National Review - Rotten Tomatoes

National Review

National Review is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Armond White, Kyle Smith, Megan Basham
Rating
Title/Year
Author
1
Petite Maman (2021)

Armond White

Filmmaker Céline Sciamma unexpectedly recaptures Spielberg's once-amazing relation to childhood wonder and pure emotion.
Posted Jan 26, 2022
2
Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022)

Kyle Smith

As edgy as a tub of margarine. Not that it's a bad movie; it simply has no impact.
Posted Jan 26, 2022
3
When You Finish Saving the World (2022)

Kyle Smith

Eisenberg keeps the whole movie dry and matter-of-fact, letting this cast of amusingly misguided people simply go about their lives as blind to their own flaws as you would expect professional progressives to be.
Posted Jan 24, 2022
4
The Harder They Fall (2021)

Armond White

The Harder They Fall confirms there's no honor in performing garbage with relish.
Posted Jan 21, 2022
5
Parallel Mothers (Madres paralelas) (2021)

Armond White

Parallel Mothers is Almodóvar's most pompous and unconvincingly political film.
Posted Jan 20, 2022
6
Belle (2022)

Kyle Smith

It suggests that what's most notable, most personal, about the avatars isn't the amazing feats they're capable of, but their bruises, which tell a story about their humanity.
Posted Jan 18, 2022
7
Licorice Pizza (2021)

Armond White

This is easily the American eccentric's best film because his usual indie-movie flaws - obscure themes, cynical perspective, and technical showing-off - are mitigated by a rare, relatable narrative.
Posted Jan 14, 2022
8
Don't Look Up (2021)

Armond White

The film's negativity indicts McKay and insults his audience.
Posted Jan 12, 2022
9
France (2021)

Armond White

No other 2021 movie feels so eerily contemporary. France is a work of head-spinning mastery.
Posted Jan 6, 2022
10
The Power of the Dog (2021)

Armond White

Campion's incongruous plot twists can pass for profundity in an era ignorant of both American history and film history.
Posted Jan 3, 2022
11
Red Rocket (2021)

Armond White

Red Rocket would seem dehumanizing and despicable if not for Rex's three-dimensional portrait of Mikey's outlawry; flaunting head-banger's stupidity, misused charm, and misguided talents to full effect.
Posted Dec 29, 2021
12
Drive My Car (2021)

Armond White

I'm reluctant to hand Hamaguchi Chekhovian laurels because his measured style feels like Chekhov when done poorly. Drive My Car is the opposite of lively.
Posted Dec 27, 2021
13
Red Rocket (2021)

Kyle Smith

[Director Sean Baker] builds his raunchy, offbeat, sometimes-alarming, and consistently very funny dark comedy around the considerable talents of a journeyman actor/deejay/rapper named Simon Rex.
Posted Dec 27, 2021
14
The Lost Daughter (2021)

Armond White

Gyllenhaal is one of those close-minded Hollywood liberals who confuse self-pity with political enmity.
Posted Dec 17, 2021
15
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Kyle Smith

It's all dumb gimmicks, sci-fi gobbledygook, and digital spectacle, and the central love story is such an afterthought that the young couple (Tom Holland and Zendaya) barely spend any time together.
Posted Dec 17, 2021
16
Don't Look Up (2021)

Kyle Smith

The fruit here isn't low-hanging; it's on the ground rotting, impossible to make a meal of.
Posted Dec 10, 2021
17
West Side Story (2021)

Armond White

Spielberg shrinks the spiritual aspiration that once made his popular art transcendent. First time out, West Side Story functioned as tragedy and cultural triumph. Second time, it's woke farce.
Posted Dec 10, 2021
18
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021)

Armond White

Jude's eye-popping essay captures the same insolence indicated by the unrivaled title of his previous film, I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians.
Posted Dec 8, 2021
19
West Side Story (2021)

Kyle Smith

The dramatic portions of the story still aren't good, but now they're more or less tolerable. As for the songs? Spectacular. Funny, merry, beautiful, full of life, and entertainingly staged by Spielberg.
Posted Dec 6, 2021
20
tick, tick...Boom! (2021)

Armond White

Tick, tick...BOOM! uses the Jonathan Larson careerist cult to promote Broadway narcissism. It's the most obnoxious showbiz biopic since De-Lovely disgraced Cole Porter.
Posted Dec 3, 2021
21
Asphalt Goddess (La Diosa del Asfalto) (2020)

Armond White

Asphalt Goddess dares to sensationalize rebellion but then reconciles it with our common humanity.
Posted Dec 2, 2021
22
Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (2021)

Kyle Smith

Thanks to all of this personal reflection that Weide caught on film, the doc is gold for Vonnegut buffs. As for those who decline to revere him, there are plenty of revealing moments.
Posted Nov 29, 2021
23
Licorice Pizza (2021)

Kyle Smith

Anderson has a genius for locating the comedy in the ordinary, and his wry observations make Licorice Pizza one of the funniest movies of the year. Maybe he should ditch the epics for a while and dare to be delightful.
Posted Nov 29, 2021
24
House of Gucci (2021)

Kyle Smith

House of Gucci is like a walk across the cinematic equivalent of Canal Street, where shady merchants sell ersatz designer merchandise: Instead of a purse whose clasp falls off, the movie amounts to a dull, cheap knockoff of Martin Scorsese.
Posted Nov 29, 2021
25
Encanto (2021)

Kyle Smith

A thin story, dull characters, endlessly regurgitated gags, and a general air of pointlessness dog this fantasy about life in an enchanted house in an unspecified Latin country.
Posted Nov 29, 2021
26
House of Gucci (2021)

Armond White

Ultrahack Ridley Scott redefines banality in House of Gucci, a cornball reality drama.
Posted Nov 29, 2021
27
A Cop Movie (2021)

Armond White

It's a challenge to the dramatic conventions of TV crime shows and movie decadence. A Cop Movie responds to the social moment, examining contemporary issues without resorting to "reform" and "defund" clichés.
Posted Nov 29, 2021
28
Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road (2021)

Kyle Smith

Building a documentary around recent conversations with Wilson as he drives around L.A. wasn't likely to yield much, and doesn't, in Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road.
Posted Nov 22, 2021
29
King Richard (2021)

Kyle Smith

Directed in straightforward sentimental style by Reinaldo Marcus Green from a script by Zach Baylin, King Richard is infused with hearty American optimism, packed wall to wall with motivational one-liners and projections of titanic self-confidence.
Posted Nov 22, 2021
30
Belfast (2021)

Armond White

Branagh's shallow regard of Irish history cheapens its art heritage, first by misappropriating Van Morrison, creator of the transcendent Astral Weeks among other Irish pop landmarks.
Posted Nov 19, 2021
31
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

Kyle Smith

For the most part, it's a winsome, endearing summer movie for November, a cunningly engineered generational bridge.
Posted Nov 18, 2021
32
Love Is Love Is Love (2021)

Armond White

No one else in Hollywood takes middle-aged women seriously, so Eleanor Coppola's calm, patience, and insight provide an unusual movie experience.
Posted Nov 17, 2021
33
Ragtime (1981)

Armond White

Trying to do the right Hollywood thing on Doctorow's story, Forman fell into the same traps that hobble contemporary films.
Posted Nov 12, 2021
34
Belfast (2021)

Kyle Smith

A wonderfully intimate and deeply personal little picture shot in naturalistic (rather than expressionistic) black and white
Posted Nov 12, 2021
35
Spencer (2021)

Armond White

Spencer itself is only a half-bad movie, promoting idolatry for a public that has lost respect for tradition and that has no sense of duty or sense of occasion.
Posted Nov 10, 2021
36
The French Dispatch (2021)

Armond White

The French Dispatch is a Millennial creation, set at the title publication's headquarters in the preciously named town Ennui sur blasé. That means it celebrates journalism as a class marker, American arrogance served à la Française.
Posted Nov 5, 2021
37
Spencer (2021)

Kyle Smith

It's all too much, and then some. The script, by Steven Knight, is sprinkled with howlers that sound like they were recycled from Dynasty.
Posted Nov 5, 2021
38
Eternals (2021)

Kyle Smith

Zhao has graduated from delicate artisanal indies to overprocessed, soul-challenged, assembly-line Hollywood junk in record time.
Posted Nov 1, 2021
39
Last Night in Soho (2021)

Armond White

Everything about Wright's checklist filmmaking is unsatisfying. Trying to make both a pop-culture jamboree and an exposé of female exploitation means Last Night in Soho is diversity gone mad.
Posted Oct 29, 2021
40
Dune (2021)

Armond White

If you expect a sensual, kinetic, visually exciting movie version of Frank Herbert's renowned 1965 epic sci-fi novel, be prepared for a presentation of global malaise instead.
Posted Oct 22, 2021
41
The Velvet Underground (2021)

Armond White

Haynes gets so lost in his preening art gestures that there's no practical information about contracts or record-company business, just the useless glorification of pop-art myths.
Posted Oct 15, 2021
42
Halloween Kills (2021)

Kyle Smith

Picking up immediately after the brilliant 2018 Halloween, the new one is grueling, enervating, and dispiriting.
Posted Oct 14, 2021
43
Bergman Island (2021)

Armond White

To a generation that knows nothing about Ingmar Bergman, Hansen-Love's name-dropping caprice will mean even less.
Posted Oct 13, 2021
44
The Last Duel (2021)

Kyle Smith

Any historical film that is genuinely curious about the past will observe how prodigiously different it was, and this one is absolutely soaked in fascinating strangeness.
Posted Oct 13, 2021
45
No Time To Die (2021)

Armond White

No Time to Die proves that the decades-old James Bond franchise has reached a dead end. The turn toward sadism that began with Daniel Craig's angry, sinister interpretation of 007 has reached an unconscionable level of heartlessness.
Posted Oct 8, 2021
46
The Power of the Dog (2021)

Kyle Smith

Unnecessary ponderousness, dressed up with lots of period detail. Oscar voters often confuse failing to get to the point with importance, especially if the movie looks pretty.
Posted Oct 8, 2021
47
Dune (2021)

Kyle Smith

It's well worth seeing and I certainly hope the second half gets made. But it's a slog. Gorgeous and eerie, it drifts along when it should be charging ahead. It's a film of painterly vistas, haunting music, and woozy reveries, defined by stiff dialogue.
Posted Oct 8, 2021
48
The French Dispatch (2021)

Kyle Smith

The French Dispatch is cute but kind of dull. I'd call it a French disappointment.
Posted Oct 6, 2021
49
The Velvet Underground (2021)

Kyle Smith

Jumpy, kaleidoscopic, nervy, trippy, the film succeeds brilliantly at capturing the band's shamanic appeal. Running two hours, it probably could have gone on for twice as long with no loss of effect.
Posted Oct 6, 2021
50
The Many Saints of Newark (2021)

Armond White

For some of us, The Sopranos epitomizes everything that went wrong with American popular culture this millennium. Those of us who realize that mainstream media operate by different rules will be mildly appalled by The Many Saints of Newark
Posted Oct 6, 2021