External reviews
2024
in total
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Destroyer
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2019-01-11
This is one of those radical change-your-image performances that tries too hard to defy our expectations. Kidman has indeed proved in the past to be quite versatile, but this muddled, scabrous, neo-noir procedural does her no great favors.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
The Upside
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2019-01-11
The Upside is a movie that somehow works, at least some of the time, even when it shouldn’t.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
On the Basis of Sex
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2019-01-10
The casting of Jones as Ginsburg might have seemed like a good idea, but, as fine an actress as she is, she can’t quite manage to bring the future Supreme Court justice to life, perhaps because it’s tough to animate cardboard. She’s stiff and humorless.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
Vice
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2019-01-10
When, at the end, we hear Cheney intone “I was the bad guy so you didn’t have to be,” the self-serving gravity of that pronouncement rings hollow because the movie is hollow, too.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
Mary Poppins Returns
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-12-23
It’s well crafted, well acted, and features some terrific live-action/animation combos. But it never quite achieves liftoff, which is a big problem for a musical – especially this musical.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
Ben Is Back
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-12-14
Roberts, in her “serious” performances, is often a tad too stiff and monochromic, but she works well here with Hedges, who knows how to be volatile without chewing the scenery. They are quite believable as mother and son.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
If Beale Street Could Talk
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-12-14
For all the film’s righteous anger and obeisance to Baldwin, it remains a baffling, amorphous construct.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
Mary Queen of Scots
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-12-07
In real life, Mary and Elizabeth never met, but this film, directed by Josie Rourke and written by Beau Willimon, stages numerous interactions, many of them accompanied by flaring nostrils.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
Shirkers
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-12-07
It’s a charming, wistful movie, and I trust Tan will not have to wait another 20 years to direct her next film.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
Shoplifters
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-12-01
Kore-eda’s slow reveal of who these people are, and what they mean to each other, has its mystery story aspects, but this is essentially a character study, or at least it tries to be, and not a puzzle picture. He fills in each of the main players leisurely, in snatches.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
The Favourite
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-12-01
The actresses are so expert, especially Colman, with her grievous, hardbitten woe, that you may not care, but if one is to mock this sort of historical extravaganza, I much prefer the nutbrain Monty Python approach to all this deep-dish folderol.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
Roma
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-11-23
As evocative and soulful as I found parts of this movie, I experienced these stylistics as more evasion than immersion. Cuarón is so careful to avoid overdramatizing the narrative that his steady-state underplaying ends up seeming equally coercive. But this is not how we are supposed to react to “Roma.” We are supposed to regard it as “real life.”Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
At Eternity's Gate
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-11-18
One of the great achievements of this movie is that, in the end, Van Gogh’s words enter into our soul with the same force as the paintings.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
Green Book
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-11-16
Mortensen, who reportedly put on thirty pounds for the role, starts out playing Tony like a big lug but as the road trip ensues he brings all sorts of subtle shadings to the role. He even comes to appreciate Doc’s artistry. In Tony’s eyes, he’s right up there with Liberace.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
The Front Runner
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-11-09
Jackman, sporting a distracting, Hart-like brown hairpiece, seems miscast. He doesn’t convincingly convey this politician’s swagger and slickness, and Reitman’s attempts to mimic a loose-limbed political movie in the style of, say, Robert Altman’s “Tanner '88” series or “The Candidate” are rather leaden. It’s a film that’s less interesting to watch than to discuss afterward.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-11-09
How intently should we take Joel and Ethan Coen as artists? Despite their extreme unevenness and the flip misanthropy that runs through their work, I think they deserve to be taken seriously as such. In this new film, their extraordinary jeweler’s-eye attention to detail, their gift for concocting dialogue in plummy 19th-century vernacular, their lyrical embrace of wide-open landscapes, and their woeful nihilism that conceives of a world where paradise is always on the precipice of ruination are hallmarks of something much more than mere jokesterism.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
The Other Side of the Wind
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-11-02
As it turns out, bearing Welles’s words in mind, it becomes almost a meta version of Welles’s movie. I would like to think that the great magician himself would have approved.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
Burning
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-10-26
It builds slowly, and, at almost 2-1/2 hours, it occasionally drags. But it’s worth the time. This is a very knowing movie about the ultimate unknowability of people.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
The Kindergarten Teacher
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-10-19
One of those movies with a terrific premise left unfulfilled.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor -
First Man
A review by Peter Rainer for Christian Science Monitor2018-10-13
First Man pays lip service to the politics of the cold war that surrounded the moon shot, but it’s not that kind of movie, really. For all its scale and ambition, it’s essentially a small-scale character study. The character, Armstrong, is microscopic, and the backdrop is macroscopic. It’s an odd, uneasy fit.Read entire review on Christian Science Monitor
