Matt Singer

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ScreenCrush, The Dissolve
For 419 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 36% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 61% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Matt Singer's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 American Graffiti
Lowest review score: 10 The Emoji Movie
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 176 out of 419
  2. Mixed: 196 out of 419
  3. Negative: 47 out of 419
419 movie reviews
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    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    The Alto Knights
    When all is said and done, The Alto Knights imparts very little about these two men that couldn’t be gleaned by reading their respective Wikipedia pages, and it does it at a sluggish pace and with little visual flair. Some of the biggest and best names to ever work in gangster movies contributed to this film; De Niro and Pileggi, obviously, but also producer Irwin Winkler and director Barry Levinson. Despite their many contributions to this genre in the past, they’ve got nothing new to say here. And they provide zero evidence that casting De Niro in both lead roles is anything more than a gimmick.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Napoleon
    At times, Napoleon is a costume drama. For long stretches, it is a bloody war film. And occasionally — in its best moments — it becomes a sordid and twisted love story about the unbreakable bond between two people: Napoleon Bonaparte, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and his wife Joséphine, played by Vanessa Kirby.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Lorne
    Like Saturday Night Live itself, there are too many great comedians involved for it not to be at least occasionally funny. But it’s surely not among Neville’s most insightful films. Michaels guards his secrets like someone in the Witness Protection Program.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Pacific Rim: Uprising
    The first half of the film setting up the characters’ meager backstories and conflicts is boring. The second half is livelier but dumber, with the kaiju rising yet again from the depths of the Pacific to rampage through some extremely computer-generated cityscapes. There isn’t a single second where anything involving the jaegers or the kaiju looks real.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    The Flash
    The good barely outweighs the bad here, at least enough for me to give The Flash a marginal recommendation. A lot of the reviews of The Flash from early screenings called it one of the greatest DC Comics movies ever made. Maybe in another universe that’s true. In this one, I thought it stumbled across the finish line.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Mank
    It is a beautiful film, as all Fincher films are, and it contains several compelling performances. But if all that artifice and powerhouse acting add up to something particularly profound, I did not find it during my initial viewings of the movie.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Silence
    With his mastery of composition, editing, and music, Scorsese has made some of the most engaging movies in history, experiences that express fascinating ideas through gripping stories, compelling characters, and unparalleled craft. Here, all of those elements seem sublimated to the larger points Scorsese wants to make.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Dumb Money
    It’s not boring and there are a few decent laughs. But it also does feel like exactly the movie you would expect a big Hollywood studio to make from this material.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    i'm thinking of ending things
    The best way I can think of to describe the experience of actually watching I’m Thinking of Ending Things is to imagine you’ve been asked to assemble a complicated piece of furniture without the instruction manual. All of the pieces are there; and you see how some of those individual parts connect and work together. You can admire the obvious intelligence and care that went into crafting those pieces. But the path to a coherent whole is not entirely clear — and often deeply frustrating.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Fifty Shades Darker
    Fifty Shades Darker is a very faithful sequel; a milquetoast continuation of a bland romance between two boring people.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    The Jungle Book
    Favreau’s Jungle Book is at its best in moments of visual splendor; when his camera pulls back to admire the sweep of the CGI foliage or yet another dazzling computer creation wanders into frame. Those images have a clarity that the rest of the movie often lacks.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
    The’re not a lot of momentum to Hotel Transylvania 3; this is a children’s film after all. But the character and location designs are inventive and appealing, and there are several memorable set pieces, including a wordless scuba diving sequence that draws heavy inspiration from classic Warner Bros. cartoons.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Maestro
    This couple’s connection feels authentic and lived in — but I must confess that at a certain point I began to feel like an additional dimension was missing, some sort of tangible connection between Bernstein’s outward persona and his marital stresses, or between his sexuality (and the steps he took to hide it) and his musical output.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    The Revenant
    If Iñárritu wanted to show how life on the frontier was miserable and monotonous he succeeded — by making a movie that is miserable and monotonous. Some of the greatest cinematography in history can’t change that fact.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Extraction
    Extraction might outdo Children of Men in some minor technical ways, but it can’t hold a candle to it as a whole. The movie comes alive around the 34-minute mark; it’s a bit of a slog until that point — one I confess I might have turned off long before its bravura centerpiece if not for professional commitments.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Raya and the Last Dragon
    The many similarities between Raya and Mulan and Moana suggest that Disney’s honed in on a new formula for their fairy tales, one that emphasizes (to borrow a phrase from a television series that anticipated the appetite for these kinds of stories) warrior princesses. In this case, at least, the formula works.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    On the Rocks
    Felix isn’t On the Rocks’ main character, but he is its most interesting one, the one who seems to have the most to say and the most to hide; the one that writer/director Sofia Coppola gives her strongest comedic material and saddest monologues; the one who’s played by Bill Murray in yet another performance that feels so tossed off and yet so finely tuned
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Fair Play
    Dynevor and Ehrenreich are both very easy on the eyes, and when the story allows — which is not that often — they do have chemistry together. Their final scenes crackle with a darker and more disturbing energy as well. But Fair Play’s middle section gives neither of them very much to do beyond a repetitive series of clashes.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    A Field in England
    Even though the film’s overall impact is blunted by Wheatley’s frequently inscrutable plotting (co-written with Amy Jump), Rose’s images...speak louder than words.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Spaceship Earth
    If you think quarantine life is tough, just wait until you see what happens in a biosphere.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Wind River
    The crime story, involving the hunt for the men who murdered this girl, is strictly by-the-numbers (and there are a few clue that still don’t fit together in my mind) but Sheridan proves himself a surprisingly effective director of action.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Hoppers
    Hoppers director and co-writer Daniel Chong throws a lot of ingredients in the pot here, but I’m not sure they all blend together into a coherent stew. The film has a couple fun gags, an uplifting theme, and a touching subplot about Mabel and her grandmother (Karen Huie). Still, as a story it’s a bit of a jumble, as if someone took a nature doc and hopped it into a mystery movie that was hopped into a broad comedy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Jay Kelly
    The final act pickles Jay Kelly’s tragicomic vibe into something more overtly and excessively sentimental.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Zootopia 2
    Sure, yes, technically speaking Zootopia 2 is intended for your children. This is a colorful, energetic, and extremely busy animated film about talking animals. But while these critters’ adventures keep the kids occupied, a lot of the movie’s humor, tucked into its corners and backgrounds of the frame, is aimed squarely at their parents and guardians, at least those who love a groan-inducing play on words.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    M3GAN
    While most of 2022’s holiday toys are destined to be dumped in storage bins or even the garbage in a matter of weeks, I have feeling M3GAN is going to stick around a lot longer than that.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Midsommar
    The stuff about this couple in decline is lacerating and painful in the best and most hilarious ways possible. The stuff about the solstice is standard horror fare made unfurled, with exceptional craft, at a snail’s pace. And the longer Midsommar goes, the further it gets from the pain and the loss that fueled its emotional core, until it has lost touch with the things that made it special.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Doctor Strange
    The bad news is the studio’s most innovative visuals are wedded to one of its most formulaic origin stories. In some scenes, Doctor Strange is Marvel’s most exciting movie yet. In others, it might be its most boring movie since Iron Man 2.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Luca
    Combine some of the Italian master’s whimsy with even more of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, along with plenty of Pixar’s now-standard bittersweet lessons about growing up and you get Luca, an affectionate portrait of friendship that never quite rises to the level of the beloved animation studio’s best efforts. Maybe it’s just a little too simple, both in construction and stakes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Brad's Status
    With little drama or humor, it mostly amounts to watching a guy complain about his fairly decent life for 100 minutes.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Memory: The Origins of Alien
    Essentially, Memory is too superficial a treatment of the chestburster sequence to validate making half of a movie about it, and it’s also too lengthy an exploration of it to give the other elements of the movie their proper due.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Colossal
    This is the sort of film that is more frustrating than bad. Vigalondo had something really special here. He just didn’t quite pull it off.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Monkey Man
    Patel’s desire to make something more than a straightforward action film is admirable, especially since he had to juggle responsibilities in front of and behind the camera simultaneously to do so. Monkey Man suggests he’s got potential as a filmmaker in the future. In the present, his directorial debut is the sort of genre exercise that makes you realize creating a “straightforward” action movie is not so straightforward.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Ant-Man and the Wasp
    It’s about as unassuming as a movie about a man who can grow 65 feet tall could be, and in its relatively subdued scale, it is fairly refreshing and fun.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
    Weird won’t make anyone forget Walk Hard, but it might make some folks go and break out their old Weird Al records for the first time in a while. I recommend Dare to Be Stupid.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    The Little Hours
    On paper, The Little Hours sounds like a combative anti-religious tract, but Baena’s less interested in mocking the church than in basking in the gulf between humanity’s lofty aspirations and its baser instincts.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    How to Train Your Dragon
    Look past the surface of this remake and you’ll find ... basically the exact same movie you’ve seen before, and could watch at home anytime you want. There are no surprises, except maybe the total lack of surprises.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    The Birth of a Nation
    A famous (though almost certainly false) quote attributed to President Woodrow Wilson compared Griffith’s work to “writing history with lightning” and the best sections in Parker’s Birth of a Nation are charged with a similar kind of cinematic electricity. Many of his directing choices are obvious but bluntly effective.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Deep Water
    In 2022, films of this ilk are so rare, that I can almost forgive the Deep Water’s faults just for reminding me that these sorts of stories can be told onscreen. Almost.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Avengers: Infinity War
    I appreciate the sheer logistical achievement of Infinity War (and the chutzpah of its ending). I laughed a bunch of times, and some of the scenes are definitely exciting. But I would be lying if I pretended this movie ever grabbed me the way the best MCU movies did.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    No Time to Die
    Parts recall the muscular intensity of Craig’s debut, Casino Royale. Others evoke painful memories (and specific story threads) from the bloated, digressive Spectre.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Black Widow
    Black Widow functions less as a showcase for the title character and more as a sneaky introduction for Pugh, who is drolly hilarious as the deeply cynical Yelena.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
    If you want to see a lot of strange CGI visuals and the you’re interested in the groundwork of the next phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you’ll likely walk out satisfied (if maybe a little confused about the specifics of Kang’s larger plan). If you want to see an Ant-Man movie like the previous two Ant-Man movies — with wry humor, simple stories, and inventive uses of Ant-Man’s shrinking powers — you’re as out of luck as Scott Lang after Kang drags him to the Quantum Realm.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
    The old masters of early movie stunts who Cruise and McQuarrie so obviously admire knew that sometimes simpler was better.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
    This movie has a lot on its mind — and perhaps too many characters.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Jurassic World Rebirth
    Beyond a few flashes of visual ingenuity, though, there really isn’t much to recommend about this movie.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    The Founder
    This movie offers very few insights, and has no apparent point beyond mythologizing the early days of a company that doesn’t exactly need assistance in the self-mythologizing department.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Bumblebee
    The whole production just works. Steinfeld, Lendeborg, and Cena are extremely likable leads, and there’s a soul and an innocence to Bumblebee that was never present in any of the previous Transformers.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    The BFG
    The BFG’s sluggish pacing will test even older viewers’ attention spans. The visuals are potent, but the story is never urgent. The crux of the movie, inspiring people to dream, is a noble, beautiful thing. But not when you put them to sleep in the process.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    There are some scenes here as lively and as thoughtful as any in this great series’ history. But then that final sequence reminds viewers that this is a franchise still thinking about the way things were, and not with the way things are — or could be in the future.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Deadpool
    While Deadpool’s core audience will appreciate the way it flatters their knowledge of genre conventions with winking, cynical humor, too much of this stuff just plays like smug self-satisfaction. The movie is so impressed with itself that the viewer’s satisfaction seems completely irrelevant.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Deadpool 2
    The fight sequences aren’t as good as director David Leitch’s previous work like Atomic Blonde and the John Wick movies, but it’s better than the standard superhero fare, with enough clever touches to keep things interesting.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
    Edwards is very good at crafting images that straddle the uncomfortable line between beauty and horror, and at dwarfing people with giant monsters and machines with powers beyond mortal comprehension. It’s his comprehension of mortals that sometimes feels lacking.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Charlie Victor Romeo
    The small company of actors make convincing pilots, flight attendants, and air-traffic controllers, but their activities, tragic and brave though they may be, quickly grow monotonous.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Transformers One
    The best vocal performance in Transformers One by far comes from Brian Tyree Henry, who puts so much feeling into D-16 rapid transformation into the menacing Megatron that you almost buy that he goes from Orion’s loyal bestie to his sworn mortal enemy in the span of about 10 minutes.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    The Smashing Machine
    Everything Safdie, Johnson, and Blunt do to conjure up this time and place is a technical achievement, but it never goes past that to a truly involving sports story. The Smashing Machine is sadly not a knockout. Call it a split decision instead.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    Is it a fun movie overall? Yes, although not quite as much fun as I had hoped. On paper, Shakman cast the four lead roles perfectly. In execution, I’m not sure any of his stars really found their groove as these characters yet. Or maybe the script flattened the Fantastic Four to the point where it left them no groove to find. Let’s put it this way: It’s a decent first step. There’s still room for improvement.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Alien: Romulus
    What’s here isn’t necessarily boring or bad, but it represents a back-to-basics approach for Alien that feels like a betrayal of something central to the Xenomorph’s toxic DNA, which is forever mutating into another deadly creature.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Frozen II
    Even with Frozen II’s problems, the ending affected me. Because some things do change. Even if they always remain Frozen.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    MaXXXine
    West does so much winking at the audience that he doesn’t leave much time to gaze into the darkness the way a truly scary horror movie does; MaXXXine’s moments of shock are surprisingly few and far between. As a result MaXXXine is rarely as disturbing or as effective as the earlier films in this series.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Captain Marvel
    Captain Marvel itself has none of that rebellious spirit. It takes very few risks in the way that something like Thor: Ragnarok did, beyond the fact that it is the studio’s first blockbuster with a female hero in the lead. Personally, I like my movies about rule breakers to actually break some rules.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Sicario: Day of the Soldado
    A superficial sequel that lacks the first movie’s unique quirks and soul.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Knock at the Cabin
    Before that, though, Knock at the Cabin is about as well-acted and intense as a movie of this kind gets. For a long time, Shyalaman had a reputation as a guy obsessed with twists. While he does still occasionally veer into that sort of territory, his movies these days are less about structural gimmicks than insistent messages. In Knock at the Cabin’s case, it is a poignant tale about faith and sacrifice — and, above all, avoiding family vacations at all costs.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Pee-wee's Big Holiday
    The results are mostly pleasing and occasionally very funny (particularly whenever Manganiello pops up and Pee-wee tries to pronounce his name). But they also feel very familiar, something that flies in the face of the movie’s key theme about reinvention.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Free Fire
    There’s a decent amount of craft on display, along with a filmmaker of genuine chutzpah. Throw just a little restraint into the mix, and you might really have something.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Solo: A Star Wars Story
    If the goal here was to really understand how a brash kid from a backwater planet became an amoral smuggler, Solo failed. Han’s evolution in this movie is entirely superficial. He doesn’t become the character we recognize. When you get right down to it, the biggest thing about him that changes is he goes from wearing a vest to a jacket.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
    It takes way too long — nearly an hour of a 105-minute movie — for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s actual story to emerge and for Keaton to take center stage again. Once he shows up, though, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice springs to life. Er, make that afterlife.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Kong: Skull Island
    This is a creature feature, plain and simple — and, at least on a visceral level, a satisfying one.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
    Murphy is really on his game; way more than I expected after 30 years. This is not Eddie Murphy in a Detroit Lions jacket sleepwalking his way through a big Netflix paycheck; it’s Axel Foley improvising his way through one crisis after another. And that’s fun.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Dumbo
    Dumbo’s great skill, flying around a tent in a circle, becomes a little old after it’s repeated ad naseam over the course of two full hours. Adorable though he may be, Dumbo’s kind of a one-trick pony, in a matter of speaking.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Lucy
    Lucy earns points for its unpredictable treatment of its vaguely superhero-ish premise and an appealing silliness, but it struggles to match wits with the genius at its center.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Babylon
    Chazelle seems so enamored with his simulacrum of this forgotten world that he loses sight of the people in it.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Black Phone 2
    Black Phone 2 conjures an artful milieu out of those disparate elements, and it’s saturated with the chilly ambiance of a classic campfire ghost story. But the actual story it tells never quite measures up to its superior influences, or even the previous entry in this series.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Tetris
    The lead performers bring a lot of energy to the material, and for a while Tetris hums along as part The Social Network and part Ocean’s 11, at least until a final act that collapses under the weight of an action sequence so ludicrous it feels like it belongs in a parody of bad Hollywood biopics.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Velvet Buzzsaw
    A great cast and a fairly clever turn into the realm of horror can’t redeem what otherwise feels like a very familiar, very safe piece of satire.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Scream VI
    Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett do know how to stage a good scare sequence, and Scream VI has enough decent ones to prevent the film from tipping over into disaster.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
    If Suicide Squad felt like Warner Bros.’ deliberate attempt to replicate the quirky fun of Guardians of the Galaxy, Birds of Prey is its stab — and there is a lot of stabbing in it — at making DC’s Deadpool.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Saturday Night
    Reitman clearly made this film from a place of love and admiration for the institution of SNL and the people, then and now, who produce it. He might get the facts wrong at times; what he gets right is the feeling that every fan who grows up watching SNL imagines the show is like behind the scenes — giddy and chaotic and brimming with passionate creativity.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Ghostbusters
    Warts and all, the new Ghostbusters is still one of the best tentpoles of the summer (admittedly, that’s not saying much). It doesn’t tarnish the legacy of the original movie, and its own legacy might have been even stronger if it hadn’t worried about paying homage to the old Ghostbusters quite so intensely.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Kill the Messenger
    Kill The Messenger isn’t a great movie, but it’s a great vehicle for Renner, and a showcase for the kind of work he should be doing more regularly.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Wonder Woman 1984
    Pretty much everything in Wonder Woman 1984 that’s not an excuse for a Gadot and Pine reunion flops. That includes both of its villains.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Bad Times at the El Royale
    Lots of mystery hangs in the air of the El Royale, but when all is said and done there aren’t a ton of surprises in Bad Times at the El Royale’s story, or the way that story is told. Even with a bunch of twists, things progress largely how you expect, only slower.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    Hobbs & Shaw is the movie version of a replacement-level player. It is adequate, but not exceptional. It’s the baseline version of what one of these movies should be, now that they’re not about undercover cops chasing thieves anymore.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Godzilla vs. Kong
    As an entertainment, Godzilla vs. Kong is as hollow as the Earth upon which its set. Here, the human characters’ irrational decisions do not feel like part of a cohesive statement about our species’ self-absorption, but rather the byproduct of a superficial screenplay that cares only about the excuses needed to get Godzilla and King Kong into several extended (and undeniably impressive) CGI scuffles.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
    At a certain point, Deliver Me From Nowhere sort of loses the thread of its stripped-down, unadorned approach.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Cruella
    I suspect some may give Cruella a pass simply because it does have a genuinely quirky vibe, along with a slightly darker than your standard Disney fare. The gonzo period fashions are fun as well. Ultimately, though, the film feels less like a satisfying character drama than a work of corporate rebranding — for Disney as well as for Cruella herself.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Novocaine
    Novocaine belongs to the same cinemasochistic tradition as movies like Evil Dead II and Crank, where the audience is invited to derive twisted pleasure from watching a heroic leading man get the crap beaten out of him in inventive ways. It’s not as good as those movies. But on its own terms, it’s painless enough. Pleasurable even.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    It: Chapter Two
    The parade of subplots and explanations keep sinking a story that previously floated along so effectively. I saw It Chapter Two a few nights ago and I think it just ended.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    F9: The Fast Saga
    Even as it takes Fast and Furious to literal new heights (and marks a significant improvement from The Fate of the Furious), F9 never tops the franchise’s best entries. It’s simply too complicated and too long to surpass something like Fast Five.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Flamin' Hot
    While Flamin’ Hot’s choice of subject might separate it slightly from the larger canon of great-man biographies, it’s otherwise a very familiar recipe coated with a little new seasoning.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    An American Pickle
    There are good things in American Pickle, like two convincing (and occasionally moving) performances from Rogen. But they’re the equivalent of a couple cucumber scraps in a giant vat of salt water.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Moana 2
    Without the musical heart or stirring adventure of the first movie, Moana 2 relies on a surprising amount of gross-out humor and meta jokes to keep audiences engaged.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Wicked: For Good
    Ultimately, the best creative argument in favor of making two Wicked movies is that it let the audience spend even more time with the story’s characters and the two lead performers, who really are terrific together.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Elemental
    The stronger element (sorry) of this story is the relationship between Bernie and Ember, and how it underscores the way the expectations of every generation winds up resting heavily on the shoulders of the next. I’m not sure using different elements as a metaphor for the immigrant experience quite works beyond its broadest strokes, but it does at least add some heft to Elemental’s scenes between father and daughter, which do build to an affecting if extremely predictable conclusion.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
    It’s nice to see Reiner, McKean, Guest, and Shearer acknowledge their age and have some fun again, even if they never come close to matching the invention and creativity of the old Spinal Tap.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Thor: Love and Thunder
    A lot of Love and Thunder’s individual parts are sharp, and the film is full of likable performers like Hemsworth, Portman, and Thompson. It’s not a terrible time at the theater. If you enjoyed the last Thor movie, you’ll probably enjoy this one. Just not as much.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Mascots
    There are an obscene number of funny people in this movie — though Mascots is not as obscenely funny as that Murderers’ Row of comedy talent would suggest.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Mufasa: The Lion King
    Turning Mufasa’s rise to power into its own movie makes sense, although doing it in this style, and with so much prequelitis about less-essential elements of The Lion King mythos, still seems like a strange choice to me.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Hocus Pocus 2
    Hocus Pocus 2 doesn’t necessarily demand Kubrickian levels of visual splendor, but it’s still a film, and film is a visual medium. If there was anything even remotely interesting to look at on the screen, that would be nice.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Joy
    Joy has none of the energy or precision of any of Russell’s recent efforts. Not even Joy Mangano could invent a mop good enough to clean up this mess.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Concussion
    It’s the very definition of a film with its heart in the right place. And also a prime example of how good intentions don’t automatically make great movies.
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