Christian Science Monitor - Rotten Tomatoes

Christian Science Monitor

Tomatometer-approved publication
Rating
Title/Year
Author
1
4.5/5
Let the Sunshine In (Un beau soleil intérieur) (2018)

Peter Rainer

The movie is all a bit more airy than it needs to be, but Isabelle's startlements are like a double take that never lets up.
Posted May 4, 2018
2
4.5/5
Tully (2018)

Peter Rainer

In "Tully," the cynicism about the supposed undiluted joys of motherhood rings true, or at least truer than in movies that don't admit such a station in life can be less than paradise.
Posted May 4, 2018
3
B
RBG (2018)

Peter Rainer

Ostensibly a documentary about 85-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but it feels more like a love letter.
Posted May 4, 2018
4
B
After Auschwitz (2018)

Peter Rainer

Each of the women profiled recounts, with varying degrees of intensity, the difficulties in creating a "normal" life in a world where the concept of "home" can no longer fully resonate.
Posted May 4, 2018
5
B+
In the Intense Now (No Intenso Agora) (2018)

Peter Rainer

In the end, the political confusions of Salles's movie, which seem all of a piece with the political confusions of that era, sit small beside its achievement as a document of an incendiary time.
Posted Apr 27, 2018
6
B-
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Peter Rainer

Some of the sequences are undeniably thrilling but, at about 2-1/2 hours, overkill sets in early.
Posted Apr 27, 2018
7
The Shining (1980)

David Sterritt

What a picture that could have been: a modern ghost yarn with an excellent cast, directed by master technician Stanley Kubrick. Yet the result is a bore, sometimes gratuitously violent, and lacking logic as well as chills.
Posted Apr 25, 2018
8
A-
A Quiet Place (2018)

Peter Rainer

At a brisk 90 minutes, it's one of the most inventive and beautifully crafted and acted horror movies I've seen in a very long time, and I think the main reason for its power is the family crisis at its core.
Posted Apr 18, 2018
9
B+
Lean on Pete (2018)

Peter Rainer

At his best, [Haigh] can strike more emotional notes from silence than most directors can with a full chorus of sound.
Posted Apr 6, 2018
10
B-
Ready Player One (2018)

Peter Rainer

Spielberg wants us to drop the techno-gadgets and join hands, but it's the VR world that really juices him. He's the ultimate fanboy making a movie about the need to move beyond being a fan.
Posted Mar 30, 2018
11
C+
Final Portrait (2018)

Peter Rainer

The film's inexplicably grayish palette doesn't do the artist or the artwork any favors, and the action, which mostly takes place in Giacometti's plaster sculpture-strewn studio, is stagey.
Posted Mar 23, 2018
12
A-
Isle of Dogs (2018)

Peter Rainer

I was transfixed. There is so much to look at in "Isle of Dogs" that a second viewing is almost mandatory. You can forgive its fetishism. Mania this dedicated deserves its due.
Posted Mar 23, 2018
13
Beaches (1988)

David Sterritt

Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey give lively performances, but the screenplay is dreary.
Posted Mar 22, 2018
14
A-
The Death of Stalin (2018)

Peter Rainer

The central conceit of The Death of Stalin is that what is funny is not always just funny. In this sense, the film is closer in spirit to Dr. Strangelove than, say Mel Brooks's The Producers.
Posted Mar 16, 2018
15
A-
Journey's End (2018)

Peter Rainer

Journey's End does justice both to the horrors of war and to the spirit that can sometimes, somehow, transcend it.
Posted Mar 16, 2018
16
C
Tomb Raider (2018)

Peter Rainer

Tomb Raider, sloppily directed by Roar Uthaug, would not be worth watching without Vikander, who darts, leaps, and pummels her way through this mediocre escapade with a winning fierceness
Posted Mar 16, 2018
17
C+
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

Peter Rainer

Phantasmagoria that is more cheesy than transporting.
Posted Mar 9, 2018
18
B+
The Forgiven (2018)

Peter Rainer

No attempt is made to win over the audience. This welcome absence of sentimentality allows us to experience Tutu's own crisis of faith as he attempts to reconcile this man's actions with his bedrock belief in forgiveness.
Posted Mar 9, 2018
19
B-
Oh Lucy! (2018)

Peter Rainer

The film's viewpoint is unsentimental but compassionate...The film itself could use a blond wig - it needs to be far more expansive, antic, and disturbing than it is...but there are moments in Oh Lucy! that stay with you.
Posted Mar 2, 2018
20
C+
Red Sparrow (2018)

Peter Rainer

It's the centerpiece of high-gloss, highly sexualized espionage claptrap with an overlay of faux female empowerment: Dominika is pretty much an equal-opportunity scourge.
Posted Mar 2, 2018
21
The Plague Dogs (1983)

David Sterritt

Harrowing in story and urgent in subject, dealing with animal rights and the relation of human beings to their planet.
Posted Mar 1, 2018
22
B-
The Party (2018)

Peter Rainer

The Party is a brisk, black-and-white, worst-possible-case dinner party scenario overflowing with good actors and bad vibes. It resembles a minor-league distillation of Edward Albee and Woody Allen, but at least there are those performers to look at
Posted Feb 23, 2018
23
C
The Young Karl Marx (Le jeune Karl Marx) (2018)

Peter Rainer

Watching it is like being tossed into an agitprop blender..It has little depth, either political or psychological.
Posted Feb 23, 2018
24
B-
Annihilation (2018)

Peter Rainer

Garland has a gift for locating the horror inside that silliness, and this is what gives the film such a kicky, off-center quality. You laugh at it and gasp at it simultaneously.
Posted Feb 23, 2018
25
B+
Loveless (Nelyubov) (2018)

Peter Rainer

Zvyagintsev has always been wildly ambitious, sometimes to a fault, and Loveless is perhaps his most encompassing indictment of Russian society.
Posted Feb 16, 2018
26
A-
Black Panther (2018)

Peter Rainer

Coogler is trying for a lot of things in Black Panther, probably too many, but there is also a winning modesty to his ambition.
Posted Feb 16, 2018
27
B
A Fantastic Woman (Una mujer fantástica) (2018)

Peter Rainer

A Fantastic Woman trumpets its intentions in its very title. It should not have been necessary to exalt Marina in order to give her passion and turmoil their due.
Posted Feb 9, 2018
28
A-
The Insult (L'insulte) (2018)

Peter Rainer

... powerful new movie directed by Ziad Doueiri...
Posted Feb 2, 2018
29
B
Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017)

Peter Rainer

Annette Bening is one of those rare actresses who makes a movie, however otherwise deficient, worth seeing.
Posted Feb 2, 2018
30
B-
Hostiles (2018)

Peter Rainer

... a strong, if overlong and over-obvious, western...
Posted Feb 2, 2018
31
A-
Paddington 2 (2018)

Peter Rainer

A movie that promotes the importance of family and good manners might seem like it could become the squarest of snoozes, but Paddington 2 is so transcendentally cheerful that it carries the day - and then some.
Posted Jan 19, 2018
32
B-
All the Money in the World (2017)

Peter Rainer

At 88, Christopher is at the top of his game. He turns Getty into a dastardly miser with an aggrieved core. There hasn't been such a lonely mogul in the movies since Orson Welles's Charles Foster Kane expired with "Rosebud" on his lips.
Posted Jan 19, 2018
33
C+
Molly's Game (2018)

Peter Rainer

Most of the arias in Molly's Game don't achieve liftoff, and so neither does the movie.
Posted Jan 12, 2018
34
A-
Phantom Thread (2018)

Peter Rainer

The dry ice in this film burns with a hothouse intensity.
Posted Jan 5, 2018
35
B
The Post (2018)

Peter Rainer

[Streep's] hesitations, rue, and ultimate valor are soul-deep. Graham's victory over her fears does not come lightly, but when it does, it's definitive.
Posted Dec 22, 2017
36
C
Downsizing (2017)

Peter Rainer

Downsizing never quite goes where you think it's going, and normally, I'd say that's a plus. But confounding expectations only goes so far. You still have to get to a place worth getting to.
Posted Dec 22, 2017
37
B
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

Peter Rainer

Fanatics will love it; for the rest of us, it's a tolerably good time.
Posted Dec 15, 2017
38
A-
1945 (2017)

Peter Rainer

It's a good bet that the director had High Noon in mind when he made this film, but the comparison ends there. As a compact study of wartime guilt, the film has the look and feel of a waking nightmare.
Posted Dec 12, 2017
39
B-
I, Tonya (2018)

Peter Rainer

The film is periodically enlivened by some of the supporting players, including Paul Walter Hauser as Shawn Eckhardt, the supposed mastermind of the Kerrigan assault whom the movie depicts as a world-class schlub.
Posted Dec 8, 2017
40
B-
Wonder Wheel (2017)

Peter Rainer

A fresh Woody Allen movie arrives practically every year like clockwork. Some are good - most are middling. Being prolific isn't a crime, but with Allen, what you often get are retreads dolled up to look brand-new.
Posted Dec 1, 2017
41
B-
The Shape of Water (2017)

Peter Rainer

... marvelously rhapsodic in ways that recall films like Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" without ever seeming slavish.
Posted Dec 1, 2017
42
B
Call Me by Your Name (2018)

Peter Rainer

Although it ends on a powerful, bittersweet chord, the movie is a bit too determinedly soothing for comfort.
Posted Nov 27, 2017
43
B+
Coco (2017)

Peter Rainer

Pixar rebounds nicely with Coco, a big, spangly animated fiesta with its fair share of "heart."
Posted Nov 22, 2017
44
B-
Darkest Hour (2017)

Peter Rainer

The film itself may skirt stodginess, but Oldman, who has played everyone from Sid Vicious to Ludwig van Beethoven to Lee Harvey Oswald, never does. (The extraordinary makeup job is courtesy of Kazuhiro Tsuji.)
Posted Nov 22, 2017
45
3/5
Mudbound (2017)

Peter Rainer

Blige, the queen of hip-hop and soul, is virtually unrecognizable, but her underplaying in no way negates her force. It's a self-contained force that she possesses here, and she knows when to loosen the bonds.
Posted Nov 17, 2017
46
B-
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Peter Rainer

Scene by scene, the movie is compelling, but the scenes don't fit together especially well.
Posted Nov 10, 2017
47
B-
Lady Bird (2017)

Peter Rainer

The movie is best when it undercuts its own seriousness, as when Lady Bird proclaims, "I want to be the best version of who I can be," and then follows up with, "What if this is the best version?"
Posted Nov 3, 2017
48
B-
Last Flag Flying (2017)

Peter Rainer

There is a pleasingness to the predictability of the film, which stars Bryan Cranston, Steve Carell, and Laurence Fishburne as Vietnam veterans.
Posted Nov 3, 2017
49
C
Wonderstruck (2017)

Peter Rainer

It's the sort of poetic conceit that needs a filmmaker far more rapt and intuitive than Haynes, whose jeweler's precision keeps everything at an emotional remove.
Posted Oct 27, 2017
50
C+
Suburbicon (2017)

Peter Rainer

Suburbicon never jells. Good intentions are not enough.
Posted Oct 27, 2017