Tim Brayton
Chicago, IL
Movies reviews only
Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Alien: Romulus (2024) |
[Not] the worst movie in this unfortunately inconsistent franchise. Just the worst movie that doesn't have any Predators in it. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 21, 2024
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Twisters (2024) |
It would be nice if the film gave us much of anything worth paying attention to between the setpieces. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 13, 2024
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Inside Out 2 (2024) |
Mostly painless and often funny. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 13, 2024
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) |
One of the main ways that Furiosa is an unpredictable zig-zag for the Mad Max series is that it's actually much closer to a direct evolution from Miller's last film, 2022's Three Thousand Years of Longing. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 13, 2024
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Xanadu (1980) |
It is one of the dumbest movies of the 1980s, and one of the most joyful movies of the 1980s. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 13, 2024
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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006) |
A movie that is much, much more nuts than it lets on. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 13, 2024
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Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024) |
The series has finally produced its first lousy entry. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 13, 2024
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Hitman Hart: Wrestling With Shadows (1998) |
To a certain extent, Paul Jay literally needed to do nothing at all but stand out of the way of reality while it crafted for him one of the most substantial character arcs I have ever heard of in any sports documentary. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 13, 2024
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) |
There's a genuine sense of wonder here that is frankly not expected at all for the deeply pessimistic franchise it's a part of. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 13, 2024
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Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (1987) |
Despite all of its elements that are individually deranged and visionary and feel like they were wrenched out of the pitch-black recesses of some underground animator's brain, the thing as a whole feels like such yawning, uninspired hackwork. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Apr 14, 2024
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Tumbbad (2018) |
The film creeps into your bones and gives you a little shiver of discomfort at how very unknowable the world is. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Apr 14, 2024
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Madame Web (2024) |
The thing that's definitely true of Madame Web is that it was absolutely butchered, just hacked apart by a screaming maniac with a cleaver, in post-production. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Apr 14, 2024
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Tremors II: Aftershocks (1996) |
A whole lot more thoughtful than it had the slightest reason to be. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Apr 14, 2024
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Drive-Away Dolls (2024) |
It's easy to call this "just a lark", but it's not just a lark, really; it's rare and wonderful for a lark to be this self-assured and swaggering. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Apr 14, 2024
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The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953) |
Lively and peculiar enough to feel like a worthy experiment in trying to make Seuss-style visuals work in live-action. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Mar 09, 2024
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Dune: Part Two (2024) |
Where it really comes into its own as a hugely satisfying Hollywood sci-fi epic is in the action-adventure material, which is also backloaded, so the very long film seems to keep getting bigger and richer as it goes along. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Mar 09, 2024
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Wonka (2023) |
Irritatingly free of the "pure imagination" that it presumes to be its most sacred value. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Feb 20, 2024
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The Zone of Interest (2023) |
It works brilliantly, it's just that the thing it works brilliantly at is being an off-putting slog. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Feb 20, 2024
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Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) |
A brilliantly ambiguous film about ambiguity. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Dec 24, 2023
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The Boy and the Heron (2023) |
Despite all of the heavy imagery, this is still a fundamentally generous depiction of a sad little kid who needs to learn that it's okay that other people want to love him. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Dec 24, 2023
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Godzilla Minus One (2023) |
The technical quality of the effects is great. So, happily, is the artistic quality. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Dec 16, 2023
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Journey to Bethlehem (2023) |
It's kind of hair-raising how just tacky this all is. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Dec 01, 2023
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Wish (2023) |
The animation is ugly, the story is confusing, the characters are an unappealing jumble of badly-expressed traits, the voice acting is meager, the songs are an affront. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Dec 01, 2023
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Thanksgiving (2023) |
Performing the requisite duties of a slasher film with the most sincerity and highest level of quality it can manage. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Nov 24, 2023
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Trolls Band Together (2023) |
The whole movie feels a bit like a laboratory for playing with new examples of the series' defined aesthetic. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Nov 23, 2023
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The Nun II (2023) |
Does not claim that its storytelling integrity is more important to it than providing a nice, rickety old thrill ride of bumps and shocks. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Nov 14, 2023
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Priscilla (2023) |
Tough, tough stuff, and Cailee Spaeny and Sofia Coppola make it look so inevitable. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Nov 14, 2023
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The Exorcist: Believer (2023) |
Congrats to the filmmaking team, I guess: they might have made some utter, contemptible trash, but at least it's not lazy trash. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Nov 07, 2023
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Saw X (2023) |
The path that Saw X traveled to become the best-ever Saw movie was short, brightly-lit, well-marked and so obvious... make Tobin Bell the protagonist. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Nov 07, 2023
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Five Nights at Freddy's (2023) |
It's all very tedious when it's not confusing, and it can't even count on atmosphere to salvage it. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Nov 01, 2023
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The Pope's Exorcist (2023) |
No matter how much zany wackadoo nonsense you think it has flung at you, it still finds surprises and ways to remain fresh and unpredictable, quite literally up until the very last scene. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Oct 28, 2023
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Riki-Oh (1991) |
A great deal of the film's appeal lies in its unselfconscious childish enthusiasm, an unrelenting delight in doing cool, stupid stuff and doing it as hard as you possibly can - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Oct 27, 2023
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Once Upon a Time in China (1991) |
As much a grave history lesson as a giddy celebration of its stunt team's physical prowess. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Oct 27, 2023
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Koyaanisqatsi (1982) |
Crafting a way of seeing the world that is fresh and new. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Oct 27, 2023
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Once Within a Time (2023) |
It's taking one big swing after another, connecting often enough for to be exciting to watch more than its frustrating. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Oct 27, 2023
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Oppenheimer (2023) |
This is very clear, effective, disciplined prestige filmmaking, enough to make this one of the toniest pieces of Oscarbait that I expect to see this year - but it is Oscarbait. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 09, 2023
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The Two Jakes (1990) |
This simply isn't a very well-made thing, and it's not coming from any genuinely inspired place. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 09, 2023
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) |
It's neat to look at, and it zips by with kinetic energy that nothing else starring these characters ever has. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Aug 09, 2023
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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) |
As energetic as one dares to hope a popcorn movie might be, in love with the capacity of movies to provide every sort of visual delight. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jul 20, 2023
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Insidious: The Red Door (2023) |
Takes the laziest of all routes, suggesting that what happened a decade ago shall happen again now in more or less exactly the same way. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jul 20, 2023
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The Son of the White Mare (1981) |
Unbelievably dazzling and powerful, using these strong, almost abstract collections of colors and shapes that evoke primal, forceful emotion. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jul 20, 2023
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) |
The whole opening of the film... is just a constant stream of sour notes. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jul 05, 2023
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Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001) |
Taken on its own terms, this is a very impressive piece of animation and sci-fi worldbuilding, telling its gloomy story of a man-made end-times through some wonderfully expressive visuals and increasingly heavy atmosphere - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jul 05, 2023
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) |
An awfully good and deliciously watchable popcorn movie, made by probably the single most reliable director of popcorn movies in the history of American cinema, when he was still pretty close to the peak of his powers. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jul 05, 2023
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Event Horizon (1997) |
Approaches some very silly third-tier post-Lovecraft nonsense with a enthusiastic desire to make it the most enjoyably trashy version of itself possible. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jun 29, 2023
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Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023) |
Exists at the level of narrative sophistication of children idly mashing their toys together whilst making "pow, screech, aiieeeeeee" noises, which is sincerely better than any of the earlier movies were able to achieve. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jun 29, 2023
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Asteroid City (2023) |
Delightful, beautiful, phenomenally well-acted. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jun 29, 2023
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You Hurt My Feelings (2023) |
An indescribably pleasant vibe. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jun 22, 2023
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Elemental (2023) |
It is, not only for the incredible weakness of its central metaphor, the most unsound script that Pixar has ever turned into a feature film. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jun 22, 2023
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) |
An extravagant blend of styles and visual ideas and techniques that makes the bleeding-edge radicalism of the 2018 film seem downright boring. - Alternate Ending
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| Posted Jun 09, 2023
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