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John Anderson
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Uglies (2024) |
It feels a bit infantile, never mind petty, to go looking for literary-theological heft in a project so clearly directed at the blushingly young, or to begrudge them an indulgence like Uglies. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 19, 2024
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Kennedy, Sinatra and the Mafia (2024) |
It is fun to wonder but, as always, there is something haunting about the whole affair. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 15, 2024
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Inside the Mind of a Dog (2024) |
Fortunately, even cat ladies will like “Inside the Mind of a Dog,” which has an abundance of furry charm and retrieves a kennel’s worth of information from those sniffing around the cutting edge of canine science. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 08, 2024
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Alien 3 (1992) |
Alien 3 should be seen on the largest screen, with the biggest sound system possible; the silences are all-important. And director David Fincher does a pretty good job of implying horror as well as showing it. - Newsday
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| Posted Aug 05, 2024
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Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (2024) |
Documentarian Nanette Burstein has a wealth of photographic material at her disposal, much of it breathtakingly lovely, and she uses it gracefully and in the noble cause of forward motion. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 01, 2024
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Humane (2024) |
Hardcore horror fans will get their dose of mayhem from Humane, though in its modest, tidily organized fashion the film might also get under the skin. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 25, 2024
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Wild Wild Space (2024) |
Wild Wild Space delivers an apt intro to director Ross Kauffman’s journey into the untamed frontier of low-earth orbit, a documentary that has the right stuff and asks the right questions. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 18, 2024
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Twister (1996) |
Within the funnel of Twister's exciting illogic and formula humanity -- created by the extraordinarily successful and equally insubstantial Michael Crichton -- lies a lot of standard-issue stuff. - Newsday
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| Posted Jul 16, 2024
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Faye (2024) |
A survey of stills and clips that reveals, seduces and astounds, in the sense that one woman could be so stunning in so many ways, so interpretive, so indelible. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (2024) |
It has been 40 years since the first Beverly Hills Cop, 30 years since the last, and this fourth iteration is recycling at its best. And its most obvious. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 02, 2024
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A Family Affair (2024) |
As a parody of Hollywood excess and narcissism it is frequently laugh-out-loud; as a wannabe Hallmark Channel holiday movie -- a segue that is nothing short of baffling -- it is less than amusing. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics (2024) |
The telling is seldom as thorough, or thoughtful, as it is in “Triumph: Jesse Owens and the Berlin Olympics,” which puts the entire drama -- co-starring Adolf Hitler -- in a particularly detailed historical-political frame. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jun 21, 2024
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Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge (2024) |
There is much that is conventional about the construction of “Woman in Charge”... But it is a good story, told by a subject who has a righteous-yet-reasonable sense of her own place in history. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jun 20, 2024
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Federer: Twelve Final Days (2024) |
Less a career overview than a lengthy valediction, “Twelve Final Days” considers what is meant when a professional athlete has to stare into the post-career abyss. Mr. Federer seems more likely than most not to go blind. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jun 20, 2024
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Mysteries of the Terracotta Warriors (2024) |
It is a perfect introduction for people -- like this reviewer -- who have had only a vague idea of what “terracotta army” meant, and what the phenomenon was all about, and why it was lost to history for well over two millennia. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jun 13, 2024
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No Way Up (2024) |
The one selling point of No Way Up is that it makes you scared of being scared, which may be enough for a lazy evening on the couch with a friend, a drink and a meal, though it probably wouldn’t work on sushi night. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jun 06, 2024
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Am I OK? (2022) |
True, it has no story to speak of. Its characters are slightly befuddling, as is the casting... But what it does have is wonderfully natural dialogue that allows two talented actresses to spin a convincing friendship out of a gossamer narrative. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jun 04, 2024
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MoviePass, MovieCrash (2024) |
The directorial choice is to use animation in many instances, just to break up the interviews and archival footage... which is amusing enough. But what it all amounts to is a story of arrogance, strategic misrepresentation, and/or a massive scam. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted May 31, 2024
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Living With Leopards (2024) |
Despite a soundtrack that doesn’t quite fit, Living With Leopards is superior nature content, largely because of the evident devotion of its humans. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted May 09, 2024
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Unfrosted (2024) |
Unfrosted is a bonbon, a truffle, a trifle and a distraction from dispiriting news and disappointing drama upon which one can gorge as if it were a package of Fig Newtons. No, too healthy: Honey Smacks. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted May 03, 2024
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I Think I Do (1997) |
To get where it’s going, I Think I Do has to leap cliched dialogue, a bloated sense of its own relevance and some serious misdirection - Newsday
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| Posted Apr 17, 2024
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What Jennifer Did (2024) |
It can be defined in a number of profitable ways: a crime thriller, an anatomy of police interrogation techniques, a parenting story and an immigrant fable -- one in the classic tradition, rather than one that fits any narratives currently being promoted. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 11, 2024
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An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th (2024) |
What Mr. Levin and his producer, Daphne Pinkerson, do, while justifying nothing, is separate the righteously angry from the opportunistic and the people with legitimate grievances from the exploiters of those grievances. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Apr 11, 2024
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Little Women (1994) |
The result is not just the best family movie of the year, but one of the better movies. - Newsday
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| Posted Apr 11, 2024
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Almost Famous (2000) |
Almost Famous is a case study in the decline of music and movies. Both want to keep the fun in profundity. But neither has figured out how to have it both ways. - Newsday
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| Posted Mar 26, 2024
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Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros (2023) |
Any viewer interested in food, food preparation, food service, wine, cheese, frogs or snails will be affixed to his figurative chair at Mr. Wiseman’s table. Bring snacks. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 21, 2024
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You'll Never Find Me (2023) |
You’ll Never Find Me is one more indication that some of the most creative work on screens large and small is being done in genre film, and that there is wisdom in prioritizing soundscape over landscape or visual effects. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 21, 2024
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Road House (2024) |
The main attraction, so to speak, of “Road House” is ne’er-do-wells getting their comeuppance, to put it as gently as possible. The amount and degree of fighting defy most rules of physics, respiration and orthopedics. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 19, 2024
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The Bloody Hundredth (2024) |
Directed by Mark Herzog and Laurent Bouzereau, the nonfiction account of the airborne armada... is intended to augment the dramatic series. But as good as that series may be, it has to take a respectful back seat to the real account and the real men. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 19, 2024
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Cabrini (2024) |
Cabrini, while certainly a hagiography, is dramatically and cinematically sound and even, now and then, visually breathtaking. - America Magazine
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| Posted Mar 08, 2024
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Damsel (2024) |
There’s a credibility gap the size of Mount Dragon. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 08, 2024
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The Lionheart (2023) |
It is Susie Wheldon who is the soul of “The Lionheart” and whose courage, mixed with confusion, marks it as a story that certainly transcends the track. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 07, 2024
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Ricky Stanicky (2024) |
It is all quite preposterous, and every time Mr. Cena performs a selection from Rod’s filthy repertoire, one cringes. But he makes the most of the part, abandoning any hint of a post-wrestling persona. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Mar 07, 2024
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Pulp Fiction (1994) |
Tarantino’s going to be around for a while. And on only his second film, he’s already using his own agitated image to move his audience where he wants them, and to deconstruct the very genre he’s spearheading. - Newsday
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| Posted Feb 28, 2024
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Einstein and the Bomb (2024) |
A moving and even poetic mixed-media meditation on Albert Einstein... - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Feb 17, 2024
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Role Play (2023) |
Like a guy at a bar telling you a very long joke. You laugh politely each time the story seems to be winding up, which it isn’t, until the fellow brings things to a close by telling you his house burned down just after he made the last mortgage payment. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jan 12, 2024
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Self Reliance (2023) |
For a movie with such a nose for nuttiness, its human element is genuine and warm. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jan 11, 2024
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Society of the Snow (2023) |
For all the sensationalism of what was a very real ordeal, any accounting of it requires respect, both for the dead and for the living. Mr. Bayona more than meets that standard. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jan 03, 2024
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Hopper: An American Love Story (2022) |
The deeper, paradoxical Hopper -- whose pictures recognize, and share, an existential loneliness -- is there if one wants to do a little mining, which this “American Masters” presentation does to enlightening effect. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Dec 29, 2023
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Hell Camp: Teen Nightmare (2023) |
The film also makes a case for currency by establishing, with lawyerly caution, that the industry in which Cartisano was a pioneer continues to flourish and has never been very closely scrutinized. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Dec 29, 2023
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Daniel (2023) |
If one is inclined to buy into Mayan curses and possessed totems, this may be your cup of aguardiente. Otherwise, Daniel is a bewildering film, full of cracker-barrel philosophizing and Northcott’s ad-libbed aphorisms about the interconnectedness of life. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Dec 21, 2023
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Poor Things (2023) |
[It's] teeming with visual ideas, jolts to the adrenal gland, and a performance by Emma Stone so singular it may end up residing in the history of cinema alongside those of Louise Brooks (Pandora’s Box) and Maria Falconetti (The Passion of Joan of Arc). - America Magazine
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| Posted Dec 08, 2023
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How to Have an American Baby (2023) |
“How to Have an American Baby” is a virtual one-woman production, which may explain the extraordinary intimacy achieved by producer, writer, cinematographer, director and editor Leslie Tai. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Dec 08, 2023
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Bye Bye Barry (2023) |
There’s not a lot of mystery to Bye Bye Barry... At the same time, Bye Bye Barry does amount to a scathing portrait of a bad father. And you can’t run away from that. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas (2023) |
The singer, evidently, has always wanted to sing these songs, and isn’t that how singers should make you feel? - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived (2023) |
Much of what makes The Boy Who Lived special are the inexplicable ways people respond to the unexpected, and the randomly tragic, and whether they stick around when it would be much easier to vanish, as if by wizardry. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 17, 2023
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Rustin (2023) |
Mr. Domingo is a force of nature in this film, delivering a complex, highly sympathetic portrayal, but he also determines what the movie actually is, while preventing it from going awry. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 17, 2023
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birth/rebirth (2023) |
It is the understated, matter-of-fact tone of the story that sucks us in, and the two central performances that help make this effort by Ms. Moss such a singular addition to the monster catalog. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 10, 2023
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The Lady Bird Diaries (2023) |
It is difficult not to like Lady Bird, despite the coldly clinical conversation she has with her borrowed reel-to-reel, if only because her affection for her husband is so palpable and constant. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 10, 2023
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Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (2023) |
The time feels right for an Albert Brooks assessment, although one by Mr. Reiner was never going to be anything but glowing. And, as it happens, convincing. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 10, 2023
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