>
Sam Adams
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications:
Critics' Group:
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Will & Harper (2024) |
It’s as wholesome, and as American, as it gets. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Sep 27, 2024
|
|
|
|
Saturday Night (2024) |
There’s plenty of adrenaline to go around, but once that wears off, all that’s left is emptiness. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Sep 17, 2024
|
|
|
|
Alien: Romulus (2024) |
Romulus isn’t a mutation. It’s just inbred. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Aug 16, 2024
|
|
|
|
Good One (2024) |
Good One is a quiet movie, not because it has little to say but because it wants you to listen, to pay as much attention to what’s left unsaid as to its meticulously crafted dialogue, and to the way silence can be a power as well as a punishment. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Aug 12, 2024
|
|
|
|
Trap (2024) |
Trap repeatedly crosses the boundary between performer and fan, the viewer and the viewed, but it doesn’t really want us to think about what that means. We’re just meant to lie back and watch. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Aug 06, 2024
|
|
|
|
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) |
Dotted in among the quips and Easter eggs is the superhero equivalent of Toy Story 2, a mournful goodbye to the things we once held dear, even if some of those things weren’t that great to begin with. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jul 31, 2024
|
|
|
|
Atlas (2024) |
J. Lo may be fighting for the very existence of the human race, but there’s nothing at stake between you and the screen. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jun 07, 2024
|
|
|
|
Megalopolis (2024) |
Megalopolis is the product of man who has tried to put everything he knows or thinks into one climactic work. And whether or not it all fits, it’s exhilarating to watch him try. - Slate
Read More
| Posted May 20, 2024
|
|
|
|
Civil War (2024) |
Purposeful though it may be, Garland's squishiness can read only as a failure of nerve. A more successfully political movie wouldn't be so wary of aiming at real targets. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Apr 15, 2024
|
|
|
|
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) |
It captures what it’s like to live in this chaotic and deadening world so well it might be the movie of the year, and last year, and next year too. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Mar 22, 2024
|
|
|
|
Madame Web (2024) |
It’s a travesty, a disaster, a blight on the history of superheroes and cinema itself. I enjoyed the hell out of it. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Feb 14, 2024
|
|
|
|
Love Me (2024) |
The plot can be surprisingly predictable at times, but Love Me finds a new way to poke at an age-old question, one that is apparently destined to resonate long after we’re gone. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jan 26, 2024
|
|
|
|
I Saw the TV Glow (2024) |
I Saw the TV Glow is unnerving, unsettling, and engrossing, the kind of movie best watched on the border between waking and sleep. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jan 19, 2024
|
|
|
|
Poison (2023) |
It works the way a good short story does, outlining a situation or state of being and then leaving us to imagine the rest. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Oct 03, 2023
|
|
|
|
The Rat Catcher (2023) |
[The] visual presentation and rapid-fire dialogue make [it] instantly recognizable as Anderson's, but [the] tone takes him into territory so unexpected it might be disorienting if his hand were not so sure. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Oct 03, 2023
|
|
|
|
The Swan (2023) |
[The] visual presentation and rapid-fire dialogue make [it] instantly recognizable as Anderson’s, but [the] tone takes him into territory so unexpected it might be disorienting if his hand were not so sure. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Oct 03, 2023
|
|
|
|
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023) |
Anderson has said it was the story’s nesting-doll structure that drew him to Henry Sugar in the first place... and he realizes its concentric narratives with dazzling fluidity. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Oct 03, 2023
|
|
|
|
The Deepest Breath (2023) |
The Deepest Breath gambles that you’ll be so blown away by its big reveal that you’ll banish any thought of how it was arranged. But as affected as I was, I’m not sure it was worth it. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jul 28, 2023
|
|
|
|
Nimona (2023) |
Nimona seems to proceed from the assumption that focusing on diverse protagonists relieves the movie of the need to train its creative energies on any other area. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jul 01, 2023
|
|
|
|
Occupied City (2023) |
It’s an attempt to find a new way of keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, as the people who remember it firsthand disappear. - Slate
Read More
| Posted May 22, 2023
|
|
|
|
The Zone of Interest (2023) |
The digital cinematography is harsh and glaring, so sharp that it rakes at your eyes. Already, we’re seeing more than we want to. - Slate
Read More
| Posted May 22, 2023
|
|
|
|
Knock at the Cabin (2023) |
Although some of the movie’s changes were inevitable and the book is hardly some sacrosanct masterwork, the disruption of the story’s final act makes the movie feel incoherent at best. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Feb 04, 2023
|
|
|
|
Past Lives (2023) |
January isn’t usually the time to start making Top 10 lists, but I can already confidently put Past Lives on mine. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jan 27, 2023
|
|
|
|
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022) |
Del Toro finds in this oft-told tale both the heart that has allowed it to endure for so long and an idiosyncratic connection that makes his version feel new. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Dec 09, 2022
|
|
|
|
The People's Joker (2022) |
It’s a sight to see–or it will be, if anyone ever sees it again. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Sep 15, 2022
|
|
|
|
Fire of Love (2022) |
[A] thrilling, moving documentary... - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jul 07, 2022
|
|
|
|
Mariupolis 2 (2022) |
A ragged, inevitably imperfect movie whose unfinished qualities... convey both the disruptions of war and the tragically truncated nature of the film’s own creation. - Slate
Read More
| Posted May 20, 2022
|
|
|
|
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) |
Though American movies have largely discarded the family melodrama as passé, DDLJ reminds us of the genre's potency, its ability to stage social and generational conflicts. - Philadelphia City Paper
Read More
| Posted Nov 18, 2021
|
|
|
|
No Time to Die (2021) |
By the end, the movie itself feels worn out, uncertain what it is we're all doing here. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Sep 30, 2021
|
|
|
|
DASHCAM (2021) |
Its grating repetitions actually get under your skin, creating something more troubling that a jump scare. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Sep 16, 2021
|
|
|
|
Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021) |
Corporations handing a bag of unrelated IP and ordering screenwriters to come up with a story around them is the template for most studio filmmaking now, if not all of contemporary existence. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jul 16, 2021
|
|
|
|
The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021) |
Further proof that producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller are an animation brand as reliable as Disney or Pixar, and a good deal more likely to provide something that's not only sturdy but genuinely surprising. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Apr 30, 2021
|
|
|
|
Thunder Force (2021) |
An action comedy directed by someone without an eye for either action or comedy. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Apr 10, 2021
|
|
|
|
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) |
The reward is a new sense of connection to actions that normally pass without thought, a sense that every flip of a light switch is an experience to be savored for its pure physical sensation, a step in a dance that never ends. - Los Angeles Times
Read More
| Posted Mar 03, 2021
|
|
|
|
Totally Under Control (2020) |
This isn't the story of an inevitable tragedy. It's the story of a disaster that everyone saw coming and let happen anyway. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Feb 07, 2021
|
|
|
|
Everything for a Reason (2000) |
A perfect mix of romantic warmth and worldly-wise cynicism, it's the work of a budding director who can deliver on both commercial and artistic levels. Shown with Sean McBride's That Special Monkey. - Philadelphia City Paper
Read More
| Posted Dec 30, 2020
|
|
|
|
Wolfwalkers (2020) |
Wolfwalkers casts a spell that will linger for a long, long time. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Nov 14, 2020
|
|
|
|
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) |
The Borat sequel's best moments are when it turns from mockumentary to straight-up doc, finding Americans who look past Borat's bushy mustache and try to connect with the human behind it. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Oct 21, 2020
|
|
|
|
Tenet (2020) |
Tenet's gears turn smoothly, but it's like a factory with no raw material to process. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Aug 28, 2020
|
|
|
|
She Dies Tomorrow (2020) |
Both raw and oblique, in a way that suggests something torn from life, fashioned into something new but with the seams left bare. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jul 29, 2020
|
|
|
|
Irresistible (2020) |
Irresistible might be a movie for the moment before or the moment after, but it feels entirely out of step with the one it's in. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jun 22, 2020
|
|
|
|
Da 5 Bloods (2020) |
Lindo's character, and his performance, are for the ages. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jun 12, 2020
|
|
|
|
The King of Staten Island (2020) |
You're in the passenger seat, and it's a nice ride as long as you don't care where you're going. At least, this time, Apatow opted for a change of scenery. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jun 08, 2020
|
|
|
|
The Lovebirds (2020) |
The way The Lovebirds executes this old template is largely unremarkable, so the fact that it works anyway is a testament to its leads' star power, especially Rae's. - Slate
Read More
| Posted May 22, 2020
|
|
|
|
Trolls World Tour (2020) |
Reader, I wept. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Apr 13, 2020
|
|
|
|
The Hunt (2020) |
No one will see themselves in The Hunt, and only those inclined to ignorant caricature will fancy they recognize the others. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Mar 11, 2020
|
|
|
|
Downhill (2020) |
Downhill too often plays like a cringe comedy that's all cringe. It's not just uncomfortable; it's unpleasant. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Feb 15, 2020
|
|
|
|
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020) |
For a movie that touts its protagonist's emancipation, Birds of Prey still feels very much in chains. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Feb 06, 2020
|
|
|
|
On the Record (2020) |
Drawing on interviews with cultural commentators, academics, and activists, the movie addresses head-on the place, or lack of one, that women of color-especially black women assaulted by black men-have been accorded in the #MeToo movement. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Jan 26, 2020
|
|
|
|
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) |
Rather than making a movie some people might love, Abrams tried to make a movie no one would hate, and as a result, you don't feel much of anything at all. - Slate
Read More
| Posted Dec 18, 2019
|