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Chris Klimek

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Born in Topeka, Kansas but taught to fear Jesus in the Northern Virginia suburbs, I quit the East Coast after college for a stay in Ventura, California, where I wrote for an alt-weekly. After earning a screenwriting degree from UCLA, I worked for a magician for a while, but was eventually seduced back east. My writing appears in The Washington City Paper, NPR, The Washington Post, and The Village Voice. I've written for Slate, The Guardian, PASTE and The Indian Express, and I was a contributor to the best film criticism site, The Dissolve, until its demise in 2015. I teach boxing. Orson Welles is my hero. Loves: running, comic books, thunderstorms, old time radio drama, live drums. Hates: treadmills, reality TV, Auto-Tune. I was a 2009 NEA Institute Fellow, and a 2012/2017 AltWeekly Awards finalist in the category of Arts Criticism, circulation 50,000 and above. In 2015, I was selected as a Critic Fellow for the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center's National Critics Institute.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Mercy (2026) 24% EDIT “There’s a perfect if unintended harmony of form and content in Mercy: This harebrained real-time whodunit about an accused killer standing trial before an AI judge appears to have been written, directed, and performed via algorithm. ” – Washington City Paper Jan 27, 2026 Full Review 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) 93% EDIT “Letting us watch Fiennes lip-synch to Iron Maiden can only forgive so much.” – Washington City Paper Jan 22, 2026 Full Review Anaconda (2025) 48% 1.5/4 EDIT “Rudd and Black are not technically playing themselves, but they may as well be, so dependent is the film on the leads’ familiar comic personas.” – Washington Post Dec 29, 2025 Full Review Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) 66% EDIT “It gives us more of everything that was great about the last one, but with too little that feels new. ” – Washington City Paper Dec 23, 2025 Full Review Jay Kelly (2025) 75% EDIT “It never pierces the shell of Clooney’s innate charisma, no matter how many friends and colleagues we see his alter ego screw over—certainly not enough to make us buy it as a character study. ” – Washington City Paper Dec 12, 2025 Full Review Hamnet (2025) 86% EDIT “While Agnes is the focus, Mescal’s performance is just as accomplished.” – Washington City Paper Dec 3, 2025 Full Review Wicked: For Good (2025) 66% EDIT “If you like your Wicked with more wearied resignation, less singing, and less Bowen Yang, then this is the shorter, sadder second act for you” – Washington City Paper Nov 24, 2025 Full Review Sneakers (1992) 80% EDIT “It’ll put a smile on your face without raising your pulse. ” – Washington City Paper Nov 24, 2025 Full Review The Running Man (2025) 62% 3.5/4 EDIT “Wright has an appealing and spry leading man in Glen Powell, who channels the boiling rage of his accidental-insurgent character, Ben Richards, far more persuasively than Ah-nold did. ” – Washington Post Nov 14, 2025 Full Review Predator: Badlands (2025) 86% EDIT “I think the script is really good. I think Elle Fanning is wonderful. I just don't like the way this movie looks.” – Pop Culture Happy Hour (NPR Podcast) Nov 10, 2025 Full Review A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025) 75% EDIT “Let it suffice to say that this nail-biter never relieves the tension it builds from its opening frames.” – Washington City Paper Oct 29, 2025 Full Review Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) 61% EDIT “The movie is resoundingly … not an embarrassment. ” – Washington City Paper Oct 29, 2025 Full Review The Smashing Machine (2025) 70% EDIT “At the end of Smashing Machine, I was left puzzled as to why Safdie wanted to take on this project at all. ” – Washington City Paper Oct 15, 2025 Full Review Tenet (2020) 70% EDIT “Tenet’s formal experimentation is more audacious and original than the story it’s telling, but the story is pretty... wild, too.” – Washington City Paper Sep 29, 2025 Full Review The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) 81% EDIT “In this third feature, Anderson’s much-parodied signature style of framing and performance became fully formed.” – Washington City Paper Sep 15, 2025 Full Review Splitsville (2025) 84% 3/4 EDIT “If it's not crazy to praise a sophomore film that so closely resembles its predecessor for its originality, then "Splitsville" is a real catch.” – Washington Post Sep 4, 2025 Full Review Highest 2 Lowest (2025) 83% EDIT “Lee’s filmmaking has always been closer to movie-verse than to movie-prose, and he’s freestyling here, letting scenes play longer and end more ambiguously than a filmmaker beholden to studio notes ever could. ” – Washington City Paper Aug 25, 2025 Full Review Ne Zha II (2025) 91% 2.5/4 EDIT “The character and environmental designs are both otherworldly in their originality and astonishingly lifelike.” – Washington Post Aug 21, 2025 Full Review Nobody 2 (2025) 76% 2.5/4 EDIT “Making memories it ain't. But making 89 minutes of your life disappear almost painlessly has its place, too.” – Washington Post Aug 14, 2025 Full Review The Naked Gun (2025) 87% EDIT “It’s a high-velocity gag-o-rama that just barely hits 90 minutes if you stay through the credits.” – Washington City Paper Aug 5, 2025 Full Review The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) 86% 3/4 EDIT “Buoyant, bracing and, most shocking of all, brief, The Fantastic Four: First Steps represents a quantum leap of ship-righting. ” – Washington Post Jul 23, 2025 Full Review Heads of State (2025) 68% EDIT “Call it the Tyranny of Low Expectations, but Heads of State is far more buoyant and amusing than one could reasonably expect a Prime Video original to be. ” – Washington City Paper Jul 8, 2025 Full Review 28 Years Later (2025) 88% EDIT “It’s a bloody marvel.” – Washington City Paper Jun 23, 2025 Full Review Ballerina (2025) 75% EDIT “Ballerina finds its bloody groove once Ms. Macarro moves on to an appealingly snowy Eastern European village populated entirely by assassins, which is great fun.” – Washington City Paper Jun 6, 2025 Full Review Bono: Stories of Surrender (2025) 75% EDIT “Shooting in crisp monochrome, director Andrew Dominik has higher aspirations than the unadorned documentation of a stage play. ” – Washington Post May 30, 2025 Full Review
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