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Michael Phillips

Tomatometer-approved critic

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Train Dreams (2025) 95% 3/4 EDIT “Visually, “Train Dreams” has a strong Terrence Malick drunk-on-lost-Eden streak, striving for poetry and myth along with the prose. Yet it coheres. ” – San Francisco Chronicle Nov 8, 2025 Full Review Toy Story (1995) 100% EDIT “The computer-generated animation, favoring clinically bright, super-crisp photo-realism, approached the real of 3-D, even without 3-D.” – Chicago Tribune Sep 9, 2025 Full Review Highest 2 Lowest (2025) 83% 3/4 EDIT “A model of conventional thriller suspense, the movie isn’t. A stimulating cry for “Black culture and artistic integrity,” in King’s words, and for the true value of a well-made commodity, whether it’s shoes or songs — that, the movie surely is.” – Chicago Tribune Aug 14, 2025 Full Review Weapons (2025) 93% 3/4 EDIT “What we need is horror with some wit and visual assurance. And that, we have right here.” – Chicago Tribune Aug 7, 2025 Full Review Freakier Friday (2025) 73% 2/4 EDIT “There is a strain to it all. Doubling the bodies swapped ends up feeling like six times the chaos, not two: ” – Chicago Tribune Aug 6, 2025 Full Review Together (2025) 89% 3/4 EDIT “It works, I because Shanks has the guts to write a male protagonist who is no hero, no villain, just a mass of garden-variety insecurities, all too reliant on his partner for a sense of direction.” – Chicago Tribune Jul 31, 2025 Full Review The Naked Gun (2025) 87% 2/4 EDIT “In the end, though, this “Naked Gun” has little interest or temperamental skill in the art of the deadpan throwaway, which was the crucial element in “Police Squad!” and, intermittently, in the three movies. ” – Chicago Tribune Jul 30, 2025 Full Review The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) 86% 3/4 EDIT “It's not great superhero cinema but good is good enough for The Fantastic Four."” – Chicago Tribune Jul 23, 2025 Full Review To a Land Unknown (2024) 98% 3/4 EDIT “Chatila’s the emergent protagonist in the script by Fyzal Boulifa, Jason McColgan and director Fleifel, and in the compelling, un-showy performance by Mahmood Bakri, the story’s escalating tensions never feel actor-engineered. ” – Chicago Tribune Jul 18, 2025 Full Review Eddington (2025) 68% 3/4 EDIT “Eddington is probably Aster’s strongest film visually, with cinematographer Darius Khondji creating the light and shadow for some sweeping, gently ironic evocations of Old West and Old Hollywood myth-making.” – Chicago Tribune Jul 16, 2025 Full Review Superman (2025) 83% 3/4 EDIT “It’s nicely packed and quite funny, when it isn’t giving into Gunn’s trademark air of merry depravity. ” – Chicago Tribune Jul 9, 2025 Full Review Sorry, Baby (2025) 97% 3.5/4 EDIT “Clear-eyed, disarming and, yes, plainly semi-autobiographical, “Sorry, Baby” takes every right turn in making Agnes far more than a tragic yet wisecracking victim, with a smiling-through-tears ending waiting around the bend. ” – Chicago Tribune Jul 3, 2025 Full Review Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) 50% 2.5/4 EDIT “Still, I’d rank “Rebirth” ahead of two or three previous chapters in a franchise whose sole consistency lies in a simple question: How have humans survived this long, even?” – Chicago Tribune Jul 2, 2025 Full Review Familiar Touch (2024) 98% 3.5/4 EDIT “The result is an auspicious first feature, and I’d see it if I were you.” – Chicago Tribune Jun 27, 2025 Full Review F1 The Movie (2025) 82% 2.5/4 EDIT “ In an artfully packaged movie offering more teamwork lessons per lap than any racing film before it, nothing in “F1” beats those pit stops — purely cinematic blurs of speed, noise and collaborative purpose.” – Chicago Tribune Jun 25, 2025 Full Review A Photographic Memory (2024) 100% 3.5/4 EDIT “Without playing with anyone’s life, “A Photographic Memory” makes beautiful sense of the connections between mother and daughter, work and love and other mysteries. ” – Chicago Tribune Jun 23, 2025 Full Review Materialists (2025) 77% 3/4 EDIT “It may make true love look all too Hollywood-easy in the end, but en route it’s still a Celine Song film.” – Chicago Tribune Jun 12, 2025 Full Review How to Train Your Dragon (2025) 77% 2/4 EDIT “The remake is just like the original, but there’s more of it. And less.” – Chicago Tribune Jun 11, 2025 Full Review The Life of Chuck (2024) 80% 2/4 EDIT “After the persuasively strange first chapter’s over, “The Life of Chuck” is a duller kind of strange.” – Chicago Tribune Jun 9, 2025 Full Review The Phoenician Scheme (2025) 77% 2.5/4 EDIT “A beautiful mixed bag, let’s say, all told.” – Chicago Tribune Jun 5, 2025 Full Review Ballerina (2025) 75% 2.5/4 EDIT “The new “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina” is recommendable, -ish, primarily for the way Anjelica Huston, as the Russian mob boss, makes a meal out of a single-syllable word near the end.” – Chicago Tribune Jun 4, 2025 Full Review Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (2024) 82% 3/4 EDIT “Piani’s film is, in itself, a comfort zone for viewers, the latest of many cinematic mash notes to Jane Austen, from “Clueless” to four “Bridget Jones” movies.” – Chicago Tribune May 23, 2025 Full Review Lilo & Stitch (2025) 72% 2/4 EDIT “Live-action recycling makes characters you know and love more “real.” And too often, that realism comes with only trace elements of real charm, or magic.” – Chicago Tribune May 22, 2025 Full Review Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) 80% 3/4 EDIT “This franchise has class. Always has. Plus, it has the virtue, taken as a 29-year entity, of having had a striking variety of directors at the helm.” – Chicago Tribune May 21, 2025 Full Review Final Destination Bloodlines (2025) 92% 3/4 EDIT “It’s a rare franchise reboot that works as a standalone, even with a few choice callbacks and links to the previous movies. ” – Chicago Tribune May 19, 2025 Full Review
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