Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes
Publications list

The Movie Buff

The Movie Buff is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Bianca Garner, Hector A. Gonzalez, Paul Emmanuel Enicola.

Prev Next
Rating Title | Year Author Quote
B
Sunshine (2024) Paul Emmanuel Enicola A film that relishes discomfort, one that forces us to confront the silences we’ve learned to live with: around abortion, around reproductive rights, around what we teach our daughters (and sons) about sex, choice, and consequence.
Posted Jan 20, 2026  Edit critic review
D
Ella McCay (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola Watching "Ella McCay" feels like being handed several potentially interesting movies at once and being asked to pretend they form a coherent whole.
Posted Jan 16, 2026  Edit critic review
A-
Sentimental Value (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola "Sentimental Value" articulates a particular pain: knowing someone loves you in the only way they know how, while also knowing that love never arrived in the form you needed.
Posted Jan 14, 2026  Edit critic review
B
Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola There’s something undeniably compelling about watching Cameron operate at this scale.... This is blockbuster filmmaking as an endurance test and visual symphony, often at the same time.
Posted Dec 16, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Die My Love (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola "Die My Love" is a difficult film. It’s sometimes frustrating. It occasionally overplays its hand. But it’s also bracingly honest about how isolation, emotional negligence, and undiagnosed mental illness can combine into something catastrophic.
Posted Dec 14, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Merrily We Roll Along (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola A version that breathes on screen, holds its shape, and honors the late Stephen Sondheim with a clarity he would have been massively proud of.
Posted Dec 06, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
Hamnet (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola I’m fascinated by movies that delicately examine how their characters circle around mourning, or whether they dive into it headfirst. "Hamnet" does both.
Posted Nov 29, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola Kaouther Ben Hania has made a docudrama that refuses to let you look away, and in doing so, she’s created one of the most vital and necessary pieces of cinema in recent memory.
Posted Nov 27, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
The Mastermind (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola [The Mastermind]'s both a heist movie where the heist is the least interesting part, and a character study of a man who isn’t interesting enough to deserve one. And somehow it all works.
Posted Nov 26, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
A Place of Absence (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola What makes "A Place of Absence" work for me isn’t simply its exploration of grief, but its recognition of how disappearance transcends nationality...the emotional landscape is shared even if the histories differ.
Posted Nov 23, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
I'm Not Everything I Want to Be (2024) Hector A. Gonzalez It is desire, displacement, hope, and yearning all tied together in a fragmented yet beautiful box that has been displaced for years, and Tasovská has found it, swept away the dust, and invited us to look back, reflect, and recognize.
Posted Nov 22, 2025  Edit critic review
C-
Frankenstein (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez Del Toro refuses to let his monsters truly suffer or descend into moral decay. He sanitizes the very anguish that once gave his creatures depth.
Posted Nov 05, 2025  Edit critic review
C-
Bugonia (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez There’s always a joke or an intent to arouse that one can’t be bothered by being intrigued by the characters because they are always second-fiddle.
Posted Nov 04, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
Quezon (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola If Tarog’s goal was to make history feel alive again, then he has succeeded—sometimes to the point of discomfort. As cinema, “Quezon” is impressive. As history, it’s provocative. And as myth, it’s necessary.
Posted Oct 25, 2025  Edit critic review
D
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez Kubrick understood how power, when coupled with fear and ego, leads to disastrous decision-making... Oppenheim, on the other hand, seems hesitant to critique that same system, opting instead for reverence and restraint.
Posted Oct 12, 2025  Edit critic review
C+
The Fence (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez Even within its restraint and unevenness, there is something quietly affecting about Denis revisiting her origins through this format and at this age.
Posted Oct 11, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
Father Mother Sister Brother (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez The conversations flow with a natural rhythm that captures the discomfort, love, and unspoken resentment shared among relatives who no longer know how to reach one another.
Posted Oct 09, 2025  Edit critic review
C-
La Grazia (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez While there are certainly some honest scenes, which feature some of Sorrentino’s best writing in a long time, the necessity to add brevity and random notches of oddball detailing ruins the reflective tone.
Posted Oct 06, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Rose of Nevada (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez Jenkin provides us with a time-travel story that is not focused on the sci-fi narrative, but more on the aspect of time and how it affects a society, both psychologically and culturally.
Posted Oct 06, 2025  Edit critic review
C-
Late Fame (2026) Hector A. Gonzalez Late Fame has sharp ideas... yet its expression is daft, culminating in a film that often hints at other times yet never defines the present.
Posted Oct 03, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Blue Moon (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez Linklater leaves us with a portrait of brilliance shadowed by fragility—a man, and perhaps an era, struggling to live once the music fades.
Posted Sep 28, 2025  Edit critic review
C+
Dear Stranger (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola Mariko’s film doesn’t solve the riddle of love across cultures or languages, but it lingers like the memory of a conversation you wish you’d managed to finish.
Posted Sep 26, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
Ky Nam Inn (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola “Ky Nam Inn” belongs to the tradition of romantic cinema that believes love is as much about what it speaks and what it leaves unsaid.
Posted Sep 26, 2025  Edit critic review
B
Aki (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola If you saw “Stellar” at TIFF a few years back, you’ll recognize Naponse’s fascination with the cosmos and the bonds of community. With “Aki,”...she trades the magical-realist romance of that film for something sparer and, in its own way, more daring.
Posted Sep 12, 2025  Edit critic review
B
Amoeba (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola “Amoeba” is, after all, about growing up in fits and starts, about identities that don’t quite align, about wanting more than the world will allow.
Posted Sep 11, 2025  Edit critic review
C+
Mama (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola “Mama” isn’t perfect; its dramatics can be too on the nose, and its narrative turns sometimes play out exactly as you’d expect. But in its best moments, it captures the loneliness of being foreign everywhere—even in your own home.
Posted Sep 07, 2025  Edit critic review
C+
One Hit Wonder (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola The most accurate way to describe “One Hit Wonder”: a solid mixtape trapped inside a lackluster movie.
Posted Aug 26, 2025  Edit critic review
B
Weapons (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola Ambitious, uneven, and downright terrifying, ‘Weapons’ is the kind of horror we need more of.
Posted Aug 07, 2025  Edit critic review
B
The Harvest (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola An earnest and pointed commentary about the struggles of an Asian-American family; as well as the generational divide present that wedges the disconnect even further.
Posted Jul 29, 2025  Edit critic review
F
Superman (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez Preaches humanity and seeks to rekindle its pulsating heart. Yet the canvas is hollow. It’s a manufactured project that never lives up to its charming or lively reputation.
Posted Jul 26, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola Given this franchise’s rocky cinematic history—four films over three decades, all varying degrees of forgettable—it’s almost shocking how functional ‘First Steps’ is.
Posted Jul 23, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
We Were Dangerous (2024) Paul Emmanuel Enicola A dreamlike portrait of confinement and girlhood, framed by an aching desire for escape.
Posted Jul 18, 2025  Edit critic review
D
The Life of Chuck (2024) Hector A. Gonzalez The Life of Chuck is a tedious effort in crafting a life-affirming picture, with artificial and hammered sentimentality.
Posted Jul 09, 2025  Edit critic review
D
Elio (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez Elio never fully delves into the themes planted by the screenwriters, and instead settle on overly simplistic and “meek” metaphors that lack both whimsy and wit.
Posted Jul 09, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
F1 The Movie (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola Some movies aim for your soul. Others go for your pulse. “F1” is firmly in the second camp. And for the life of me, that’ll do.
Posted Jun 26, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
MIMANG (2024) Paul Emmanuel Enicola [Director Kim Taeyang] pulls off a mumblecore that makes use of the white noise of the cityscape as his characters engage in walk-and-talks.
Posted Jun 20, 2025  Edit critic review
D
Materialists (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez Materialists becomes shallow and more plastic by the second. Song plants these ideas but does not want to come into conversation with them, opting instead for emotional veneers of people dating in today’s unstable world of materialistic value.
Posted Jun 19, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
The Gas Station Attendant (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola A film that’s equal parts remembrance, reckoning, and recognition of a love that sometimes spoke in broken conversations, long road trips, and tired, late-night phone calls.
Posted Jun 19, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
The Phoenician Scheme (2025) Hector A. Gonzalez Anderson isn’t repeating himself—he’s refining his style with age, evolving while staying unmistakably himself... remain with his signature yet have a different look and texture, one that comes with experience and age.
Posted Jun 18, 2025  Edit critic review
A
Happy Birthday (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola [Goher] directs with the clarity of someone who understands that inequality, when internalized young, isn’t processed with righteous anger, but with quiet confusion. And Doha Ramadan, playing Toha, is a revelation.
Posted Jun 16, 2025  Edit critic review
B
Honeyjoon (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola Despite its uneven tone and pace, writer-director Lilian T. Mehrel manages to depict the complicated nature of grief, and the different ways people process it.
Posted Jun 15, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
Slumlord Millionaire (2024) Paul Emmanuel Enicola The documentary captures the lives of tenants battling exploitative landlords and indifferent bureaucracies, underscoring how deeply personal and universal the fight for housing security truly is.
Posted Jun 12, 2025  Edit critic review
C
A Tree Fell in the Woods (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola For a film about coming clean, it never quite gets to the heart of the matter. Like a tree crashing in the distance, it makes a sound—but we’re not always sure what to make of it.
Posted Jun 12, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
Cuerpo Celeste (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola Set against the backdrop of Chile’s uneasy rebirth in the wake of Augusto Pinochet‘s dictatorship, the film binds the personal to the political in a way that makes both feel intimately connected.
Posted Jun 11, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola If this really is Hunt’s last mission, it’s a farewell that stumbles and soars in equal measure: bloated, brave, a little breathless, and entirely on brand.
Posted May 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Manila in the Claws of Neon (1975) Paul Emmanuel Enicola For Brocka, [the film] isn’t mere melodrama—it’s a searing indictment. Every institution, from labor to media to law enforcement, fails the characters. Their story isn’t rare. It’s ordinary. And that’s what makes it devastating.
Posted May 11, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Thunderbolts* (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola Shows us what it looks like when broken people try, even a little, to fix themselves. And watching that unfold...is the kind of Marvel we could get used to again.
Posted May 01, 2025  Edit critic review
B
U Are the Universe (2024) Paul Emmanuel Enicola A tender story about finding love and hope in the vastness of space that, in terms of scope, is both intimate and interstellar.
Posted Apr 25, 2025  Edit critic review
A
Sinners (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola An ambitious, serrated beast of a film that feels both stitched together and spiritually whole.
Posted Apr 19, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
Black Bag (2025) Paul Emmanuel Enicola A spy thriller more interested in the slow poison of doubt than in brute force. If you’re expecting “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” with British accents, look elsewhere. This is “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” for the emotionally entangled.
Posted Apr 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Prev Next