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Mortal Cinema (Substack)

Mortal Cinema (Substack) is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Luke Y. Thompson.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) Luke Y. Thompson Just when I thought maybe I didn’t like Nia DaCosta as a director, she slaps me upside the head with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.
Posted Jan 13, 2026  Edit critic review
Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) Luke Y. Thompson When it does go to different places, it’s at its best, but the (for now) trilogy-capper also falls into several tropes.
Posted Dec 17, 2025  Edit critic review
KPop Demon Hunters (2025) Luke Y. Thompson ...fresh, creatively exciting, and feels like a whole new cinema for the newer generation.
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Together (2025) Luke Y. Thompson There are only so many places the narrative can go here, but that’s not really the point. It’s the way they react to crises together, believing or disbelieving, with good reasons on either side, and addressing past trauma
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Scarlet (2025) Luke Y. Thompson It’s Hamlet, but with a gender-flipped, pink-haired anime girl as the princess of Denmark, plus she’s dead and in Hell now. If that ain’t a hook, I don’t know what is.
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
The Secret Agent (2025) Luke Y. Thompson I’m not surprised critics love The Secret Agent, but I’ll be more surprised if audiences do.
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Marty Supreme (2025) Luke Y. Thompson The noir-ish production design keeps this thing feeling right on the line between dream and nightmare, in a reality where Marty maybe doesn’t truly know the difference.
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Sorry, Baby (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Sorry, baby, this ain’t it.
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Hedda (2025) Luke Y. Thompson I’m not sure in the end that the movie has much to say
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) Luke Y. Thompson ...the goal appears to be to draw us into the sacred space the way a believer would enter it, offering the sensations of a religious experience the way it’s meant to be.
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
No Other Choice (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Lee Byung-hun so often plays the coolest or baddest guy in the room...that it’s quite a stretch to see him playing an awkward dork. But he rules at it, as he does with every role he takes.
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Is This Thing On? (2025) Luke Y. Thompson ...it’s a feel good fantasy, and that’s okay, but don’t mistake it for an awards-level movie.
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Left-Handed Girl (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Baker’s script is so deceitfully slice-of-life natural that when it brings everything together for the emotional climax, it’s genuinely surprising yet makes total sense
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (2025) Luke Y. Thompson I like these movies better than most critics, yet I don’t love them as much as I’d like.
Posted Dec 04, 2025  Edit critic review
Train Dreams (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Train Dreams washes over you, the way a slow-paced life can do, if you can let it. If not, well, you can still enjoy the pretty trees for a bit.
Posted Nov 26, 2025  Edit critic review
It Was Just an Accident (2025) Luke Y. Thompson ...when people tell you this is one of the best films of the year, believe them
Posted Nov 26, 2025  Edit critic review
A Magnificent Life (2025) Luke Y. Thompson ...mostly conventional stuff, animating real humans in real settings, which, even in Chomet’s distinctly caricaturish style, feels like a waste of the medium.
Posted Nov 26, 2025  Edit critic review
The Life of Chuck (2024) Luke Y. Thompson Now, that first act is wonderful, but it makes a promise the rest of the movie cannot deliver on.
Posted Nov 26, 2025  Edit critic review
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025) Luke Y. Thompson ...like a horror story for grown adults who don’t believe in the supernatural.
Posted Nov 23, 2025  Edit critic review
Blue Moon (2025) Luke Y. Thompson It’s one of the performances of the year: hilarious and harrowing, with a strong arc and a cautionary tale baked in – not just of why not to be an unreliable drunk, but also how not to come across so painfully desperate
Posted Nov 23, 2025  Edit critic review
Christy (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Sweeney gives a movie-star performance in Christy, both doing what the role calls for, and looking recognizably like the star we know from other media.
Posted Nov 23, 2025  Edit critic review
Wicked: For Good (2025) Luke Y. Thompson I actually like that the movie leans into worked shoot territory by casting some of the leads based on the way people really perceive the actors.
Posted Nov 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Bring Her Back (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Hakwins’ performance is everything it should be; it’s not her fault that the script’s primary direction appears to have been to drag things out to feature length.
Posted Nov 17, 2025  Edit critic review
Weapons (2025) Luke Y. Thompson The movie itself is fun to watch as the full scope of the plan unfolds. But Gladys herself is an unkind caricature, and movies can do better.
Posted Nov 17, 2025  Edit critic review
Frankenstein (2025) Luke Y. Thompson If this movie doesn’t win multiple awards for production design, it will be a shame. If it wins any for writing, it will merely be a sympathy vote.
Posted Nov 17, 2025  Edit critic review
One Battle After Another (2025) Luke Y. Thompson I sense a bit of gen-X self-loathing here – we grew up thinking nothing mattered, and on one hand you have Pat/Bob trying to be good but indulging his vices and being kind of a burnout, while on the other you have Lockjaw going all in on hating
Posted Nov 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Die My Love (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Empathetically, I don’t want to see someone hurt this much, but selfishly, as an aesthete, I can’t get enough of the place this film is transporting me to.
Posted Nov 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Eddington (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Aster offers a combination of skepticism and sympathy...for a man whose real-life analogs might not seem to deserve any.
Posted Nov 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Predator: Badlands (2025) Luke Y. Thompson This is what the Riddick sequels should have been. This is what After Earth should have been. This is what Rebel Moon should have been.
Posted Nov 04, 2025  Edit critic review
Sentimental Value (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Sentimental Value is an actor’s movie, for viewers who like just hanging out with families that have (not especially huge) problems.
Posted Nov 03, 2025  Edit critic review
Warfare (2025) Luke Y. Thompson It’s taut, thrilling, and perhaps not much more, but Warfare tells you what it is and delivers
Posted Nov 03, 2025  Edit critic review
Disney's Snow White (2025) Luke Y. Thompson I hope kids watch it and get the message that their parents may not want them to.
Posted Nov 03, 2025  Edit critic review
Sinners (2025) Luke Y. Thompson This is cinema at its most epic even as it tells a geographically confined story centered on one night at a juke joint.
Posted Nov 03, 2025  Edit critic review
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025) Luke Y. Thompson It works while it’s happening – I can’t say it doesn’t – but at the end, you’re likely to yell, “Is that all?”
Posted Oct 25, 2025  Edit critic review
Dead Man's Wire (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Dead Man’s Wire suggests Skarsgard’s next path: take every role Michael Shannon has aged out of.
Posted Oct 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Last Days (2025) Luke Y. Thompson It’s too sentimental for cynics, and too worldly for Christian acolytes, ultimately pleasing neither audience, I suspect.
Posted Oct 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) Luke Y. Thompson it’s visually stunning to see, though the conceit is by now almost a trope
Posted Oct 17, 2025  Edit critic review
Hamnet (2025) Luke Y. Thompson It’s more melancholy, and mildly mystical, like an episode of The Sandman without the sandman (and mercifully, without Neil Gaiman too).
Posted Oct 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Sirāt (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Sirat ratchets up the tension better than anything I’ve seen in a while, precisely because it has already cued you to understand that nobody is safe in this story.
Posted Oct 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Shell (2024) Luke Y. Thompson ...campier than The Twilight Zone, The Shell is perhaps best suited to the overlap of viewers with contempt for Hollywood people and a high tolerance for blood and bile (metaphorical, but mostly literal).
Posted Oct 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Bugonia (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Bugonia feels enough like a Lanthimos original to justify it existing, but I’d suggest not watching the original first.
Posted Oct 10, 2025  Edit critic review
TRON: Ares (2025) Luke Y. Thompson I doubt it’s a coincidence that Leto pushed this project to the greenlight, and it therefore depicts him as the most perfect being alive.
Posted Oct 07, 2025  Edit critic review
Waltzing with Brando (2024) Luke Y. Thompson If that’s what it took to give us Billy Zane as Marlon Brando, it’s probably worth it...but it helps to be a big fan of both.
Posted Sep 25, 2025  Edit critic review
Night of the Reaper (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Even with its surprises, such as they are, Night of the Reaper mostly comes off as a fair enough made-for-cable flick.
Posted Sep 19, 2025  Edit critic review
The Long Walk (2025) Luke Y. Thompson At the start of the walk, the movie feels like a drive-in style high-concept exploitation movie. By the end it's a bit more than that – a thesis on whether, in the face of darkness, it's best to put on a happy face as you keep going
Posted Sep 14, 2025  Edit critic review
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (2025) Luke Y. Thompson ...this is a comfort-food platter for longtime devotees, like whatever the adult equivalent is of Chickie Nuggies and Choccy Milk served on a silver platter with Grey Poupon and a bouillon spoon.
Posted Sep 14, 2025  Edit critic review
Light of the World (2025) Luke Y. Thompson The problem is that Light of the World isn't much of a movie – it's a biblical tract for kids that makes sure characters always say their names out loud and repeat key scriptural points
Posted Sep 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Caught Stealing (2025) Luke Y. Thompson Going full-weird with Mother! didn't work for everyone – going full '90s normie is a counter-swerve that may earn him some new fans.
Posted Aug 28, 2025  Edit critic review
The Toxic Avenger (2023) Luke Y. Thompson I can't exactly call this a bad Toxie movie, since it's self-evidently better acted than all four of the originals. But I can say it's not everything I came to see in a Toxie movie.
Posted Aug 27, 2025  Edit critic review
Ne Zha II (2025) Luke Y. Thompson I'm all for a diversity of animation in the marketplace, and clearly Ne Zha 2 fits somebody's bill. Many somebodies, even. I could not connect to it, but it sure looks nifty at times.
Posted Aug 25, 2025  Edit critic review
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