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

Chicago Reader

Tomatometer-approved publication.

Prev Next
Rating Title | Year Author Quote
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) Maxwell Rabb What makes The Bone Temple the best iteration of the “rage virus” series is how willingly it leans into absurdity.
Posted Jan 26, 2026  Edit critic review
The Testament of Ann Lee (2025) Maxwell Rabb Amanda Seyfried shines as Ann Lee, delivering a potent performance, her eyes lit with commanding devotion.
Posted Jan 26, 2026  Edit critic review
H Is for Hawk (2025) Noah Berlatsky Some viewers may be put off by the fact that H Is for Hawk has no neat moral and no cathartic end to grief. But it wouldn’t be true to either the impossible bird or the impossible person if it did.
Posted Jan 23, 2026  Edit critic review
The Plague (2025) Kyle Logan Rather than deliver any sense of tension and release or thematic heft, The Plague remains a sometimes beautifully realized but ultimately hollow and frustrating hour and a half spent with selfish tween boys.
Posted Jan 21, 2026  Edit critic review
OBEX (2025) Maxwell Rabb Birney’s gritty, imaginative filmmaking results in a compelling fantasy that leaves us nowhere to hide . . . from ourselves.
Posted Jan 14, 2026  Edit critic review
The Choral (2025) Rob Silverman Ascher While The Choral posits compelling thoughts about jingoism and the role of art in community, the film as a whole is a stodgy trifle.
Posted Jan 14, 2026  Edit critic review
Marty Supreme (2025) Maxwell Rabb The success of this film relies on Chalamet’s possessed performance.
Posted Jan 05, 2026  Edit critic review
Is This Thing On? (2025) Maxwell Rabb The problem with Is This Thing On? isn’t its setup, but how little it actually excavates loneliness or the ways a lack of purpose can curdle into something corrosive.
Posted Dec 29, 2025  Edit critic review
Ella McCay (2025) Maxwell Rabb It’s bewildering to watch, as the characters oscillate between various emotions and motivations, making it impossible to track what is going on.
Posted Dec 29, 2025  Edit critic review
Buffalo Stone (2025) Rob Silverman Ascher Bring Them Home is a spectacularly shot tribute to an icon, reclaimed from certain extinction.
Posted Dec 29, 2025  Edit critic review
Dust Bunny (2025) Maxwell Rabb It falls short at every turn: The dialogue never sparks a real connection between Mikkelsen and Sloan, the CGI looks unfinished, and the conclusion simply flatlines. What we are left with is just an unfilling, patchwork dream.
Posted Dec 29, 2025  Edit critic review
Resurrection (2025) Rob Silverman Ascher Resurrection is a total work of art, an immersive and layered metafilm that must be seen to be believed.
Posted Dec 23, 2025  Edit critic review
100 Nights of Hero (2025) Rob Silverman Ascher Despite a convoluted plot, 100 Nights of Hero is a charming, proudly queer tribute to the power of oral tradition.
Posted Dec 23, 2025  Edit critic review
Big Top Pee-wee (1988) Jonathan Rosenbaum Most of the circus freaks are as synthetic as Pee-wee himself, and while the level of imagination here is scaled to the bite-size dimensions of TV, the sense of an alternate universe felt in Herman’s TV show is woefully lacking.
Posted Dec 11, 2025  Edit critic review
S.O.B. (1981) Kat Sachs It’s an absolutely hysterical movie.
Posted Dec 08, 2025  Edit critic review
It Was Just an Accident (2025) Kat Sachs It’s cliche to say, but the value of humor in our long-suffering humanity cannot be understated, and it seems Panâhi recognizes that more than most.
Posted Dec 08, 2025  Edit critic review
The Things You Kill (2025) Soham Gadre Khatami’s direction is unpredictable. He cuts at precise moments to keep the narrative’s core mystery intact, only revealing bits of shocking information later.
Posted Dec 02, 2025  Edit critic review
Hamnet (2025) Maxwell Rabb Mescal and Buckley deliver twin but divergent blueprints for mourning, and in the film’s final reckoning, their dual performances offer the year’s most devastating finale.
Posted Dec 02, 2025  Edit critic review
Left-Handed Girl (2025) Maxwell Rabb What makes Left-Handed Girl so potent is how disarmingly charming parts of it can be.
Posted Dec 02, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
King Ivory (2024) Kyle Logan King Ivory [is] a solid riff on Sicario and a collection of almost all the cliches of Traffic (including the anti-drug crusader with an addict child) with none of the visual flair.
Posted Nov 23, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
Violent Ends (2025) Kyle Logan As effective and good looking as Violent Ends may be, it’s just too generic to be something special.
Posted Nov 23, 2025  Edit critic review
4/5
Predator: Badlands (2025) Kyle Logan Bursting with astonishing blends of practical and digital effects, thrilling action, beautifully shot vistas, and equally heartfelt and humorous character dynamics.
Posted Nov 23, 2025  Edit critic review
Train Dreams (2025) Joe Engleman It’s disappointing.
Posted Nov 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Hedda (2025) Daniella Mazzio Let’s get this out of the way: Hedda is a good time. Without sacrificing depth, DaCosta really revels in the salacious mess of people manipulating one another over the course of a lavish party.
Posted Nov 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Mississippi Masala (1991) Kat Sachs It’s lush and nuanced, romantic and edifying.
Posted Nov 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Die My Love (2025) Maxwell Rabb Die My Love frays alongside Grace, falling prey to its aesthetic machinations, which meander their way to a dull ending unfit for its lethal, serrated performances.
Posted Nov 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Jay Kelly (2025) Maxwell Rabb Baumbach shows us the brittle reality of stardom. It’s hardly a new premise, but he tells Jay’s story with such sincerity that it feels unexpectedly fresh.
Posted Nov 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Sentimental Value (2025) Maxwell Rabb Trier deftly explores how familial trauma is held deep within the hearts, unwittingly passed along by generation and through the spaces we live in.
Posted Nov 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Nouvelle Vague (2025) Maxwell Rabb Linklater tells a stylized, straightforward story about making the film but does little to evoke the timelessness of its source material.
Posted Nov 07, 2025  Edit critic review
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) Joe Engleman Its greatest strength is the intimate chemistry between Springsteen and his manager Jon Landau, but audiences aren’t given enough context to fully appreciate it.
Posted Nov 07, 2025  Edit critic review
Bugonia (2025) Maxwell Rabb Lanthimos’s hand is steady as he spins us deeper into chaos, always withholding just enough to keep us questioning what’s real.
Posted Nov 03, 2025  Edit critic review
Strange Behavior (1981) Kat Sachs It’s an excellent film that combines midwestern charm with an Alan J. Pakula–esque conspiracy.
Posted Nov 03, 2025  Edit critic review
The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) Kat Sachs The horror isn’t visceral but rather suggestive; there’s not much to see as much as feel.
Posted Nov 03, 2025  Edit critic review
The Gore Gore Girls (1972) Kat Sachs The film’s gratuitousness is balanced with humor, including a queer-coded investigator seemingly ripped from the pages of an Agatha Christie novel who delivers one-liners like a Bravo housewife.
Posted Nov 03, 2025  Edit critic review
The Mastermind (2025) Rob Silverman Ascher The Mastermind is a slow-burn thriller, directed with a thief’s precision by Reichardt and anchored by an excellent performance by O’Connor.
Posted Oct 28, 2025  Edit critic review
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025) Maxwell Rabb As the film enters its final stretch, Bigelow’s taut narrative loosens. Her return to familiar characters teases profound insight it never delivers.
Posted Oct 28, 2025  Edit critic review
Frankenstein (2025) Maxwell Rabb Del Toro spent nearly 25 years dreaming up this world, and it shows, especially in Dan Laustsen’s gorgeous cinematography and Kate Hawley’s opulent costume design.
Posted Oct 28, 2025  Edit critic review
Dracula (1979) Dave Kehr Frank Langella is the count, in a performance that reportedly differed from his Broadway interpretation: less campy, more glamorous. Still, Badham hasn’t made much of him. The character is presented well, but never developed.
Posted Oct 23, 2025  Edit critic review
From Beyond (1986) Pat Graham The gross-out sliminess and sexual acting out are supposed to provide a purgative release, but all Gordon does is gawk at the excess for what seems like forever.
Posted Oct 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Highway Hypnosis (1984) Cassandra Gillig Camp refuses the salaciousness of a Hollywood slasher, offering up something much more terrifying.
Posted Oct 18, 2025  Edit critic review
A Self-Induced Hallucination (2018) Micco Caporale A Self-Induced Hallucination packs a swift, raw punch.
Posted Oct 18, 2025  Edit critic review
If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025) Soham Gadre If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a movie that feels written and engineered to deliver moments and clips rather than offer any depth on the topics purportedly at hand: the burden of motherhood, feelings of inadequacy, alienation, lopsided gender dynamics.
Posted Oct 16, 2025  Edit critic review
It Was Just an Accident (2025) Maxwell Rabb The sheer madness that unspools is punctuated by jokes that cast a harsh light on the immense pressure placed on individuals under an oppressive regime.
Posted Oct 16, 2025  Edit critic review
The Secret Agent (2025) Soham Gadre Filho crafts his central characters as fully fleshed out people, keeping their humanity grounded in their friendships, relationships, and fantasies in close quarters.
Posted Oct 16, 2025  Edit critic review
After the Hunt (2025) Daniella Mazzio After the Hunt’s issue is that it is far too comfortably self-satisfied, resulting in something that ends up quite toothless.
Posted Oct 14, 2025  Edit critic review
Peacock (2024) Kat Sachs A genuine sense of anxiety, more pronounced than that of Östlund’s films, pervades the story, delivering a stronger message as a result.
Posted Oct 14, 2025  Edit critic review
3.5/5
Good Boy (2025) Kyle Logan It’s pretty common stuff narratively, but the striking look and Leonberg’s ability to develop and sustain atmospheric suspense make Good Boy better than it needs to be. It also helps that Indy’s extremely cute and a very good boy.
Posted Oct 10, 2025  Edit critic review
2/5
TRON: Ares (2025) Kyle Logan There are some cool scenes within the Grid, and Nine Inch Nails’ music turns those scenes into great music videos stuck inside a mediocre if not outright bad movie.
Posted Oct 10, 2025  Edit critic review
The Smashing Machine (2025) Maxwell Rabb The Smashing Machine succeeds because Johnson channels contradictions that feel deeply his own—his public armor and private fractures.
Posted Oct 03, 2025  Edit critic review
3/5
Plainclothes (2025) Kyle Logan Emmi’s willingness to play with form is welcome...and hopefully in future projects, he’s able to calibrate it better and write a more interesting script.
Posted Oct 03, 2025  Edit critic review
Prev Next