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Hot Button (Substack)

Hot Button (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): David Poland, Ray Pride.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Send Help (2026) David Poland Send Help has some big surprises... but the core plays... the 2 actors are pretty perfect… the director loves to push it, though in this case, not far enough to scare people away... and Rachel McAdams… can’t stop watching her.
Posted Jan 27, 2026  Edit critic review
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) David Poland I had a great time. The audience I saw it with seemed to have a great time. If you like this kind of movie, I expect you will have a great time.
Posted Jan 14, 2026  Edit critic review
Primate (2025) David Poland This story has whole series of gimmicks. Some are on the nose, others are intentional distractions, and others yet will be grossly underfed. The movie needs more gimmicks that are not there and fewer of the gimmicks that are there.
Posted Jan 09, 2026  Edit critic review
The Running Man (2025) David Poland The Running Man is not a bad movie. But it should have been a fun movie. And the hope was that it would be a super-fun romp that didn’t just feel like a journey from one enclosed space to another. Edgar Wright can deliver this. This time, he did not.
Posted Nov 12, 2025  Edit critic review
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025) David Poland "I am excited to chew on A House of Dynamite again and again, letting it wash over me as I consider the many questions it asks and asks us to answer for ourselves. It will always be a little kinky. The best kind of kinky in art."
Posted Oct 24, 2025  Edit critic review
One Battle After Another (2025) David Poland It’s not about dogma, even if some characters are near-caricatures. It’s about when you are committed to big ideas in your public life, but then your basic human needs… your animal brain… take control in a way beyond your intellectual control.
Posted Sep 25, 2025  Edit critic review
The Smashing Machine (2025) David Poland It’s a frustrating thing when a movie gets so much right, but doesn’t quite find its way to come together in a fully satisfying way. That, I am afraid, was my experience of The Smashing Machine.
Posted Sep 16, 2025  Edit critic review
The Roses (2025) David Poland This movie grew on me as it played. The ghost of the older film - which I watched again as soon as I got home from the screening - pulls at your shoulder. But the more I let it go and just let this movie be this movie, the more I liked it.
Posted Aug 27, 2025  Edit critic review
Nobody 2 (2025) David Poland This is exactly the kind of silly summer movie that I much prefer seeing with an audience, which laughs, gasps, and collectively rolls its eyes. If you enjoy this kind of movie, there is no spoiling it. It's a series of set pieces w/ simple characters.
Posted Aug 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Freakier Friday (2025) David Poland Basically, the movie becomes a series of bits… sketches on the same theme. But there is no real narrative drive.
Posted Aug 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Weapons (2025) David Poland The reason why Weapons is a very watchable film - and I would avoid most reviews, in which even an actors’ name may be a real spoiler - is that Cregger knows how to drive story and anxiety and very familiar human behavior.
Posted Aug 08, 2025  Edit critic review
The Naked Gun (2025) David Poland The Naked Gun could not be more stupid, more silly, more joyous, less pretentious, less unkind, and less interested in being anything more or less than it is.
Posted Jul 30, 2025  Edit critic review
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) David Poland It is a fairly complicated puzzle of a movie, but I think audiences will be able to follow it. And that is good. Maybe it’s just an, "I love you… just not that way,” situation.
Posted Jul 23, 2025  Edit critic review
Eddington (2025) David Poland I felt I needed to see the movie a 2nd time before reviewing and really, I could easily watch it a couple more times before really settling into how I feel. Everything is in Joe’s way in this film… nothing more than Joe himself.
Posted Jul 21, 2025  Edit critic review
Superman (2025) David Poland In a weird way, the whole movie is Krypto… hyper, aggressive, relentless & so busy taking action to ever get distracted by thinking too much. Krypto always threatens to be too much… but he proved his value by the end & I look forward to seeing him again
Posted Jul 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) David Poland What is truly amazing to me about this movie is that it is not only not a rebirth… or a re-set… or anything that takes the series to another place. It screams that it is the end of the entire franchise… which is unlikely, but it's what’s in the movie.
Posted Jul 01, 2025  Edit critic review
F1 The Movie (2025) David Poland F1 is the best major release of the first half of 2025. F1 is classic HOLLYWOOD cinema, driving the audience from start to finish, 2 hours and 50 minutes later with a relentless beat and just a few side elements to distract.
Posted Jun 27, 2025  Edit critic review
M3GAN 2.0 (2025) David Poland M3GAN 2.0 is like a movie made by someone with completely different ambitions than M3GAN, but with most of the same limitations. Johnstone’s skills as a high-action director are not special or even very focused.
Posted Jun 25, 2025  Edit critic review
Elio (2025) David Poland This is the frustration of Elio. There is some really incredible stuff in this movie. But the mountain it sets out for itself is so high that it is never properly climbed. The sadness of Elio is unsolved for.
Posted Jun 19, 2025  Edit critic review
Ballerina (2025) David Poland All that said… the movie never stops fighting for over 2 hours. And it is more than competently done. So what is there to complain about? Just that it wasn’t as great, within its genre, as it might have been.
Posted Jun 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Lilo & Stitch (2025) David Poland So… watching living Lilo & Stitch with an adult eye, if you remember the original film, you are missing things you probably liked… and there are elements that feel like they are right out of a Sid & Marty Kroft kids series from the 70s.
Posted May 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) David Poland A movie has to be as ambitious as this one to be a loaded down with problems as this one is. And this film wants to be a tribute to itself and a great action movie and by the end, it really doesn’t achieve either goal fully. Which is sad.
Posted May 16, 2025  Edit critic review
Thunderbolts* (2025) David Poland I consider this film to be entertaining enough to have been watched as a series, thanks to all the good acting, but as an entry in the rebuilding of the MCU just a remarkable miss.
Posted May 05, 2025  Edit critic review
Sinners (2025) David Poland I kept waiting for there to be a payoff to the many disparate ingredients in this gumbo. Even the scene that shows up in the credits, which I really loved, is super compelling and also at the edge of What The F---?
Posted Apr 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Disney's Snow White (2025) David Poland I don’t hate the movie. I was deeply frustrated with the movie… no where more than with the screenplay. It felt like 3 or 4 movies having what people saw as its best parts slammed together. The little kids won't mind.
Posted Mar 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Captain America: Brave New World (2025) David Poland How bad is Captain America: Brave New World? So bad that one really has to break it down to all of its missteps to really figure out how it all went so wrong.
Posted Feb 12, 2025  Edit critic review
Wolf Man (2025) David Poland Every great movie is a miracle. And Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man might make you think that God is dead.
Posted Jan 16, 2025  Edit critic review
Mufasa: The Lion King (2024) David Poland There is a reason that Disney has been so overly fussy about this film even though it is easily the best made, most beautiful, most visually engaging CG-Live-Action film in the entirety of filmed entertainment history to date. It ain’t The Lion King.
Posted Dec 17, 2024  Edit critic review
A Complete Unknown (2024) David Poland Mangold never makes the mistake in this film to try to explain more than Dylan. We see him writing... finding words.... working through things. But when he presents the music, we are powerless to do anything but follow the music. How does it feel?
Posted Dec 10, 2024  Edit critic review
Moana 2 (2024) David Poland Opening only in theaters, a very special episode of Moana & Friends, featuring Special Guest Star Maui! Now… whether you like this idea or hate this idea is really up to you and your tastes.
Posted Nov 27, 2024  Edit critic review
Wicked (2024) David Poland I feel a lot about Wicked like I feel about animated films that don’t reach me deeply, bit that are pleasant enough. The Super Mario Bros Movie. Beautiful to look at… fun at moments… clever, clever, clever. But I wanted to care more and I didn’t.
Posted Nov 19, 2024  Edit critic review
Gladiator II (2024) David Poland I like Gladiator II for what it is. And I am sad about what it is not.
Posted Nov 14, 2024  Edit critic review
Red One (2024) David Poland Everything that is “wrong” about Red One could have been fixed by 2 simple principles. Pace it up and tone it down for families. It should have been riding the edge of a G rating instead of pushing the edge of the R. They didn’t need it.
Posted Nov 13, 2024  Edit critic review
Anora (2024) David Poland The only thing that would not have been completely at home in the 30s or 40s is the nudity and the sex. But Stanwyck might well be giving Fonda a 1st act lap dance as the meet cute if they were both alive and making movies today.
Posted Oct 19, 2024  Edit critic review
September 5 (2024) David Poland As much as this movie has the background of a horrible real-life event, which brings all kinds of emotion and tension, it is a movie about the intensity of creation.
Posted Oct 16, 2024  Edit critic review
Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) David Poland When a movie from a skilled filmmaker misses as this film does, I perk up & start trying to figure out why. The film doesn’t do what audiences want it to do. Yes. But it can’t be that simple. There has to be a reason Todd Phillips went to work every day.
Posted Oct 04, 2024  Edit critic review
Transformers One (2024) David Poland If you have seen Ben Hur and The Treasure of Sierra Madre and The Departed and The 10 Commandments and Star Wars and Planet of the Apes and The Matrix, you have a lot of what Transformers One brings together in your brain.
Posted Sep 19, 2024  Edit critic review
Speak No Evil (2024) David Poland Speak No Evil could have been great. I didn’t hate it at all. But I really wanted that next gear. Really, really wanted. We have seen “this movie” so many times, at so many levels of success… or failure.
Posted Sep 11, 2024  Edit critic review
Emilia Pérez (2024) David Poland I don’t think of Emilia Pérez and a “trans musical” or whatever tag we are putting on it this week. Those elements are there, of course. But it’s another powerful Audiard movie about people in extreme circumstances to me.
Posted Sep 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) David Poland Is it fresh like a newborn baby? No. Is it a perfectly complex story that pays off in every way? No. However… it is as inventive and daring as movies made by most of the young filmmakers who get a chance.
Posted Sep 04, 2024  Edit critic review
Alien: Romulus (2024) David Poland I like the movie. Halfway through, I was ready to love the movie. But the frustration that set in was a variation on the old cliche… it left me wanting less. Sigh.
Posted Aug 15, 2024  Edit critic review
Trap (2024) David Poland Trap is crap.
Posted Aug 02, 2024  Edit critic review
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) David Poland I have changed the link to my spoiler review of Deadpool, which also has a link to the non-spoiler review. Both are positive. I added the spoiler review because so many critics seem to be having a hard time understanding the movie. Not that hard.
Posted Jul 23, 2024  Edit critic review
Twisters (2024) David Poland The biggest problem is this mixture of close-ups and big effects shots, spiritually as much as literally. There are cases in which they have mixed. They don’t mix here. Both fail as a result.
Posted Jul 17, 2024  Edit critic review
Touch (2024) David Poland It’s not really a great film for most people in their 20s, as they have only experienced half of the story. But anyone over 40 has had enough life experience to see reflections of their lives in many, many ways.
Posted Jul 10, 2024  Edit critic review
Fly Me to the Moon (2024) David Poland When you are trying to juggle 5 stories, you need to keep adjusting what your characters would obviously do (or push away from) so as not to step on the other plotlines that are going on. It’s too hard… even for the best screenwriters ever.
Posted Jul 08, 2024  Edit critic review
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024) David Poland The movie is not bad. It just chooses not to fulfill the viewer… over 3 hours. It may become a great 12 hour saga. But the ends will never justify the means. This is not revolutionary material. It’s not an art film. It’s not The Zone of Silence Goes West.
Posted Jun 30, 2024  Edit critic review
A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) David Poland Samira is a great movie character, easily the most complex character that has been a part of this franchise. She is not just reacting to the threat of the death angels. She is processing her own issues through every moment of the film.
Posted Jun 27, 2024  Edit critic review
Inside Out 2 (2024) David Poland There is no animation Godfather II. And Inside Out 2 isn’t the first. But it’s still a terrific time at the movies… even if we wish it aspired to a bit more and was a bit more daring.
Posted Jun 13, 2024  Edit critic review
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024) David Poland Bad Boys: Ride or Die is what we want from a genre movie sequel… incredibly familiar, but also incredibly fresh. Can’t wait to see it again.
Posted Jun 04, 2024  Edit critic review
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