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It Ends With Us
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Fighting their way out of the flowery tearjerking in the film version of Colleen Hoover’s mega-bestseller are a movie and a stellar Blake Lively performance that both take measure of domestic violence and the women who get to decide when enough is enough.
Posted Aug 09, 2024
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The Instigators
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Since heist movies are a dime a dozen, don’t get your hopes up. But thanks to the easy chemistry between Matt Damon and Casey Affleck, there is the kick of an acting job well done.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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Trap
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Hartnett does his best playing a serial killer and devoted dad living in the same body. But you don’t need a sixth sense to know that director M. Knight Shyamalan is running on empty as his patchwork thriller slips from disappointment to disaster.
Posted Aug 02, 2024
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Deadpool & Wolverine
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Is it a great movie? Nah. It's too slick a Marvel package, with surprisingly meh special effects and an energy that’s more desperation than inspiration. But stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman are willing to bust a gut to make you laugh. So there’s that.
Posted Jul 26, 2024
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Twisters
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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It’s the same old tornado twaddle, but the destructive power of weather has never been more timely, the star charisma of Glen Powell never more evident and the tenderness director Lee Isaac Chung shows for the land and its people never more appreciated
Posted Jul 19, 2024
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Longlegs
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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When it comes to high-wire acting with no net, Nicolas Cage is a rock star and this serial-killing satanic devil ranks with his bizarro best even when filmmaker Oz Perkins slides into silliness. No matter—virtuoso Cage lights the spark and then, ka-boom!
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Sing Sing
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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The first indisputably great movie of 2024 is a blazing Oscar contender about a real-life prison arts program that helps caged birds, led by a simply stupendous Colman Domingo, to regain humanity with a heart full to bursting and a spirit that soars.
Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Eddie Murphy is 63 now and sometimes the jokes seem just as retirement ready, but seeing this comic legend return to the cop role he created four decades ago—along with many of the old gang— at least squeaks by as primo fan service.
Posted Jul 03, 2024
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Despicable Me 4
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Sure it repeats everything it did the last three times, but thanks to Steve Carell’s lovable grump of a Gru and those wild and crazy Minions, the random lunacy remains hard to resist.
Posted Jul 03, 2024
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Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Costner’s real reverence for the classic western dances with disaster by passing off the first of his four-part saga as epic filmmaking instead of a trio of speechifying, clumsily linked one-hour episodes that play like a TV series with no direction home.
Posted Jun 28, 2024
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Kinds of Kindness
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Oscar winner Emma Stone teams up again with her Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos for a mesmerizing mindteaser, costarring a fabulous Jesse Plemons, that tells three stories that you can’t stop thinking about as they entertain and exasperate.
Posted Jun 21, 2024
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The Bikeriders
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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The cool factor is off the charts as director Jeff Nichols and a trio of sizzling actors—Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy—turns a 1968 photobook about a 1968 motorcycle club into a vibrant vibe of a movie that vrooms to life on the big screen.
Posted Jun 21, 2024
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Inside Out 2
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Why is the sequel never the equal? Mostly because the surprise goes poof, along with the kick of originality. This followup to the animated Oscar-winning 2015 original can't do much about that, except deliver charm in sweet abundance. So why resist?
Posted Jun 14, 2024
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Am I OK?
(2022)
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Peter Travers
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Dakota Johnson is aces as a late bloomer coming out in her 30s. The touchingly personal script by Lauren Pomerantz is funny as hell, but it’s her delicacy of feeling that sneaks up and floors you. Something special is going on here. Treasure it.
Posted Jun 07, 2024
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Bad Boys: Ride or Die
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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The 4th round for Will Smith and Martin Lawrence isn’t a bad movie, really, just another mediocrity trying to cash in on what came before, the kind of money grab that’s killing movies by serving leftovers as the main course. Resist before it's too late.
Posted Jun 07, 2024
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The Great Lillian Hall
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Starring the great Jessica Lange as a Broadway legend gobsmacked by dementia, this is a snappy, stirring tribute to theater as a lifeline. Ignore the drift into soap opera in favor of Lange’s transfixing master class in acting Just sit back and behold.
Posted May 31, 2024
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Hit Man
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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Oooowee, what a scorchingly sexy thriller. Powered by shining new star Glen Powell, who singes the screen with wowza costar Adria Arjona, this somewhat true story from Richard Linklater adds up to one of the best and most beguiling movies of the year.
Posted May 31, 2024
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The Garfield Movie
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Soon to be infamous for bad decisions, this despairingly off-kilter toon looks like a movie but feels like a cynical cash grab propelled by the idiocy of turning our favorite mouthy, shamelessly lazy cat into a blah action hero voiced by Chris Pratt.
Posted May 24, 2024
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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OK, it’s no Fury Road, but action poet George Miller scores a solid base hit by replacing the irreplaceable Charlize Theron with livewire Anya Taylor-Joy as the younger Furiosa in the exhilarating act of inventing herself. You’ll be dazzled, guaranteed.
Posted May 24, 2024
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Back to Black
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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While this sanitized and superficial Amy Winehouse biopic flounders around in search of focus, new star Marisa Abela gives her blazing all to capturing the late singer’s short, turbulent life and lasting art with stunning ferocity and feeling.
Posted May 17, 2024
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I Saw the TV Glow
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Jane Schoenbrun's off-handedly evolutionary mindbender about two teens bonding over a sci-fi TV series isn't always easy to get your head and heart around. But hold on for its incendiary daring. Schoenbrun is a trans game changer. They make us believe.
Posted May 10, 2024
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Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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No. 10 in the series proves there’s still life, artful cosplay and action monkeyshines in the ape-verse that began in 1968, but a worrying case of franchise fatigue is sneaking in. Whatever happened to quitting while you're ahead?
Posted May 10, 2024
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The Idea of You
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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A 40-ish single mom hooks up with a 20-ish boy band star. Cue the mush? Not this time. Somehow sensational Anne Hathaway and swoony Nicholas Galitzine make the cliches dance, bringing humor, heat and unexpected heart to a fantasy for daydream fbelievers.
Posted May 03, 2024
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The Fall Guy
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Ryan Gosling—he and Emily Blunt are romcom hotties to die for— knocks it out of the park in this insanely entertaining love letter to Hollywood’s unsung action heroes—stunt performers. Listen up, academy: an Oscar category for stunts is way overdue.
Posted May 03, 2024
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Challengers
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Zendaya shines like a true movie star, and she and costars Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist will blow you away as tennis pros in Luca Guadagnino’s swoony, sexy romantic triangle that finds hilarious and hardcore erotic mischief off the court and on.
Posted Apr 26, 2024
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Coup de Chance
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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This French bonbon, Woody Allen’s best reviewed film in years, is no career landmark. But its blend of humor and homicide shows Allen, 88, still moving forward, creating the kind of film he made his name on, the kind that makes you laugh till it hurts.
Posted Apr 19, 2024
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Civil War
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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In a hotly divisive, post Jan. 6 election year, Alex Garland embeds us with journalists, led by a wow Kirsten Dunst, covering a speculative second war between the states. The result is the most original and propulsively exciting movie of the year so far.
Posted Apr 12, 2024
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The Beast
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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Bertrand Bonello’s exhilarating cinematic challenge stars a never-better Lea Seydoux and George MacKay as lovers across space and time who fight to embrace the beast of their raging emotions while artificial intelligence threatens to eradicate it.
Posted Apr 05, 2024
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Wicked Little Letters
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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Mean tweets 1920 style: The incomparable Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley turn a flimsy script about poison pen letters that turn friends against each other into irresistible fun. Any resemblance to today’s internet trolling is purely intentional.
Posted Mar 29, 2024
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Road House
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Star Jake Gyllenhaal and director Doug Liman huff and puff to reimagine the bawdy B-movie punch of the 1989 original with Patrick Swayze, but despite putting a fresh coat of paint on this rickety old jalopy, there’s still nothing under the hood
Posted Mar 22, 2024
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Knox Goes Away
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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Michael Keaton’s second film as star and director stumbles but rises again on the strength of Keaton’s ability to bring his bristling intelligence as an actor to his work behind camera in this darkly comic tale of a hitman losing a battle with dementia.
Posted Mar 15, 2024
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Damsel
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Millie Bobby Brown fights a heroic battle as a princess bride up against a digital dragon, but it’s not the damsel but the audience that will suffer distress from the nonstop, numbing repetition that turns this movie dull and dreary way too fast.
Posted Mar 08, 2024
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Love Lies Bleeding
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Dive into this pulpy, erotic crime thriller starring Kristen Stewart as a gym manager in hot love with a bodybuilder (a sensational Katy M. O'Brian), Directed in a fever by the great Rose Glass, the film is a grenade of image and sound ready to blow.
Posted Mar 08, 2024
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Dune: Part Two
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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The year’s first surefire blockbuster is a sequel that outdoes Denis Villeneuve’s first epic 2021 sand opera. OK, it’s a tad long and solemn, but Chalamet and Zendaya are destiny-kissed lovers to die for, and the thundering spectacle is off the charts.
Posted Mar 01, 2024
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The Boy and the Heron
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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Japanese manga master Hayao Miyazaki, 83, came out of retirement for this hand-drawn beauty about his own life growing up in wartime. The Oscar for best animated feature belongs right here since Miyazaki’s unparalleled artistry shines out of every frame.
Posted Feb 23, 2024
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Drive-Away Dolls
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Ethan Coen’s lesbian road movie, cowritten with his wife Tricia Cooke who identifies as queer, is raucously funny when it doesn’t go slack and make you wish he’d reunite with his sibling Joel for the old Coen brothers magic that fails to materialize here.
Posted Feb 23, 2024
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Bob Marley: One Love
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Kingsley Ben-Adir catches the spirit of the Jamaican legend who became the face and voice of reggae and the Rastafarian conscience of his people. But this safe, shallow, family-sanctioned biopic gives us only snippets of songs and scraps of a life.
Posted Feb 16, 2024
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Madame Web
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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God-awful is too wimpy a word for this superdiva cash grab that sinks Dakota Johnson in what feels like a random batch of half-baked ideas tossed at the screen in the cynical assumption that we’ll buy any lazy hack-work that is Spider-Man adjacent. Resist
Posted Feb 16, 2024
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The Taste of Things
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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Food porn has never been yummier than it is in this indecently delicious French romance starring on-and-off screen lovers Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel as dueling foodies who craft mouth-watering dishes as a way of finding each other’s hearts.
Posted Feb 09, 2024
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Lisa Frankenstein
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Another Frankenstein throwback (“Poor Things” has nothing to fear) dressed up as a 1980’s teen sex comedy about a goth girl (Kathryn Newton) with the hots for an undead lover (Cole Sprouse). Diablo Cody’s devilish script is sadly tamed by a PG-13 rating.
Posted Feb 09, 2024
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Argylle
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Forget the rumor that Taylor Swift wrote the books this sad excuse for fun is based on. Bryce Dallas Howard is wasted as a cat lady who writes thrillers—Henry Cavill and Sam Rockwell play spies—but the whole plodding, cartoonish mess lands with a thud.
Posted Feb 02, 2024
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Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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The Japanese reboot of the kaju king just snagged an Oscar nomination for visual effects. It should win. Whether you see it in color or glorious black-and-white, the 70-year-old series finally finds a human depth to match its dazzle. A star is reborn.
Posted Jan 26, 2024
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I.S.S.
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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Ariana DeBose and Chris Messina excel in this space thriller that sizzles with Russia vs America tension but all too predictably fizzles into a mild ride that is better than you might expect while falling way short of the wonder it so wants to inspire.
Posted Jan 19, 2024
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Origin
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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How do you make a movie about an intellectual argument? By putting a human face on it,
which is what Ava DuVernay and acting force Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor do in this stunning provocation about race and class. Here's something rare: a movie that matters.
Posted Jan 19, 2024
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Lift
(2024)
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Peter Travers
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Start the new year off wrong with another Kevin Hart misfire that doesn’t even try to be funny, preferring to slide by as a humdrum heist movie that steals time you'll never get back.
Posted Jan 12, 2024
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The Teachers' Lounge
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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A nail-biting thriller in which director İlker Çatak and sensational star Leonie Benesch turn a tale of petty theft at a German middle school into a battle between freedom of expression and institutional control all too easily recognizable as our own.
Posted Jan 05, 2024
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Memory
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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Fueled by terrific performances from Chastain and Sarsgaard, this impossible love story between a woman who can't forget and man who can't remember slowly works its way into your mind and heart. Director Michel Franco makes sure you’ll be moved to tears.
Posted Jan 05, 2024
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Ferrari
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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The great Michael Mann directs Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, the ex-racer-turned-entrepreneur. The domestic scenes with his wife (Penelope Cruz) and mistress (Shailene Woodley) slow the pacing but the vroom of tires on the road is thrilling to the max.
Posted Dec 29, 2023
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The Boys in the Boat
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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The true story about the triumph of an eight-man rowing crew at the 1936 Olympics fits right into director George Clooney’s love for underdogs, but the excitment on the water is muted by thinly developed personal dramas that feel pokey and predictable.
Posted Dec 29, 2023
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All of Us Strangers
(2023)
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Peter Travers
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Andrew Haigh’s enthralling ghost story concerns a writer (Andrew Scott) coming to terms with a new love (Paul Mescal) and the parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) who died in his childhood. Watch out— Haigh and his four superlative actors will get you good
Posted Dec 22, 2023
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