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David Poland

Tomatometer-approved critic

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Send Help (2026) 94% EDIT “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. ” – Hot Button (Substack) Jan 27, 2026 Full Review 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) 93% EDIT “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. ” – Hot Button (Substack) Jan 14, 2026 Full Review Primate (2025) 79% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) Jan 9, 2026 Full Review The Running Man (2025) 62% EDIT “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. ” – Hot Button (Substack) Nov 12, 2025 Full Review A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025) 75% EDIT “"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."” – Hot Button (Substack) Oct 24, 2025 Full Review One Battle After Another (2025) 94% EDIT “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. ” – Hot Button (Substack) Sep 25, 2025 Full Review The Smashing Machine (2025) 70% EDIT “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. ” – Hot Button (Substack) Sep 16, 2025 Full Review The Roses (2025) 64% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) Aug 27, 2025 Full Review Nobody 2 (2025) 76% EDIT “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. ” – Hot Button (Substack) Aug 13, 2025 Full Review Freakier Friday (2025) 73% EDIT “Basically, the movie becomes a series of bits… sketches on the same theme. But there is no real narrative drive. ” – Hot Button (Substack) Aug 8, 2025 Full Review Weapons (2025) 93% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) Aug 8, 2025 Full Review The Naked Gun (2025) 87% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) Jul 30, 2025 Full Review The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) 86% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) Jul 23, 2025 Full Review Eddington (2025) 68% EDIT “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. ” – Hot Button (Substack) Jul 21, 2025 Full Review Superman (2025) 83% EDIT “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” – Hot Button (Substack) Jul 11, 2025 Full Review Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) 50% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) Jul 1, 2025 Full Review F1 The Movie (2025) 82% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) Jun 27, 2025 Full Review M3GAN 2.0 (2025) 57% EDIT “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. ” – Hot Button (Substack) Jun 25, 2025 Full Review Elio (2025) 83% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) Jun 19, 2025 Full Review Ballerina (2025) 75% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) Jun 6, 2025 Full Review Lilo & Stitch (2025) 72% EDIT “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. ” – Hot Button (Substack) May 22, 2025 Full Review Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) 80% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) May 16, 2025 Full Review Thunderbolts* (2025) 88% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) May 5, 2025 Full Review Sinners (2025) 97% EDIT “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---? ” – Hot Button (Substack) Apr 18, 2025 Full Review Disney's Snow White (2025) 39% EDIT “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.” – Hot Button (Substack) Mar 20, 2025 Full Review
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