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

The Film Maven

The Film Maven is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Kristen Lopez, Lex Briscuso.

Prev Next
Rating Title | Year Author Quote
B+
Send Help (2026) Kristen Lopez Hilariously gory, spooky and suspenseful, this is a soon-to-be Halloween classic that continues to make us ask, "Why the hell is Rachel McAdams not a huge star?"
Posted Jan 26, 2026  Edit critic review
B
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) Kristen Lopez 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is not only better than its predecessor, it's one of the first great movies of 2026.
Posted Jan 13, 2026  Edit critic review
C-
Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) Kristen Lopez For those looking for a good time at the movies, Avatar: Fire and Ash offers some thrilling visuals but little else. The story is repetitive and unfocused, the characters dull and lacking depth.
Posted Dec 16, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
Hamnet (2025) Kristen Lopez Hamnet is another slow burn from Chloe Zhao, but when it really unleashes its magic it's an unstoppable force enhanced by Jessie Buckley's performance. A beautiful examination of mourning and artistic catharsis.
Posted Dec 03, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Marty Supreme (2025) Kristen Lopez A rapid-fire story of superiority wrapped up in a burning performance by Timothee Chalamet. Even a Safdie naysayer will find something to be charmed by.
Posted Dec 01, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
Wicked: For Good (2025) Kristen Lopez Wicked: For Good sticks the landing as best as it can. When Erivo and Grande are finally together, it does leave "a handprint on your heart" even if everything leading up to it is just drawing that out.
Posted Nov 18, 2025  Edit critic review
C-
The Running Man (2025) Kristen Lopez There are fits and spurts of '80s action cheese but, for the most part, the script is wildly inconsistent in terms of tone while characters are wafer thin caricatures.
Posted Nov 11, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Eternity (2025) Kristen Lopez This is one of the purest, sweetest movies you'll see all year.
Posted Nov 06, 2025  Edit critic review
D-
Song Sung Blue (2025) Kristen Lopez Song Sung Blue is essentially white trash Hustle & Flow, removing the rap for Neil Diamond. Hudson and Jackman are fine, but the movie's overwrought and, at times, irritating portrayal of disability and poverty gets old fast.
Posted Oct 27, 2025  Edit critic review
D-
After the Hunt (2025) Kristen Lopez After the Hunt is a tired mess that wants to be provocative and thought-provoking in a way that feels dated and out-of-touch.
Posted Oct 16, 2025  Edit critic review
D
Black Phone 2 (2025) Kristen Lopez An homage to Nightmare on Elm Street so blatant as to be an outright rip-off, Black Phone 2 takes elements that should work, but ends up losing the beat with a sluggish story and a wafer thin premise.
Posted Oct 15, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
Frankenstein (2025) Kristen Lopez Visually, Frankenstein is a feast of impeccable costumes and production design. And the first hour of the movie is thrilling, with Isaac in fine form. The second half is muted, but still has a power to it, coupled with a unique performance from Elordi.
Posted Oct 13, 2025  Edit critic review
A
Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025) Kristen Lopez Kiss of the Spider Woman is astounding. If you aren't a musical fan, will you be in hell? Probably. But for those who enjoy a sweeping musical story, or for lovers of Old Hollywood, you'll be in Heaven for the next two hours.
Posted Oct 08, 2025  Edit critic review
D
Play Dirty (2025) Kristen Lopez It's not that Play Dirty is a terrible movie, just a very dull one. One that never feels like a Shane Black-directed feature but, perhaps more egregiously, feels like a movie you'd find on Amazon Prime.
Posted Sep 30, 2025  Edit critic review
C
Roofman (2025) Kristen Lopez Roofman succeeds on Channing Tatum's charm which covers up for a pretty thin script. Cianfrance tells another story about personal choice that, unlike his past work, does feel lighter and more hopeful.
Posted Sep 29, 2025  Edit critic review
A
Hedda (2025) Kristen Lopez Hedda is one of the year's best movies with Thompson nothing short of wondrous.
Posted Sep 22, 2025  Edit critic review
D-
HIM (2025) Kristen Lopez Him is barely a movie. It's an extended video game sequence with a Satanic vibe to it. Wayans is good, but he's not worth making a point to see the movie.
Posted Sep 18, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
One Battle After Another (2025) Kristen Lopez One Battle After Another is an ensemble powerhouse, with Anderson taking a stab at what could be his most politically charged feature. DiCaprio is wonderful, but then again there's not a dull note in the entire cast.
Posted Sep 17, 2025  Edit critic review
A
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025) Kristen Lopez At the end of the journey, what the audience has experienced is a wondrous dive into humanity's capacity for love that is truly life-affirming. I felt this was a movie made specifically for me, and I have a feeling others will think that as well.
Posted Sep 16, 2025  Edit critic review
D+
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025) Kristen Lopez Where This is Spinal Tap was a comedy masquerading as a documentary film, and doing both extremely well, Spinal Tap 2 is a thinly drawn concert film pretending to be a sequel and doing neither good enough to be compelling.
Posted Sep 11, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Bugonia (2025) Kristen Lopez Yorgos Lanthimos wants you to care about the planet. If only to save your own skin. Such is the case with his latest feature, Bugonia, an incredibly quirky call to arms about the beauty of our world and how hellbent we are on destroying it.
Posted Sep 10, 2025  Edit critic review
B
Eleanor the Great (2025) Kristen Lopez This was a heartfelt, emotionally resonant story about the power of our lives and the capacity of our stories lingering on long after we've left this world. Take someone you love and see it.
Posted Sep 09, 2025  Edit critic review
D+
The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) Kristen Lopez By the time this closes out Last Rites certainly holds true: a weak script kills the franchise and is helping it pass onto the other side.
Posted Sep 03, 2025  Edit critic review
C-
Caught Stealing (2025) Kristen Lopez Caught Stealing certainly doesn’t feel like an Aronofsky movie, and that generic sensibility will affect your mileage on it. It does give Butler a great opportunity to prove his worth as a leading man.
Posted Aug 26, 2025  Edit critic review
D+
The Roses (2025) Kristen Lopez The Roses doesn’t have much humor and isn’t dark at all. It’s like a piece of puff pastry, cute on the outside and absolutely nothing on the inside.
Posted Aug 25, 2025  Edit critic review
D-
Honey Don't! (2025) Kristen Lopez Honey Don’t is something you can certainly watch. Qualley drags this movie to the finish line and she is the best part. The rest of it is a shaggy mess that never gels into anything cohesive.
Posted Aug 21, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
Relay (2024) Kristen Lopez Relay is a remarkably strong film that takes its old school inspirations and modernizes them to great effect.
Posted Aug 19, 2025  Edit critic review
C+
Highest 2 Lowest (2025) Kristen Lopez Highest 2 Lowest works best when it’s trying to say something different from its predecessor and that happens predominately in the final hour.
Posted Aug 14, 2025  Edit critic review
C
Weapons (2025) Kristen Lopez The narrative structure affects the pacing, and the third act is messy, but the performances are undeniable particularly Amy Madigan. Seriously, give the woman an award.
Posted Aug 06, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
Freakier Friday (2025) Kristen Lopez Freakier Friday is the best Disney sequel in a minute thanks to the continued joy of watching Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis together. The comedy is broad and the story formulaic, but all of that is what builds on some of the best Disney classics.
Posted Aug 05, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
She Rides Shotgun (2025) Kristen Lopez She Rides Shotgun is a film that could just come and go, and that’s unfortunate. It’s one of the year’s best movies! Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger are pitch perfect.
Posted Jul 30, 2025  Edit critic review
C-
The Naked Gun (2025) Kristen Lopez The Naked Gun is silly, dumb and inoffensive. It’s neither good or bad but fits comfortably in the mediocre category.
Posted Jul 30, 2025  Edit critic review
A-
Together (2025) Kristen Lopez Together is a wild ride that, for all the squishing and melding, is also a powerful story of romantic complacency. This is one that left me cringing as often as it made me find these two utterly darling.
Posted Jul 28, 2025  Edit critic review
C
The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) Kristen Lopez The Fantastic Four: First Steps is just that. It’s a first step for a new generation of Fantastic Four movies and, the hope, is that the stride becomes more confident from hereon out. All the materials are there.
Posted Jul 22, 2025  Edit critic review
C+
Superman (2025) Kristen Lopez It’s far from a perfect movie and isn’t even necessarily a great one, but it’s the funnest time I’ve had watching a Superman movie in a while.
Posted Jul 09, 2025  Edit critic review
D
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) Kristen Lopez Jurassic World: Rebirth still can’t find an interesting story worth telling with its premise. Content to ride the coattails of the original, Rebirth tries two competing stories, neither of which amounts to much.
Posted Jun 30, 2025  Edit critic review
C-
F1 The Movie (2025) Kristen Lopez It’s not that F1 is a bad movie, just a painfully silly one, and that can work if it’s what you’re seeking. On its own it’s a stock race car movie whose magnetic visuals do a lot to help an uninspired story.
Posted Jun 26, 2025  Edit critic review
D+
M3GAN 2.0 (2025) Kristen Lopez M3GAN 2.0 works when M3GAN is front and center but, as it stands now, there’s just not enough of her. The central conflict is smothered by a haphazard ‘80s techno plot that’s too muddled to be interesting.
Posted Jun 25, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
28 Years Later (2025) Kristen Lopez 28 Years Later is a recipe I’d assume says: a dash zombie movie, a pinch of melancholy story of loss and existence, a hint of tone poem, and a soupçon of batshit insane.
Posted Jun 18, 2025  Edit critic review
C
Elio (2025) Kristen Lopez Elio is a charming little delight, but it never rises beyond.
Posted Jun 17, 2025  Edit critic review
C+
How to Train Your Dragon (2025) Kristen Lopez How to Train Your Dragon doesn’t reinvent the wheel so much as much the same wheel again in the same fun way as the original. The visuals are beautiful to look at and the cast brings a lot of fun and heart.
Posted Jun 11, 2025  Edit critic review
D+
Materialists (2025) Kristen Lopez Materialists is as shallow as its characters, but so desperately wants to think it isn’t. The script is all over the place, and when it finally settles into a groove there still seems to be pieces missing.
Posted Jun 09, 2025  Edit critic review
D+
Lilo & Stitch (2025) Kristen Lopez The problem is the give-and-take nature of a script that slavishly recreates the original film’s greatest hits while breathlessly trying to leapfrog over those same moments to add in original storytelling that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Posted May 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Bring Her Back (2025) Lex Briscuso Bring Her Back is, at its core, a terrifying and truthful blaze that burns bright in the name of love.
Posted May 17, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) Kristen Lopez Mission: Impossible — Final Reckoning is a true culmination of not just a franchise, but a body of work from some fantastic actors and cinematic craftsmen.
Posted May 14, 2025  Edit critic review
C
Final Destination Bloodlines (2025) Kristen Lopez Final Destination: Bloodlines reinvigorates a franchise that...appeared finished for good. The results are an altogether mixed bag of fun and inventive kills trying to buoy up a haphazard story and selectively interesting characters.
Posted May 13, 2025  Edit critic review
C+
Thunderbolts* (2025) Kristen Lopez For all its flaws, Thunderbolts* is one of the stronger Marvel entities to come out in awhile and certainly the best of the year so far.
Posted Apr 29, 2025  Edit critic review
B-
The Wedding Banquet (2025) Kristen Lopez Ahn’s interpretation is charming. Gladstone and Tran walk away with the film. In a landscape of BIG event movies, it’s nice to slow down and just enjoy people with a movie like this.
Posted Apr 17, 2025  Edit critic review
B+
Sinners (2025) Kristen Lopez It’s weird — it’s got an extended step-dancing scene — and it’s horny. It’s brash. It’s exciting. Sinners is everything!
Posted Apr 15, 2025  Edit critic review
C
The Accountant 2 (2025) Kristen Lopez When the movie is about two brothers struggling to relate to the outside world and each other it’s heartfelt, it’s fun to watch, and it’s funny as hell. It helps that stars Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal have such a strong chemistry between them.
Posted Apr 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Prev Next