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San Diego Reader

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
3/5
Queen of the Ring (2024) Scott Marks I took more from Avildsen’s commitment to his subject than I would from watching 10 big-budget celebrity biopics combined.
Posted Mar 26, 2025  Edit critic review
1/5
Heretic (2024) Matthew Lickona For a movie that seems to want to be about faith, it relies pretty heavily on works (and the miraculous transformation of a frightened teen into a tough-minded detective), right up until its big deus ex machina.
Posted Nov 09, 2024  Edit critic review
2/5
Anora (2024) Matthew Lickona Perhaps the director’s most conventional effort to date; it even veers toward cliché in its final scene. But what comes before is strong enough to make it hit anyway.
Posted Nov 01, 2024  Edit critic review
2/5
Conclave (2024) Matthew Lickona It’s possible that the film takes itself entirely too seriously; fortunately, the viewer is under no such obligation, and may have a good time as a result.
Posted Oct 24, 2024  Edit critic review
2/5
Last Summer (2023) Matthew Lickona That’s the character of the film as a whole: cataclysmic events taking place amid lovely, languid scenery and civil (or at least sophisticated) conversation.
Posted Jul 12, 2024  Edit critic review
1/5
Longlegs (2024) Matthew Lickona Oz Perkins’ adventure in toxic family dynamics — toxic in a way that results in copious quantities of spilled blood — hits so many of the beats from Silence of the Lambs that some viewers may wonder if it’s some kind of supernaturally-skewed gloss.
Posted Jul 12, 2024  Edit critic review
1/5
MaXXXine (2024) Matthew Lickona Maybe, just maybe, the film’s final shot serves as a frightening rebuke to all that comes before. At least it’s something to think about after all the lovely neon nonsense.
Posted Jul 05, 2024  Edit critic review
2/5
I Saw the TV Glow (2024) Matthew Lickona An almost shockingly effective evocation of How Things Felt, back before the internet made cult followings into malignant mobs, and more importantly, back before we — the collective we — put aside childish things and let adulthood take hold.
Posted Jun 25, 2024  Edit critic review
1/5
Love Lies Bleeding (2024) Matthew Lickona Once you get the interior ugliness of everyone involved, you may be able to chuckle at some of the violence, ha ha.
Posted Jun 20, 2024  Edit critic review
1/5
Challengers (2024) Matthew Lickona Guadagnino knows how to make people very, very attractive. But that’s not the same as interesting.
Posted Jun 20, 2024  Edit critic review
1/5
Inside Out 2 (2024) Matthew Lickona There’s plenty of invention at the granular level: the battle within the Projection Room is smart, the sar-chasm is funny, the stream of consciousness is cute. But the story is very much the same.
Posted Jun 20, 2024  Edit critic review
2/5
Thelma (2024) Matthew Lickona Squibb is almost unbelievably lively and sharp, and Richard Roundtree serves as a fine, sober counterpoint to her “age is just a number” attitude.
Posted Jun 20, 2024  Edit critic review
1/5
The Bikeriders (2023) Matthew Lickona There’s a story here, and yeah, that story hinges on Johnny and Benny’s choices. But their reasons seem murky even to themselves, and for all the cheerful exposition Kathy provides, Nichols seems happy to have it that way.
Posted Jun 20, 2024  Edit critic review
2/5
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) Matthew Lickona The ending is talky, and it sounds like an authorial statement: Dementus revealing the dark heart of the Mad Max saga. But it also makes way for a nasty, batty, but strangely redemptive segue into Fury Road’s story.
Posted May 26, 2024  Edit critic review
2/5
Drive-Away Dolls (2024) Matthew Lickona The story doesn’t hold up under scrutiny — don’t overthink it, man — so what you’re left with is the gentle exploration (send-up?) of lesbian culture; the trademark Coen blend of violence, cupidity, and stupidity; and nostalgia for the grindhouse.
Posted Mar 02, 2024  Edit critic review
3/5
Dune: Part Two (2024) Matthew Lickona Lawrence of Arrakis meets Dr. Sandworm, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bene Gesserit...The result is a blockbuster space opera that plays like a downbeat drama — we’re a long, long way from that famous galaxy far, far away.
Posted Mar 02, 2024  Edit critic review
1/5
Freud's Last Session (2023) Matthew Lickona Brown does what he can to keep things from feeling like a filmed play, but he can’t do much, and what he does do — flashbacks, dream sequences, a war scene, and a trip to an air raid shelter — isn’t always helpful.
Posted Jan 17, 2024  Edit critic review
2/5
American Fiction (2023) Matthew Lickona It’s a sign of star Jeffrey Wright’s presence and talent that he’s able to keep the viewer from noticing the bait-and-switch until the ending.
Posted Jan 17, 2024  Edit critic review
0/5
The Beekeeper (2024) Matthew Lickona Off we go. Like, way off, leaving even the notion of reality behind like a burned-out barn full of busted honey jars. In its place, a hero who makes James Bond look inconspicuous and John Wick look vincible.
Posted Jan 17, 2024  Edit critic review
1/5
Mean Girls (2024) Matthew Lickona The girls just aren’t as mean. The social hierarchies just aren’t as brutal. The betrayals and losses just aren’t as devastating — and it’s not just because we may have seen them before. It may be because the world has gotten meaner in the meantime.
Posted Jan 17, 2024  Edit critic review
2/5
The Iron Claw (2023) Matthew Lickona Durkin wriggles free of his own story and brings on not one but three happy endings — one in real-time, one in eternity, and one in posterity. If it feels like a bit of a slippery move, well, this is wrestling we’re talking about.
Posted Jan 17, 2024  Edit critic review
2/5
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) Matthew Lickona The story here is strong enough to stand on its own, but of course, it is a prequel, and there is a grimy pleasure in seeing the clunky early iterations of the later Games’ slick social machinations.
Posted Nov 23, 2023  Edit critic review
1/5
Napoleon (2023) Matthew Lickona Director Ridley Scott cuts the world’s most famous short person down to size — but it’s not clear why.
Posted Nov 22, 2023  Edit critic review
1/5
Wish (2023) Matthew Lickona Well, it’s a big swing, anyway, even if it’s a miss: Disney’s latest animated effort goes full Carl “We Are Star Stuff” Sagan and takes aim at the Judeo-Christian God.
Posted Nov 22, 2023  Edit critic review
3/5
The Holdovers (2023) Matthew Lickona Giamatti has a ball here as a glass-eyed grump, but he’s a known quantity. The lupine Sessa is the revelation; it’s a gutsy move putting him in a movie theater scene watching Dustin Hoffman, but it’s no accident.
Posted Nov 10, 2023  Edit critic review
0/5
The Marvels (2023) Matthew Lickona Star Brie Larson seems pretty checked out here — almost as checked out as the jokers who came up with the idea of once again tapping the Beastie Boys for the soundtrack. “Hey, they’re on a spaceship! Let’s use ‘Intergalactic!’”
Posted Nov 10, 2023  Edit critic review
2/5
Oppenheimer (2023) Matthew Lickona A story of ordinary men and women caught up in extraordinary times. What they created really did “change the world,” but no one here rises to the level of hero, or even tragic hero, and even the villainy on display is more vanity than anything else.
Posted Jul 21, 2023  Edit critic review
1/5
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) Matthew Lickona Cruise the stuntman is reliably spectacular here, but Cruise the actor seems a bit scattered... And Hunt the character? He fails personally when it counts, but suffers not a single consequence because of it.
Posted Jul 12, 2023  Edit critic review
2/5
You Hurt My Feelings (2023) Matthew Lickona The film is handsome without being showy, stately without being sedate, and mostly amusing without being ridiculous. It's also slight, and slightly silly.
Posted Jun 28, 2023  Edit critic review
1/5
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) Matthew Lickona Long before a watch appeared onscreen as a plot element, I was thinking of a timepiece winding down.
Posted Jun 28, 2023  Edit critic review
3/5
Asteroid City (2023) Matthew Lickona As ever, the mannered speech and meticulous framing lend a certain unreality to the proceedings — to say nothing of the brightly saturated image — but it's hardly style for style's sake.
Posted Jun 28, 2023  Edit critic review
2/5
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) Matthew Lickona Tempts you to think Spider-Man was always meant to be animated.
Posted Jun 16, 2023  Edit critic review
1/5
The Flash (2023) Matthew Lickona As it is, there’s the pesky way the multiverse dulls the dramatic edge of death, even as the film seeks to sharpen the blade.
Posted Jun 16, 2023  Edit critic review
0/5
Elemental (2023) Matthew Lickona We cried because Pixar gave us consequences, many of them having to do with the inevitability of change. Here, the change — assimilation — is hardly inevitable, even if it’s probable, but the film’s whole project is the removal of consequences.
Posted Jun 16, 2023  Edit critic review
2/5
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) Matthew Lickona Remarkably, given the studio brand: this is absolutely Gunn's movie. It's cheerfully gross, frequently hideous to behold, nakedly emotional, indulgent to the point of bloat in its desire to tie off every narrative thread...and, happily, its own thing.
Posted May 25, 2023  Edit critic review
1/5
Fast X (2023) Matthew Lickona It’s overlong and over-the-top, but the real trouble is that when a series like this starts acknowledging its its own absurdities, they become harder to enjoy.
Posted May 25, 2023  Edit critic review
2/5
Master Gardener (2022) Matthew Lickona The pleasure is not in the innovation, but in the variation.
Posted May 25, 2023  Edit critic review
1/5
The Little Mermaid (2023) Matthew Lickona Part of that world of lazy remakes, alas. At least Sebastian the crab is still fun.
Posted May 25, 2023  Edit critic review
2/5
Suzume (2022) Matthew Lickona It all makes for a fine adolescent adventure: travel, rebellion, unattainable love, a search, a chase, a deadline, and a little bit of growing up. And happily, the film understands that some problems don’t get resolved without real sacrifice.
Posted Apr 27, 2023  Edit critic review
2/5
Guy Ritchie's The Covenant (2023) Matthew Lickona Director Guy Ritchie exercises considerable restraint in his depiction of action: again and again, he is content to pull back, hold the shot, and let what happens be enough to engage the viewer. And again and again, it's more than enough.
Posted Apr 19, 2023  Edit critic review
2/5
Renfield (2023) Matthew Lickona Robert Kirkman’s story takes its pop psychology seriously, which is what makes its application here so much fun. When Cage bellows, “I’m the real victim here!” anyone who’s ever known a narcissist may find themselves wincing through the grin.
Posted Apr 11, 2023  Edit critic review
0
Air (2023) Matthew Lickona Nostalgia is the only reason I can think of to explain why old friends Ben Affleck and Matt Damon reteamed for a movie that so artlessly sets out to make us love shoe company Nike for buttering up a college hoops star better than Adidas or Converse.
Posted Apr 11, 2023  Edit critic review
0/5
Cocaine Bear (2023) Matthew Lickona Why does the bear kill everyone it meets during its drug rampage except for the one person it decides to kidnap? Why don’t people with guns shoot the bear when they have the chance? Because the movie needs to happen, that’s why!
Posted Mar 03, 2023  Edit critic review
1/5
Creed III (2023) Matthew Lickona The two Final Fight combatants are fearsome and beautiful to behold, and Jordan does his best to get visually creative, but there’s more drama in the training montage — possibly because it’s the only place where his character feels vincible.
Posted Mar 03, 2023  Edit critic review
0/5
Sharper (2023) Matthew Lickona At one point, circumstances threaten to turn a con-artist caper into something more desperate and dangerous, but here as elsewhere, dramatic urgency is sacrificed in the twisty pursuit of cleverness.
Posted Feb 18, 2023  Edit critic review
0/5
Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (2023) Matthew Lickona And yet, there it was, that thought, overarching and overwhelming: “I didn’t feel a thing.”
Posted Feb 18, 2023  Edit critic review
2/5
M3GAN (2022) Matthew Lickona Machine learning may one day be the death of us all, but we’re still far enough out from the Rise of the Machines to indulge a wry chuckle at the prospect.
Posted Jan 13, 2023  Edit critic review
2/5
Babylon (2022) Matthew Lickona Long and frequently unpleasant, but at least there’s a point to all that decadence and despair: first time as tragedy, second time as hit musical.
Posted Dec 23, 2022  Edit critic review
1/5
Empire of Light (2022) Matthew Lickona Late in the film, Hilary asks projectionist Norman (Toby Young, appealing) why he made a particular momentous decision; his mystified reply may match the viewer’s own as to what Mendes had in mind here.
Posted Dec 21, 2022  Edit critic review
2/5
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) Matthew Lickona It would be missing the point to call the proceedings indulgent to the point of self-infatuation: Cameron has built a new world from the remixed bits of this one, and he seems determined that we should not simply visit Pandora, we should live in it.
Posted Dec 21, 2022  Edit critic review
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