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The Pop Break

The Pop Break is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Marisa Carpico, Murjani Rawls.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Hedda (2025) Marisa Carpico Hedda is a butterfly in a bell jar of her own making and she’s fluttering her wings as fast as she can to escape suffocating from her own unhappiness.
Posted Oct 22, 2025  Edit critic review
The Smashing Machine (2025) Marisa Carpico Still, as strong as The Smashing Machine is as a showcase for what an outstanding actor Johnson can be with the right material, it’s still worth questioning whether it achieves a greater truth or emotional resonance than the documentary that inspired it.
Posted Oct 03, 2025  Edit critic review
Oh, Hi! (2025) Marisa Carpico Though the situation Iris and Isaac find themselves in is certainly extreme, its stakes and characters are true enough that Oh, Hi! never becomes slight or silly.
Posted Jul 21, 2025  Edit critic review
Superman (2025) Marisa Carpico This Superman is for an America unable to halt its own collapse. He is a reminder of the dream, the failed experiment of the “American Way.”
Posted Jul 14, 2025  Edit critic review
Rumours (2024) Marisa Carpico By not committing to a genre or giving its characters much else to do besides wander around and spew faux inspiring yet noncommittal monologues, it does little more than waste its audience’s time.
Posted Oct 14, 2024  Edit critic review
Lee (2023) Marisa Carpico Still, while Lee can sometimes verge on hero worship (perhaps in part because it’s based on her son’s biography of her), it does treat both what Miller photographed and her own traumas with intelligence and empathy.
Posted Sep 26, 2024  Edit critic review
The Substance (2024) Marisa Carpico ...there are moments when Fargeat is so convinced of her own vision that points are overemphasized or scenes become tiresome in their need to provoke, but even in its most obnoxious moments, it’s impossible not to admire The Substance for its gall.
Posted Sep 17, 2024  Edit critic review
Cuckoo (2024) Marisa Carpico While Cuckoo suffers from the self-aware audience winking that plagues so much modern horror, it ultimately succeeds thanks to strong filmmaking and the way it delivers on all its menace.
Posted Aug 05, 2024  Edit critic review
MaXXXine (2024) Marisa Carpico Though MaXXXine by no means deviates from its predecessors in gore or camp, this is the first installment that feels as if all of those elements mesh perfectly.
Posted Jul 02, 2024  Edit critic review
Boy Kills World (2023) Marisa Carpico It’s a crowd-pleaser to be sure, but its delights are like cotton candy: light and delicious in the moment, but ultimately not very filling.
Posted Apr 25, 2024  Edit critic review
Civil War (2024) Marisa Carpico ...Civil War‘s impressive, invigorating filmmaking makes it essential theater viewing.
Posted Apr 11, 2024  Edit critic review
Immaculate (2024) Marisa Carpico Between scenes of nuns chopping heads off chickens and bathing each other in opaque gowns, it offers a couple of good scares. What more could audiences want?
Posted Mar 20, 2024  Edit critic review
Madame Web (2024) Murjani Rawls Sony has presented a superhero that can see into the future inside a film that feels like a prequel and assumed it’s earned the trust of its audience to bet on another story without earning it.
Posted Feb 20, 2024  Edit critic review
Veni Vidi Vici (2024) Murjani Rawls We know that inequality is vast, and the consequences of greed don’t usually fall upon those with enough cash to buy their way out of it. However, it’s not merely enough to show this in action when other stories have done so with something more to say.
Posted Feb 02, 2024  Edit critic review
All of Us Strangers (2023) Marisa Carpico Final plot twist notwithstanding, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers is a cathartic and brilliantly-acted melodrama.
Posted Dec 22, 2023  Edit critic review
The Iron Claw (2023) Marisa Carpico While The Iron Claw takes its drama from real-life events and people, through the caliber of its craft, it elevates that story to something like Greek tragedy.
Posted Dec 19, 2023  Edit critic review
Eileen (2023) Marisa Carpico While the filmmaking is textured and transporting, it ultimately feels like all that craft is wasted on a narrative and characters that are only explored on a surface level.
Posted Dec 01, 2023  Edit critic review
A Holiday I Do (2023) Marisa Carpico Though A Holiday I Do may lack the polish of a Hallmark Christmas movie, it’s worth watching precisely because of how much it subverts genre expectations while still honoring some of its most satisfying tropes.
Posted Nov 14, 2023  Edit critic review
Dream Scenario (2023) Marisa Carpico The set-up inevitably allows Cage to get into wacky situations and the film is best when it’s an absurdist comedy about a family man struggling with success. It’s when it tries to make its central metaphor mean something that it slips up.
Posted Nov 11, 2023  Edit critic review
Subject (2022) Marisa Carpico But Subject goes much deeper into the ethics of documentary filmmaking, questioning not only what obligation the audience has to the genre’s subjects, but the directors and the filmmaking industry itself.
Posted Nov 07, 2023  Edit critic review
Pain Hustlers (2023) Marisa Carpico Like so many movies of its kind, Pain Hustlers gets too wrapped up in the thrills of the grift to service its ultimate indictment of drug companies and their questionable practices.
Posted Oct 31, 2023  Edit critic review
The Royal Hotel (2023) Marisa Carpico While some viewers will undoubtedly feel a righteous thrill through the film’s ending, the final beats are so rushed that the triumph feels hollow.
Posted Oct 05, 2023  Edit critic review
Talk to Me (2023) Marisa Carpico ...it’s one of too many recent horror movies that use the paranormal to explore how people process grief and the second coming out this very weekend. Sure, it’s scary, but it won’t haunt us for long.
Posted Jul 28, 2023  Edit critic review
The Stroll (2023) Marisa Carpico At its core, The Stroll is about giving dignity back to a group of people who’ve had their personhood systematically denied for decades.
Posted Jun 21, 2023  Edit critic review
Asteroid City (2023) Marisa Carpico While Anderson’s style is fussier than ever in Asteroid City, the film’s structural, visual and performative complexity allows him to strip down his storytelling to its bare essentials. It’s his most playful and rewarding film in years.
Posted Jun 12, 2023  Edit critic review
The Quiet Girl (2022) Marisa Carpico Indeed, Cáit and the Kinsellas’ relationship is built on small connections like that and while it can leave the movie feeling slight in the moment, it’s in the way the film accumulates those acts of love that it gains its power.
Posted Feb 24, 2023  Edit critic review
Creed III (2023) Marisa Carpico And while Creed III is certainly operatic in scale, it succeeds because it’s grounded in character dynamics.
Posted Feb 24, 2023  Edit critic review
Of an Age (2022) Marisa Carpico And while it will take some time before we know if Of an Age will be regarded as one of cinema’s great queer romances, it’s certain that it’s this year’s first great romantic film.
Posted Feb 13, 2023  Edit critic review
Infinity Pool (2023) Marisa Carpico Everything in <i>Infinity Pool</i> is so outrageous that it eventually becomes boring.
Posted Jan 29, 2023  Edit critic review
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (2022) Marisa Carpico The script is so busy trying to put all the pieces of this makeshift family together that it never has time to show us the intimacy that should bind them.
Posted Oct 07, 2022  Edit critic review
Heathers: The Musical (2022) Marisa Carpico [The audience's] energy is infectious and while some viewers may not love every second of Heathers: The Musical, it’s impossible not to be swept up in its energy just like the audience in the theater.
Posted Sep 19, 2022  Edit critic review
After Yang (2021) Marisa Carpico ...After Yang manages to explore major ideas like loss and memory in a way that feels profound without also feeling self-important.
Posted Aug 05, 2022  Edit critic review
Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) Marisa Carpico Still, while Bodies Bodies Bodies may stumble just before the finish line, it has enough strengths to keep itself from totally imploding.
Posted Aug 05, 2022  Edit critic review
Nightmare Alley (2021) Marisa Carpico What should be a film about the depths of human depravity and deception becomes a lifeless painting, enthralling to look at but lacking in substance.
Posted Dec 17, 2021  Edit critic review
Red Rocket (2021) Marisa Carpico Though Red Rocket began production well into the pandemic, it feels like a film made well before it and released well after it would have been most ideologically relevant.
Posted Dec 17, 2021  Edit critic review
The Lost Daughter (2021) Marisa Carpico Gyllenhaal herself is a thoughtful and complex actress. So, it's unsurprising that she pulls and captures such layered performances from her core trio of actresses.
Posted Dec 17, 2021  Edit critic review
The Hating Game (2021) Marisa Carpico However, for viewers coming to The Hating Game with an open mind and a desire to see two hot people flirt, the film is easily the best romantic comedy of the year.
Posted Dec 10, 2021  Edit critic review
Christmas at the Ranch (2021) Marisa Carpico However, because Christmas at the Ranch's central romance can't sweep us up in the way it should, it also can't distract us from the film's other weaknesses.
Posted Dec 01, 2021  Edit critic review
Belfast (2021) Marisa Carpico For some, the way Belfast breezes over its serious subjects will leave it feeling too slight, even cloying in its constant will to beguile the audience.
Posted Nov 12, 2021  Edit critic review
Antlers (2021) Marisa Carpico While Antlers is perhaps not the culture-shifting prestige horror film genre fans hoped it could be, it is exactly what it sets out to be: a chilling dark fairy tale.
Posted Nov 01, 2021  Edit critic review
No Time to Die (2021) Marisa Carpico No Time to Die is not only a fitting last chapter to the Craig era, but a Bond movie that dares to tread wholly new ground for the 59-year-old franchise.
Posted Oct 06, 2021  Edit critic review
Mayday (2021) Marisa Carpico Still, sticky as some possible readings of Mayday can be, it's perhaps a mistake to ascribe a concrete meaning to what is essentially meant to mimic a dream.
Posted Oct 06, 2021  Edit critic review
Dating & New York (2021) Marisa Carpico ...while Dating & New York is often funny, it never quite convinces the audience that it's doing anything but going through the motions.
Posted Sep 10, 2021  Edit critic review
Kate (2021) Marisa Carpico ...a fun and surprisingly thoughtful action romp.
Posted Sep 10, 2021  Edit critic review
Wild Indian (2021) Marisa Carpico ...the threat of something horrible is constant and Wild Indian is a tense, wholly engrossing modern parable as a result.
Posted Sep 03, 2021  Edit critic review
John and the Hole (2020) Marisa Carpico John and the Hole is an intriguing film. It just may not be a deep one.
Posted Aug 06, 2021  Edit critic review
The Green Knight (2021) Marisa Carpico Indeed, Lowery doesn't seem interested in a straightforward, realistic adaptation so much as creating a vibe.
Posted Jul 30, 2021  Edit critic review
Zola (2020) Marisa Carpico ...like the viral social media that inspired it, Zola is simply meant to be enjoyed while it's happening, to be talked about later, meaning as much or as little as you want.
Posted Jun 29, 2021  Edit critic review
Occupation: Rainfall (2020) Marisa Carpico Unfortunately, Occupation: Rainfall feels like the outline of a great sci-fi movie instead.
Posted Jun 12, 2021  Edit critic review
Poser (2021) Marisa Carpico Certainly, [it's] a love letter to underground, local music scenes generally. But [Poser is] also exploring the boundaries of artistic integrity and...the result is thrilling.
Posted Jun 12, 2021  Edit critic review
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