Tim Grierson
Tim Grierson is a film critic whose writing appears in Screen International, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Vulture and RogerEbert.com. A member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the National Society of Film Critics, Tim is the author of seven books, including "This Is How You Make a Movie."
<i>The Danish Girl</i> Makes Transgender Issues Safe For The Oscar Crowd
Of all the adjectives to describe a movie, “well-intentioned” is among the least scintillating and most wearying. It’s why a lot of people have an aversion to so-called Oscar-bait— they’re the kind of films that pop up around award season to address important subjects in a respectful way, with the h...
<i>The Good Dinosaur's</i> Visual Grandeur Makes Up For Its Lack Of Wit
One of the constant accolades Pixar receives about its movies is that they’re not made just for kids. This is meant as a compliment: While they’re animated and appeal to children, their emotional and thematic sophistication also makes them satisfying to grownups—maybe even more so. The downside to t...
<i>Carol</i> Is A Beautiful Love Story, Starring A Terrific Cate Blanchett
In director Todd Haynes’ films, characters have to learn how to live in worlds that don’t suit them. In Safe, Far From Heaven and I’m Not There, his lonely protagonists often feel trapped by circumstance, unable to find any sort of real happiness because, deep down, no one around them sees things th...
<i>The Night Before </i>Is One Seth Rogen Bromance Too Many
A lot of comics have a shtick, and the trick is to give it enough flexibility so that it can be twisted and reshaped in myriad ways without breaking. Since Seth Rogen’s leading-man breakthrough in 2007’s Knocked Up, his has been impressively bendy, playing overgrown man-children who end up pulling t...
<i>By The Sea</i> Makes Marriage Look Like A Beautiful, Painful Bore
About seven months after Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston got married, The Onion ran the brilliant headline “Brad Pitt Bored With Sight of Jennifer Aniston’s Naked Body.” It was a perfect joke on a couple of levels, but the element of truth that’s always stayed with me was the notion that even the mos...
<i>The Peanuts Movie </i>Is Faithful To Charles Schulz's Creation, But Still Gets It Wrong
Back in 1997, when L.A. Weekly critic Manohla Dargis gave a negative review to The Lost World, the hotly-anticipated sequel to Jurassic Park, she noted that not liking the movie was the equivalent of announcing that Christmas had been canceled to its fans. In kind, giving a thumbs-down to The Peanut...
The Superb Investigative-Journalism Drama <i>Spotlight </i>Makes Competence Riveting
Inspirational true stories trumpet lots of commendable human traits—heroism, perseverance, compassion—but Spotlight may be the first to celebrate competence. Based on the 2001 Boston Globe investigation that revealed the depth of the Catholic Church’s coverup of clergy sexual misconduct, this straig...
You Should See the 3D Sex Drama <i>Love</i>, Even If You Hate Gaspar Noé
There are two very understandable reasons why people hate Gaspar Noé’s films: He’s a pompous tool, and his movies are often little more than showy provocations filled with vapid ciphers. If anything, Love finds the 51-year-old director doubling down on his self-appointed enfant terrible persona, and...
The Political Satire <i>Our Brand Is Crisis </i>Isn't Nearly As Sharp As It Pretends To Be
Our Brand Is Crisis means to cast a harsh light on presidential campaigns, but it mostly just panders. The new film from director David Gordon Green (who’s done everything from George Washington to Pineapple Express) spends way too much time congratulating you for agreeing with its cynical perspecti...
The Abduction Drama <i>Room </i>Gets Even More Claustrophobic When They Get Out
At its halfway point, Room arrives at the moment that you might have thought would be its big finale. After being held hostage for seven years, Joy (Brie Larson) and her 5-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) execute a daring escape from their captor, a demented weirdo known only as Old Nick (Sean Bri...
Child War Is Hell In The Gripping, Important, Only Slightly Disappointing <i>Beasts Of No Nation</i>
Beasts of No Nation is such a worthy, timely, thoughtful drama that the worst you can say about it is that it’s a shame it’s only good and not amazing. Adapted, shot, and directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (who previously directed 2009’s Sin Nombre and the first season of True Detective), this immersive...
<i>Steve Jobs</i> May Be About The Apple Guru, But Aaron Sorkin Is The Real Star
The trick to enjoying an Aaron Sorkin project is to never take it as seriously as he does. The creator of The West Wing and The Newsroom and the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Social Network doesn’t write dialogue—he stages showy talk-fests that are meant to either show off how smart his characte...
<i>The Walk</i> Is A Cloying, Uneven Caper With An Absolutely Amazing Final Act
The feat that made Philippe Petit legendary—his tightrope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center on August 7, 1974—was both brave and insane. What made 2008’s Man on Wire, the Oscar-winning documentary about his achievement, so striking was that despite full access to Petit and his co...
The Gambling Drama <i>Mississippi Grind </i>Will Break Your Heart
When their eyes first meet, there’s an immediate spark, or perhaps a shared recognition. Gerry (Ben Mendelsohn) sells houses, but he’s not particularly good at it, mostly because he doesn’t care at all about his job, and only gets excited about the next time he can gamble. Curtis (Ryan Reynolds) is ...
Robert De Niro Redeems The Dopey Fantasy That Is <i>The Intern</i>
At a time when some romantic comedies are flexing an edgier, more smart-ass tone—They Came Together, Sleeping With Other People, even Trainwreck—perhaps it’s a refreshing palate-cleanser that Nancy Meyers movies continue to operate in their own storybook world. You know what to expect from the write...
Toronto Film Festival 2015: 10 Movies We Can’t Wait To See
The 40th Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday, represents both what’s great and what’s maddening about the fall movie season. With the summer blockbusters behind us, we can focus more on serious, ambitious dramas—though some of those might turn out to be lame awards bait or pretentious mi...
The Dystopian Love Triangle <i>Z For Zachariah </i>Proves That Hell Is Other People
One of the best things about Z for Zachariah, the new drama starring Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor, and Chris Pine, is that even after seeing the movie twice, I still have no idea how I feel about any of its three protagonists. That’s by design. Based on Robert C. O’Brien’s 1974 sci-fi novel, the ...
<i>Straight Outta Compton</i> Celebrates The Day The Bad Guys Won
Director F. Gary Gray’s group-endorsed new N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton brings us back to a time when hip-hop didn’t yet dominate popular culture. Now that rap has long been at the forefront of pop music, it’s easy to forget that in the 1980s, the form wasn’t just new but also novel, an outsi...
Meryl Streep Rocks Out: <i>Ricki And The Flash</i> Could've Been Worse
Ricki and the Flash could’ve easily been yet another broad, obvious dysfunctional-family comedy. It’s right there in the setup: A middle-aged woman who years ago abandoned her buttoned-down Midwestern husband and kids to be a rock ’n’ roll star must now make amends, setting up a feel-good redemption...
The David Foster Wallace Movie Gets Our Vision Of Him Right, At Least
The End of the Tour, a drama about a five-day interview/road trip that took place between novelist David Foster Wallace and Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky in 1996, has already received significant pushback from those closest to the late author, who committed suicide in 2008. Wallace’s estate an...