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New and upcoming, all movies in theaters.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die

Adil El Arbi / Bilall Fallah

Release Date - Jun 7, 2024

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

George Miller

Release Date - May 24, 2024

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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

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In Memoriam

Morgan spurlock, 1970-2024.

Documentarian Morgan Spurlock burst onto the scene with his hilarious and controversial film Super-Size Me, in which he only ate McDonalds for a whole month and catalogued the toll it took on his health. He parlayed that success into a career producing, directing, and creating reality-based docudramas.

New To Stream

Staff Pick of the Day

Amazon Women on the Moon

Directed by Joe Dante / Peter Horton / Carl Gottlieb / John Landis / Robert K. Weiss

Parody Film , Satire , Science Fiction Comedy - Rated R - 85 Minutes - 1987

Amazon Women on the Moon is a 1987 American satirical comedy film that parodies the experience of watching low-budget movies on late-night television. The film, featuring a large ensemble cast, was written by Michael Barrie and Jim Mulholland, and takes the form of a compilation of twenty-one comedy skits directed by five different directors: Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, John Landis and Robert K. Weiss. -

IMDb vs. Rotten Tomatoes vs. Metacritic: Which Movie Ratings Site Is Best?

IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic are the three most popular ratings sites for movies, but they aren't all equal.

Thanks to online ratings, it's easier than ever to know whether or not a movie is worth watching. A quick Google search brings up plenty of websites offering their opinions on the latest films.

The three most popular are IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic. But how do these sites differ, and which should you trust for information on movies? Here's everything you need to know.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is a gigantic compendium of movies, TV shows, and video games. Its primary use is to find detailed information about any actor, producer, or piece of media content.

When you pull up a movie, you'll see a synopsis, trailers, photos, a cast list, trivia, and much more. What makes IMDb so useful is its cross-referencing. Upon opening the page for an actor, you'll see their best-known roles. Thus, IMDb is great for those "what else have I seen her in?" moments.

The IMDb mobile app takes this a step further. If you create an account and give ratings to movies and other media, you'll see a You may know them from field on an actor's page if you've rated something they appeared in.

With a free IMDb account, you can also create a Watchlist of movies you want to see. Along with contributing to the 10-point rating scale with other users, IMDb has many other useful features to offer if you're interested.

Pros of IMDb

Unlike the other two sites, IMDb's reviews come solely from users. It only takes a minute to sign up for IMDb and leave a review, so there's little barrier to entry.

Thus, IMDb's biggest strength is that its scores gives you a good idea of what normal consumers think of it. Professional critics have no influence on IMDb scores.

IMDb has a weighted average system to prevent users from rigging the score, but the service doesn't make it clear exactly how this works. Click the review count next to the star icon on any movie's page to see a breakdown of how people rated it.

Below the overall star average, you can see how the ratings break down by a few demographics, including age and gender.

Cons of IMDb

IMDb's biggest problem is that like other platforms, most people only leave reviews if they love or hate a film. Thus, this skews the scores in favor of either fanboys or haters.

People who want to boost a movie's perception will likely rate the movie a 10, while those who didn't like it will give a rating of one. This means you should read a handful of reviews to get a full picture of the movie's quality.

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a trusted source for movie reviews sourced from critics. Every movie uses the "Tomatometer" to score the quality of a film. If the critic liked the movie, a red tomato appears by their review. When they don't like it, you'll see a green splat instead.

As long as 60 percent or more of critics like the movie, it earns an overall Fresh score with a red tomato. If under 60 percent of critics rate the movie favorably, it earns a Rotten score with a green splat.

Meanwhile, a Certified Fresh badge appears next to titles that are of particularly high quality. They must hold at least a 75 percent favorable score after 80 reviews, including at least five from top critics.

Open any movie's page, and you'll see the overall score plus its number of reviews at the top. Click See Score Details for a deeper breakdown. The Critics Consensus , present for most movies, is a great summary of why the movie received its score.

Rotten Tomatoes also providers a user score, shown by the popcorn bucket. When at least 60 percent of users rated it 3.5 stars (out of 5) or higher, it shows a full bucket. A tipped-over bucket represents that under 60 percent of users gave it under 3.5 stars. Since you can use half-star ratings, this is close to the IMDb score.

In 2019, Rotten Tomatoes made some changes to reduce "review bombing" of movies. There's no longer a Want to See percentage, and you'll also see a check next to user reviews where the site has confirmed that the person actually bought a ticket to the movie.

At the bottom of a movie's page, you can read excerpts from the critic reviews, filter by fresh or rotten, or only show top critics. Search for your favorite actors, and you can check the scores of films they appeared in.

Related: Sites Like Rotten Tomatoes to Find Average Ratings and Reviews for Anything

Pros of Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes has the advantage of sourcing its reviews from trusted critics. The Rotten Tomatoes criteria page explains that the site only takes reviews from trusted newspapers, podcasts, and websites. In theory, this means that only the opinions of the most-trusted movie critics influence the Rotten Tomatoes review.

The Top Critic designation lets you filter by the absolute best critics if you prefer. You can't get a more professional opinion than from these folks.

Overall, Rotten Tomatoes does a good job of letting you know at a glance whether or not a movie is worth your time. The easily identifiable icons, overall score, and consensus summary only take a moment to scan.

Cons of Rotten Tomatoes

The biggest issue with Rotten Tomatoes is that it breaks down complex opinions into a Yes or No score. It scores a critic who thought the movie was decent but had some flaws (say, a 59 percent rating) the same as one who thought the movie was absolute garbage (a zero percent score).

You'll notice this with the Average Rating under the score. Take Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle as an example. Of the 232 critic reviews, 177 of them are positive. This gives the movie a score of 76 percent. However, the critics rated the movie an average of 6.2/10---quite a bit under the 76 percent displayed on the page.

This doesn't mean the scores on Rotten Tomatoes are useless, of course. But it's important to remember that there's nuance in individual reviews, and the Fresh/Rotten system effectively turns every rating into a 100 or 0 score.

Metacritic aggregates reviews of movies and TV shows, plus video games and music albums. It's one of the best sites for gamers , but it can give you a good idea on the quality of movies too.

The site collects reviews from many sources and aggregates them into one "metascore" from 0 to 100. It displays a color and one-line indication of quality based on the overall score, with the following used for movies, TV, and albums:

• 81-100: Universal Acclaim (Green)
• 61-80: Generally Favorable Reviews (Green)
• 40-60: Mixed or Average Reviews (Yellow)
• 20-39: Generally Unfavorable Reviews (Red)
• 0-19: Overwhelming Dislike (Red)

Unlike Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic uses a weighted average system. Nobody knows the exact details, but the service assigns more importance to some sources than others. Like the other two sites, Metacritic also includes a separate user score, which does not influence the critic score.

The Pros of Metacritic

Metacritic avoids the Rotten Tomatoes problem of scoring every review as simply "good" or "bad." A review of 50 percent gets mixed in with the rest to create the metascore. Thus, the score you see on Metacritic is closer to the average review, as opposed to the percentage of critics who simply liked the movie on Rotten Tomatoes.

Additionally, among these three sites, Metacritic is the only one to feature full user reviews right next to critic reviews. This makes it easy to compare what the general public thinks compared to the professionals.

The Cons of Metacritic

While it's easy to translate a score from a five-star or 10-point scale, Metacritic's way of translating letter grade is questionable. We can see how this works on the About Metascores page :

While scoring an A as 100 percent makes sense, note the scores for B- and F , for instance. A 67 percent score for a B- seems a bit harsh. In most schools, a score of 67 percent is closer to an F than it is a B- .

And scoring an F as 0 percent seems unfair. Something like 20 percent for an F might be more appropriate. Because every site has different scales for scoring (some might not even use pluses and minuses), this could skew a reviewer's original meaning.

Also, unlike Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic seems to have few public standards. There's no detailed information on where it sources it critics from. Thus, the score potentially doesn't have as much weight behind it as Rotten Tomatoes does.

What Is the Best Movie Rating Website?

So we've now taken a look at IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic, and listed their major pros and cons. As you might have guessed, there's no one website that's best for everything.

However, we can recommend each of these sites for different reasons:

• IMDb is great for seeing what general audiences think of a movie. If you don't care what the critics say and want to see what people like yourself thought of a film, then you should use IMDb. Just be aware that fans often skew the vote with 10-star ratings, which may inflate scores somewhat.
• Rotten Tomatoes offers the best overall picture of whether a movie is worth seeing at a glance. If you only trust the opinions of top critics and just want to know if a movie is at least decent, you should use Rotten Tomatoes. While the Fresh/Rotten binary can oversimplify the often complex opinions of critics, it should still help you weed out lousy films.
• Metacritic offers the most balanced aggregate score. If you don't mind which critics' opinions go into the final score and prefer seeing a general average, then you should use Metacritic. Its standards are mostly unknown, but Metacritic makes it easy to compare professional and user reviews side-by-side.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with checking all three of these sites every time you're thinking of seeing a movie. Over time, you should figure out which site's tastes most match yours; then you'll know which is best for you personally.

Personal Taste Still Matters Most

Remember that movie scores aren't everything. All three of these sites don't, for instance, paint an accurate picture of movies that are so bad they're good. Because those movies are objectively terrible, they carry low scores even though they have ironic value.

Plus, it's impossible to sum up complex opinions from dozens of people into a single number. And no matter what the critics or general public think, your preferences might be totally different anyway. There's nothing wrong with enjoying a movie that most people find stupid. So while these sites are helpful, don't take them too seriously.

• Behind the scene

IMDb (Internet Movie Database); best movie critic websites:‎

IMDb is a well-known platform that serves as a one-stop destination for movie information. While it ‎primarily focuses on providing a comprehensive database of films, it also includes user-generated reviews ‎and ratings. IMDb’s extensive user community makes it a valuable resource for gauging public opinion on ‎movies of all genres.‎

Metacritic; movie critic website:‎

Metacritic stands out by presenting a metascore, which is a weighted average of scores from various ‎critics. This unique approach provides a quick snapshot of critical reception. Metacritic also includes user ‎reviews, allowing readers to explore a broader range of opinions.‎

You may also be interested in this: Top Movie Review YouTube Channels

Letterboxd:‎

Letterboxd is a social networking site for film enthusiasts. It offers a platform for users to log, rate, and ‎review movies they have watched. Letterboxd fosters a vibrant community that encourages discussions ‎and recommendations, making it an excellent resource for cinephiles to discover new films.‎

Criticker; movie review aggregator websites:‎

Criticker adopts a personalized approach to movie recommendations. Users rate films they have watched, ‎and the website’s algorithm suggests other movies based on their ratings. This collaborative filtering ‎system helps users find movies that align with their tastes and preferences.‎

FilmAffinity:‎

FilmAffinity is a Spanish-based movie review website that boasts an extensive international user ‎community. It features user-generated reviews and ratings, along with personalized movie ‎recommendations. FilmAffinity’s multicultural perspective makes it a valuable resource for exploring films ‎beyond mainstream Hollywood.‎

You may also be interested in this: Best Cinema Critics

Reddit, a popular online platform, hosts various communities dedicated to movies and film criticism. ‎Subreddits such as r/movies and r/TrueFilm provide spaces for discussions, sharing recommendations, and ‎reading insightful reviews. The diverse user base ensures a broad range of opinions and perspectives.‎

The Guardian’s Film Section; professional movie critic websites:

‎ The Guardian’s film section is a reputable source of movie reviews and features articles written by ‎experienced critics. Known for its thoughtful analysis and in-depth coverage, The Guardian provides ‎readers with well-crafted reviews that delve into the artistic and thematic aspects of films.‎

Best Cinema Review

BestCinemareview.com is a newly established website designed and updated daily by a group of cinema enthusiasts. The site introduces you to the best movies and series, and provides analysis of both classic and modern cinema.

When you visit BestCinemareview.com, you will find various sections, including Reviews (In-depth reviews of recently released movies and TV series), Genres, The Bests, Biography, Behind The Scene and Anime

Are movie critics biased?‎

The question of whether movie critics are biased is a complex one. While it is true that critics, like any ‎other human beings, have their own subjective preferences, it does not necessarily mean they are ‎inherently biased. Here are a few factors to consider:‎

Subjectivity and Personal Taste:‎

Movie criticism is inherently subjective because art, including film, is open to interpretation. Critics bring ‎their personal backgrounds, experiences, and tastes to their reviews, which can influence their opinions. ‎What resonates with one critic may not resonate with another. However, reputable critics strive to ‎evaluate films based on their artistic merits, storytelling, technical aspects, and cultural significance, rather ‎than solely on personal preferences.‎

Professionalism and Expertise:‎

Many movie critics have dedicated their careers to studying and analyzing films. They possess extensive ‎knowledge about film history, theory, and the craft of filmmaking. Their expertise allows them to provide ‎informed perspectives and critical insights. While personal biases may still exist, professional critics usually ‎aim to provide objective analyses and consider the broader context of a film’s production and cultural ‎impact.‎

Different Approaches and Critical Schools:‎

Film criticism encompasses a wide range of approaches and methodologies. Some critics focus on formal ‎analysis, examining the technical aspects of a film, while others emphasize the socio-cultural or political ‎implications of a movie. Critics may align with different critical schools or philosophies, which can result in ‎varying interpretations and evaluations. These diverse perspectives contribute to a well-rounded ‎understanding of a film’s strengths and weaknesses.‎

Influence and External Factors:‎

Critics, like any public figures, can be influenced by external factors such as industry relationships, ‎marketing campaigns, or personal biases. Some critics may succumb to these pressures, consciously or ‎unconsciously, affecting the objectivity of their reviews. However, reputable critics strive to maintain their ‎integrity and independence, providing honest opinions regardless of external influences.‎

Reader-Reviewer Relationship:‎

It is essential to recognize that movie criticism is a dialogue between the critic and the audience. Readers ‎often seek out critics whose opinions align with their own tastes or whose writing style resonates with ‎them. Therefore, what may be perceived as bias by some could simply be a critic’s consistent perspective ‎or writing style that attracts a specific audience?‎

When it comes to finding reliable movie reviews, these movie critic websites offer a range of perspectives ‎and insights. Rotten Tomatoes , IMDb, Metacritic , Letterboxd, Criticker, FilmAffinity, Reddit, and The ‎Guardian’s film section are just a few examples of the excellent resources available online. By exploring ‎these platforms, movie enthusiasts can make informed decisions about which films to watch, ensuring ‎their movie-watching experiences are both enjoyable and enriching.‎ In addition to these websites, some film and series production platforms such as Netflix or Amazon Prime ‎sometimes review films and series.‎

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Best Sites For Rating Movies: 6 Top Movie Review Websites

Our society has grown to worship movies. This can be seen in the sheer number of movies made each year, some good and some bad. Because there are so many to choose from, finding a good one can be a challenge.

Movies now make up a huge part of the entertainment industry. But with so many choices comes the problem of finding the best ones to watch.

It would take hours upon hours to watch every movie made in a year, and even then you’d likely miss some great ones. So how can we solve this problem?

The answer reviews. Reviews allow us to get an idea of whether or not others liked the movie before we decide if it’s worth watching ourselves.

BEST SITES FOR RATING MOVIES

What are movie review sites.

Movie review sites like IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, and Letterboxd are great places to find out what a movie is all about.

They can also be useful for finding out if your favorite actor has been in other movies you may have missed.

Movie review websites are one of the best ways to learn what critics think of a movie and how they feel about it.

The more information you can gather on a film, the better informed you’ll be when you decide whether to watch it or not.

Movie review sites don’t really have any effect on box office sales, but they can make a huge difference in determining what kind of an impact a movie will have on consumers.

A review helps us determine if others were entertained by a movie before we spend our time and money on it.

Picking a movie to watch can be hard. You have your mood to consider, the weather, and the amount of time you have available.

And who to see it with? But even after all that, one question remains — is it any good?

With sites like Letterboxd, the answer is now as easy as logging into your social media account.

The internet can be an overwhelming place when trying to find a good, reliable movie review site.

With so many sites out there, it’s hard to know which ones are actually worth your time.

With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of the best movie review sites out there. Not everyone will be for everyone, but each reviewer has something unique to offer that makes it worth checking out.

Best Sites For Rating Movies

If you love the cinema, and you’re constantly looking for the best ways to keep up to date with what’s new and what’s upcoming, then one of these sites is going to be perfect for you.

Below, we’ve gone through some of the most popular movie websites on the internet today and reviewed them, so that you can find out which site is best for your film needs.

Let’s start off with my personal favorite!

Letterboxd is a social network for sharing your taste in film. Keep a watchlist of films you’d like to see, and create lists/collections on any topic. Rate, review, and tag films as you add them. Find and follow friends to see what they’re enjoying.

Keep a diary of your film viewing, check in to films at theaters, and share your thoughts with the world. Search a database of over 2 million films, with filters that can refine your results by anything from decade and genre to personal ratings and reviews.

From Letterboxd themselves: “We’re proud of our place in a burgeoning ecosystem of film-related apps and websites that complement Letterboxd’s focus on social sharing, curation, and discovery.

In that spirit, we offer a range of developer tools to help integrate Letterboxd data into other applications and websites — you can explore these on our developer site.”

My Letterboxd profile can be found here, btw: FilmLifestyle’s Letterboxd profile . Give me a follow!

Try Letterboxd

iCheckMovies

iCheckMovies helps you keep a personal list of movies you have seen and liked. It’s a checklist more than anything else.

The main part of the site is the List, which is essentially a ‘Best Movies Ever’ list, as voted by users. Each movie in the list has been checked by at least 2 users.

The goal of the site is to provide an easy way to create and share your own customized list of favorite movies.

You can compare your lists with friends and explore other people’s lists. iCheckMovies helps you keep a personal list of your favorite movies and shows

• Create your own list of favorites to keep track of what you have seen and liked.
• Discover new movies by browsing lists created by our users.
• Compare your taste with other users and see how many movies you have in common.
• Explore the top-rated, most popular, and most discussed movies by our users.
• Get suggestions for movies and shows to watch based on your taste.

Originally a fan-operated website, the database is owned and operated by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon.

IMDb has approximately 4.7 million titles (including episodes) and 8.3 million personalities in its database,  as well as 83 million registered users.

IMDb stands out for its vast collection of film and television information. It’s not just a place for ratings; it’s a comprehensive resource for release dates, cast and crew details, trivia, and forums for discussion.

With user-contributed content and professional critic reviews, IMDb offers a balanced view of a film’s reception. Its integration with Amazon also allows for easy viewing options.

Matt Crawford

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Great guide to the top sites for rating movies.

Thanks, Jaani.

I would like to receive the latest movies before selling them. Thanks

Can’t help you there, Jurugo.

There are many websites that offer movie reviews and ratings, but here are six of the top sites:

Rotten Tomatoes: Rotten Tomatoes is one of the most popular movie review websites. It aggregates reviews from both professional critics and regular movie-goers to provide an overall score for each film.

IMDb: IMDb is a comprehensive database of movies information that also includes user reviews and ratings. Its Top Rated Movies list is based on user ratings, and it’s a great place to find information about upcoming movies.

Metacritic: Like Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic aggregates reviews from critics, but it also assigns a weighted score to each review based on the critic’s track record. The site’s Metascore is often used as a shorthand for a movie’s critical reception.

Letterboxd: Letterboxd is a social media platform for movie lovers that allows users to rate and review films, create watchlists, and follow other users with similar tastes. Its recommendation algorithm is known for being particularly effective.

RogerEbert.com: Roger Ebert was one of the most respected film critics of his time, and his website continues to offer thoughtful and insightful reviews from a team of writers. The site also includes essays, interviews, and other film-related content.

Empire: Empire is a UK-based magazine that covers movies, TV shows, and video games. Its website includes reviews, news, and features, and its annual Empire Awards are highly respected within the industry.

Thanks for the contribution, Rizwan.

Amazing content, thanks for sharing

Thanks, Kelvin.

I think that Toy Story is worth watching than Star wares Where it doesn t have have the force

Fair enough, Joel.

Great content, thanks for sharing

Cheers, Jenny.

great content, thanks for sharing

In India idmb is the best website for movie review after all your content is very informative and best knowledge provides.

Thanks, Hemant.

I have updated my knowledge after reading the information given on your site, thank you so much for such an awesome article.

Thank you for sharing such an informative and well-structured post on movie rating sites. The content was organized in a way that made it easy to navigate and find specific information.

Thanks, Soumen.

Toy Story, in my opinion, is more entertaining to watch than Star Wars because it lacks the force.

I see what you did there!

Great article on movie rating sites!

Thanks, rizwan

Brilliant article

These movie review websites are a lifesaver when it comes to choosing what to watch. Thanks for curating this list!

I’ve been looking for reliable movie review sources, and this article just made my search a whole lot easier. Kudos!

Thanks, Kuliah.

I’ve been looking for reliable movie review sources, and this article just made my search a whole lot easier. Kudos!

Thanks a lot, yousif.

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'Atlas' review: Jennifer Lopez befriends an AI in her scrappy new Netflix space movie

Just when you think you’ve seen everything, here comes a movie where Jennifer Lopez tries to out-sass a computer program.

Jenny from the Block is in her Iron Man era with “Atlas” (★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; streaming now on Netflix ), a sci-fi action thriller directed by Brad Peyton ( “San Andreas” ) that pairs two hot commodities: a pop-culture superstar and artificial intelligence.

The movie shares aspects with a bevy of films like “Blade Runner,” “The Terminator,” "The Iron Giant" and “Pacific Rim,” and it’s best to not think too hard about the science involved. Yet there’s a scrappiness to “Atlas” that pairs well with a human/machine bonding narrative and a fish-out-of-water Lopez trying to figure out how to work a super cool, high-tech armored suit and not die spectacularly.

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But “Atlas” doesn’t have the best start, beginning with the mother of exposition dumps: In the future, AI has evolved to a dangerous degree and a robotic terrorist named Harlan (a charmless Simu Liu) has turned genocidal, wanting to wipe out most of mankind. He’s defeated and retreats into space, vowing to return, and in the ensuing 28 years, counterterrorism analyst Atlas Shepherd – whose mother invented Harlan and made him part of their family before he went bad – has been trying to find him.

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She’s distrustful of Al and also most humans: The antisocial Atlas’ only true love is coffee but she’s also crazy smart, and she figures out the galaxy where Harlan’s hiding. Atlas forces herself on a military space mission run by a no-nonsense colonel (Sterling K. Brown) to track down Harlan, but amid a sneak attack by cyborg bad guys, Atlas has to hop in a mech suit to survive. The caveat: to run the thing, she has to create a neural link with an onboard AI named Smith (voiced by Gregory James Cohan).

Streaming preview: 15 new movies you'll want to watch this summer, from 'Atlas' to 'Beverly Hills Cop 4'

Obviously, there’s a climactic throwdown with Harlan – you don’t need ChatGPT to figure out the predictable plot – and there are plenty of action scenes with spotty visual effects. But “Atlas” cooks most when it’s just Atlas and Smith, sniping and snarking at each other: He fixes her broken leg, her cursing expands his vocabulary, and slowly they figure out a way to coexist and become a formidable fighting unit. 

Lopez does well with the buddy comedy vibe as well as her whole "Atlas" character arc. The fact that she starts as a misanthropic hot mess – even her hair is unruly, though still movie star-ready – makes her an appealing character, one you root for as she becomes besties with a computer and finds herself in mortal danger every five minutes.

While “Atlas” doesn’t top the J. Lo movie canon – that’s rarefied air for the likes of “Out of Sight” and “Hustlers” – it’s certainly more interesting than a lot of her rom-com output . Her action-oriented vehicles such as this and the assassin thriller “The Mother,” plus B-movie “Anaconda” and sci-fi film “The Cell” back in the day, show a willing gameness to venture outside her A-list box.

It also helps when she finds the right dance partner – in this case, a wily AI. And in “Atlas,” that unlikely friendship forgives the bigger glitches.

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Maya hawke reveals she was cast for “nepotistic reasons” in tarantino’s ‘once upon a time… in hollywood’.

• ‘Summer Camp’ Review: Diane Keaton And Septuagenarian Cast In Another By-The-Numbers Senior Comedy Attempt To Get Laughs From Boomers

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Roadside Acquires ‘Summer Camp’ Comedy Starring Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates & Alfre Woodard

Sorry if that all sounds a bit cynical because I am a genuine fan of these stars and similar movies like Book Club and 80 For Brady were fun and heartfelt, but Summer Camp turns out beat-for-beat to be exactly what I thought it was going to be, and even target audiences of a certain age still deserve something, anything a little more surprising to keep the heart going strong.

There’s nothing really blatantly wrong with writer/director Castille Landon’s screenplay or its casting which blessedly includes Eugene Levy and Dennis Haysbert in the perfuntory single older male roles Andy Garcia usually gets parts in these days. It’s just so predictable. Think of the high school reunion you dread going to and you pretty much have Summer Camp.

And of course, there are even suggestions of senior romance, particularly for the very reluctant and awkwardly nervous Nora which has Keaton still doing her Annie Hallisms with the mature and balanced Stevie D played with nice restraint by Levy who gets a chance to show a different side of his talent than movies generally have allowed. We also feel Mary might get a little hanky panky with the very nice Tommy (Haysbert) but her own domestic problems stand in the way and this potential relationship gets short shrift. Overall, the three leads discuss their lives, dreams, regrets, good times, bad times, and because all three are such accomplished actors they manage to keep these characters from sailing over the top.

For all her bravado and wiseacre lines, Bates does show that Ginny is a bit lonely and sad she hasn’t had the chance at family her other two friends have, but in terms of films about facing aging I would recommend checking out the other film Bates is in this week, HBO’s The Great Lillian Hall in which she is terrific opposite a dementia-ridden Jessica Lange. Also, what the red-wigged Bates has been saddled with here is a bit distracting. The always fine Woodard is not given a lot of scenes where she gets to have fun, but instead is stuck with scenes dwelling on her unhappy home life, even to the point of a brief intrusion by her husband who just wants to take her back home before the week is up so she can return to their miserable existence. Keaton is pretty much flummoxed all the time, a woman who can’t seem to decide what she wants with Stevie D or anything else, or even to just succumb to Ginny’s urging that she simply “get laid”. As usual in recent films Keaton’s very distinct wardrobe desires are on full display, wildly out of place in this summer camp setting.

Among the supporting cast, Beverly D’Angelo gets a couple of scenes as a former rival of our trio of camp returnees, Nicole Richie has little to do as a camp employee, Josh Peck is nicely oafish as another camp worker, and Betsy Sodaro seems to be channeling a low rent version of Melissa McCarthy as an over-the-top staffer who makes trouble for our girls.

There have been diminishing returns in this boomer comedy genre since 2018’s smart and funny Book Club proved there was genuine boxoffice appeal for movies with older actresses in their 70’s and 80’s, a demo usually ignored by Hollywood, with movies that followed including a Book Club sequel, Poms about a group of retirement home cheerleaders, and Mack & Rita about a 30-something who magically turns into her 70-something self. All starred Keaton, who isn’t getting the kinds of roles, such as Nancy Meyers provided her with in 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give, that she richly deserves. So it appears it’s routine stuff like Summer Camp that keeps her working, just like it is revenge films that do the same for Liam Neeson. Don’t you wish Hollywood might have something a little meatier for these talents? Sure hope so.

Title: Summer Camp Distributor: Roadside Attractions Release Date: May 31, 2024 Director/Screenplay: Castille Landon Cast: Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, Alfre Woodard, Dennis Haysbert, Eugene Levy, Josh Peck, Nicole Richie, Betsy Sodaro, Beverly D’Angelo, Victoria Rowell. Rating : PG13 Running Time: 1 hour and 36 minutes

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‘clipped’ review: laurence fishburne and ed o’neill lead fx/hulu’s unwieldy depiction of the clippers/donald sterling scandal.

Get ready for fictionalized versions of Doc Rivers, V. Stiviano, Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and more in the six-part limited series.

By Daniel Fienberg

Daniel Fienberg

Chief Television Critic

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Equal time rules do not, in fact, apply to slightly fictionalized treatments of the real-life trials and tribulations of professional basketball teams, but for at least an hour it’s hard to shake the feeling that FX / Hulu ‘s six-parter Clipped exists as a make-good for the surplus of programming dedicated to the Lakers.

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This sells Clipped a bit short. I watched the pilot twice, separated by several months. The first time, I thought it was a mess, more cartoonish and broad than it had any reason to be. The second time, once I’d gotten all the comparisons to other shows out of my system — once I’d stopped being distracted by how little any of the show’s actors resemble the very famous people they’re playing, once I’d stopped being distracted by the details that, as a basketball fan, I already knew and could easily fact-check — it became easier to spot the bigger themes Clipped has on its mind.

Underneath what feels derivative and coarse — the poster featuring a hand with overly manicured nails squeezing a pair of basketballs isn’t reflective of the show — creator Gina Welch’s adaptation of Ramona Shelburne’s 30 for 30 podcast is a pragmatic, appropriately prickly examination of the cost of the American Dream and the responsibilities that come with fame in a social media-driven age of voyeurism and visibility. It’s a story with an interesting amount of empathy for all of its flawed participants, but very little affection and, in a narrative with nobody to really root for and lots of people to generally root against, it’s hard to always stay invested.

But Rivers has high hopes for this moribund franchise (that the team won 56 games the year before is never mentioned). They’re a squad with a lot of potential, thanks to superstar point guard Chris Paul (J. Alphonse Nicholson), high-flying Blake Griffin (Austin Scott), newly added sharpshooter J.J. Redick (Charlie McElveen) and breakout rebounding machine DeAndre Jordan (Sheldon Bailey). The missing piece seems to be Rivers, a championship-level coach, provided that outside factors don’t intervene.

Outside factors intervene. Much to the chagrin of his longtime wife Shelly ( Jacki Weaver ), Donald has a very public and very strange relationship with his so-called assistant V. Stiviano ( Cleopatra Coleman ). He buys her fancy cars, revealing outfits and even a duplex, so everybody assumes that Donald and Stiviano are having a sexual affair. It’s… more complicated than that. For evasively evoked reasons, she has been recording a lot of their conversations, including one in which he very aggressively takes her to task for posing for pictures with Magic Johnson and surrounding herself with people of color. It’s exactly the sort of audio clip that, if leaked to TMZ, could jeopardize the Clippers’ season and Sterling’s hold on the franchise. But the exposure could help Stiviano find the level of notoriety that she craves.

The scandal involving Stiviano’s recordings is juicy, but Welch is much more curious about the aftermath, for the players and for complacent longtime Clippers’ employees — like PR maven Seth and wholly unqualified team president Andy (Rich Sommer and Kelly AuCoin, both amusingly flighty). Everybody in the series has taken Sterling’s money with some awareness of his fatal flaws, and when the situation becomes untenable, nobody can find any high ground.

The middle of the season is full of long scenes in which characters mostly argue about whether or not there’s a path forward, and although it’s hard to fully buy anybody here as people rather than rhetorical positions, those conversations can be fascinating. The season’s best episode, the flashback-heavy fourth hour, traces how several main characters got to where they find themselves in April 2014. The playoffs were heating up, the recording was breaking on TMZ and the time was right for people to examine their respective Faustian bargains — some made out of hubris, some out of desperation and some, like that of NBA legend and former Clippers executive Elgin Baylor (a very effective Clifton Davis), out of a misbegotten sense of duty. It’s a good and thoughtful episode of TV, even if it doesn’t really gel with the series around it. 

It matters because Sterling has been sheltered by a sports league that’s America’s version of an oligarchy — mostly white billionaires covering their own butts and making money off of a mostly Black workforce. The series looks backward to the L.A. riots of 1992, which play a role in Doc’s episode four flashback. And although it isn’t mentioned, the series implicitly looks ahead to 2020, when NBA players, led by Chris Paul, pushed to use their platform for social justice causes. Anger simmers and it’s projected at targets well beyond Donald Sterling.

But building a serious argument on a frivolous foundation is a difficult task. Clipped feels choppy and emotionally remote, lacking a consistent voice and anything resembling a distinctive style — something that Winning Time , if nothing else, had in spades.

There’s nothing tragic about Sterling’s fall, and O’Neill leans hard into every aspect of his entitled grotesquerie, from the external — such a bad dye job — to the dazed certainty in his intonations. It’s not a subtle performance, but Donald Sterling’s general grossness wasn’t a secret, and “If everybody knew, how was this allowed to continue for decades?” is among the series’ key questions. He’s matched by Weaver’s interestingly contradictory take on Shelly, as simultaneously underestimated and oblivious. 

The series is tentative when it comes to developing the on-screen players, several of whom are still in the NBA or NBA adjacent. Nobody looks like the person they’re playing, and their personalities are only sketched out in broad strokes — the treatment of Chris Paul is especially tentative — presumably to avoid Jerry West-style blowback. You’d think they were cast to be believable in the basketball scenes, but I don’t think Clipped has more than five minutes of on-court action. Bailey, whose Jordan is intense and weird, is probably the standout.

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In a Violent Nature

When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, his body is resurre... Read all When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it. When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it.

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• Trivia Filming began in central Ontario, Canada, near the Kawartha Lakes area, before moving to Algoma district in Ontario, in 2021. It released three years later, in January of 2024.
• Goofs Nearly every scene involves a rental cabin or Forest Ranger Lodge / museum, and implies some kind of major roadway with extremely accessible driveways right up to said cabins. However, half the movie seems to look very remote, such as POV tracking of either the villain hiking endlessly through woods or fields, or a young person being pursued and getting lost in the woods; more than likely, all these places would be much more closely situated to each other, and even in darkness the clear driveways and road would easily findable, for use as a guide.
• Soundtracks Black Flies Written by Wade Hemsworth Performed by Tracy Newman

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• May 30, 2024
• May 31, 2024 (United States)
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‘MoviePass, MovieCrash’ Review: When They Take Your Company Away

An illuminating documentary about the ill-fated (though now-revived) subscription service finds an unexpected story.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

As a reporter, I spent the better part of 2018 puzzling over the meteoric rise and sensational nosedive of MoviePass, the brief beautiful dream of a subscription service that’s the subject of Muta’Ali’s new documentary “MoviePass, MovieCrash.” Perhaps you remember those halcyon days. For about $10 a month, you could see any movie in any theater on any day. You received a debit card that you’d use to “purchase” the ticket, and then the company would reimburse the theater for the ticket’s full cost. It worked, for a while, and it was amazing. But it made positively zero sense.

Anyone who passed third grade math can see why. If I pay $10 this month, and see only one movie, the company’s probably already in the hole. (A normal, non-matinee ticket in New York City, where there were a whole lot of MoviePass subscribers, hovered around $15.) If I see two, the hole gets deeper. Now consider the people who go to two movies a week, or four, or seven, and you start to see the problem.

There was some speculation that MoviePass was working on the gym membership model — lots of people subscribe, but few people actually use it, and they balance each other out. But that also makes very little sense. People, on the whole, tend to enjoy watching movies more than they enjoy slogging away on the StairMaster.

The only answer was that MoviePass was either trying to cut deals with studios and theaters, or selling and utilizing user data, or both — especially since Helios and Matheson, MoviePass’s publicly traded owner, was a data analytics firm. The answer is both, and the company’s leadership was convinced that the bigger their user base, the more likely they’d be able to monetize audiences. After all, data showed that MoviePass drastically increased people’s willingness to go to the movies, where they’d presumably spend money on concessions, too — and that might translate to eagerness from theaters to keep the service alive. The company’s chief executive, Mitchell Lowe, who was at Netflix in its early days, was certain that if they could reach five million users, they’d be operating in the black.

MoviePass didn’t reach five million users, but for a while it seemed as though there would be no stopping it. Under the leadership of Lowe and Theodore Farnsworth, the chief executive of Helios and Matheson, the new subsidiary MoviePass Ventures produced the abysmal movie “ Gotti ” and threw a lot of very expensive parties in mid-2018. At the same time, if you were trying to actually use the service, it went from bad to worse to baffling: random blackout periods, strange requirements for purchasing tickets (like uploading photos of stubs) and near-constant changes to the terms and conditions. Eventually the Federal Trade Commission made accusations that MoviePass fraudulently deceived its customers to prevent power users from getting what they’d paid for. That era of MoviePass did not end well.

My friends and I still wistfully speak of those days, wondering what exactly happened there. Luckily, “MoviePass, MovieCrash” answers a lot of those questions, with the participation of the company’s put-upon customer service agents, engineers, employees, investors and Lowe himself. But surprisingly, the film goes much further than expected. Streaming services are loaded with documentaries about scammy internet-era companies, but “MoviePass, MovieCrash” finds the barely told story in all the juicy facts.

That story is, in a sense, a tale as old as time. MoviePass in fact existed all the way back in 2011, co-founded by Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt. The story they tell in the documentary is one of spotting a need in the market — a threat to theatrical exhibition of films posed, in part, by the slow growth of streaming services — and of figuring out a sustainable way to fill it. The answer was MoviePass, which cost more at the time (I believe I paid $49.99 per month in 2013, which was still a bargain) and seemed poised for success.

But as Spikes and Watt explain it, MoviePass is another story of Black entrepreneurs who, along with other underrepresented demographics, struggle to find investment capital and investor confidence in the market, creating something groundbreaking and then losing it to overconfident white men. There’s no doubt that, under Lowe and Farnsworth, a promising service was run directly into the ground. The frustration that Spikes and Watt felt as they were pushed out of the company is palpable. And when Lowe opines on camera that Spikes “wasn’t being a productive member of the team” when he voiced his concerns, you can feel that frustration, too.

All of this makes for an eye-opening documentary about a lot more than just MoviePass, worth watching whether you’re nostalgic for the service or bitter about how it turned out — or if you just think the whole thing was kind of hilarious. But there is a happy ending. In 2022, Spikes bought back the company, tweaked the service and relaunched MoviePass. And in 2023, it reported its first-ever year of profitability.

MoviePass, MovieCrash Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Max.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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