Rotten Tomatoes
Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes
Publications list

The Popcorn Muncher (Substack)

The Popcorn Muncher (Substack) is not a Tomatometer-approved publication. Reviews from this publication only count toward the Tomatometer® when written by the following Tomatometer-approved critic(s): Tom Beasley.

Prev Next
Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Venom: The Last Dance (2024) Tom Beasley If you can’t enjoy Tom Hardy sitting in stony silence while his alien lover croons along joyfully to Space Oddity inside his head, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Posted Oct 30, 2024  Edit critic review
Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) Tom Beasley There must be a Venn diagram middle section of people who love both edgelord internet philosophy and visual nods to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but you need a microscope to find it.
Posted Oct 13, 2024  Edit critic review
The Substance (2024) Tom Beasley Fargeat’s movies are assaultive and guttural, delivering their messages with the fearsome aggression of a sledgehammer to the sternum.
Posted Sep 20, 2024  Edit critic review
Red Rooms (2023) Tom Beasley An immersive journey into the very real grubbiness of the world we have allowed technology to build around us.
Posted Sep 08, 2024  Edit critic review
AfrAId (2024) Tom Beasley Every line of dialogue is stilted, every theme is spelled out in laboriously literal terms, and the characters never feel even close to human.
Posted Sep 08, 2024  Edit critic review
The Echo (2023) Tom Beasley This is a movie that rewards patient audiences, but represents something of a challenge to others.
Posted Jul 26, 2024  Edit critic review
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) Tom Beasley This isn’t really a movie. It’s just a lame Reddit thread upvoted by Kevin Feige. Surely, after more than 15 years of cultural dominance, Marvel can do better than that.
Posted Jul 26, 2024  Edit critic review
Twisters (2024) Tom Beasley If you ever stop to think for too long, the movie shakes you out of your seat with some of its bone-rattling spectacle.
Posted Jul 19, 2024  Edit critic review
Chuck Chuck Baby (2023) Tom Beasley While I didn’t totally key into the film’s unique tone, I appreciated its commitment to crowd-pleasing joy and the weirdness of its world.
Posted Jul 19, 2024  Edit critic review
Longlegs (2024) Tom Beasley Something about Longlegs feels as forbidden and satanic as the characters’ occult interests, like it’s cracked open a door to let pure darkness leak out into the world.
Posted Jul 13, 2024  Edit critic review
Despicable Me 4 (2024) Tom Beasley This is a triumph for silly voices and route one slapstick.
Posted Jul 13, 2024  Edit critic review
MaXXXine (2024) Tom Beasley This time around, MaXXXine wears its time period and genre like an accessory rather than an intrinsic part of its DNA.
Posted Jul 13, 2024  Edit critic review
Kill (2023) Tom Beasley There are punches, kicks, shootings, bludgeonings, and more stabbings than a pin cushion factory.
Posted Jul 13, 2024  Edit critic review
Kinds of Kindness (2024) Tom Beasley Kinds of Kindness stretches its darkness to the point that it becomes mundane — perhaps deliberately — and more than a little boring — almost certainly not deliberately.
Posted Jul 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Something in the Water (2024) Tom Beasley Something in the Water takes the sub-genre seriously and, as a result, it crafts something gripping, memorable, and genuinely thrilling. Even when the sharks aren’t circling.
Posted Jul 05, 2024  Edit critic review
The Bikeriders (2023) Tom Beasley This is a film fascinated by blowing away the acrid smoke, peeling off the denim jackets, and scratching at the fragile masculinity hidden beneath it all.
Posted Jun 22, 2024  Edit critic review
The Exorcism (2024) Tom Beasley It’s a plodding, generic horror tale flattened into nothing by a drab visual approach.
Posted Jun 22, 2024  Edit critic review
Inside Out 2 (2024) Tom Beasley The straightforward beauty and eloquence of the first film isn’t present in Inside Out 2, but that doesn’t mean it’s anything other than brilliant.
Posted Jun 14, 2024  Edit critic review
Hounds (2023) Tom Beasley It doesn’t always work, but there’s enough dirt under its fingernails to make it a fascinating watch.
Posted Jun 14, 2024  Edit critic review
The Moor (2023) Tom Beasley It’s true that folk horror is often more about mood than plot, but The Moor provides little more than hazy weather and even murkier storytelling.
Posted Jun 14, 2024  Edit critic review
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (2024) Tom Beasley Smith and Lawrence are movie stars, so Adil & Bilall are wise enough to get the hell out of their way.
Posted Jun 08, 2024  Edit critic review
The Watchers (2024) Tom Beasley On the big screen, it’s very leaden and sluggish without the visual invention to make it work.
Posted Jun 08, 2024  Edit critic review
Rosalie (2023) Tom Beasley Rosalie is a knotty and fascinating watch, using Clémentine’s true story — she really did run a café and sell pictures of herself — as groundwork for a more complex take on desire, shame, and the fragility of gender performance.
Posted Jun 08, 2024  Edit critic review
The Beast (2023) Tom Beasley The Beast’s overriding effect may be of an elliptical sci-fi journey, but it has a knack for delivering sobering and entirely plausible predictions for our imminent future.
Posted May 31, 2024  Edit critic review
Sting (2024) Tom Beasley This movie definitely gives spiders a bad name, but not for the reasons you might expect. They’re so much more interesting than this.
Posted May 31, 2024  Edit critic review
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) Tom Beasley There’s a sense throughout the movie of a throttle left deliberately unfloored, not least in the bizarrely talky and structurally weird damp squib of an ending.
Posted May 25, 2024  Edit critic review
The Garfield Movie (2024) Tom Beasley Sometimes, Garfield will look down the camera lens and Pratt will speak with the inflection and gratingly snarky tone of a joke, but the words don’t even seem like an attempt at comedy.
Posted May 25, 2024  Edit critic review
The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024) Tom Beasley The scares aren’t scary, the gore isn’t especially nasty, and there’s very little reason for us to care about the two people running around screaming.
Posted May 25, 2024  Edit critic review
IF (2024) Tom Beasley Krasinski’s script is an onslaught of platitudes, like it was written by an AI model fed exclusively with fortune cookies and horoscopes.
Posted May 17, 2024  Edit critic review
Tiger Stripes (2023) Tom Beasley A deliciously anarchic calling card for a director who we’ll all be watching soar to even greater heights in the coming decades.
Posted May 17, 2024  Edit critic review
Hoard  (2023) Tom Beasley Luna Carmoon blasts on to the scene with this weird, meandering drama that finds a lot to say through its most shocking moments. The bin juice is merely the tip of the unsanitary iceberg.
Posted May 17, 2024  Edit critic review
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) Tom Beasley Every time it looks as if Planet of the Apes might be done forever, somebody comes along with a fresh perspective and, somehow, it works.
Posted May 10, 2024  Edit critic review
La Chimera (2023) Tom Beasley Rohrwacher’s work is as surprisingly playful as it is intelligent and languid. For those willing to go with it, there’s plenty to chew on beyond that sweat-soaked linen suit.
Posted May 10, 2024  Edit critic review
The Fall Guy (2024) Tom Beasley The stunt work is excellent, the action thrills, and the chemistry between the two leads absolutely sparkles. Unfortunately, there’s way too much movie before we get to that point.
Posted May 10, 2024  Edit critic review
Love Lies Bleeding (2024) Tom Beasley It’s an irresistible collage of tones and genres, fusing to create something that’s far more original than just Coen Brothers karaoke.
Posted May 05, 2024  Edit critic review
The Idea of You (2024) Tom Beasley Of course the romcom hasn’t ever really gone away but, with this unashamedly sexy and silly tale, it’s definitely back.
Posted May 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Tarot (2024) Tom Beasley The characters fall off things in the dark while lazily-designed beasties mug and scream loudly for the camera.
Posted May 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Challengers (2024) Tom Beasley If tennis is a relationship, then Challengers is the lustful honeymoon period. When the credits roll, you just want more of it.
Posted Apr 27, 2024  Edit critic review
Elaha (2024) Tom Beasley It’s a film that never provides easy answers, exploring what it means to be a young woman with one foot in tradition and the other in modern freedoms. Well worth your time.
Posted Apr 27, 2024  Edit critic review
Swede Caroline (2022) Tom Beasley This setup is funny and the cast is game, but the movie's sense of humour never takes root.
Posted Apr 19, 2024  Edit critic review
Abigail (2024) Tom Beasley Look, if you can’t bring macabre maximalism to a movie about a bitey ballerina, then you’re in the wrong genre.
Posted Apr 19, 2024  Edit critic review
Rebel Moon: Part Two - The Scargiver (2024) Tom Beasley These movies have a physicality and lived-in feel to them that’s at odds with the CGI sludge of so many of today’s blockbusters, as much as Snyder’s love of ultra-shallow focus is still deeply distracting.
Posted Apr 19, 2024  Edit critic review
Back to Black (2024) Tom Beasley It visibly struggles to corral such a complex icon and her contested legacy into a two-hour drama, but does an honourable job in the face of the enormity of that task.
Posted Apr 12, 2024  Edit critic review
Civil War (2024) Tom Beasley He set the table for a button-pushing movie, but then forgot to push any of the buttons.
Posted Apr 12, 2024  Edit critic review
The Teachers' Lounge (2023) Tom Beasley Çatak’s movie wears its allegory lightly in a way that enriches its surface-level storytelling. This isn’t a heavy-handed piece of didacticism; it’s a genuinely sweat-inducing thriller.
Posted Apr 12, 2024  Edit critic review
The First Omen (2024) Tom Beasley The First Omen just has a foreboding sense of evil hanging over every frame and I watched the whole thing while knotted up like a set of old earphones in a desk drawer.
Posted Apr 12, 2024  Edit critic review
Yannick (2023) Tom Beasley At just over an hour long, this is a brief, breezy, and deeply silly single-location comedy with a late in the day burst of welcome heart.
Posted Apr 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Scoop (2024) Tom Beasley Why do we need this dramatised? We all watched it at the time. We’ve all seen clips since. We can watch the whole thing on YouTube whenever we want.
Posted Apr 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Monkey Man (2024) Tom Beasley Monkey Man is great at tone, evoking a scuzzy and corrupt underworld brilliantly. But often that vibe is all it has — an exercise in style over substance.
Posted Apr 05, 2024  Edit critic review
Silver Haze (2023) Tom Beasley It’s a more complex film than Dirty God — and often a more frustrating, mercurial one — but it’s just as fascinating and fulfilling.
Posted Mar 29, 2024  Edit critic review
Prev Next