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Alison Willmore

Movie Critic
See all their articles from across New York Magazine

Alison Willmore is a film critic for New York magazine and Vulture. Formerly, she was the only critic at BuzzFeed News, the first TV editor at IndieWire, and the host of Filmspotting: SVU.

  1. movie review
    Spencer Is a Portrait of a Princess Too Sane to Play the Royals’ GameKristen Stewart may not resemble the real Diana, Princess of Wales, but she does an incredible job of capturing the woman’s charisma and her sadness.
  2. movie review
    The Souvenir Part II Is All Truth and Dead EndsThere’s a sealed-off quality to the second of Joanna Hogg’s memoirs, a sense that it’s possible to authentically portray only oneself.
  3. there will be blood
    The Greatest Place to Be a Vampire Was New York in the ’90sJust take a look at The Addiction, Habit, and Nadja.
  4. movie review
    The French Dispatch Is the Most Wes Anderson Movie Wes Anderson Has Ever MadeThe ensemble anthology is airless, overly whimsical, and utterly delightful — sorry!
  5. movie review
    Dune Doesn’t Care If You Like ItDenis Villeneuve’s gloriously unfriendly take on Frank Herbert’s sci-fi classic wants to feel as alien as possible.
  6. movie review
    Bergman Island Is a Giddy Exploration of the Gap Between Art and ArtistMia Hansen-Løve’s new film takes place on the Swedish island that was famously home to Ingmar Bergman, but it makes room for ABBA as well.
  7. chasing ben
    Ben Affleck Plays HimselfBecoming a tabloid star gave the actor his best role ever.
  8. movie review
    Ghostbusters: Afterlife Is a Reanimated CorpseBut hey, people love zombies.
  9. movie review
    Lamb Is a Dark Fairy Tale With a Great Concept and Not Much to SayThe new A24 movie has a way with wordlessness — for better and worse.
  10. movies
    Titane Isn’t Just an Extravaganza of Body Horror and Automotive SexJulia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winner is a fascinating, confounding work about the longing for control over one’s own flesh.
  11. movie review
    Who Let Venom: Let There Be Carnage In on the Joke?In trying to do more of what made the first Venom work, the new super(anti)hero movie ruins things.
  12. movie review
    The Tragedy of Macbeth Is Basically One Phenomenal Denzel Washington PerformanceJoel Coen’s stark Shakespeare adaptation could have gone even more minimalist and had a cast of only two, to be honest.
  13. movie review
    The Eyes of Tammy Faye Is All Eyelashes, No TeethJessica Chastain goes big as the disgraced televangelist’s wife, but the movie doesn’t know what to make of Tammy Faye beyond her outrageous style.
  14. movie review
    Tiffany Haddish and Oscar Isaac Are Off-Kilter Hot Together in The Card CounterWhat does professional poker have in common with enhanced interrogation? This lean, mean thriller (of sorts) from Paul Schrader.
  15. movie review
    Shang-Chi Treats Tony Leung As More Compelling Than Its HeroThere’s something cruel about putting Simu Liu up against a legend of Hong Kong cinema who is the very embodiment of what it means to be a movie star.
  16. fall preview 2021
    32 Movies We’re Excited to See This FallHouse of Gucci, Jennifer Lawrence in Don’t Look Up, Clint Eastwood’s Cry Macho, and more.
  17. how we spent our bummer vacation
    The Genre of the Summer Is Resort HorrorThe premise of a luxury vacation gone wrong is an ideal match for the Hot Vaxxed Summer that wasn’t.
  18. movie review
    Hugh Jackman’s Sci-fi Noir Reminiscence Is Weirdly BoringIt’s not that director Lisa Joy, the co-creator of Westworld, doesn’t have interesting ideas — but they’re all shoved to the side.
  19. movie review
    Of Course the Murdering Rapist From Don’t Breathe Is the Protagonist NowWe love to make a horror villain into someone you’re meant to root for — the thrills of the genre make it irresistible.
  20. movie review
    CODA Is an Occasionally Corny But Very Effective Family DramedyEmilia Jones plays the only hearing member of a Massachusetts fishing family in this Sundance crowd-pleaser that’s hard to resist.
  21. movie review
    Udo Kier Will Break Your Heart in Swan SongThe German actor is tremendous in this elegiac comedy about a flamboyant former hairdresser living in a small Ohio town.
  22. the scorpion king
    Why Doesn’t the Rock Get to Make Out More Onscreen?Jungle Cruise doesn’t exactly position Dwayne Johnson as a great romantic lead. But do A-list stars even need to play love interests anymore?
  23. movie review
    Matt Damon Makes For an Excellent Unlovable American in StillwaterThe new movie from Spotlight director Tom McCarthy is a character study in the guise of a crime thriller.
  24. movie review
    The Green Knight Is a Ravishing, Unsettling FantasyIn David Lowery’s new A24 movie, Dev Patel is a gadabout in search of a legend to call his own.
  25. ip freely
    The Future of Entertainment Is Just More and More and More of ThisTwo critics wonder if Space Jam 2–style IP mining is a brief trend or something that could alter the entertainment timeline for good.
  26. movie review
    M. Night Shyamalan’s Old Is Beautifully Made and Terribly WrittenThe Sixth Sense director still has a way with sinister shots, but is oddly invested in having the audience care about his cardboard characters.
  27. movie review
    The Anthony Bourdain Doc Roadrunner Can Be Invasive. Sometimes, It’s Worse.In deciding to treat his subject as a mystery to be solved, director Morgan Neville makes some ugly choices.
  28. movie review
    Maybe Netflix’s Fear Street Should Have Just Been a TV ShowThe delightfully nasty Fear Street exists in this strange space between movies and television, serving neither format well.
  29. movie review
    Black Widow Bids a Barbed Farewell to the MCU’s First Female SuperheroScarlett Johansson plays Natasha one last time (for now) in an espionage adventure that’s as much a criticism of the character as a good-bye.
  30. movie review
    Zola the Movie Is a Chillier Exploration of Trauma Than the Tweets We All ReadJanicza Bravo and co-writer Jeremy O. Harris’s retelling is not exactly the wild romp of the viral thread it’s based on.
  31. role call
    Chad Lindberg Answers Every Question We Have About The Fast and the FuriousOn the 20th anniversary of the unlikely start of the now-monster franchise, the actor thinks it’s time to #BringJesseBack.
  32. movie review
    F9 Brings an Improbably Good Gearhead Daddy-Issues Opera HomeCinéma, it lives.
  33. movie review
    Review: Pixar’s Luca Is a Literal Fish-Out-of-Water FantasyThough charming and vibrant, the new Disney film aspires for greater meaning that it doesn’t always reach.
  34. movie review
    Mark Wahlberg’s Reincarnation Movie Infinite Needs a Few More Lifetimes of WorkSuch a high-concept action movie, so little imagination.
  35. film festival
    17 Films You Should See at This Year’s Tribeca FestivalFrom an Ilana Glazer pregnancy-horror movie to a biographical doc about Anthony Bourdain.
  36. movie review
    Undine Is a Perplexing Take on the Mermaid MythThe new film from the Phoenix director Christian Petzold is hard to shake off, even if it also never really comes together.
  37. movie review
    The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It Should Have Stuck to the Haunted HousesThe Patrick Wilson–Vera Farmiga horror franchise tries to depart from its previous format, with some seriously mixed results.
  38. summer 2021
    96 Movies You May or May Not Want to See This SummerTheaters are opening, the big screen is back, and we’re doing a deep dive on the films worth your undivided attention this summer.
  39. movie review
    The Woman in the Window Is a Trashy Movie Trying to Be a Classy OneThe Amy Adams thriller would be better off embracing its true self.
  40. movie review
    Oxygen Feels Like Something the Netflix Algorithm Vomited UpIn that sense, it’s fine?
  41. movie review
    Fear Not, Here Today Is Not a Billy Crystal-Tiffany Haddish Romantic ComedyBut you get the feeling that Crystal kind of wanted it to be?
  42. movie review
    About Endlessness Gloriously Collages the Absurdity and Grandeur of the EverydayThe sixth feature from Swedish director Roy Andersson finds connections between armies marching in the snow and girls dancing to music from a café.
  43. movie review
    Without Remorse Is Also Without a Single Moment of ExcitementHow is this Michael B. Jordan action movie, which is headed to Amazon, so dreary?
  44. oscars 2021
    The 2021 Oscars Were a Film Production That Ran Out of MoneyCritics Bilge Ebiri and Alison Willmore autopsy this year’s Academy Awards.
  45. movie review
    Sesame Street Doc Street Gang Is About When TV Needed To Be Saved From ItselfThe documentary, which celebrates the formative years of the iconic kids’ show, is also a testament to the singular forces that allowed it to happen.
  46. movie review
    In the Earth Is a Slapdash Wilderness Horror Story for the Age of COVIDThe new horror film from Ben Wheatley, made quietly and quickly last year, evokes the pandemic but can’t figure out what to say about it.
  47. movie review
    Melissa McCarthy Can’t Save the Day, or the Studio Comedy, in Thunder ForceThe Netflix spoof, which co-stars Octavia Spencer and Jason Bateman, doesn’t make its superhero buddy antics work.
  48. movie review
    Voyagers Is Just Lord of the Flies in SpaceDon’t be fooled by sexy marketing material — the new sci-fi film is really just a predictable, tedious drag.
  49. movie review
    If Only the Rest of French Exit Were As Good As Michelle Pfeiffer’s PerformancePfeiffer is delightful and overwhelming as a mordant Manhattan socialite searching for an ending in a depressive farce that never really gets going.
  50. close reads
    What Was the Asian American Character Actor?For way too long, supporting roles were both the ceiling and a devil’s bargain.
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