Popular reviews

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  Review by tyler ★★

  just watch the nicole kidman amc ad instead

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  Review by Esther Rosenfield ½ 24

  not necessarily the worst movie i've seen this year but undeniably the most embarrassing. the idea that everyone involved was willing to publicly attach their name to this maudlin retread of a thousand films about racism and "movie magic" (all of which already sucked!) is staggering to think about. by the time toby jones is monologuing about how when you project film at 24 frames per second it means you can't see the darkness i thought about how in a few decades they'll be making movies like this via AI prompts and we'll look back at this and wonder how sam mendes got there first.

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  Review by CinemaJoe ★★½ 9

  Sure it looks pretty, I mean it’s Deakins, but it’s tonally lost in a sea of half baked characters and ideas. Colman is good, Micheal Ward is great, but Empire of Light struggles to find its voice resulting in the most aggressively okay movie of the year.

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  Review by Alex Darling ★★ 12

  sam what is this movie about

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  Review by AmandaTheJedi ★★

  We've let Colin Firth be entirely too horny this year.

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  Review by reibureibu ★ 21

  in which sam mendes demonstrates a middle-school understanding of racism and writing (this might be generous)

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  Review by David Chen ★★★ 4

  “I was having a great time just listening to people wax poetic about their love of movies. Then, a bunch of Nazis showed up.” -My plot description for this movie AND my experience being on Twitter this year.

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  Review by Matt Neglia ★★★

  EMPIRE OF LIGHT is Sam Mendes’ personal & loving ode to how cinema connects us all despite how different we all are. When you enter that theatre and the lights go down, all your troubles can be left at the door and you’re free to escape. At times, this movie achieves that very goal. The screenplay is a little all over the place and there are many important aspects I wish were delved into a little deeper. Still, Olivia Colman is extraordinary in what is another career highlight, and her chemistry with Micheal Ward is warm & tender. Vibrant cinematography & a gorgeously serene score that will fill your heart & give you goosebumps.

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★

  Despite being set in the early 1980s (its story spanning from “The Blues Brothers” to “Being There”), Sam Mendes’ scattershot and moribund “Empire of Light” is a movie born out of two simultaneous but unequal reckonings that erupted in the summer of 2020: The Black Lives Matter movement, and the existential threat to the future of movie theaters. Looking at those phenomena through the (not particularly nostalgic) lens of his teenage years in “there’s no such thing as society” England — a time when racism and cinema were both thriving in popular culture — Mendes strives to tell a plaintive yet poignant little story about the simple power of community.

  It’s a story about a magical where light and dark…

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  Review by Meg Shields ★★

  kind of remarkable that it’s possible to make a boring movie about Olivia Coleman being horny

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  Review by David Sims ★★ 6

  codswallop

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  Review by Zoë Rose Bryant ★★★★ 8

  I guess I’m one of the few who loved Empire of Light, as I fell hard for this deftly directed romantic drama, elevated by two of the most tender performances of the year courtesy of Olivia Colman and Micheal Ward. It’s a simple story, and maybe it bites off a bit more than it can chew, but it’s just so sincere - and so soulfully shot and scored.

  A good old-fashioned prestige pic aimed squarely at adults, and I ate it up. It doesn’t aspire to change the world or anything, but it doesn’t need to!

  2022 Ranked
  Sam Mendes Ranked