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Matthew Lickona
Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:
Matthew Lickona has been a staff writer for the San Diego Reader since 1995, and a film critic for the paper since 2010.
Publications:
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Heretic (2024) |
For a movie that seems to want to be about faith, it relies pretty heavily on works (and the miraculous transformation of a frightened teen into a tough-minded detective), right up until its big deus ex machina. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Nov 09, 2024
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Anora (2024) |
Perhaps the director’s most conventional effort to date; it even veers toward cliché in its final scene. But what comes before is strong enough to make it hit anyway. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Nov 01, 2024
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Conclave (2024) |
It’s possible that the film takes itself entirely too seriously; fortunately, the viewer is under no such obligation, and may have a good time as a result. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Oct 24, 2024
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Last Summer (2023) |
That’s the character of the film as a whole: cataclysmic events taking place amid lovely, languid scenery and civil (or at least sophisticated) conversation. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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Longlegs (2024) |
Oz Perkins’ adventure in toxic family dynamics — toxic in a way that results in copious quantities of spilled blood — hits so many of the beats from Silence of the Lambs that some viewers may wonder if it’s some kind of supernaturally-skewed gloss. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jul 12, 2024
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MaXXXine (2024) |
Maybe, just maybe, the film’s final shot serves as a frightening rebuke to all that comes before. At least it’s something to think about after all the lovely neon nonsense. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jul 05, 2024
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I Saw the TV Glow (2024) |
An almost shockingly effective evocation of How Things Felt, back before the internet made cult followings into malignant mobs, and more importantly, back before we — the collective we — put aside childish things and let adulthood take hold. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 25, 2024
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Love Lies Bleeding (2024) |
Once you get the interior ugliness of everyone involved, you may be able to chuckle at some of the violence, ha ha. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 20, 2024
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Challengers (2024) |
Guadagnino knows how to make people very, very attractive. But that’s not the same as interesting. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 20, 2024
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Inside Out 2 (2024) |
There’s plenty of invention at the granular level: the battle within the Projection Room is smart, the sar-chasm is funny, the stream of consciousness is cute. But the story is very much the same. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 20, 2024
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Thelma (2024) |
Squibb is almost unbelievably lively and sharp, and Richard Roundtree serves as a fine, sober counterpoint to her “age is just a number” attitude. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 20, 2024
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The Bikeriders (2023) |
There’s a story here, and yeah, that story hinges on Johnny and Benny’s choices. But their reasons seem murky even to themselves, and for all the cheerful exposition Kathy provides, Nichols seems happy to have it that way. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 20, 2024
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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) |
The ending is talky, and it sounds like an authorial statement: Dementus revealing the dark heart of the Mad Max saga. But it also makes way for a nasty, batty, but strangely redemptive segue into Fury Road’s story. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted May 26, 2024
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Drive-Away Dolls (2024) |
The story doesn’t hold up under scrutiny — don’t overthink it, man — so what you’re left with is the gentle exploration (send-up?) of lesbian culture; the trademark Coen blend of violence, cupidity, and stupidity; and nostalgia for the grindhouse. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Mar 02, 2024
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Dune: Part Two (2024) |
Lawrence of Arrakis meets Dr. Sandworm, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bene Gesserit...The result is a blockbuster space opera that plays like a downbeat drama — we’re a long, long way from that famous galaxy far, far away. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Mar 02, 2024
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Freud's Last Session (2023) |
Brown does what he can to keep things from feeling like a filmed play, but he can’t do much, and what he does do — flashbacks, dream sequences, a war scene, and a trip to an air raid shelter — isn’t always helpful. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jan 17, 2024
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American Fiction (2023) |
It’s a sign of star Jeffrey Wright’s presence and talent that he’s able to keep the viewer from noticing the bait-and-switch until the ending. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jan 17, 2024
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The Beekeeper (2024) |
Off we go. Like, way off, leaving even the notion of reality behind like a burned-out barn full of busted honey jars. In its place, a hero who makes James Bond look inconspicuous and John Wick look vincible. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jan 17, 2024
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Mean Girls (2024) |
The girls just aren’t as mean. The social hierarchies just aren’t as brutal. The betrayals and losses just aren’t as devastating — and it’s not just because we may have seen them before. It may be because the world has gotten meaner in the meantime. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jan 17, 2024
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The Iron Claw (2023) |
Durkin wriggles free of his own story and brings on not one but three happy endings — one in real-time, one in eternity, and one in posterity. If it feels like a bit of a slippery move, well, this is wrestling we’re talking about. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jan 17, 2024
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The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) |
The story here is strong enough to stand on its own, but of course, it is a prequel, and there is a grimy pleasure in seeing the clunky early iterations of the later Games’ slick social machinations. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Nov 23, 2023
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Napoleon (2023) |
Director Ridley Scott cuts the world’s most famous short person down to size — but it’s not clear why. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Nov 22, 2023
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Wish (2023) |
Well, it’s a big swing, anyway, even if it’s a miss: Disney’s latest animated effort goes full Carl “We Are Star Stuff” Sagan and takes aim at the Judeo-Christian God. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Nov 22, 2023
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The Holdovers (2023) |
Giamatti has a ball here as a glass-eyed grump, but he’s a known quantity. The lupine Sessa is the revelation; it’s a gutsy move putting him in a movie theater scene watching Dustin Hoffman, but it’s no accident. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Nov 10, 2023
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The Marvels (2023) |
Star Brie Larson seems pretty checked out here — almost as checked out as the jokers who came up with the idea of once again tapping the Beastie Boys for the soundtrack. “Hey, they’re on a spaceship! Let’s use ‘Intergalactic!’” - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Nov 10, 2023
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Oppenheimer (2023) |
A story of ordinary men and women caught up in extraordinary times. What they created really did “change the world,” but no one here rises to the level of hero, or even tragic hero, and even the villainy on display is more vanity than anything else. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jul 21, 2023
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Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) |
Cruise the stuntman is reliably spectacular here, but Cruise the actor seems a bit scattered... And Hunt the character? He fails personally when it counts, but suffers not a single consequence because of it. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jul 12, 2023
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You Hurt My Feelings (2023) |
The film is handsome without being showy, stately without being sedate, and mostly amusing without being ridiculous. It's also slight, and slightly silly. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 28, 2023
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) |
Long before a watch appeared onscreen as a plot element, I was thinking of a timepiece winding down. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 28, 2023
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Asteroid City (2023) |
As ever, the mannered speech and meticulous framing lend a certain unreality to the proceedings — to say nothing of the brightly saturated image — but it's hardly style for style's sake. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 28, 2023
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Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) |
Tempts you to think Spider-Man was always meant to be animated. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2023
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The Flash (2023) |
As it is, there’s the pesky way the multiverse dulls the dramatic edge of death, even as the film seeks to sharpen the blade. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2023
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Elemental (2023) |
We cried because Pixar gave us consequences, many of them having to do with the inevitability of change. Here, the change — assimilation — is hardly inevitable, even if it’s probable, but the film’s whole project is the removal of consequences. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jun 16, 2023
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Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) |
Remarkably, given the studio brand: this is absolutely Gunn's movie. It's cheerfully gross, frequently hideous to behold, nakedly emotional, indulgent to the point of bloat in its desire to tie off every narrative thread...and, happily, its own thing. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted May 25, 2023
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Fast X (2023) |
It’s overlong and over-the-top, but the real trouble is that when a series like this starts acknowledging its its own absurdities, they become harder to enjoy. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted May 25, 2023
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Master Gardener (2022) |
The pleasure is not in the innovation, but in the variation. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted May 25, 2023
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The Little Mermaid (2023) |
Part of that world of lazy remakes, alas. At least Sebastian the crab is still fun. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted May 25, 2023
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Suzume (2022) |
It all makes for a fine adolescent adventure: travel, rebellion, unattainable love, a search, a chase, a deadline, and a little bit of growing up. And happily, the film understands that some problems don’t get resolved without real sacrifice. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Apr 27, 2023
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Guy Ritchie's The Covenant (2023) |
Director Guy Ritchie exercises considerable restraint in his depiction of action: again and again, he is content to pull back, hold the shot, and let what happens be enough to engage the viewer. And again and again, it's more than enough. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Apr 19, 2023
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Renfield (2023) |
Robert Kirkman’s story takes its pop psychology seriously, which is what makes its application here so much fun. When Cage bellows, “I’m the real victim here!” anyone who’s ever known a narcissist may find themselves wincing through the grin. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Apr 11, 2023
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Air (2023) |
Nostalgia is the only reason I can think of to explain why old friends Ben Affleck and Matt Damon reteamed for a movie that so artlessly sets out to make us love shoe company Nike for buttering up a college hoops star better than Adidas or Converse. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Apr 11, 2023
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Cocaine Bear (2023) |
Why does the bear kill everyone it meets during its drug rampage except for the one person it decides to kidnap? Why don’t people with guns shoot the bear when they have the chance? Because the movie needs to happen, that’s why! - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Creed III (2023) |
The two Final Fight combatants are fearsome and beautiful to behold, and Jordan does his best to get visually creative, but there’s more drama in the training montage — possibly because it’s the only place where his character feels vincible. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Mar 03, 2023
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Sharper (2023) |
At one point, circumstances threaten to turn a con-artist caper into something more desperate and dangerous, but here as elsewhere, dramatic urgency is sacrificed in the twisty pursuit of cleverness. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Feb 18, 2023
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Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (2023) |
And yet, there it was, that thought, overarching and overwhelming: “I didn’t feel a thing.” - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Feb 18, 2023
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M3GAN (2022) |
Machine learning may one day be the death of us all, but we’re still far enough out from the Rise of the Machines to indulge a wry chuckle at the prospect. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Jan 13, 2023
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Babylon (2022) |
Long and frequently unpleasant, but at least there’s a point to all that decadence and despair: first time as tragedy, second time as hit musical. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Dec 23, 2022
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Empire of Light (2022) |
Late in the film, Hilary asks projectionist Norman (Toby Young, appealing) why he made a particular momentous decision; his mystified reply may match the viewer’s own as to what Mendes had in mind here. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Dec 21, 2022
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) |
It would be missing the point to call the proceedings indulgent to the point of self-infatuation: Cameron has built a new world from the remixed bits of this one, and he seems determined that we should not simply visit Pandora, we should live in it. - San Diego Reader
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| Posted Dec 21, 2022
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The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) |
It’s deep without putting on airs, moving without reaching for sentiment, and intimate without becoming insular. It’s good, is what I’m saying. - National Review
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| Posted Oct 29, 2022
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