A.A. Dowd
Writer
A.A. Dowd, or Alex to his friends, is a writer and editor based in Chicago. He has held staff positions at The A.V. Club and Time Out Chicago, and is a member of the National Society of Film Critics.
20 years ago, Spider-Man swung onto MTV and changed the Marvel superhero forever
MTV's Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, starring Neil Patrick Harris as Peter Parker, deserved better than the single 13-episode season it got.
With just a few episodes, writer Darin Morgan changed The X-Files forever
Chris Carter's classic TV show The X-Files, which turned 30 this week, hit new peaks of tragicomic brilliance in the six episodes written by Darin Morgan.
Video game adaptations are huge, but will we ever see a great one?
With The Last of Us, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and Gran Turismo, video game adaptations came of age in 2023, but they didn't transcend the genre.
Superhero movies aren’t events anymore
From Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania to The Flash, superheroes have underperformed in 2023. Will Blue Beetle and other comic book movies suffer the same fate?
The Halloween franchise should have ended 25 years ago with Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
Twenty-five years ago, Halloween H20 did the legacy sequel thing long before, and better than, the recent trilogy by David Gordon Green.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter review: Dracula by way of Alien
Adapting just a few pages of Bram Stoker's novel, The Last Voyage of the Demeter puts an entertaining new spin on the most famous vampire of them all, Dracula.
Meg 2: The Trench review: Toss this bucket of chum
Jason Statham returns to defend the world from giant, prehistoric sharks in The Meg 2: The Trench, an even-worse thriller that fails to do that premise justice.
Passages review: Ira Sachs’ portrait of a romantic scoundrel
Franz Rogowski plays a magnetically selfish lothario in Ira Sachs' compact drama, Passages.
How James Wan reshaped modern horror with Saw, The Conjuring, and Insidious
From Saw to Insidious to The Conjuring, the Aussie director James Wan has an uncanny ability to launch hit horror franchises.
Talk to Me review: scary party-game horror from A24
The Aussie horror movie Talk to Me has a great premise, but a disappointing second half blunts its scares.
Why is it so hard to make a hit Terminator movie again?
Every Terminator sequel since T2 has been a commercial dud. With the advancement of special effects and the rise of AI, why can't the Terminator series succeed?
Oppenheimer review: Christopher Nolan’s staggering atomic opus
Christopher Nolan returns with a towering, troubling 70mm biopic about the Father of the Atomic Bomb, Oppenheimer.
Does Jurassic Park reveal a guilty confession from Steven Spielberg?
The 1993 sci-fi film Jurassic Park works as both an entertaining blockbuster and a revealing confession about the damage Steven Spielberg did to modern movies.
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One review: Accept this mission
Tom Cruise returns once more as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, the latest entry in Hollywood's most reliably entertaining franchise.
Indiana Jones and the perils of sequelizing Steven Spielberg
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the latest example of how hard it is to make a sequel to a Steven Spielberg movie.
Irrational horror: How Skinamarink, The Outwaters, and Enys Men remystify the genre
Skinamarink, The Outwaters, and Enys Men bring some welcome irrationality back to a horror genre that is too obsessed with blunt metaphors about past trauma.
The decade of the dead: How 28 Days Later, World War Z, and zombies took over pop culture
Released 10 years apart, 28 Days Later and World War Z offered similar prophetic visions of global outbreak that make them more resonant in a post-COVID world.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts review: This prequel needs more Bayhem
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts is a prequel that streamlines the Michael Bay style into anonymous spectacle.
Smile review: A cruelly scary studio horror movie
There are traces of It Follows and The Ring in Parker Finn's diabolically effective horror movie Smile.
James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar returns to theaters, but has its magic faded?
James Cameron's sci-fi epic Avatar returns to theaters13 years after it broke records. Will audiences still care?
Don’t Worry Darling review: through the suburban looking glass
Despite the chaos of its press tour, Olivia Wilde's suburban Twilight Zone fantasy Don't Worry Darling starring Harry Styles is controlled to a fault.
The best films of TIFF 2022
From a surgical documentary to a Korean thriller to the triumphant return of Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc, these were our favorites films of TIFF '22.
The slasher Sick is a highlight of TIFF’s Midnight Madness
This year's Midnight Madness program at TIFF includes a slick slasher, a prequel to a horror hit, and another V/H/S/ anthology of horror.
Zac Efron goes to Vietnam in the shallow comedy The Greatest Beer Run Ever
In his follow-up to the Oscar-winning Green Book, director Peter Farrelly makes another bid for middlebrow prestige with The Greatest Beer Run Ever.
The Whale review: Brendan Fraser can’t save this histrionic drama
Brendan Fraser's sensitive performance is the chief highlight of Darren Aronofsky's limp drama The Whale.
The Fabelmans review: an origin story of Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg plunges into his own childhood with the twinkly-tragic memoir The Fabelmans.
Glass Onion review: a deviously intricate Knives Out sequel
Rian Johnson reteams with Daniel Craig for the delightfully complicated Knives Out sequel Glass Onion.
The documentary De Humani Corporis Fabrica is an astonishing dive into the human body
The experimental documentary De Humani Corporis Fabrica, now showing at this year's TIFF, takes a gross, beautiful plunge into the human body.
Down to clown? The biopic spoof Weird is a glorified Funny or Die sketch
Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is Al Yankovich in the dopey fictional biopic Weird, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Toronto film fest 2022 opens with a blandly inspirational Netflix biopic
Day one of the Toronto International Film Festival offered a blandly directed Netflix biopic, as well as an incisive Romanian drama.
Speak No Evil review: the horror of holding your tongue
A Dutch vacation becomes a sinister social nightmare in the unsettling Shudder-bound thriller Speak No Evil.
Event Horizon, Mimic, and the glory of the lowly late-August thriller
Released 25 years ago, Event Horizon and Mimic are Alien-indebted reminders that late August doesn't have to be a dumping ground.
Three Thousand Years of Longing review: George Miller takes a left turn off Fury Road
George Miller veers off Fury Road for the eccentric, romantic fable Three Thousand Years of Longing, starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton.
Three Minutes: A Lengthening review: Haunting documentary about the Holocaust
Built around the only footage of a Polish town destroyed by the Nazis, Three Minutes: A Lengthening is at once a memorial, detective story, and gripping essay.