A.A. Dowd

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IGN, The A.V. Club
For 852 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

A.A. Dowd 's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 The Long Day Closes
Lowest review score: 16 Replicas
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 528 out of 852
  2. Mixed: 278 out of 852
  3. Negative: 46 out of 852
852 movie reviews
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    Stations of the Cross
    Formally, Stations Of The Cross is a rigorous achievement; there’s a purity, cinematic if not spiritual, to the way Brüggemann carefully composes each static shot, as though they all really were paintings to be arranged in succession along a line of pews. It’s less successful on a dramatic level.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 A.A. Dowd
    No Time to Die
    No Time To Die is forgettable in all the places that usually count—it’s a Bond movie with little excitement or panache.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 A.A. Dowd
    Caniba
    Certainly, viewers may feel a kind of seasickness, their stomachs doing somersaults during this supremely discomfiting movie.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 58 A.A. Dowd
    Fear Street Part Three: 1666
    1666 offers about the best you could expect from it: a modestly rewarding resolution, like a finale that makes you glad you finished up the season but not convinced you’ll tune in for the next one.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    Crawl
    If any one thing holds back this modest, skillfully made potboiler from true B-movie glory, it’s the human drama.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    Inequality for All
    As a primer on its topic, Inequality For All is informative, plainly argued, and — in some of its more poignant anecdotes — suitably enraging.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    Neighbors
    Trouble is, Neighbors rarely exploits its generational war of attrition for big laughs or true insight. And despite a couple of puerile gags, it often feels as domesticated (and fatigued) as its main characters.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    Noah
    The result is a monolithic slab of Biblical fan fiction, at once deeply serious and seriously silly. It’s a mess, but at least it’s the mess its creators wanted.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    Black Widow
    For all the work this spinoff puts into generating a traumatic origin story for its moonlighting superhero, it would be a stretch to say that either Johansson or the filmmakers finally find the real Romanoff—or even that they much deepen the various versions of her we’ve met already.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    Band Aid
    You’ll believe you’re watching two people who love each other but no longer know how to live with each other. You may still wish Band Aid better distinguished their relationship.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    Other People
    What keeps Kelly honest is the wealth of authentic detail he sprinkles throughout.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 58 A.A. Dowd
    Brigsby Bear
    The big finale never reaches "Chuck & Buck" levels of therapeutic catharsis, because Mooney hasn’t really let us see James’ pain, only his gushy wide-eyed innocence, his lovability.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    This Is the End
    Funny is funny, and it would be truly dishonest to deny the big laughs—the spikes of gut-busting inspiration—that the film sporadically delivers.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 A.A. Dowd
    Halloween
    Halloween isn’t explicitly a horror-comedy, but it does have the destructive habit of undercutting its scares with broad laughs, Green and McBride deflating the tension at every turn with goofball asides.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 A.A. Dowd
    The Little Stranger
    In truth, The Little Stranger is barely a horror movie at all. It’s more of an impeccably crafted chamber drama with a supernatural bent, like Edith Wharton by way of Shirley Jackson.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 58 A.A. Dowd
    Fear Street Part One: 1994
    1994 channels that legacy of give and take, between teen horror of the page and screen, into a polished nostalgia object of secondhand thrills, a throwback to a throwback.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 A.A. Dowd
    The Last Duel
    The setting may be the 14th century, but this is very much a historical drama of modern concerns. Damningly, it suggests that yesterday’s injustices remain very much today’s.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 58 A.A. Dowd
    As You Are
    Never does it sound much like something grunge fans might like.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 A.A. Dowd
    Closed Circuit
    Closed Circuit may be little more than a high-minded, shrewdly topical gloss on a shopworn genre, but its cynicism is bracing.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    The Gift
    Pivoting out of conventional horror-flick territory into the realm of psychodrama, and drastically blurring the lines separating its heroes from its villains, The Gift turns out to be much smarter and more troubling than it looks on the surface.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 58 A.A. Dowd
    Tom at the Farm
    As interesting as it is to see the filmmaker move out of his wheelhouse, Tom At The Farm is neither dramatically satisfying nor psychologically convincing. Something was clearly lost in its transition from stage to screen.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 A.A. Dowd
    The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her
    It’s little surprise that Her turns out to be the better of the two movies, mostly by virtue of prominently featuring Chastain, who conveys an interior life — shifting emotions, competing desires — the script doesn’t supply her.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 67 A.A. Dowd
    Wonder Woman
    The best thing about Wonder Woman, the overlong and intermittently enjoyable new DC superhero spectacular, is Wonder Woman herself.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 A.A. Dowd
    Long Shot
    At least Long Shot acknowledges, more explicitly than usual, that it’s a kind of adolescent fantasy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 A.A. Dowd
    Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus
    For a moment, Crystal Fairy looks like it’s going to be a real fish-in-a-barrel satire, its rifles aimed at two very easy targets. But once a coked-out Cera invites Hoffmann on his road trip, a voyage he hopes will culminate with the consumption of a psychotropic cactus, the film gains a ramshackle quality that’s difficult to resist.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 A.A. Dowd
    Patti Cake$
    There’s no cliché so corny that Patti Cake$ won’t exploit it for our approval.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 A.A. Dowd
    The Life of Chuck
    You can admire the ambition of The Life of Chuck while still wondering if such a lightly philosophical story needed to make the leap to the screen – or if turning all of its prose into Nick Offerman voice-over was the best move. It’s less an adaptation, ultimately, than a glorified book on tape from a talented King superfan.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 A.A. Dowd
    Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
    The uplifting nature of this true story naturally triggers Van Sant’s pesky sentimentality, with scenes that recall the hug-it-out, therapeutic catharsis of Good Will Hunting. But this is still the writer-director’s most formally interesting, emotionally involving movie in a decade, however little that may really be saying.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 83 A.A. Dowd
    Wild Canaries
    At its core, Wild Canaries is a reminder that relationships require a sense of adventure, and maybe a little mystery, to keep the magic alive. Indie comedies, as the film proves, benefit from the same.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 A.A. Dowd
    Smile 2
    Smile 2 doesn’t quite match its sadistically effective predecessor in the scare department, because once you’ve seen one phantom doppelganger grinning like the Cheshire Cat, you’ve seen them all. But the movie works as a nasty portrait of the downside of music-biz fame, and it builds to an ending deserving of every crooked smile it earns.
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