Aaron Hillis

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Premiere, Village Voice
For 194 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 40% higher than the average critic
  • 9% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Aaron Hillis' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 58
Highest review score: 100 Take Out
Lowest review score: 0 Unthinkable: An Airline Captain's Story
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 99 out of 194
  2. Mixed: 44 out of 194
  3. Negative: 51 out of 194
194 movie reviews
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    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Never Here
    Up through the ambiguous ending, Thoman withholds the story’s bigger puzzle pieces, which is satisfying when the focus is on Miranda’s quietly traumatic unraveling. Yet as a mystery, Never Here teases too much naturalism to get away with the haunting abstruseness Lynch does in his masterful return to Twin Peaks.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    The Pretty One
    Kazan holds together a decent coming-of-age script that's emotionally sincere if tonally unfocused.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    What About Me
    Come for the cult of personality, stay for the nostalgia of a dirtier, dodgier, far cooler scene.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Fraulein
    Stylized with a recurring misty focus, the film's economically captured detail shots (gestures, expressions, caught moments) convey genuine sensitivity without the expected weepiness.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Hyena
    The film's convoluted moral trajectory to hell may be as unoriginal as quoting Taxi Driver, and the pervasive violent menace can be needlessly punishing (including a drugged sexual assault), but as stylish, scorched-earth entertainment, it'll get you in its teeth.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Filly Brown
    Youssef Delara and Michael D. Olmos's variation on the too-familiar subgenre (the rising inner-city superstar here is a Latina tomboy) is more heartfelt, humanistic, and entertaining than such a clichéd showbiz cautionary tale has any right to be.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
    From Oshima’s later career (after one stroke, he made 1999’s Taboo; after two strokes, it’s unclear whether he’ll direct again), most notable is this bilingual, end-of-WWII tearjerker about forgiveness and understanding between cultures, which could have been dubbed The Man Who Fell to Java.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Extraordinary Ordinary People
    Folklorist Alan Govenar has dedicated himself to exalting their work in dozens of books and films. His knowledge and affection are contagious, but this enjoyable documentary is a sampler plate crammed with bite-size pieces that only hint at the original fare’s distinctive flavors.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone
    As a visceral experience, it’s entrancing, especially during Shinji’s fight sequences, when his anxieties are cruelly exacerbated by having his body and mind symbiotically bonded to his father’s combat toy.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Songs My Brothers Taught Me
    The performances are undeniably authentic, the cinematography could make Terrence Malick stand to give a slow clap, and sometimes a sensitive mood and evocative milieu are enough to sustain when there's barely a plot.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Below Dreams
    As the waves of this cinematic dream break, the profundities left behind come not from character arcs, but observed states of being that feel subjectively experienced.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Coming Home
    Viko Nikci's undeniably poignant doc surprisingly chooses to follow threads of hope and forgiveness over the angers of injustice.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    The Teacher
    The setup may be as unsubtle as a metaphoric morality lesson about Europe’s not-too-distant past, or perhaps it’s politically timeless; it’s not a far leap to also think about a certain someone’s insane need for backscratching loyalty within the White House.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Pig Death Machine
    Too madcap or not self-serious enough to be called transgressive, Moritsugu's degenerate romp splits the tonal difference between Nick Zedd and John Waters.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Aaron Hillis
    Centro Histórico
    A rich, artful quartet of shorts mirroring the diverse idiosyncrasies of four significant auteurs.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    Meet the Fockers
    De Niro is constantly upstaged by the showstopping, sunburnt duo of Streisand and Hoffman, but even their material is so recycled (more Focker puns, etc.) that it doesn’t matter who steals the most chuckles.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    An enjoyable mess that aimlessly goofs like "Men in Black" when its script calls for "Black Adder."
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    The Aristocrats
    The Aristocrats lies halfway between two potentially great films: it's neither a smartly austere succession of jokesmiths with all the critique left to the audience, nor a deconstructionist essay on "crossing the line" and the language of comedy itself.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    War of the Worlds
    Has masterfully polished mechanics, some of the most seamless CGI effects in recent memory, and the Wells veneration is admirable. However, the film takes far too many creative shortcuts, like bookended narration and aliens that make strategically humanlike mistakes, completely incongruous to their technological superiority.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    Together
    It may be a crowd-pleasing escapism, but it's that feel-good shmaltz that ultimately plays the film off-key.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    Stuck on You
    It may not be saying much, but what keeps this movie afloat, aside from solid performances, is the nearly sophisticated dynamic of an otherwise redundant punchline.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    The Brown Bunny
    The film stubbornly refuses to fill empty space with dialogue or adhere to any structure other than its own downbeat atmosphere, forcing viewers to be intensely patient or squirm. It's the best film I’ve seen in a while that I wouldn't recommend to anyone.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    The Orphanage
    The Orphanage's joys come from the experiential: Bayona's cultured technical skills, including some phenomenal sound design, and sustained anxiety. It's about as healthy as junk food gets.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    Bukowski: Born into This
    Dullaghan's film is a bit too straightforward and introductory to be declared a definitive portraiture. The gold nuggets worth sifting for lie in the anecdotal minutiae.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    Last Days
    Van Sant has mastered this kind of driftingly contemplative imagery and his layered soundscapes would make Sonic Youth proud (of course, Kim Gordon makes an appearance), but the introduction of other characters fracture the film's greatest asset, its lonely first-person atmosphere.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    Carandiru
    Stylistically, Carandiru is definitely less monochromatic than an "Oz" rerun.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    World Trade Center
    Underscored by the fragility of a plinking piano and well-timed flourishes to uplift, this heroic heartstring-tugger is still frequently and unexpectedly affecting, so much that it's able to hide its true face as a glorified movie-of-the-week.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    Dig!
    DiG! never delves deep enough to act as a true cautionary tale. It's an amusingly drunken PBS-worthy human-interest doc, unless you're too old or not cool enough to have played in the embarrassing hipster zoo, in which case DiG! may be the closest you'll ever get to the uncaged animals.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    The Day After Tomorrow
    The real top billing, what audience-goers are obviously shelling out to see, is the computer-generated chaos, and as they should: Digital technology has caught up with our collective imaginations Now More Than Ever.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Aaron Hillis
    Seabiscuit
    For such a pedestrian exercise in Spielbergian sentiment, the somewhat stale Seabiscuit dunks into some gravy moments; the always dependable William H. Macy is three honks and six rattles of comic relief as the sound effects–happy, kooky radio reporter Tick Tock McGlaughlin, and the racing scenes themselves are spectacular.
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