Angelica Jade Bastien

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New York Magazine (Vulture), RogerEbert.com
For 72 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 29% higher than the average critic
  • 0% same as the average critic
  • 71% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 11.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Angelica Jade Bastien's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 54
Highest review score: 100 Black Bag
Lowest review score: 0 Bad Hair
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 26 out of 72
  2. Mixed: 26 out of 72
  3. Negative: 20 out of 72
72 movie reviews
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    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    The Drama
    Its comedy is successfully awkward and discomfiting until it’s evident Borgli isn’t interested in exploring people so much as using their mistakes as gristle to create an endless sprawl of socially awkward scenarios with all the grace and interpersonal cognizance of an edgelord. It is only through the sheer force of the actors involved that the movie is engaging and entertaining.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Angelica Jade Bastien
    The Monkey
    The problem is that The Monkey has a hole at its center. It isn’t comedic enough to distract from the fact that the film traffics in rote archetypes, and it doesn’t quite pluck the heartstrings of its audience over the ragged inheritance from fathers to their sons either.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Star Trek: Section 31
    The film adopts a visual slickness that renders it anonymous. You don’t have to squint hard to recognize how the writers and the director are cribbing from other science-fiction franchises in an attempt to refresh Star Trek — though all that accomplishes is giving the franchise a center of gravity that isn’t its own.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Challengers
    Like the film Challengers itself, Zendaya is a star who still operates on the surface of things.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé
    There is no star of such magnitude who more cunningly positions themselves as apolitical than Beyoncé. Her performance as an icon is meant to connect with the broadest number of people possible. To do that, her refusal to stand for anything specific beyond the watered-down treatises on Black excellence must be maintained.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Babylon
    Babylon is a film too busy writing an elegy for the still-breathing body of film as a medium to capture the true beauty and complications of being alive.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
    To say the film is overtaxed is an understatement. Regrettably, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever tries to do so many things that it comes across as threadbare and pallid — less a failure of imagination and more of circumstance, time, and narrative constraints.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Men
    Despite all the broken bones, the graphic deaths, and the copious amounts of blood, the driving idea behind Men is not bold enough to feel frightening. Instead, it’s remarkably tepid.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    The Lost City
    The Lost City isn’t terrible, just aggressively mediocre. It is the kind of movie you put on in the background after coming across it on TBS while you fold laundry on a Sunday afternoon. If anything, The Lost City makes evident not a lack of stars, but a persistent inability on the part of contemporary Hollywood to know what to do with them.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 40 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
    Ma Rainey postures toward being an actor’s showcase, but its storytelling — and its actorly pitfalls — prohibit that from being the reality.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    The High Note
    While Ross lacks the bite and Johnson lacks the depth, Kelvin Harrison Jr. feels like a revelation. He’s bristling with warmth, intrigue, and mystery.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Angelica Jade Bastien
    The Lovebirds
    This is a film designed to be watched while performing a menial task — folding the laundry or washing dishes. Even during a pandemic, or perhaps especially so, we have more pressing things to do with our time than drain it away watching mediocre Netflix comedies.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Angelica Jade Bastien
    The Photograph
    Unfortunately, The Photograph doesn’t quite deliver on the promise of its premise.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Queen & Slim
    Queen & Slim does a disservice to both the themes of love and anger by never giving the latter the depth it deserves, leaving the film a beautiful object to behold but a hollow narrative to consider.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Harriet
    Harriet only highlights how this genre can fail despite the so-called important nature of the picture and a talented black director at the helm.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    It: Chapter Two
    It Chapter Two moves with an almost too swift purpose, never feeling the weight of its nearly three-hour runtime; although it is long, the film feels frustratingly thin. Meanwhile, the film is aggressively sentimental, and moments of emotional catharsis or terror don’t often hit the way they need to. When they do, it is because of the dedication of the acting.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Don't Let Go
    Don’t Let Go is a slog. I wish it loosened up, better balanced the potential fear, joy, wonder, and delight spooling out of its premise to yield a more adventurous result. Instead, it carries itself with dread and stilted seriousness, alleviated only by noteworthy performances from Reid and Oyelowo.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Skin
    Ultimately, Skin — despite its artful compositions and meditative editing choices — devolves into a reductive redemption fable that doesn’t fully wrestle with the racism or politics governing Babs’s decisions.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Child's Play
    Unfortunately, Child’s Play is undone by a lack of tension even its best performances can’t conjure, and a familiar story that only skips lightly along the surface of gnarly ideas.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Late Night
    Even the film’s most charming character work is undone by the stale jokes that populate its script.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Ma
    Ultimately, to borrow a phrase from writer Michele Wallace, Ma is too wistfully hegemonic to truly work.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Nappily Ever After
    Unfortunately, instead of coming across as a warm throwback, Nappily Ever After is a romantic comedy saddled with a reductive understanding of black womanhood without enough cast chemistry or beauty to distract us.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Detroit
    Detroit was directed, written, produced, shot, and edited by white creatives who do not understand the weight of the images they hone in on with an unflinching gaze.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Live Cargo
    Despite the care put into the story and its heavy themes, Live Cargo has no emotional impact.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    Ghost in the Shell
    Full of dazzling images that suggest a rich, profound narrative the film is never able to achieve.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Angelica Jade Bastien
    How He Fell in Love
    The acting starts off capable even if it reflects the same lifelessness of the film itself, but as the story continues the performances only magnify script issues that become unbearable.

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