April Wolfe

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L.A. Weekly, The A.V. Club, TheWrap, Village Voice
For 186 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

April Wolfe's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Manchester by the Sea
Lowest review score: 0 Life Itself
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 111 out of 186
  2. Mixed: 60 out of 186
  3. Negative: 15 out of 186
186 movie reviews
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    The Autopsy of Jane Doe
    Without the serious acting talent of its leads, this color-saturated gross-out horror could have devolved into a mess, but The Autopsy of Jane Doe proves imperfect fun even when it starts to play like CSI: Salem.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 89 April Wolfe
    Captain Marvel
    Captain Marvel, the first Marvel adaptation both to star a woman and to be co-directed by a woman, is an obvious, crude, and transparent film. And it’s also quite enjoyable and evocative — most of the time.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    Slash
    It's both funny and enlightening, a nuanced yet strikingly bold look at how teens see themselves, not how adults would like to see them. Parents: Take note. Teens: Relax, you'll figure it out.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    XX
    I’d rather see these shorts included in a co-ed anthology, which would allow each director’s piece to gain resonance via proximity to works of shared themes. Still, if it takes segregating the sexes to climb up to gender parity, I can overlook a slightly mismatched directing combo.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    In a Valley of Violence
    A slow approach requires careful atmosphere-building, and these days West is actually stronger at writing funny dialogue than he is at creating atmosphere.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 April Wolfe
    Anna and the Apocalypse
    Unfortunately, the film, written by Alan McDonald from a short by the late Viner Ryan McHenry, at times comes closer to a facsimile than a parody. When McPhail does hit the high notes, however, he really hits them.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Seoul Searching
    Every character gets to learn a lesson, and while the humor is nothing new, the situations are.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    My Cousin Rachel
    Tense and at times downright frightening.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    Buster's Mal Heart
    It’s science fiction that’s complex, thoughtful and funny, like 12 Monkeys or Primer run through a Fargo filter.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Sicario: Day of the Soldado
    Del Toro and Moner say everything that’s needed with pained, bewildered eyes. Meanwhile, Graver speaks with relentless American cynicism. He is both funny and unnerving, and maybe more unnerving because he’s being funny.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    The Eyes of My Mother
    I've been watching horror films since I was three years old. They've never given me nightmares. Until now.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    Unsane
    Simple and well acted, Unsane has tension enough to knot the stomach.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    Keanu
    Key and Peele have a special kind of magic they’ve brought to their first feature, but it’s also a crazy-simple formula: Keep saving that damn cat.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    The Bookshop
    Though nearly nothing happens in this movie besides a woman opening a shop and beginning a standoffish friendship with a reclusive man, I still found myself drawn in, just as I was drawn to Iain’s discreet disaster of a baked Alaska (please check it out if you haven’t seen this TGBBS episode); sometimes the quiet is enticing.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Wakefield
    Swicord turns what could be a dark or one-note premise into a sometimes charming, sometimes heartbreaking meditation on a man’s loss of self after having set out to conquer the job, wife, house, and kids he thought would make him happy.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    Let the Corpses Tan
    More times than I could count I had no idea what the hell was happening, and also just didn’t care that I didn’t know. Let the Corpses Tan is that strange and beautiful.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 78 April Wolfe
    Destroyer
    Despite the film’s needlessly fractured structure and a relentlessly grim story, Kidman and Kusama seem to be speaking the same language, in quieter moments illuminating not just the faults of the protagonist but also the faults of every tragic hard-boiled detective in cinematic history.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Sleight
    The director builds to one big, beautiful revelation. But the story he tells in the lead-up doesn’t distract so much as it politely asks you to stand up so that it can place the trick card under your ass.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    The Bad Batch
    No matter how confounding the story gets, details and humor ground the narrative, and a simple guiding premise about the importance of human connection and artistic expression fills in the blanks.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    The Sense of an Ending
    Batra kills the mystery part of the story and instead pushes the adaptation toward that humanism, which renders a good chunk of the plot a wash. Good thing Batra’s really adept at the human portraits, though.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    The Light Between Oceans
    The sense of authenticity that marks The Light Between Oceans at its best has everything to do with the acting — and if all Cianfrance ever gives us is that, it's worth the price of his lagging third act.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Like Me
    Timlin so fully embodies the role of the sociopathic Kiya that this often-gruesome buffet of wild imagery bathed in hot pink impresses even with a thin, nearly nonexistent story. And Mockler’s and Jessalyn Abbott’s artfully chaotic editing style...elevates Like Me to video art.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    Into the Forest
    This isn’t torture-porn dystopia; it’s a singular, honest, heartfelt portrait of sisterly devotion at the end of the world
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie
    The art of physical comedy is alive and well with Saunders and Lumley, who precisely calculate each well-timed tumble.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    In Darkness
    The first third of the story then presents her like a typical Hitchcock ingenue before branching out into a promisingly ambitious mystery. Too bad that story ultimately loses focus and its protagonist’s point of view.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Wildling
    The attention paid to images does not translate to character development, story, or dialogue, leaving little emotional resonance, while making me seriously wonder if the men telling these stories understand much at all about female sexuality.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    Before I Fall
    Russo-Young gives this teen parable the thriller treatment to ward off any cheese, and watching Deutch learn her lesson with that expressive face of hers is a singular, moving experience.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
    The complexity of feminism for young girls today is displayed with rare hilarity and insight.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Lights Out
    When Sandberg isn’t spinning his wheels in the why, he’s capable of doling out a steady diet of scares.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    The Trust
    In The Trust, the stylish new heist film from Alex and Benjamin Brewer, we get a brief, satisfying, darkly comic peek at everyday Vegas life as lived by low-level LVPD officers. Then the film quickly loses focus and forgets the quirky characters that make the city — and the story — special.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Hotel Artemis
    Whether it’s the too-harried pacing or too many central people vying for attention, the film’s heart never quite coalesces. Seizing it is like trying to grab a cloud. Pearce seems to want this movie to be both a neon pulp plot-heavy piece and a character-driven drama, and there’s just not enough time in a single film for all of it to work.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    The Zookeeper's Wife
    True to form, Caro seems unbound by her audience’s expectations of a WWII picture; she delivers a singular, thrilling portrait, filled with surprises and moving performances.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Claire in Motion
    Howell and Robinson go all-in on Claire’s measured mourning, and while it may be realistic, that detachment — along with a relentlessly clinical gray-tinged color palette — ultimately bogs down whatever momentum Claire in Motion might be working up to.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    The Discovery
    While the film is ambitious, with enough intrigue and uneasy moral quandaries to keep my attention rapt in the end it just doesn’t make the leap to the other side.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    A Wrinkle in Time
    I was transported by DuVernay’s adaptation to the mind-set of my girlhood — embarrassing insecurities and all. This is not a cynic’s film. It is, instead, unabashedly emotional.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Book Club
    Even though it follows the map of every romcom before it, Holderman’s film still offers the too-rare chance to marvel at just how good these women are at their craft, how easily they inhabit the bodies and lives of other people.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Unfriended: Dark Web
    For all its inventive and impressive technique, the film lacks fun; a lot of folks, myself included, need very little reminding that the Internet is a threat and that terrible men are actively out there abducting and terrorizing girls and women for lulz.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 0 April Wolfe
    Life Itself
    The Crash-meets–Collateral Beauty false-gravitas joke of the year.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Humor Me
    Hoffman’s feature debut is hampered by well-worn tropes the writer-director seems at first to be aware of — and playing with — before he leans so hard into them that whatever originality the film at first displayed crashes right into a well of rom-com cliché.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Red Sparrow
    With Lawrence (the director) and Lawrence (the actor) so professionally in tune over the course of three Hunger Games films, you might have hoped that the pair would deliver an off-the-rails, more mature action film with a nuanced female protagonist. But instead, they’ve delivered a lifeless peep show.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Murder on the Orient Express
    Despite the bright cinematography, there’s something quaint and comforting about this film and its brand of old-fashioned storytelling, where coincidences are extremely likely, everyone somehow knows a countess, and a man puts honor above all else.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    Kuso
    Kuso is an astounding feat of animation, humor, and practical effects.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    The Neon Demon
    Whether or not you connect with Refn's brand of over-the-top violence, you can't deny that his attention to color, texture, and music is nearly unmatched by other directors working today.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Boundaries
    Where Feste best succeeds in Boundaries isn’t in the father-daughter relationship, which finds her straining for a tight resolution, but in the mother-son one, where the two actors vibe easily and persuasively off each other.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Therapy for a Vampire
    The strongest aspect of Therapy for a Vampire is its exquisite visual homage to the vamp films of old, and also the screwballs.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Please Stand By
    The film itself is often flat, akin to a very well-directed after-school special crafted exclusively to dramatize what it might be like to either live on the high-functioning end of the spectrum or care for someone who’s there.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Gold
    In the end, the whole thing is a bit like one big golden shower pissing contest, with every male character vying for top of the trough.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    The Greatest Showman
    Hugh Jackman is charming as ever, and two dance scenes are mildly inventive and well-executed, yet Jackman’s goodwill and a splash of inspired choreography are not enough to earn the greatest in the title.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Jungle
    While the horror director successfully distills Ghinsberg’s spare prose into a succession of terrifying images, McLean can’t seem to help straying into the tackier elements of horror.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Paris Can Wait
    Imagine The Trip meets Lost in Translation (Coppola’s daughter Sophia’s debut), but with stale dialogue and neither much romance nor comedy
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Porto
    All of this is attractive, yet I felt nothing for these people, their pain, or their possible lost future.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Morgan
    Even if his film's plot is predictable, the younger Scott is returning the ensemble thriller to its roots with something far more important than an airtight story: compelling, well-drawn characters and the talented actors to play them.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Being Charlie
    If Charlie were just unlikable, it all might be palatable and even fun. But his behavior draws more of an eye-roll than a laugh or a snarl, despite Robinson's confident, believable performance.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Railroad Tigers
    With heart, humor and some breathtaking special effects, Ding Sheng’s Railroad Tigers charms and thrills.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    A Cure for Wellness
    The director conjures some chills with a cold plunge into an enchanting and frightful world — the imagery’s straight out of a Kubrick and Lynch nightmare — but the story unravels as he tries to overexplain his evil doctor’s devilish plot.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Beyond Skyline
    Beyond Skyline is pretty fun, even if it’s completely nonsensical.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Flower
    Flower is messy and imperfect and above all else a star-making role for Deutch, who carries this film from funny to tragic and back again.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Aftermath
    The story necessitates ceaseless sadness, which can grind, but for the most part Aftermath glides just above the wreckage with its leads’ performances. Lester, however, can’t resist throwing in some easy, cheesy symbolism to slop it up.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    All I See Is You
    It defeats expectations, but it’s far more arresting and captivating a romance because Forster infuses it with suspenseful urgency. I have to admire the guts of a director who portrays the dissolution of a mismatched marriage with the dread of a murder mystery.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Black Butterfly
    Banderas, who doesn’t get to speak a single good line, still manages to convey panic, terror and confusion. It’s his performance that allows this film to float at all.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Bad Samaritan
    There’s frightfully little atmosphere to this film — anything from creepy sound design to evocative cinematography — rendering the flaws in the story all too visible.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Voice from the Stone
    As evocative as the production design and cinematography are, multiple cheesy scenes with one-dimensional characters undermine Howell’s efforts to spook, let alone redefine a genre.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    The Hollow Point
    Lyew kills the story with implausible twists, but he does craft some effective, original set pieces.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Outlaws and Angels
    Despite worthy performances from the entire cast, this movie’s a prime example of a director admiring some great movies but only having a cursory, superficial understanding of what it was that made them work.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 55 April Wolfe
    Krystal
    The comic drama Krystal, marking William H. Macy’s third time out as a feature director, is so baffling that it must be appreciated at least for its ability to defy all logic.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Jack Goes Home
    There might be a good story somewhere deep inside this tangled narrative, but Dekker seems more focused on creating a succession of "scary" images than he is on that.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Bad Santa 2
    God bless Kathy Bates, because she scalds with the darkest, mindfuckiest burns as the ultimate Mommy Dearest. And this script is in dire need of her.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Devil's Gate
    What’s most disappointing is that Staub proves himself to be a formidable director of action and visual effects. Please, someone just give him a better story.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Perfect
    The sheer number of artisans creating great work on this film does become a disappointment, though. Without a proper story or dialogue, what good is skin-deep beauty?
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Spaceman
    Throughout the film, the wrong characters are in focus, inexplicable close-ups abound, and Rapkin’s got the camera on rails, moving and panning for seemingly no reason.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Proud Mary
    It’s a sad day when the cinematographer carries the full burden of storytelling, but in this instance, it’s also at least a wonderful opportunity to marvel at Laustsen’s work.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    The Dark Tower
    Outside of its actors, the film is unremarkable.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Alice Through the Looking Glass
    It’s so gorgeous you can sometimes forget the train wreck of a story. But only sometimes.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Colonia
    Rather than a grand buildup, Colonia just gives the sense of one thing happening, and then another thing happening.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    November Criminals
    What follows is something like Veronica Mars, only set in snowy D.C. and on heavy sedatives.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    The Unspoken
    This film is in dire need of some atmosphere and a rewrite to make the twists work.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Terminal
    Compounding the manic energy of the editing is dialogue that muses mostly on long-winded ideas that don’t lend themselves to any kind of visual representation.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Dark Crimes
    This is one very ugly movie at its heart, not for how Englert photographed it but for how bleak and unrelenting the violence is — even that ending can’t dig Dark Crimes out of its dark hole.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Ghost Team
    The jokes are thinner than the apparitions.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 10 April Wolfe
    Bad Kids of Crestview Academy
    There’s very little fun to be had with the camp of Bad Kids.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Echo Park
    Echo Park doesn't circumvent expectations, but it's worth a watch for those small moments of two humans relating to each other on a realistic plane. Just don't expect to learn anything about Echo Park, its residents, or how people deal with gentrification.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    The House on Coco Road
    This documentary doesn’t just tell the ill-fated story of the failed Grenada utopia — which failed because of American intervention. The House on Coco Road is instead a sprawling tale of African-American migration, the search for peace, and America’s relentless sabotage of black escape.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Monster Family
    Nothing matters in this movie; stuff just happens.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Pickings
    I wish Morgan had put as much care into the script as he did into his inventive, illustrative style.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Distorted
    If there’s one thing I can say for this movie, it’s that the cast is delivering, even if the story they’re in cannot.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 89 April Wolfe
    The Icarus Line Must Die
    If there are any takeaways from Grodner’s film, it’s that we are all powerless to stop the passage of time, and, as Future Music owner Jack Waterson says, “Be truly loved or truly hated, man, cuz anything in the middle is garbage.” I think you’ll truly love or truly hate this film, but I’m firmly in the “love” camp for this remarkable Los Angeles time capsule.
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