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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    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Bleeding Steel
    The closest comparison for this film is 2017’s joyfully schlocky Beyond Skyline, though that boasted far more original set pieces. Bleeding Steel seems content to rehash old ones, cutting and pasting Chan into familiar scenes, with the welcome exception of one battle that takes place atop the Sydney Opera House — but I’ll be damned if I could figure out why or how they got there.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    The Yellow Birds
    What Moors offers that’s new is a kind of unfolding mystery, as we come to find what really happened to Murphy in the war zone. Too bad that the pacing is botched and that the whole narrative becomes one long dirge of “and then, and then, and then.”
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    Half the Picture
    Half the Picture is maddening and enlightening and, most of all, necessary, as much as I wish it weren’t.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 April Wolfe
    Hereditary
    In Aster’s story, as in life, the devil is in the details. As the film goes on, these details accumulate, coalesce, and then hang heavy over the characters.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    The Gospel According to André
    The Talley of before the election presents himself as a man who believes anything is possible if you swallow your anger, work hard enough, and sacrifice all — especially your chance at love — and the Talley of after seems to worry that much of that progress has proved an illusion.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Disobedience
    As a whole, the film is directionless, with few individual character-study scenes making it compelling enough. It’s almost as though there are miniature, worthy films within this film, and watching for those can be a thrill.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 April Wolfe
    Revenge
    In other hands, this film could go kitsch, could all be a big joke, but Fargeat directs Lutz like no other Rambo-style action hero before her.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    The 12th Man
    Harald Zwart’s thrilling The 12th Man, based on the true story of a Norwegian soldier who escaped the Nazis in World War II, is a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart but also an unexpectedly tender adventure that is as celebratory as it is tense.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 89 April Wolfe
    Let the Sunshine In
    When films are made about straight men in this predicament, they’re often considered explorations of a “midlife crisis,” but Denis’ film poses the questions: What if crises aren’t limited to a certain age, and what if love itself is the crisis?
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    Ghost Stories
    Equal parts spooky and cheeky, this film nails its black humor and finds a bizarre but satisfying conclusion to manage all the loose ends.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami
    This is an intimate portrait of the artist in recent years as she returns to Jamaica, the country of her birth and childhood, for a family reunion.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    Sweet Country
    Thornton delicately peels back all the layers of Aussie injustice in this film, but what’s most unnerving is that the story proves to be so universal.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    I Kill Giants
    Walter is riding a tricky line, but it’s his mixing of fantasy and reality, making the edges between the two porous, that ultimately sells the film.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    Unsane
    Simple and well acted, Unsane has tension enough to knot the stomach.
    • 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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 84 April Wolfe
    Blockers
    It’s the little, almost imperceptible twists to the story that make Blockers a worthy entry into the teen sex comedy canon, most notably that girls and women are funny and can play more than the killjoy or the babe.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
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