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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    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 April Wolfe
    Game Night
    Mark Perez has written one of the tightest comedy scripts to make it to be the big screen in ages. Game Night, directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, wastes not a single second of dialogue, gives killer lines to every member of its all-star ensemble, delivers genuinely tense action sequences, and even goes for broke with style.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    The Party
    Potter isn’t what you’d call subtle, but she also knows not to overstay her welcome, and this pithy comedy is a masterclass in all that a filmmaker can squeeze from the most basic theatrical concept: Put a bunch of characters with opposing motivations in a room and see what happens.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Early Man
    Aardman Animations (Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep) generally invests a great deal of care and precision into its storytelling, but this picture is somehow both simple and nonsensical. Early Man is the convoluted, caveman-populated skewering of FIFA that nobody asked for.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 April Wolfe
    Fifty Shades Freed
    Those seeking out some titillating times would be better satisfied by Googling “feminist porn” and clicking randomly. But if you relish a mindless soap operatic story that leans into the silliness of the genre, Fifty Shades Freed might do the trick.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    Monster Family
    Nothing matters in this movie; stuff just happens.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 92 April Wolfe
    Seeing Allred
    What’s perhaps most fascinating about this documentary is how sure-footed Allred has been in picking her battles over the years.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    A Fantastic Woman
    A Fantastic Woman shows that the obvious insults a trans person may endure will, of course, weigh on the psyche, but the death by a thousand well-meaning cuts hurts as well.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Small Town Crime
    Every town possesses a history, culture, lineage and language all unto its own, but in the Nelms’s hands, we see none of that. Here’s a half-boiled mystery and boring bad guys, but the film does have a saving grace: Hawkes’s comic timing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 April Wolfe
    Lover for a Day
    The scenario almost seems an apologia for the film’s own subject matter, crafted with the awareness that audiences have outgrown the May-December trope.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Molly's Game
    Chastain seems at times to be both the lead and her own supporting actor in this story, as she oscillates between traditionally feminine and masculine modes of behavior, sometimes inhabiting both at once.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Happy End
    As with so many of his films, Haneke asks: Why? Why abide by the rules? Why go on? Here, he’s created two characters — Georges and Eve — I want to see exploring those questions and a handful I really don’t.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Beyond Skyline
    Beyond Skyline is pretty fun, even if it’s completely nonsensical.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 April Wolfe
    November Criminals
    What follows is something like Veronica Mars, only set in snowy D.C. and on heavy sedatives.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    I, Tonya
    Those expecting camp or catfights won’t find them in Gillespie’s movie, which instead offers thoughtful and somewhat objective critiques, plus much seriously dark humor that’ll elicit a lot of uncomfortable gasps of laughter — and invites you to ponder difficult truths.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 April Wolfe
    Call Me by Your Name
    Guadagnino adeptly captures not just the physicality of a burning love but also the emotional and intellectual components, and the film is all the more salient for that careful, realistic interpretation.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 April Wolfe
    Mudbound
    With Mudbound, Rees proves the truest rule of all: That talent and vision make all lesser rules negotiable. This absorbing, incredibly accomplished film should win awards and be taught in history classes all over America.
    • 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    Sweet Virginia
    The concepts Sweet Virginia explore through this setup — lives intersecting after a tragedy in a small town and a dangerous outsider tearing through a community — aren’t new for noir or westerns, but the understated, intense performances of Dagg’s cast make this slow burner a standout.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 April Wolfe
    mother!
    What I feel compelled to say, which can get lost in the myriad interpretations we may have of the film’s story or meaning, is that for all its self-indulgences and excess and ghastly sights, I was quickly enamored with Mother! in a way I’ve not been with any other Aronofsky film.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
    McDormand could have carried this film all the way through a minefield of touchy topics, singed but with all parts in the right place, primed for a painful laugh. But goddamnit if the cops in this story didn’t ruin all the fun.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 April Wolfe
    Gilbert
    In Neil Berkeley’s documentary Gilbert, we’re gifted with intimate moments from the comedian’s life.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 90 April Wolfe
    My Friend Dahmer
    My Friend Dahmer is both sensitive and fascinating, distinguished by a stellar, mouth-breathing performance of insecurity from Lynch.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 April Wolfe
    Princess Cyd
    While the chemistry between Pinnick and Spence is sweet and familial, I couldn’t help but think so much of this film is just…nice. It’s that pretty feather you found in the grass. And maybe you’ll take it home, but will likely forget you did.
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