Bilge Ebiri

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L.A. Weekly, New York Magazine (Vulture), The New York Times, Village Voice
For 1,180 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 59% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 39% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1 point higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Bilge Ebiri's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Cyrano
Lowest review score: 0 Dolittle
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 711 out of 1180
  2. Mixed: 366 out of 1180
  3. Negative: 103 out of 1180
1180 movie reviews
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    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    The Life of Chuck
    The film’s driving ideas, which transform over the course of the picture, are replete with ironic potential, but Flanagan ably navigates the tonal minefield, never presenting the whole thing as a wink-wink joke on his characters. They feel real, both in their conception and in how they deviate from our preconceptions, which is quite an accomplishment given that most of them aren’t even onscreen for that long within the movie’s frescolike structure.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story
    For an hour and a half, this charming little movie, with its chatty talking heads and its sweet-natured subjects, offers a glimpse into the lives of two fascinating people whom I had never heard of, and who shared an unlikely life filled with achievements and setbacks, wonder and pain.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Burning
    Lee Chang-dong’s dexterity with the telling minutiae of human interactions ensures that Burning makes for an emotionally gripping film. I’m not sure he sticks the landing, however: The finale, while it doesn’t actually resolve anything, felt to me more convenient than convincing. But maybe that’s because I had too much invested in these characters.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Tu Dors Nicole
    Lafleur’s film is a quiet trifle that sneaks up on you, like a pleasant dream you might have and then gradually forget. Its very slightness is its greatest weapon.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Frida
    By the time the movie is over, we feel, perhaps for the first time, like we’ve gotten to know this legendary, almost mythical figure. Despite the tumult of her life and her singularity as both a person and an artist, this Frida seems downright familiar.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    El Conde
    Beneath all the genre theatrics, what comes through most vividly in El Conde are Larraín’s sadness and rage at what happened to his country.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    A Hologram for the King
    Tykwer sublimates what Eggers made explicit: the joblessness, the debt, the isolation. He knows the power of an image, a gesture, a brief exchange, so he captures those social themes in flashes, which ironically gives them new power.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Frankenstein
    Del Toro’s comes into a marketplace more open to gothic delirium, and he’s such an expert craftsman that the film is a momentous technical achievement. But it’s more than that. Whatever its flaws, the director has filled Frankenstein with seemingly everything he loves, and it reflects his obsessions. It feels like the work of a true madman, and that’s really the only way anyone should make a movie of Frankenstein.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    People Places Things
    We know these characters are going through a lot, even if we don’t always see it. And so, this short, ramshackle, shrinking movie manages to stick with you.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Perfect Days
    Your cousin could have written this movie. But maybe only Wenders could have directed it. He has the sensitivity to shoot the seesawing depths of Yakusho’s face. He has the eye to capture the elegant and diverse architecture of Tokyo’s public bathrooms.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
    It’s wonderfully inventive filmmaking: Amirpour’s striking compositions borrow from the iconography of both the Western and the horror film — wide, evocative vistas are intercut with dark, tense city streets where shadowy figures follow one another.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Frank
    As playful as it is, Lenny Abrahamson’s film is mostly a surprisingly earnest story about the compromises and conflicts of art, stardom, and mental illness.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Eden
    The pressures of the untamed setting, combined with the inability of these characters to ever trust each other, results in an over-the-top melodrama that gets loopier as it goes on. But it pulls us along, too.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    The Oldest Person in the World
    For a movie so filled with death, The Oldest Person in the World is surprisingly, almost confrontationally life-affirming. That sounds cheap, but Green comes by the sentiment honestly.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Jimmy's Hall
    Don’t let the politics scare you off, though, for Jimmy’s Hall is a joyous movie. I wasn’t being glib with that earlier mention of "Footloose": Loach’s film isn’t technically a musical, but it has that same spirit, that same let’s-put-on-a-show vitality.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Cloud
    Kurosawa films psychological torment with real gravity, and he films physical cruelty with humorous detachment. The absurdity of his vision matches our topsy-turvy reality.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Stray Dog
    Somehow, gradually, this intimate documentary portrait of one very unique person starts to take on the qualities of a national epic. Through the eyes of this man, we start to see our own country in a different light.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Megalopolis
    Megalopolis might be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy every single batshit second of it.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    The Death of Dick Long
    The Death of Dick Long becomes a symphony of stupidity. I say “symphony” because it’s multivoiced and overpowering. That’s part of the movie’s charm, too: You can feel your brain melting away as you watch it, and that’s not always a bad sensation.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Better Man
    There’s an interesting juxtaposition here: a paint-by-numbers biopic structure, neatly bookmarked (to a fault) with pat dialogue about the perils of fame and the double life of stardom and abandonment issues and whatnot, which is then constantly upended by completely batshit musical sequences.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Sisu
    Sisu veers between the elemental and the ethereal. Once it’s over, it feels like you must have dreamed it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Zarafa
    The patient storytelling and the elegant and colorful hand-drawn animation combine to give the film a pleasing, picture-book-like quality that should appeal to kids; there’s something very old-school about the film’s aesthetic. But in some senses, it also feels like a blast of fresh air, not the least because of where, and on whom, it chooses to place its focus.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Piercing
    Piercing is an unnerving mix of loveliness and lunacy.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    The Wedding Guest
    It’s all quite gorgeous, and surprisingly moving. The Wedding Guest shows just how much you can do with a wisp of a story and a whole lot of cinematic vision.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Spettacolo
    Is this art or is this prophecy? Is there even a difference?
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    The Waldheim Waltz
    Beckermann wants not so much to contextualize as to invoke — with the hope, perhaps, that placing us in the middle of this debate will create its own context.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    X-Men: Apocalypse
    This film nimbly mixes narrative exuberance and emotional depth, flamboyant displays of power with quietly terrifying exchanges. It zips along, combining the highs and lows of a real comic book – all the feeling, color, and wonder, even some of the dopiness – with gloriously cinematic storytelling.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    The Killing of a Sacred Deer
    As things spun out of control, getting ever stranger, I started to wonder if the director had merely written himself into a corner and was doubling down on weirdness to get himself out. And yet the film never quite loses its mythic drive. You walk out feeling like you’ve truly had an experience.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Bilge Ebiri
    Megadoc
    Like the man who made it, Megalopolis is a movie that bears both the qualities and the scars of these conflicts. We probably didn’t need Megadoc to tell us this, but it remains a thoroughly fascinating look at one of the most unlikely films ever made.
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