Christopher Machell

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CineVue
For 344 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 8.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Christopher Machell's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 Playground
Lowest review score: 20 Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 230 out of 344
  2. Mixed: 110 out of 344
  3. Negative: 4 out of 344
344 movie reviews
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    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    Tootsie
    Despite sharing the stylistic trappings of so many 1980s urban comedies – Three Men and a Baby, Big, Crocodile Dundee – Tootsie transcends its generic conventions with a wonderfully nuanced turn from Hoffman, a terrific supporting cast that includes Bill Murray and Jessica Lange, and a screenplay that is as sensitive as it is funny. Tootsie’s finely balanced writing is one of the film’s greatest strengths, being consistently funny without ever turning the central premise into a gag.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    So Long, My Son
    Subsumed by the bigger picture, the plot resurfaces at the end to utterly devastating effect. Only a film with the epic sweep of So Long, My Son could pull off such a narrative feat so beautifully.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    If Beale Street Could Talk
    If Beale Street Could Talk is a rich, tender and poetic film as much about love as it is about injustice.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    A Raisin in the Sun
    At once a searing, affirming and defiant portrayal of race, poverty and frustrated aspiration in America.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Christopher Machell
    The Awful Truth
    The film lacks the crackle of Grant’s later masterpieces yet there remains a great deal to enjoy here with an ending that surprises with its tenderness, not-so-subtle eroticism and visual wit.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    It Happened One Night
    The combination of Capra’s playful sensibility, inimitable 1930s line delivery, and a screwball wit really come together here to capture lightning in a bottle.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    Return to Seoul
    Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul is a visceral, astonishingly assured work, compelling, rarely predictable, and vital.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    Mission: Impossible – Fallout
    Not only is Fallout the best Mission: Impossible film by a considerable margin, it is also undoubtedly the best action film of the year.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    F for Fake
    F for Fake is a sometimes maddening, always brilliant disruption of the conventional documentary.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    Jane
    A deeply felt, loving tribute to a truly remarkable woman.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    Perischetti, Ramsey and Rothman’s picture is an irresistible treat throughout, an unadulterated confection crafted with wit, vivacity and heart.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    Blue Jean
    [An] astonishing feature debut.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    Tampopo
    Through a series of vignettes hung together by the widow of a noodle chef, this ramen-western explores how the pleasure and meaning we derive from food are vital and enriching components in the human experience.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    Playground
    Both Vanderbeque and Duret give star turns here: utterly believable as brother and sister, each performance informs the other as they try to survive each day.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
    Across the Spider-Verse’s hymn to emotional storytelling is a much-needed salve to the dreary primacy of cycles and lore: more importantly, full of colour, life and drama, it is a near-unassailable good time.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    One Cut of the Dead
    As much a repudiation of auteur theory as a tribute to the imperfect process of creation, One Cut of the Dead is a thrilling reminder that of the beautiful, vital lie that is cinema.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    Vitalina Varela
    A work of astonishing aesthetic beauty, made up of static compositions and use of chiaroscuro that recalls the Dutch masters.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    Happening
    Happening is a naturalistic, heart-breaking and relentless account of the multiple traumas and injustices that cascade when women are denied their basic bodily autonomy.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    One Fine Morning
    With One Fine Morning, celebrated French director Mia Hansen-Løve presents complementary accounts of infatuation, love, and loss in a nuanced, moving study of the ways that love can sustain and consume us.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    Get Out
    Peele's blistering debut is a timely and powerful satire of modern prejudice as much as it is a taut, gripping exercise in horror cinema.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    To the Ends of the Earth
    To the Ends of the Earth is a light, airy and fun journey with flashes of poetry.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    Ash Is Purest White
    Ash Is Purest White’s is an epic spanning decades and vast geography that ultimately gives way to the intimate and personal.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    Easy Rider
    Not only emblematic of independent American cinema, but, released in 1969, is the definitive statement on the death of the 60s.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    Cat People
    Where The Wolfman is a a fairgound ghost train, entertaining but ultimately shallow, Cat People is a true journey into the power of fear and belief, at once frightening, disturbing and psychologically complex.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    Alcarràs
    Director Carla Simón’s Alcarràs is at once a paean to family, community and a dwindling way of life, and a complex and heartbreaking study of the victims of progress.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    In Front of Your Face
    A captivating film of deep emotional power; like weeds slowly cracking the pavement above, its movements in isolation are barely felt but its effects are profound.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    Mudbound
    Though Mudbound represent a period of injustice consigned to history, its examination of a toxic, racist masculinity stuck in the past could hardly be more relevant today.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Christopher Machell
    Stalker
    Arguably Andrei Tarkovsky’s finest masterpiece, the Russian director’s 1979 film Stalker is the culmination of a career-long preoccupation with memory, trauma and the relationship between subjective perception and physical reality.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    EO
    EO is at once a cinematic curiosity, a compelling drama and a harrowing portrait of cruel whimsy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Christopher Machell
    The Truffle Hunters
    There is a wealth of real humanity underneath The Truffle Hunters‘ polished surface; in key moments, the film’s high aesthetics fade away to reveal unvarnished, understated pathos.
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