David Sims

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The Atlantic, The A.V. Club
For 464 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 47% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

David Sims' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 One Battle After Another
Lowest review score: 10 Dolittle
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 313 out of 464
  2. Mixed: 102 out of 464
  3. Negative: 49 out of 464
464 movie reviews
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    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 David Sims
    Marry Me
    We’re in silly–rom-com territory, and you simply have to accept every ludicrous development with calm rationality. Marry Me is a revived artifact from a time when Hollywood regularly churned out syrupy nonsense about people kissing under the most unlikely of circumstances. The presence of Lopez, once a reigning queen of the genre, only helps underline what a throwback Marry Me is.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 David Sims
    Where'd You Go, Bernadette
    The cast is stacked, but the story is messy, and the pathos driving Bernadette’s disappearance (which, again, is easily solved) is underwritten.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 David Sims
    The Little Things
    Even the most mundane moments in The Little Things aren’t enough to stifle Washington’s star power. Almost nothing is.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 David Sims
    Dream Scenario
    Dream Scenario morphs from a Charlie Kaufman–esque cringe comedy into a simmering nightmare thriller, staging some genuinely unsettling hallucinations but failing to knit them into any larger narrative.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 David Sims
    Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
    Though Ford invests his performance with as much longing and nuance as he can, underlining Indiana’s increasing disconnection from the modern world, the movie is too busy to really plumb those themes, instead zipping along to the next action sequence lest anyone get bored.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 David Sims
    Captain Marvel
    The 21st entry in Marvel’s galactic film empire, and the first focused on a female superhero (played by Brie Larson), is a perfectly fun time at the movies that deftly lays out the stakes of its new character for many future appearances. But more often than not, it feels a little routine.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 David Sims
    Jojo Rabbit
    Jojo Rabbit’s script isn’t emotionally complex enough to address the cruel realism of its world, and as the bleakness continues, the jokes fall flatter and flatter.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Bones and All
    Even with the gore and the gorgeous visuals that typically accompany a Guadagnino project, Bones and All too often feels frustratingly tame.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Cats
    Whether you think the imagery is beautiful or nightmarish, this is a film that demands to be looked at. If nothing else, I can confirm it’s the most Jellicle experience I’ve had all year.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Stuber
    If you’re looking for a throwback to simpler, sillier times (with a dash of self-awareness about the state of toxic masculinity in 2019), it should just about satisfy.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    The Tender Bar
    The acting is good, while the story fails to really hang together. The same is true for a lot of Clooney projects—perhaps unsurprisingly, he’s attentive to the subtleties of an actor’s performance, but the scripts he’s chosen of late have been short on narrative propulsion.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Spider-Man: No Way Home
    Spider-Man: No Way Home unfolds as though it were written by a room full of children who had just eaten a whole bag of sugar; it’s a hectic series of plot twists and deus ex machinas that overturns an entire bucket of action figures and smashes them all together with delight. The film might be a new nadir of cinema—but it’s also an undeniably watchable good time.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    TRON: Ares
    It’s another superficial, techno-futuristic tale that emphasizes its glossy look over its heady concept.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Mulan
    Mulan delivers a straightforwardly heroic narrative of a capable woman battling her way to respect. It just doesn’t have much else to add.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Fighting with My Family
    Sheer force of personality is the main ingredient of any great sports movie, and Pugh has enough of it to pull the story along. But this is a star performance that deserved an equally dazzling script.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Underwater
    If not for the unusual setting and Stewart’s unique star presence, Underwater might feel completely anonymous. Fortunately, all that H2O suffices to give this goofy trifle a memorable sense of atmosphere.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Love, Simon
    I’m happy to see a major-studio teen film wrestle with homosexuality and life in the closet as more than a comical subplot, even though I wish there had been a more engaging character to build that progress around.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Frozen II
    The result is a convoluted, sporadically sensical, occasionally trippy film that can’t quite find a purpose amid all the manic world-building.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Nyad
    By making Nyad a narrative film, the movie succumbs to a lot of boring biopic-storytelling shorthand; Nyad sometimes states her goals and fears aloud in the middle of conversation. Much of the thuddingly expositional dialogue cannot escape the sense that it sprouted from an expanded Wikipedia page.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Long Shot
    In the end, Long Shot is too fixated on the supposed absurdity of its romantic pair to spend much time considering them as people. Which is a shame, because the human moments are the only parts where the film really shines.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Caught Stealing
    In Caught Stealing, Aronofsky drops the viewer into an older New York as another artistic exercise, but renders it as a playground for bloody and one-dimensional silliness. His skill as a cinematic storyteller is on display—I just missed the narrative depth and danger that used to come with the elegant shots.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Venom
    Venom is, at its heart, a will-they-won’t-they story—a grisly meet-cute between a down-on-his-luck reporter and a grumpy, gloppy little extra-terrestrial with a really big appetite. That’s good, because the movie is barely competent as an action flick.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
    The result is a functional if unspectacular film that makes no outsize effort to speak to cultural conversations around the movie.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Companion
    Companion is at best a mean little confection, no matter how much you know going into it: amusing, occasionally thrilling, but not something with the capability to linger.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Mid90s
    In its quietest scenes, Mid90s feels a little more authentic, and Hill may well turn out to have a growing talent for directing. But he needs to match his subtler insights to a script that feels less derivative.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    It: Chapter Two
    The length of It Chapter Two is matched by the scale of Pennywise’s big scares, assisted by the slickest visual effects money can buy, but it means the story never manages to pick up any speed. This is a lumbering brute of a film, a creaky rollercoaster that inches a little too slowly toward every drop.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Moonfall
    For all its cheesiness, the film is still entertaining—my entire row at the theater had fun cackling at clunky dialogue and absurd lunar lore. If you’re looking for a nice, empty-brained evening at the movies, Moonfall is the ticket to buy right now.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Someone Great
    Someone Great is fizzy, frivolous, and probably easily forgotten, but for a weekend-friendly jolt of entertainment, rom-com fans could do far worse.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Uncle Drew
    The jokes could be dirtier, the plot looser, the basketball action more gleefully ludicrous. Instead, everything feels very competent but safe.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 55 David Sims
    Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
    This is a movie chock-full of heady imagery that it can’t get a handle on, and so the allegories at work don’t quite connect.
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