Derek Smith

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Slant Magazine
For 336 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 15% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 83% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 14.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Derek Smith's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 51
Highest review score: 88 Everything Everywhere All at Once
Lowest review score: 0 The Last Face
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 133 out of 336
  2. Mixed: 74 out of 336
  3. Negative: 129 out of 336
336 movie reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    The Mitchells vs. The Machines
    While the film certainly lays out the dangers of technology run amok, it also sees its power to connect people.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Derek Smith
    A Thousand and One
    The film brims with authenticity and the electrifying emotional intensity of the best melodramas.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    Preparation for the Next Life
    One small, shrewd decision after another allows Preparation for the Next Life to sustain its naturalism to the end.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    The Train
    The Train makes unmistakably clear to us that heroism isn’t always black and white—that sometimes it’s simply about doing what’s right even if you don’t understand why.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
    Dean Fleischer-Camp’s Marcel the Shell with Shoes On convincingly proves that bigger sometimes is better.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    Four Daughters
    A fascinating metacommentary courses beneath the film’s emotional storytelling surface.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    Wild Rose
    Tom Harper’s film empathetically probes the growing pains of self-improvement.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Derek Smith
    Take Out
    Economic anxiety is rarely spoken about in the film, but the life-and-death importance of dollars and cents is felt in every frame.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    David Crosby: Remember My Name
    The film captures a man haunted by his past mistakes and nearly certain that he doesn’t have the time left to begin making up for them.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Indivisible
    Edoardo de Angelis's coming-of-age portrait is poignant when fixated on the intricacies of a complicated sisterhood.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Smith
    Song Sung Blue
    Song Sung Blue is content to pendulum-swing from triumph to tragedy and back again with all the self-control of a drunk driver.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    The White House Effect
    The film meticulously yet concisely probes how, why, and when our understanding of the greenhouse effect went from a scientific certainty to it being up for debate.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Derek Smith
    Feels Good Man
    That the democratization of the internet has opened a doorway for fascist ideologies to openly quash democratic ones is an irony that isn’t lost on the film.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Walking Out
    Walking Out is modest in scope, its concerns limited to man’s attempts to live both morally and harmoniously with nature.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Ghost Elephants
    Ghost Elephants shows that Werner Herzog is fiercely determined to explore new frontiers while they still exist and capture the poetic phenomena of nature and the unshakeable dreams it continues to instill in mankind.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Derek Smith
    Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
    From its rigorous and deliberately distancing structural gambit to its restless stylistic experimentations, Thirty Two Short Films proves that biopics needn’t color within the lines to effectively portray their subjects.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Dìdi
    The film speaks unflinchingly to the unique anxieties and frustrations of early teenhood.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Smith
    John Wick: Chapter 4
    In the gradual development and expansion of the Wickaverse, the filmmakers seem to have lost the thread of what makes the first and, at times, second film in the series work so well.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Barracuda
    It's anchored by a pair of dynamic, intuitive performances which mine the psychological complexities of an understandably troubled relationship.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    The Ballad of Wallis Island
    The Ballad of Wallis Island plays both its drama and comedy in decidedly minor keys, straining neither for grand emotional revelations nor big laughs.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Endless Poetry
    Endless Poetry eventually, like young Alejandro, opens itself up to the world in all of its beauty and complexities.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Till
    Because of Chinonye Chukwu’s willingness to let small-scale, ancillary scenes play out unhurried and at length, Till taps into to a deeper well of emotions than most biopics.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs
    The film speaks lyrically to a peoples’ determination to find a meaningful way to live in a rapidly changing modern world.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    Dear Mr. Brody
    The film poignantly draws a straight line from the economic anxieties of the past straight to the present.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    Corpus Christi
    It’s within the murky realm of self-doubt and spiritual anxiety that it’s at its most audacious and compelling.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Buoyancy
    The film never quite pushes beyond the archetypal nature of its scenario to fully unearth its characters’ psychological turmoil.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 38 Derek Smith
    The Aftermath
    The film’s threads of personal loss and cultural friction are all but lost amid the tawdry romantic entanglements.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 38 Derek Smith
    Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
    There are only so many monster-centric jokes to be made before they become toothless, and only so many ways to preach tolerance before it sounds more like blunt moralizing.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Derek Smith
    Memory
    Martin Campbell’s film never shakes off its familiarity, and as such seems destined to, well, be lost to public memory.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    Kneecap
    Much of Rich Peppiatt’s film isn’t about respectability, but rather debasement, and sugar-coating Kneecap’s widespread antics isn’t on the menu.
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