Derek Smith

Select another critic »
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
view
per page
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Derek Smith
    Funny Pages
    Funny Pages eschews the platitudes and carefully scripted character arcs that often cause coming-of-age tales to feel not only predictable but coated in a sheen of nostalgia.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    Three Thousand Years of Longing
    George Miller’s film is a passionate exploration of how image-making is inextricable from storytelling.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Smith
    Not Okay
    Not Okay doesn’t make any points that, now over a decade into the ubiquity of social media, aren’t painfully obvious.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Smith
    My Old School
    The film is a perfectly entertaining retelling of an offbeat tale, but it’s also superficial and borderline exploitative.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 38 Derek Smith
    Where the Crawdads Sing
    The film spins a soapy yet dramatically inert and often tone-deaf yarn about societal rejection and female empowerment in the wetlands of North Carolina.
    • 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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Smith
    Brian and Charles
    The original Brian and Charles short focused entirely on its titular characters, and it’s clear that was for the best.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Emergency
    Emergency is uneven, but it’s grounded by dynamic performances and a vivid portrayal of the minutiae of friendship.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Smith
    The Last Victim
    Distractingly indebted to No Country for Old Men, the film’s wild tonal swings mostly leave it feeling impossibly disjointed.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 12 Derek Smith
    The Takedown
    The Takedown’s supposedly inclusionary, pro-immigrant messaging is constantly undermined by puerile and dated humor.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Smith
    The Bad Guys
    The Bad Guys is a heist film that steals all of its moves.
    • 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.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 25 Derek Smith
    Father Stu
    The film is a Hollywood-approved show of Old Testament judgment that sees all people as sinners and thus deserving of all the punishment they receive.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Ambulance
    Rarely have Michael Bay’s frenzied stylistic tics been so effectively intertwined with the substance of one of his films.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 38 Derek Smith
    Metal Lords
    Peter Sollett’s coming-of-age comedy betrays rather than upholds the values of the very kids it wants to revere.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Derek Smith
    Everything Everywhere All at Once
    The film works magic by embracing excess, finding a kind of harmony and possibility within it, and reminding us of the beauty and lunacy of the human experience along the way.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Smith
    The Lost City
    The Lost City is proof that star power and chemistry can only take a film with a mediocre script so far.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 Derek Smith
    The Adam Project
    Ultimately, the film tries so hard to do so much that it doesn’t end up doing any of it particularly well.
    • 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.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 12 Derek Smith
    The Desperate Hour
    The Desperate Hour’s broad, vague rendering of its characters is part and parcel of its troubling approach to its material.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 25 Derek Smith
    Blacklight
    Instead of elaborating its plot, Blacklight offers up repetitious, dialogue-driven scenes that deliver only the shallowest of exposition, advancing the story at a sluggish pace.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 38 Derek Smith
    Cha Cha Real Smooth
    Rather than thoughtfully reflect on post-collegiate ennui and disillusionment, the film settles for erecting a monument to its main character’s awesomeness.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    You Won't Be Alone
    Throughout You Won’t Be Alone, writer-director Goran Stolevski rejects the slickness that defines so-called elevated horror.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Derek Smith
    Watcher
    Watcher gives a feminist twist to a throwback genre, but never does its topicality dilute its gripping suspense.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    Happening
    This period drama manages the difficult task of speaking to our current moment without being didactic or preachy.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 12 Derek Smith
    Redeeming Love
    The film is too narrow-minded to explore the notion that a saint-like man may want to satisfy his normal carnal desires.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Derek Smith
    Belle
    For all of the film’s visually striking action and musical set pieces, it’s the generosity of spirit with which it approaches the modern teenage experience that’s its most impressive attribute.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 25 Derek Smith
    The King's Man
    The film is so caught up in its own idea of national exceptionalism that its tagline might as well be Make England Great Again.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Smith
    Don't Look Up
    Like Vice before it, the film too often uses satire as a tool of castigation rather than as a means of truly attacking the status quo.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Smith
    House of Gucci
    Ridley Scott’s tale of greed and revenge practically begs for melodramatic excess.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »