Elena Lazic

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Little White Lies, The Playlist
For 52 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 67% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 30% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 10.7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Elena Lazic's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 76
Highest review score: 100 Club Kid
Lowest review score: 25 Three Floors
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 38 out of 52
  2. Mixed: 12 out of 52
  3. Negative: 2 out of 52
52 movie reviews
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    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    Club Kid
    Although Firstman’s brand of modern humor highlights the absurdity and hypocrisy of social interactions, it is in no way cynical. On the contrary, his comedy playfully exposes those primal emotions and impulses that we think we’re hiding better than we actually are. This comedy of honesty carries well into drama, essentially blurring the boundary between the two.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    Alpha
    Through its complex structure, formed of different timelines and split realities, uncanny dreams and blurred memories, “Alpha” viscerally teases out the binds of love and trauma.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Elena Lazic
    Dossier 137
    The director’s ingenuity lies in the telling. Hitting all the beats of the police procedural, Moll, with a simple but effective sleight of hand, turns the genre inside out, and points to a much bigger offscreen enemy: Emmanuel Macron.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    Eddington
    More conventional than any of Aster’s previous work, Eddington is also more rigorous and explicit in its political engagement — the work of a maturing filmmaker eager to make it clear that his dark and scathing sense of humor is anything but an empty provocation.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 83 Elena Lazic
    Sound of Falling
    For all its sprawling ambition, Schilinski’s sophomore feature is most effective and moving on a human scale. A dissociative film, it recreates the febrile sensation of a mind splintered by too many painful truths, which continue to linger in the body long after they’ve vanished from memory.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Elena Lazic
    Day of the Fight
    Day of the Fight does not break the mold of the boxing movie, but it does not set out to do so. An homage to a kind of cinema that isn’t made much anymore, it signals a director who understands that a filmmaker does not need a huge budget or a complicated story to make a good film.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Elena Lazic
    Daaaaaalí!
    It’s a playful vision that allows for many contradictions — the superficial and the profound, the boring and the thrilling, the ugly and the beautiful — and for an endlessly creative vision of art and cinema.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Elena Lazic
    The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
    Like “Cruising” and “To Live and Die in L.A.,” to cite two of my favorite works by Friedkin, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial does not stop playing with our heads when the credits start to roll.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Elena Lazic
    The Promised Land
    A handsome historical drama featuring plenty of gorgeous gowns, powdered wigs, and bored aristocrats, the film is, however, an unusually earthy proposition where nature, in its most unmanicured and unwieldy form, plays a major role.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    Hit Man
    Hit Man finds both comedy and refuge in the elusive nature of identity and acts as a balm in our confusingly performative, deeply unsexy times.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Elena Lazic
    Priscilla
    Through subtle detail, a degree of convenient biopic irreality, and a pace that encourages viewers to think beyond first impressions, the film shows a relationship with elements of abuse that is much more complex than the label often suggests.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    Last Summer
    Breillat’s film is devastating because it exposes at the heart of a seemingly normal family a black hole where empathy should be.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 83 Elena Lazic
    The Book of Solutions
    It is refreshing and endearing to watch as Gondry lets his protagonist, a version of himself, go to the end of his thoughts, even if they apparently lead nowhere.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    The Taste of Things
    The couple’s pursuit of true, deep, sincere beauty in all things — in body and mind — despite these obstacles is infinitely touching.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 83 Elena Lazic
    Tiger Stripes
    The use of body horror allegories in cinema to address the physical, physiological, and mental changes brought on by puberty could hardly be called original. However, by delightfully and intelligently remixing symbols and metaphors Malaysian director Amanda Nell Eu refreshes the concept in her zesty debut feature Tiger Stripes.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Elena Lazic
    The Goldman Case
    At its best moments, the extremely straightforward construction of Cédric Kahn’s The Goldman Case allows for fascinating dynamics and images to occur apparently unforced, as if by themselves, for the viewer to seize on their own.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    Anatomy of a Fall
    Triet’s breathtakingly intelligent and subtly perverse masterpiece takes the long way through the cold and the snow to address, in nuanced but never ambiguous terms, the ineffable and irreducible mystery at the heart of deep relationships — between two partners, between parents and their children, between words and the world.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Elena Lazic
    The Innocent
    Garrel here delivers a witty and elegantly constructed film that joyfully draws parallels between acting and lying, being and pretending, while remaining breezy, fun, eminently accessible and even welcoming.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Elena Lazic
    Smoking Causes Coughing
    Although Smoking Causes Coughing isn’t as substantial or funny as some of his other films, it remains a breath of fresh air and contains enough moments of invention and flawless comedy to amuse and charm, particularly at a festival that has sorely lacked laughs so far.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    No Bears
    Panahi does not paint himself and his practice in a kind or perfectly innocent light here. However, his ability to still clearly identify who the real culprits are is an inspiring testament to his clear-mindedness and his unshaken ability to imagine a better, more just world.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Elena Lazic
    Rodeo
    Rather misjudged dips into the realm of fantasy likewise fail to lift up proceedings, but Rodeo is at its best when it stays down to earth, close to the pavement.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Elena Lazic
    Godland
    The film’s very long takes feel extremely rich with meaning and texture even as they often show a whole lot of nothing.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 83 Elena Lazic
    The Five Devils
    The Five Devils feels like the inevitable encounter of indestructible drives, which send sparks flying both when they are satisfied and when they are denied.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    Nostalgia
    The film ends on a slightly too simplistic, almost crass note regarding that point, but it cannot take away from its overall highly sensitive and formally rigorous exploration of nostalgia and of the other, different relationships people can afford to have with their past.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Elena Lazic
    Brother and Sister
    More impressionistic and less definite than a diagnostic, our understanding of why the two protagonists behave the way they do builds up cumulatively rather than didactically. It generously makes space for the entirety of their lives and histories and allows for the possibility of change.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Elena Lazic
    Zero F*cks Given
    Lecoustre and Marre have the good sense to avoid ending the film on too positive a note — their protagonist has carried her grief for a long time, and she will not let it go overnight — but in delicate, truthful touches, they suggest for her the possibility of a future
    • 53 Metascore
    • 90 Elena Lazic
    Deep Water
    Most remarkable about Deep Water is the fact that beyond being a sexy and gruesome thriller, it is also an absolute riot.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Elena Lazic
    Dark Glasses
    Together with the firm confidence of its execution, perhaps it is this sincerity that marks Dark Glasses as a touching late work from a master.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    Incredible But True
    Dupieux, a director who has always been attuned to the absurd humor and casual beauty of the every day, effortlessly aligns us with Alain’s perspective.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 100 Elena Lazic
    Sharp Stick
    Dunham has not lost her habit of exploring taboo and shocking scenarios. But just like this new film’s fluid, low key visual style and bright, poppy production design, the coming-of-age story it presents feels so organically conceived that what would surely be completely unacceptable in another context appears to obey the film’s own perverse set of rules with warmth and a refreshing lack of judgment.
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