Hoai-Tran Bui

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Slashfilm
For 111 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 38% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Hoai-Tran Bui's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 The Green Knight
Lowest review score: 10 Artemis Fowl
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 74 out of 111
  2. Mixed: 34 out of 111
  3. Negative: 3 out of 111
111 movie reviews
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    • 95 Metascore
    • 70 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Small Axe: Lovers Rock
    Clocking in at a little over an hour, Lovers Rock is naturally a little lean, limited by its one-night premise and its brief sojourn into these characters’ lives. But it’s a tone poem that feels at once a love letter to the style of reggae music which it’s named after, and to the people who danced and fell in love to that music in ’80s London.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Petite Maman
    Petite Maman is richer in its simplicity; a lovely slice-of-life tale that knows that loss is so enormous and monumental that we can only linger with it for brief moments.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 70 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Days
    A mesmerizing exercise in the mundane, Days is almost completely free of dialogue — and intentionally unsubtitled for this reason — inducing a kind of calm hypnotic state that makes the viewer even more aware of the sharp stabs of loneliness felt by his longtime muse Lee Kang-sheng.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Little Women
    It can at times feel sentimental and mawkish — an inevitability of adapting the classic story — but no other film in 2019 has conveyed as much ineffable joy, or been such a testament to the human spirit.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Small Axe: Mangrove
    With Mangrove, it feels like McQueen has put the story — of Black pain, Black joy, and Black triumph — back in the hands of the London West Indian community.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Return to Seoul
    The search for one's identity is never an easy one. "Return to Seoul" understands that, and allows us to live in — and finally, accept — that uncertainty.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 95 Hoai-Tran Bui
    The Tragedy of Macbeth
    Coen shows an understanding of Shakespeare's original play as well as a willingness to go beyond it. His "Tragedy of Macbeth" leans into the staginess of the story, while tapping into the surreal nightmare of the whole thing. It's nothing short of magnificent.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Hoai-Tran Bui
    The Green Knight
    The enormity of this film intimidates me. And it hypnotizes me, and seduces me, and captures me until it feels as if the green has grown like moss over my entire body. But rather than threatening to choke, The Green Knight injects a new source of oxygen into the sword-and-sorcery genre.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Hoai-Tran Bui
    The Novice
    Fuhrman’s performance is so unhinged, and Hadaway’s direction is so merciless, that The Novice constantly dances on the edge of character drama and full-fledged horror movie. It’s an impressive feat of incisively dark tone, even if the plot and characters are little more than shadows.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins
    The worst sin a martial arts movie can commit is not properly showing its action. The second sin is casting martial arts superstars and not letting them fight. On both counts, the extraordinarily limp G.I. Joe reboot Snake Eyes is guilty.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 85 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Small Axe: Red, White and Blue
    It is difficult and uneasy, and often feels more punishing than entertaining.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Hoai-Tran Bui
    In the Heights
    Despite its minor missteps, In the Heights is an unabashed delight. The cast all give deeply felt, deeply fun performances, with Ramos, Merediz, and Barrera as standouts. In the Heights is a celebration of a rich culture and a group of dreamers, who are messy and full of contradictions, but whose emotions always ring true.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 85 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Soul
    Soul is dealing with themes that may even be beyond its grasp. The idea of creative passions becoming a reason for living has been a recurring thread through most Pixar films, but Soul attempts to dig deeper. And while it may not find one perfect discernible answer, it’s a search that feels inherently…soulful.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Turning Red
    Turning Red" is another Pixar homerun, a low-stakes adventure turned high-stakes thanks to its heightened emotions and envelope-pushing animation style. It's loud and unapologetic, and while that frenzy of stuff can sometimes turn frantic, it's one of the most accurate cinematic depictions of what it was like to be a hormonal teenage girl.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Hoai-Tran Bui
    I Was a Simple Man
    I Was a Simple Man is a slow-burning walk toward the light, a paean for life, and the land and people that shaped it. It's the kind of love letter that only a lifelong resident of Hawaii like Yogi could make, to a resilient land whose scars will take long to heal.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Marry Me
    Marry Me feels like a satirical movie that missed the joke. It doesn't have a plot as much as a collection of rom-com tropes — Fake marriage! Reverse "Notting Hill"! Evil exes! School mathalons? — and is strung together by the whisper of a narrative structure. But while "Marry Me" is silly, poorly made, and inarguably a bad movie, I had dumb fun.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Hoai-Tran Bui
    C'mon C'mon
    There's something about a Mike Mills film that feels like it's gently caressing the hair out of your face and kissing you on the forehead: a softness, a wistfulness that acknowledges how hard reality can be while tucking you into bed. While "C'mon C'mon" can't protect you from the world, it can at the very least hold your hand as it tries to figure out the path forward too.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 85 Hoai-Tran Bui
    The Northman
    It's when the film meets between these two modes — the mythic and the realistic — that it's at its most thrilling.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Hoai-Tran Bui
    The Woman Who Ran
    In The Woman Who Ran, Hong lets go of all vanity and gives Kim a well-deserved spotlight. With Kim’s rueful performance, and the film’s roaming, Eric Rohmer-like sensibilities, The Woman Who Ran allows itself to take solace in serenity and not worry so much about the would haves and could haves.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Hoai-Tran Bui
    All These Sons
    All These Sons falls short of Liu’s tremendous documentary feature debut, but shows that the Minding the Gap filmmaker is capable of tackling a complicated and knotty subject with the same kind of laser-focused intimacy that he showed in his first autobiographical outing. There may be a distance to All These Sons, but its clear-eyed compassion makes it a solid and effective follow-up.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Rosaline
    The romantic comedy is painfully self-aware but rarely clever, instead falling back on rom-com tropes that were creaky back in the modern Shakespeare adaptation heyday of the '90s.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Official Competition
    Cruz is the film's MVP as Lola, kookier than she's ever been, and playing well into the character's question mark of a persona — is she a true auteur or a hack? You never really find out, but watching Lola become increasingly disillusioned with the whole project makes her the closest we get to a relatable character in this whole heightened satire.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Luzzu
    It's a heartbreaking, but clear-eyed look at the last gasp of a dying industry, and a man whose whole identity, whole livelihood gets shattered by a force beyond his comprehension.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Till
    Deadwyler is simply a revelation in the role, her alternately fragile, fiery, and steely performance carrying "Till" through some of its biggest lulls.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 85 Hoai-Tran Bui
    The Man Who Knew Too Much
    The Man Who Knew Too Much remains an underrated gem from Hitchcock — one that may not stand alongside his most venerated classics, but one that shows the power of a really good villain, and a great opera setpiece.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Hoai-Tran Bui
    King Richard
    King Richard isn't looking to break the sports biopic genre or break the Williams' sister's legacy; it's purely a crowd-pleasing performance vehicle for Smith. But you know what? It does its job.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Howard
    Howard feels like an in-memoriam tribute from a friend: made with a rosy sense of nostalgia, and perhaps a few too many photo montages, but with love.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Hoai-Tran Bui
    Undine
    Its disquieting moments of magical realism paired with the all-consuming romance shared between Undine and Christoph — which feels as grand and tragic as the best cinematic love stories — add some warmth to Undine‘s chilly, cosmic exterior.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Hoai-Tran Bui
    The French Dispatch
    As visually overwhelming and artfully engineered a film as The French Dispatch is, it's also one of secret warmth lurking beneath the surface.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Hoai-Tran Bui
    The Bob's Burgers Movie
    The Bob's Burgers Movie is a little overlong. It takes a while for the plot to kick in, and by the time it does, it drags out the conflict, heightening the stakes to ludicrous degrees. And while it could've just been an episode of the show, it justifies its existence with its surplus of joyful musical songs and its surprisingly dark turns — which really only emerge in the last half hour of the movie. But mostly, it justifies itself by reaffirming why we always come back to the Belcher family. They're the sweet, emotional core of the movie, the meat of this mystery burger that we want to order over and over again.
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