Jake Cole

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Slant Magazine
For 321 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 30% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 65% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jake Cole's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 58
Highest review score: 100 A Hard Day's Night
Lowest review score: 0 No Escape
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 173 out of 321
  2. Mixed: 46 out of 321
  3. Negative: 102 out of 321
321 movie reviews
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    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Pacific Rim: Uprising
    Steven S. DeKnight's film lacks for Guillermo del Toro's visual acumen, but it makes up for that with an energetic sense of chaos throughout its front-and-center skirmishes, and in the end hedges closer to the nightmarish intensity of such inspirational texts as Hideaki Anno's Neon Genesis Evangelion.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Waves
    This is a rare case of a film that’s stronger when it colors inside the lines than radically traces outside of them.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Non-Fiction
    Olivier Assayas drains the film of the playfulness at its margins, leaving only an esoteric lecture in its place.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Ailey
    Not even Alvin Ailey’s peers can articulate the innovations and soulfulness of his choreography half as well as his work itself.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Into the Ashes
    Aaron Henry is prone to pulling back from any moment that might give greater depth to his revenge tale.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    A Private War
    A Private War ultimately sides with the late journalist’s assertion that the whos and whys of war matter far less in journalism than finding the right human-interest angle to hook an audience.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Thelma
    Thelma's transition into a paranormal thriller doesn’t complicate its initially potent character study.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    The Infiltrators
    The film is never more compelling than when relying on footage of the real radical DREAMer group the National Immigrant Youth Alliance.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Montana Story
    The film is initially distinguished by its poetic understatement, only for it to eventually succumb to staleness.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Spider-Man: No Way Home
    There’s no attempt to hide that the film is pure fan service, a greatest-hits mashup of Spider-Man’s cinematic legacy.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Proxima
    The film falls back on a reductive rumination on the balance between maternal obligation and career aspiration.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Ted K
    Tony Stone’s avoidance of emotional manipulation in dramatizing Ted Kaczynski’s terror campaign is admirable, but only up to a point.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Just Mercy
    In a time when awareness and acknowledgement of racial bias and extrajudicial measures by law enforcement in America is at its most widespread, such scenes feel condescendingly pitched to an unconverted audience of the imagination.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
    Though its lugubrious and plodding narrative spins its wheels ahead of someone coming along to fill T’Challa’s shoes, Wakanda Forever does stand out for its depictions of grief.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Bad Reputation
    The documentary often struggles to extract deeper thoughts from its subject about her wild career as a pioneering rock feminist.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    By the time the demands of big-budget spectacle take over in the final act, a film that initially stands out from the pack in imagining a different perspective of the world ends up looking all too disappointingly like everything else in the current mega-budget cinema landscape.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Deadpool 2
    Deadpool 2 muddies the distinction between parodying comic-book-movie conventions and perfunctorily adhering to them.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Alien: Covenant
    The only saving grace of the film's mostly recycled horrors is how they deepen Michael Fassbender's android David.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Elvis
    The protracted rubbernecking at Elvis’s inexorable decline epitomizes a film that regularly backs away from its keenest observations about the icon to merely, and superficially, bask in his star power.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Gladiator II
    Like so many latter-day Ridley Scott films, Gladiator II at once feels half-baked and overstuffed, and the lack of internal consistency robs its action of sustained tension and its comedy of bite.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    The Guilty
    This is an engaging, no-frills entertainment that still fails to justify its reason for being.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    My Scientology Movie
    The only element that significantly differentiates this documentary from its peers is Louis Theroux's good-natured cheekiness.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    The Many Saints of Newark
    The juxtapositions between backroom politicking, intimate family drama, and the occasional lurches into action often give the impression of a TV season’s worth of content crammed into two hours.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Being the Ricardos
    Like all Aaron Sorkin-penned characters, this film’s version of Lucille Ball is a mouthpiece for his brand of smarmy, know-it-all sarcasm.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Them That Follow
    Unfortunately, the care with which the filmmakers set up Them That Follow’s context and their characters crumbles in the final act.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Havoc
    If the rest of it had been as driven by such a ferocious sense of purpose as its final act, Havoc would be one of the finest action movies of the decade so far.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Scarlet
    On paper, anime master Hosoda Mamoru’s Scarlet sounds positively electrifying.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    The Glass Castle
    As in Destin Daniel Cretton’s previous feature, Short Term 12, the oscillations between sociological horror and misty-eyed sentimentality call attention to how meticulously the film arranges its emotional punches.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    The Running Man
    In flinching at the end, The Running Man ultimately becomes akin to the very thing it criticizes: a hollow, mollifying image of empowerment that distracts from the logical conclusions of its nihilistic premise.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Jake Cole
    Spiderhead
    By resolving its story around a mano-a-mano, the film narrows its understanding of a system in which exploitation is privatized.
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