Jeannette Catsoulis

Select another critic »
NPR, The New York Times
For 1,835 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 50% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jeannette Catsoulis' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 58
Highest review score: 100 10 Cloverfield Lane
Lowest review score: 0 The Tiger and the Snow
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 801 out of 1835
  2. Mixed: 718 out of 1835
  3. Negative: 316 out of 1835
1835 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Jeannette Catsoulis
    The Kindergarten Teacher
    Fluidly capturing the trajectory of a ruinous obsession, the writer and director, Sara Colangelo, skillfully fudges the line between mentoring and manipulation, and between nurturing talent and appropriating it. Suffusing each scene with an insinuating, prickly tension, she remains ruthlessly committed to her screw-tightening tone, offering the viewer no comforting moral escape hatch.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Over the Limit
    Reports of excessively punitive training of female gymnasts surface with some regularity, so in that sense Over the Limit is not unexpected. But the Polish director Marta Prus, brilliantly constructing a very particular look at a sport in which the arch of an eyebrow is as important as that of a spine, remains coolly impassive.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Jeannette Catsoulis
    The Happy Prince
    Suffused with a sentimentality that Wilde himself would have deplored, The Happy Prince is narratively mushy and meandering. Yet, beneath the prosthetics, there’s genuine pathos in Mr. Everett’s portrayal of a man bitterly aware that his talents are unreliable armor against the perceived sin of his homosexuality.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Await Further Instructions
    While most movies of this type simply peter out, “Instructions” maintains such an unswerving commitment to its dark purpose that its final, gorgeously tenebrous images will leave you wobbly for days.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Trouble
    Trouble makes a whole lot of noise without saying very much. The direction is wooden and the cinematography dull, leaving the solid cast (including Julia Stiles as a daffy clerk and Jim Parrack as her knuckle-dragging boyfriend) to shoulder the weight.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Viking Destiny
    A bit of low-budget Nordic nonsense that only makes you appreciate the visual finesse and rowdy discipline of the History channel’s “Vikings.”
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Monsters and Men
    Turning black-white conflict into a laudably complex wash of gray, Mr. Green (inspired in part by a conversation he had with a police officer about the 2014 death of Eric Garner) favors reason over outrage. The political heat rises but the movie stays cool, its smooth, smart climax in keeping with its levelheaded tone.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Free Solo
    Despite a somewhat soft middle section, Free Solo is an engaging study of a perfect match between passion and personality.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Bel Canto
    A movie that, for all its operatic allusions and actorly expertise, feels dismayingly passionless.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Don't Leave Home
    Don’t Leave Home is a frustratingly befuddled movie that’s nevertheless fascinating.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Lizzie
    Lizzie isn’t perfect — the pacing can flag, and the lovely Kim Dickens, as Lizzie’s older sister, barely registers — but Ms. Sevigny’s intelligence and formidable control keep the melodrama grounded. Her empathy for Borden, whose fragile constitution belies a searing will, is palpable, as is the sense of inescapable peril surrounding the two female leads.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Destination Wedding
    All right, then, let’s rip off the Band-Aid: Destination Wedding is torture. And not just because this would-be romantic comedy is grating, cheap-looking and a mighty drag: it also turns two seasoned, likable actors into characters you’ll want to throttle long before the credits roll.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Jeannette Catsoulis
    The Bookshop
    Wistful but never sentimental, it quietly turns the fortunes of one little store into a comment on the fate of many.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Jeannette Catsoulis
    A Whale of a Tale
    A Whale of a Tale is a rambling blend of complaint, tourism and straw-men arguments. What it’s not is persuasive.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich
    While you don’t require familiarity with the dozen or so earlier titles to enjoy this one, you do require a sense of humor that’s easily triggered and a gag reflex that isn’t.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Jeannette Catsoulis
    We the Animals
    Fragile yet resilient, We the Animals has an elemental quality that’s hugely endearing, using air and water and the deep, damp earth to fashion a dreamworld where big changes occur in small, sometimes symbolic ways.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Jeannette Catsoulis
    BuyBust
    Wrapping a political-corruption yarn in a blanket of bullets and blood, the Filipino director and co-writer, Erik Matti, slides visual and textual jokes into the mayhem in ways both sly and blatant.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Jeannette Catsoulis
    A Prayer Before Dawn
    Mr. Sauvaire’s approach may not be for everyone, but his skill and audacity are invigorating — and, strangely, liberating.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Jeannette Catsoulis
    The Meg
    Unlike “Sharknado,” The Meg doesn’t seem to know how dumb it is.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
    Mr. Tyrnauer surreptitiously hoses away the layers of dirt to reveal the fragility of his subject’s anything-goes hedonism.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Never Goin' Back
    By rights, Never Goin’ Back should be a chore to sit through. The jokes are dated, the behavior tasteless and the setups tired. Yet the movie has a ramshackle charm that’s due entirely to its vivacious leads, whose mutual devotion and easy, unlabeled sexuality feels endearingly innocent.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Nico, 1988
    Ms. Dyrholm, photographed frequently in brutally unforgiving close-up, fully captures the faded charisma of the woman whose life reads like a Who’s Who of the New York midcentury art scene.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Good Manners
    Swerving from predictable to confounding, dreamy to demented, artful to awkward, this genre-twisting hybrid from Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra links art house and slaughterhouse with unexpected success.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Jeannette Catsoulis
    The Captain
    The Captain, Robert Schwentke’s harrowing World War II psychodrama, isn’t what you would call enjoyable, exactly. More accurately, it compels our attention with a remorseless, gripping single-mindedness, presenting Naziism as a communicable disease that smothers conscience, paralyzes resistance and extinguishes all shreds of humanity.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Puzzle
    Like a bedtime cup of cocoa, Marc Turtletaub’s Puzzle has a soothing familiarity that quiets the mind and settles the spirit.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Generation Wealth
    Darting from micro to macro and back again, squashing obscene consumption against child beauty pageants and ruinous debt, its structure makes for an unfocused thesis. The through line, though, works, as Ms. Greenfield repeatedly turns her camera on her own family and career choices.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Jeannette Catsoulis
    McQueen
    The filmmakers’ emphasis on drama honors the driven personality of their subject, while tracing a fairly conventional glad-rags-to-riches narrative arc.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Jeannette Catsoulis
    Pin Cushion
    While Pin Cushion might prove too distressing for some, it’s still peculiarly, undeniably original.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Jeannette Catsoulis
    The Other Side of Everything
    Engrossing despite its daunting scope and tangled politics, The Other Side of Everything offers an uncommon opportunity to view the shifting borders and identities of an entire region through the eyes of the Eastern European intellectuals caught in the turmoil.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »