Jim Slotek

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Original-Cin
For 280 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 76% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 20% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jim Slotek's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 72
Highest review score: 100 The Cleaners
Lowest review score: 25 Maze Runner: The Death Cure
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 209 out of 280
  2. Mixed: 68 out of 280
  3. Negative: 3 out of 280
280 movie reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Jim Slotek
    Incredibles 2
    Incredibles 2 is a movie that could have been made redundant by time. Instead, it lightens the mood in a world gone super-serious.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Jim Slotek
    Supercell
    Technically, Supercell is not a bad movie. But it’s dragged down by the economics that insist a low-budget movie needs some minor celebrity voltage. It’s at its best when people aren’t talking.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Jim Slotek
    A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
    There are some very funny lines in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, much of it predicated on the outwardly ludicrous meeting of profound cynicism and hope. Lloyd’s character arc is well handled by Rhys (The Americans), and the denouement is one only a Scrooge could call humbug.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Silver Screamers
    A sweet and uplifting documentary twist on the horror genre, Silver Screamers is, as they say in Yiddish, a “mitzvah” on the part of director Sean Cisterna, and a gift that keeps on giving.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Song Sung Blue
    I’d almost recommend seeing the first act of Song Sung Blue and then heading home in high spirits. But it would be wrong to whitewash real life (rewrite it a bit, sure).
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV
    Amanda Kim’s admiring documentary Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV, makes a case that Paik may not have merely been one of the most influential of the avant garde, he may have been one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century - period, one who invented a new visual canvas.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 91 Jim Slotek
    Dumb Money
    If it’s not exactly a documentary, Dumb Money offers up enjoyably anarchic glee as the little guy wins for a minute.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio
    Deeper, darker, mordant, with a definite horror movie vibe, it is what you might expect from del Toro, a filmmaker who gave us Pan’s Labyrinth – essentially a dark fairy-tale wrapped in real-world fascism, as this is as well.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Jim Slotek
    Conclave
    In real life, what happens in the Vatican generally stays in the Vatican. But as cinematic guesswork goes, Conclave is as good as it gets.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Another Round
    Mikkelsen’s affecting performance is backed by an exceptional ensemble cast, who bring to life the fears and emotional scars that come with age, and the part alcohol can play in it, for better or worse.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Black Bear
    Intriguingly weird, and only loosely tethered to its own reality, Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear is two movies in one - both on the theme of creativity-squeezed-from-pain, and both offering Aubrey Plaza the acting turn of her career.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Top Gun: Maverick
    Clocking in at under two hours, virtually every word of prosaic bro dialogue, every dramatic exchange, every turn of events, is designed to do one thing: get us back in the sky twisting and turning at several times the speed of sound, narrowly avoiding crashes with other planes and with the ground.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Monos
    Monos is an immersive, sweaty, almost hallucinatory experience of hormone-driven anarchy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Jim Slotek
    John Wick: Chapter 4
    A circus of violence, it’s a noisy, non-stop combination of dance and Loony Tunes-worthy manic cartoonishness.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    The Card Counter
    A tale of trauma told, fittingly, with a poker face, Paul Schrader’s The Card Counter is a sure-handed rumination on redemption and finding peace of mind.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Donbass
    The Belarus-born Loznitsa, now a Ukrainian citizen, is not a follower of the “brevity is the soul of wit” school of dark humour. Each vignette is almost too long to earn that descriptor, almost as if he doesn’t want to let go of a scene until the viewer is utterly uncomfortable. But that churn builds on itself, taking us by the last act to a dark and cynical place.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    I'm Your Man
    I’m Your Man is certainly a metaphor for our increasingly intimate relationship with our own technology. Some have seen it as a direct reference to our intimacy with personae on social media, virtual relationships that exist at the expense of our connections with people in the real world. Whatever it is supposed to be, it is a smart and often witty take on a not exactly new sci-fi premise.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Jim Slotek
    Frankenstein
    In the end, del Toro has created an impressive piece of entertainment that manages to retain the existential thoughts that inspired Frankenstein in the first place. Ultimately, it’s one of his best films.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    The Personal History of David Copperfield
    The Personal History of David Copperfield is a comedy that washes over you with its warmth. Iannucci’s fans should be prepared to encounter the director in an unusual and infestious good mood.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Jim Slotek
    Nope
    Nope is an eccentric vehicle for some of Peele’s favourite themes – the movie business, Black social history, and character-over-plot.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Jim Slotek
    Longlegs
    The interesting thing about the remarkably intense, violent police-procedural/occult-drama Longlegs is that it doesn’t overplay the Cage card.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Jim Slotek
    Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
    It occurs at a certain point that Ronstadt was kind of the Meryl Streep of pop music, capable of taking on any vocal role and making it sound like she was born to it.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Prosecuting Evil
    A hero from an era when we still had heroes, the diminutive Romanian-born, activist and lawyer fairly burns through the screen with passion born of witnessing the worst that humanity can do. And he still tours the world with the impossible dream of ending inhumanity.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Jim Slotek
    Memory
    Director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) seems to be directing by template, never stopping to let us get to know anybody – least of all Neeson’s Alex, who for the most part is only there to kill people. Some things never change.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Jim Slotek
    28 Years Later
    The Scottish green hills and forests make for an intriguing change of scenery for the series, with nighttime given that added edge of dread that comes with unseen menace and glowing eyes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    The Last Resort
    Awash in colour and sunlight, the doc The Last Resort is both a modern cultural history of the confounding should-be-paradise that is Miami Beach, and a loving bio of a young, short-lived photographer who froze one of its moments in time.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    All Quiet on the Western Front exists to make the viewer uncomfortable – infinitely preferable to what the characters endure.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    The Trial of the Chicago 7
    Given The Trial of the Chicago 7’s snapshot of an era of an almost hopelessly divided America, and Kafka-esque and monstrous misuse of power by a bullying President, the timing for its release couldn’t be better.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Jay Sebring....Cutting to the Truth
    Jay Sebring… Cutting to the Truth works on a level beyond simply the director giving props to his all-but-forgotten uncle. Its more visceral message is that, “the dead have no rights.”
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Jim Slotek
    Red Penguins
    By comparison with Red Army, Red Penguins is a less-polished, seat-of-the-pants effort that involved Polsky sitting and waiting in a Moscow hotel room for opportunities to do quickie interviews (with many still reluctant to talk about those days pre-Putin). But there is some evocative archival footage, including shots of the game’s between-period “entertainment,” which involved dancers from the strip club that operated within the arena.
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