Jim Vorel

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Paste Magazine
For 134 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 64% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 31% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1 point higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jim Vorel's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Young Frankenstein
Lowest review score: 20 Playdate
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 90 out of 134
  2. Mixed: 42 out of 134
  3. Negative: 2 out of 134
134 movie reviews
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    • 70 Metascore
    • 86 Jim Vorel
    The Ugly Stepsister
    Feverishly funny, gruesomely gross and unrelenting in its satirical critique of both beauty standards and the designation of a cinematic “protagonist,” director Emilie Blichfeldt’s The Ugly Stepsister is a film that will have jaws dropping at Sundance this year.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Jim Vorel
    John Candy: I Like Me
    It’s a hagiography more than anything, one that does benefit from access to an intriguing library of behind-the-scenes footage, interviews and outtakes, but rarely does I Like Me know how to connect this material to any kind of deeper insight into John Candy’s psyche, with a few notable exceptions that ultimately aren’t enough.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Jim Vorel
    Dead of Winter
    Kirk’s film is a surprisingly lyrical and quite gritty, intimate thriller, one that makes the best of its unorthodox choice of performers to tell a story that is equal parts tender and savage.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Jim Vorel
    Magpie
    Credited to being “based on an original idea” from star Daisy Ridley, Magpie works in fits and starts as a portrait of an unbelievably, almost comically toxic marriage, but never aspires to really plumb the psyches of its characters or present them with anything but the most obvious and unchallenged choices.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 72 Jim Vorel
    Fear Street Part Three: 1666
    The Witch this is not, but that’s ultimately fine—although the themes may be something like a mash-up of The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible, the tone has a much more pop mentality that is at least consistent throughout.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 71 Jim Vorel
    V/H/S/Halloween
    Even with a bit of a dip in “Kidprint,” V/H/S/Halloween registers as one of the series’ strongest recent efforts, buoyed by the joyfully demented humor and explosive bloodletting of “Diet Phantasma,” “Fun Size” and “Home Haunt” in particular.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 62 Jim Vorel
    Halloween
    David Gordon Green’s Halloween is an intensely frustrating experience, buoyed by solid action and well-crafted scares, but simultaneously damned by an incredibly clunky script and appalling lack of focus.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Jim Vorel
    Fear Street Part One: 1994
    The tone has more of the edgy, joyfully nihilistic streak present in something like Heathers. Tack on some legitimately brutal deaths, and you have a very effective modern black comedy/horror hybrid in the making, enhanced by an evocative score, crisp cinematography, lively camera and appropriately grungy soundtrack of early ‘90s classics.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 62 Jim Vorel
    Strange Harvest
    It’s an impressive recreation of a familiar format–but at the same time, Strange Harvest ultimately struggles a bit to maintain the chilling atmosphere that at first seems effortless.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 86 Jim Vorel
    Meanwhile on Earth
    Ultimately, the ambiguousness of the conclusion can’t really dim the engrossing and nigh-mystical sense of enrapturement that Meanwhile on Earth can project when it’s really firing on all cylinders.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 84 Jim Vorel
    The Rule of Jenny Pen
    The new feature, debuting on Shudder today, delivers no more and no less than what it promises: A deeply creepy, ultimately engrossing battle of wills between two phenomenal lead performers.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 72 Jim Vorel
    Skinamarink
    This is a daring, unsettling, inscrutable and at times deeply boring venture into the farthest boundaries of horror esotericism, utterly unlike anything that most viewers will have ever seen before.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Jim Vorel
    Mountainhead
    Mountainhead promises and delivers a takedown of those tech bros who now rule our society, although there are few genuinely schadenfreude-derived smiles to be had in the exercise.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 53 Jim Vorel
    Rounding
    In Rounding, you can see the basic outline of a worthy psychological drama, but its screenplay fails to turn that vague shape into a fleshed-out story, instead relying on the viewer to fill in the gaps, while the horror elements merely detract from the material that might have worked otherwise.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 69 Jim Vorel
    V/H/S/Beyond
    The strong results of segments like “Stork,” “Live and Let Dive” and “Stowaway” buy the series a brief reprieve for now, but the yearly releases feel increasingly like a beast that will never be satiated.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 86 Jim Vorel
    Dangerous Animals
    It’s fascinating and enlivening to watch how the fusion of two intensely familiar subgenres–serial killer thriller and shark-starring B-movie–can result in a work that is somehow brimming with life and verve.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Jim Vorel
    The Prosecutor
    The Prosecutor is often at odds with itself, but is saved by the sheer, bravura intensity of its superior action thriller side.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 79 Jim Vorel
    The Damned
    The Damned gets by more than well enough via the elemental strength of its moral dilemma and the pristine beauty and unrelenting inhospitality of the Icelandic wilderness that is its scene-stealing star.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 55 Jim Vorel
    Unstoppable
    Jharrel Jerome gives his all, but without a screenplay to stand on, balance is impossible.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 82 Jim Vorel
    The New Boy
    Gorgeously shot and intellectually/emotionally provoking, the film tantalizes with transcendent revelations but is simultaneously unbalanced in how it approaches its characters and minimalist storytelling.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Jim Vorel
    The Apprentice
    In the end, The Apprentice is a story whose central character wouldn’t really justify the telling of said story in normal circumstances, except for the fact that he eventually became a ruinous president of the United States.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Jim Vorel
    V/H/S/94
    Put simply, V/H/S/94 is almost less an anthology than it is a vehicle for a single, deliriously creative segment from director Timo Tjahjanto, which dominates the entire center of the film. All the other segments simply orbit this central anchor, caught in the inexorable pull of Tjahjanto’s demented imagination, which manages to give V/H/S/94 at least 30 minutes in which one cannot look away.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Jim Vorel
    Villains
    Villains is a workmanlike thriller with a pair of memorable performances and a simplistic premise.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 73 Jim Vorel
    By Design
    At times, By Design is agonizingly opaque or borderline insufferable in its pretentious indulgences; at other times it’s laugh-out-loud funny as it skewers equally pretentious targets.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Jim Vorel
    Frankenstein Created Woman
    Frankenstein Created Woman is an entertaining aberration in a series of films that have a tendency to run together somewhat, combining beloved tropes of the format–the laboratory sets and sci-fi rigmarole have never looked better than here–with a fresh take on this particular brand of mad science, which sees the title character looking inward, toward the primordial origins of what makes us human.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 76 Jim Vorel
    Bone Lake
    It’s not as sordid as it plays at, but Bone Lake is wickedly entertaining nonetheless.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 74 Jim Vorel
    Witchboard
    Deeply silly but more narratively ambitious than one would likely expect, it’s bursting (honestly overstuffed) with ideas and cinematic verve, taking advantage of a slightly longer runtime to really venture into increasingly bonkers metaphysical territory as it draws on and creates new cinematic tropes for movies about witches.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 67 Jim Vorel
    Joy
    At the very least, it manages to remind us of how miraculous the commitment of human ingenuity can be, when it comes to making a new life possible.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 76 Jim Vorel
    Armand
    At times, Armand threatens to lose itself entirely in the fever dream it conjures, like the film itself is going to reach its combustion point and ignite, but it gets just enough of its disquieting atmosphere across to lodge in the memory all the same.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 62 Jim Vorel
    Being Eddie
    Being Eddie is not the all-access, honest recounting of a star’s rise that some fans would no doubt like for it to be, and it may well be intended to mostly serve as a table setting for the stand-up return that Netflix will presumably announce one of these days. But despite its shortcomings, the sharp-eyed viewer will still glean some interesting tidbits about the comedy legend from what is left unsaid.
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