Jocelyn Noveck

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The Associated Press
For 206 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 52% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.4 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jocelyn Noveck's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 The Tragedy of Macbeth
Lowest review score: 25 Unhinged
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 151 out of 206
  2. Mixed: 43 out of 206
  3. Negative: 12 out of 206
206 movie reviews
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    The Phantom of the Open
    Rylance is also one of those few actors who can power an entire film, and The Phantom of the Open definitely rides on the strength of his signature quirky energy as it tells the true-life story of Maurice Flitcroft, a shipyard crane operator from northern England who stunned the golfing world in 1976 by entering the British Open under false pretenses — he’d never played a round of golf — and shooting the worst qualifying round in Open history.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Materialists
    A smart rom-com that tries to be honest about life and still leave us smiling — that math seems to add up just fine.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    The Nest
    At the end, you might be a bit confused by what has really happened, or is yet to. But the journey has been absorbing.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    The Spy Who Dumped Me
    The main problem with The Spy Who Dumped Me is its strange dissonance of tone. There’s nothing wrong with trying to be a hard-knuckle action film and a goofy comedy all at once. But here, that effort results in moments of occasionally stunning violence that simply don’t mesh with the light-hearted vibe the filmmakers seek elsewhere.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Irresistible
    Irresistible has its smart laughs and real pleasures.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Don't Look Up
    That the comet is a stand-in for climate change is hardly a secret going into Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s exceedingly watchable, funny and star-studded yet somewhat chaotic satire.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Blink Twice
    Kravitz almost pulls it off. With the help of a terrific cast, she offers strikingly confident, brashly entertaining filmmaking, until everything seems to break down in a mess of porous storytelling.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    The Apprentice
    This film’s biggest lack is the connective tissue — we don’t ever really understand, alas, how young Trump became President Trump.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Let Them All Talk
    Eventually, the movie does seem to get where it’s going. A scene between Alice and Roberta touches upon issues of literary ownership and artistic license that haven’t yet been fully mined. It’s a bit late in the game. But the ride has been pleasant.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Dracula
    Unlike Robert Eggers’ 2024 “Nosferatu,” which was beautiful but bleak to look at and featured an ugly, fearsome vampire, Besson imbues his main character with a swashbuckling sexiness that suits his star’s craggy appeal.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Book Club
    Book Club has a script that’s often so heavy on the corn — make that corn syrup — that it strains credulity and leaves you groaning. But then, darn it, suddenly it makes you tearful, with an unexpectedly genuine moment, or laugh out loud. It’s a credit to the cast, and the cast only.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Spoiler Alert
    At times Spoiler Alert feels like an edgy, clever film that plays wittily on the main character’s lifelong obsession with TV. At others, it feels like a more formulaic, holiday-themed tearjerker — the passing years are marked in a Christmas card montage! — that wrings our tears in unsubtle ways.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Master
    Master ultimately suffers the fate of many promising films with many good ideas and not enough time to develop them — some paring down would have improved the latter part of the film.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
    Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, hotly awaited by devotees of the decades-old role-playing game, makes darned sure to be fun, and funny — enough to laugh at itself. And that’s the thing that makes it work.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Spaceman
    It’s a pleasant and occasionally mesmerizing ride, thanks in no small measure to Sandler’s skillful empathy and yet another absorbing turn by Mulligan, who never disappoints. In the constellation that is Hollywood, her star continues to be one of the brightest.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Rez Ball
    Yes, there’s a lot you can predict from the outset, not to mention lines you could have pre-written, word for word. But that doesn’t mean your heart won’t be caught up in this deeply felt, poignantly told story from Navajo country, especially when the last player takes that last shot in those final seconds — never mind some heavy-handed moments.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    The Harder They Fall
    The violence is expertly choreographed, but some of us surely could have done with less bloodshed (there are Tarantino-esque flourishes here, too) and more dialogue to deepen some of the tantalizing relationships Samuel introduces.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    The Flash
    At one point in this 184-minute drama, I started wondering if I was seeing a bunch of disco balls trying to destroy each other. But maybe this was a moment of sensory overload.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Mothering Sunday
    Memory is selective, memory is jumbled, memory travels in different directions. And so does “Mothering Sunday,” Eva Husson’s affecting and visually pleasing — if languorous — meditation on love and loss, based on a woman’s memory of an impactful day that reverberates through her long life.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    IF
    The issue is simply that with all the artistic resources and refreshing ideas here, there’s a fuzziness to the storytelling itself.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    The Phoenician Scheme
    A vivid presence despite her dry-as-dust tone, Threapleton makes a splendid Andersonian debut here as half the father-daughter duo, along with Benicio Del Toro, that drives the director’s latest creation. Their emerging relationship is what stands out amid the familiar Andersonian details: the picture-book aesthetic.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Fahrenheit 11/9
    Whether Moore’s frenetic but absorbing work here — the cinematic equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting, where you throw everything and some of it sticks — pleases or frustrates you, one thing is clear. Moore’s at his best when hitting a subject dear to his heart.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Shazam! Fury of the Gods
    The sequel, again directed by David F. Sandberg, feels less breezily funny, less fresh, less fleet of foot.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams
    Guadagnino gives us a lesson in the history of Hollywood itself, not to mention the birth of the “movie star” and the role fashion has played in that. (It’s great fun.)
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Waiting for the Barbarians
    A novel like Coetzee’s invites readers to fill in the blank spaces. On a screen, we tend to crave more specificity. The result, coupled with a too-languorous pace, is a film that’s intermittently engrossing and always interesting, but less potent than it could have been.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Yesterday
    For every laugh-out-loud moment in the smartly paced first half, there’s a sigh later as to what might have been.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    The Final Year
    Despite being near the action, we don’t feel particularly close to it. Still, we get to see the wheels turning, and it’s hard not to get wrapped up in some of the backstage moments.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    The Iron Claw
    It’s a film that tells its stunning tale with heart and conviction, yet seems somehow reticent about pointing a truly critical finger at either the brutality of a sport that broke this family, or the man who seemed to give his sons no choice in the matter: family patriarch Fritz Von Erich.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    The Boys in the Boat
    There is not much “edge” here, but Clooney and team prove that sometimes, slow and steady — or should we say, pretty and pleasing — can still win some races.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Jocelyn Noveck
    Speak No Evil
    Director James Watkins and especially his excellent troupe of actors, adult and children alike, do a nice job of building the tension, slowly but surely. Until all bloody hell breaks loose, of course. And then, in its third act, “Speak No Evil” becomes an entertaining but routine horror flick, with predictable results.
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