Joe Williams

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch
For 820 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 60% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Joe Williams' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Samsara
Lowest review score: 0 The Divergent Series: Insurgent
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 597 out of 820
  2. Mixed: 156 out of 820
  3. Negative: 67 out of 820
820 movie reviews
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    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Williams
    Won't Back Down
    While the cast is filled with award winners, writer-director Daniel Barnz is a dunce who can't construct an argument without employing flimsy logic and cardboard characters.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Joe Williams
    Pitch Perfect
    The campus comedy Pitch Perfect harmonizes high-end performance with low-brow spoofery. It's like a National Lampoon parody where the targets write the jokes.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Joe Williams
    Looper
    While Looper lacks the heft of a classic, this wayback machine is worth taking for a spin.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Joe Williams
    The Master
    The Master is not a schematic attack on a particular religion. It is a brilliantly conceived and powerfully realized work of art, with complex characters, exquisite images and ambiguously big ideas.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Williams
    Trouble with the Curve
    Everything about Trouble With the Curve is as streamlined and hollow as a Wiffle Ball bat.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Joe Williams
    Searching for Sugar Man
    It starts as a bittersweet parable about the cruelty of commerce, but the wonder of Searching for Sugar Man will not soon slip away.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Joe Williams
    Sleepwalk with Me
    Notwithstanding its storytelling stumbles, Sleepwalk With Me points in a positive direction for this likable comedian's career.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Joe Williams
    Arbitrage
    Arbitrage is never the nail-biting thriller that it could have been.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Joe Williams
    Samsara
    With a title taken from an American Indian word for "life out of balance," Godfrey Reggio's wordless documentary lured dreamers into the sacred cave of cinema, where they ingested the serial music of Philip Glass and the time-lapse imagery of cinematographer Ron Fricke.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Joe Williams
    Cosmopolis
    The rapid dialogue is dry and mannered, like a David Mamet play, there's virtually no story and Cronenberg's visual scheme is cold and claustrophobic.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Williams
    The Words
    The fatal flaw of this screenwriting term paper is that Cooper's character is a boring jerk we're supposed to regard as a nice guy who made an honest mistake.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Joe Williams
    Celeste and Jesse Forever
    To its credit, Celeste and Jesse Forever wants to be more than a formulaic farce. It succeeds to the extent that the neighbors keep up with Jones.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Joe Williams
    Robot and Frank
    Ultimately a movie that could have been a little jewel is unpolished.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Joe Williams
    Lawless
    Despite some gruesome images and the psychotic fervor of Rakes, it's a frustratingly slow boil.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 63 Joe Williams
    Easy Money
    Although this Swedish vehicle is thoughtfully engineered and has some vivid streaks of color, it could use a jump start to escape the vanilla ice.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Joe Williams
    Killer Joe
    Killer Joe is one of the most repugnant parodies of small-town stupidity that you will ever see, and Friedkin amplifies the shrill obscenities with blaring cartoon and kung-fu footage from his art director's fever dreams.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Williams
    Premium Rush
    The delivery pouch for Premium Rush promises a white-hot thriller from the bike-messenger subculture. But what's inside the package seems like a lukewarm action-comedy from the pile of scripts that Matthew Broderick rejected after "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."
    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Joe Williams
    Hit and Run
    Hit and Run isn't a catastrophe, but it leaves loose ends and a more adventurous map by the side of the winding road.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Joe Williams
    The Queen of Versailles
    Although it's a guilty pleasure, The Queen of Versailles is artful enough that both the prosecution and the defense could invoke it when the peasants cry "Off with their heads!"
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Joe Williams
    ParaNorman
    It's not warm and fuzzy, but for kids who comprehended "Coraline" and babysitters who savored "The Corpse Bride," this stop-motion marvel from some of the same animators is like an early Halloween treat.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Joe Williams
    The Odd Life of Timothy Green
    Kids are too smart to fall for it, and any grown-up who thinks that The Odd Life of Timothy Green is funny or heartwarming has a head made out of cabbage.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Joe Williams
    Farewell, My Queen
    Richly photographed and featuring an attractive cast, Farewell, My Queen is a layer cake of royal pleasures, rote protocols and revolutionary politics. For skeptics who thought this story had grown stale, let them eat their words.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Joe Williams
    The Bourne Legacy
    It bodes well for the future of the franchise that Renner and Weisz share not only a gripping predicament but something more important: chemistry.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Williams
    Hope Springs
    People over 60 are as sexual and complicated as their grandchildren, and there ought to be more movies about them, but only an audience as constipated as these characters could mistake this lukewarm stream of pablum for a hard nugget of truth.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Joe Williams
    Dark Horse
    As the blindered Abe, relative-unknown Gelber earns a sympathetic pat on the head. But as the character is braying for attention, he's stuck in his stall, while genuine dark horse Donna Murphy carries the narrative load as the middle-aged co-worker who prances into Abe's daydreams.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 88 Joe Williams
    Total Recall (2012)
    The richly constructed first hour is so superior to any feat of sci-fi speculation since "Minority Report" that the bland aftertaste of the chase finale is quickly forgotten.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Joe Williams
    The Watch
    If this movie wanders into your neighborhood, the only watch that will hold your attention is the timepiece on your wrist.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 38 Joe Williams
    30 Beats
    Where the original play "La Ronde" was a social satire about the transmission of venereal disease, 30 Beats is a sickly stepchild.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Joe Williams
    Pink Ribbons, Inc.
    A colorful indictment of corporate infestation, but it's missing a prescription.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Joe Williams
    The Dark Knight Rises
    The conclusion of Christopher Nolan's superhero trilogy is a hugely ambitious mix of eye candy and brain food. If it doesn't have the haunting aftertaste of the previous serving, that's only because Nolan couldn't clone Heath Ledger. But beefy substitute Tom Hardy is a hell of a villain.
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