John Anderson

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Los Angeles Times, Variety, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post
For 559 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 40% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

John Anderson's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Museo
Lowest review score: 0 Bio-Dome
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 322 out of 559
  2. Mixed: 197 out of 559
  3. Negative: 40 out of 559
559 movie reviews
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    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 John Anderson
    Good Time
    Containing as much forward motion as any film in recent memory, Good Time is as heartbreaking as it is exhilarating, and that’s no small thing.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 John Anderson
    War Machine
    War Machine, with a screenplay and direction by David Michod (of 2010’s ferocious “Animal Kingdom”), is a comedy because, as per the old Angela Carter line, it’s tragedy happening to other people. But it’s also a highly accessible examination of why the Afghanistan war couldn’t be won the way we—in the person of Gen. McChrystal—were fighting it.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 John Anderson
    Victoria Day
    Victoria Day (a very Canadian holiday) is expertly put together, the editing and framing so sturdy and right that the twin currents of the film flow over the viewer unimpeded.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 90 John Anderson
    The White Helmets
    Mr. Von Einsiedel is convinced that his subjects are “true heroes.” Viewers will be convinced of the same.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 John Anderson
    Barry
    [Barry's] search for an identity is the ignition and combustion of the film. The exhaust, however, comes courtesy of Philip Morris. And the odor, like that surrounding the film itself, is of provocation in service of no cogent point.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 John Anderson
    The Handmaiden
    Thoroughly entertaining, startling and highly erotic film.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 John Anderson
    Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
    It shouldn’t seem shocking, but the most interesting thing about this second Cruise-fired action film based on author Lee Child’s nomadic, ex-military hero is its action.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 John Anderson
    Moonlight
    It’s a masterpiece — an overused word, but not the wrong one.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 John Anderson
    Desierto
    It’s a nail-biter, a solid thriller, an immigration-themed takeoff on that old chestnut “The Most Dangerous Game,” in which humans are both predator and prey. It’s not particularly nuanced. In fact, its lack of nuance is its most distinguishing characteristic.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 John Anderson
    Certain Women
    The characters are really minimalist masterpieces, sculpted, polished and uncompromisingly female.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 John Anderson
    The Accountant
    An effective and even affecting pop thriller.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 John Anderson
    The Girl on the Train
    The film never quite succeeds, simply because the book’s core virtues do not lend themselves to cinema.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 John Anderson
    The Birth of a Nation
    What Mr. Parker has committed to the screen is a righteously indignant, kinetic and well-acted film — Mr. Parker, as Turner, delivers a fierce, complex performance. At the same time, his film is remarkably conventional. The framing and the camera movements are all very routine, even dated; one would have said it looks like television, before television gained its current lustre.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 10 John Anderson
    Yoga Hosers
    Mr. Garman’s showcase has very little to do with anything else, but he’s a pal of Mr. Smith’s and, at the very least, his performance is a filet of wit amid a heaping helping of comedic byproduct.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 John Anderson
    Morgan
    A mixed bag of a thriller that exploits two primal fears—of artificial intelligence, and precocious children.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 John Anderson
    The Light Between Oceans
    Everything in The Light Between Oceans is deeply felt and dramatically precise, in a way that seems destined to become profoundly personal for each and every viewer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 John Anderson
    Mia Madre
    The upshot is an emotionally satisfying fusion of the mixed up and the magical.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 John Anderson
    In Order of Disappearance
    There’s much amusement to be had in the film. Very little of it stupid.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 John Anderson
    Hands of Stone
    Jakubowicz has made a muscular, messy and vulgar film based on a life that has been all those things.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 John Anderson
    The Club
    The psychology of The Club is warped and gnarled, the thinking of its members less-than-jesuitical.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 John Anderson
    Rams
    Few viewers anywhere will be immune to the movie’s charms, or the performances, notably that of Mr. Sigurjonsson, who makes Gummi a slightly mournful, enormously lovable and quixotically heroic figure.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 John Anderson
    Hail, Caesar!
    A dispiritingly vitriolic, only sporadically funny satire of ’50s Hollywood, Hail, Caesar! verifies a suspicion long held here, that the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, really hate the movies.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 John Anderson
    Nostalgia for the Light
    As a work of nonfiction, it deserves its own nomenclature. "Docu-poem" is too inelegant; "masterpiece" works, although it's been used before.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 John Anderson
    Dragon Blade
    As Tiberius, who seems not to have been based on any Tiberius of history, Mr. Brody brings to the film a combination of heroin-chic and Basil Rathbone. Also, an extraordinary level of sadistic cruelty. People are burned alive, crushed like insects, hurled from rooftops. They may not deserve all this. But neither do we.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 John Anderson
    Dirty Weekend
    Mr. LaBute is not a moralizer as much as a lamenter — his people usually bring unhappiness upon themselves. In the gently joyous Dirty Weekend, though, they are capable of finding a flight path to contentment.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 John Anderson
    The Golden Dream
    The filmmaking is fluid and electric; the acting, precise; the archetypal storytelling, seamless and brutal. What happens in “La Jaula de Oro” might enrage audiences, and probably for a variety of reasons. But there’s no getting away without it leaving a mark.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 John Anderson
    The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
    Consistently daffy, consistently amusing.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 John Anderson
    The D Train
    As pure comedy, The D Train is far more cringe-worthy than outright hilarious. But as a study in human nature, it’s beyond provocative — and maybe even instructive.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 John Anderson
    Hot Pursuit
    Hot Pursuit is about two women finding sisterly common ground despite ethnic, religious, philosophical, temperamental and/or phonetic differences. It also seems an inevitable stop on Hollywood’s perpetual recycling drive, which caters to an audience perfectly content with the creaky and familiar.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 John Anderson
    Hyena
    The visuals are kinetic, the pacing frenetic; the violence, or at least its aftermath, doesn’t just border on the excessive, it makes major incursions. But given the criminal milieu at hand, nothing less would have seemed plausible, or equal to the heightened, sordid sensibility Mr. Johnson creates in the film’s opening moments and maintains right up to an ending that is among the more perverse in recent memory.
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