John Nugent

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Empire
For 250 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

John Nugent's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Lowest review score: 20 The School for Good and Evil
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 105 out of 250
  2. Mixed: 140 out of 250
  3. Negative: 5 out of 250
250 movie reviews
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    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    Emancipation
    Emancipation can’t avoid the well-trodden hallmarks of slavery stories, nor offer a particularly fresh perspective on them. It’s best when it leans into other modes — and when it centres on Will Smith’s outstanding, understated performance.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    White Noise
    A strange brew. While the family dynamics and capitalist satire work a little better than the outlandish spectacle, White Noise at least appears to herald an ambitious new phase in Noah Baumbach’s career.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
    A fizzy, gaudy, joyfully entertaining couple of hours. If there’s any right in the world, Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig will continue making films in the Benoit Blanc Cinematic Universe forever.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    Bones and All
    Part arthouse-Twilight, part John Hughes-ian coming-of-age romance, part Bonnie And Clyde cannibal remix, part dreamy Wim Wenders-esque road trip. This is gorgeous, gruesome work from Luca Guadagnino.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    Disenchanted
    If you liked Enchanted, this is a dependably familiar serving. In an era where Disney is constantly raiding its archives for intellectual property to remake, this is a sequel that feels unusually original by comparison.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
    Bardo sees director Alejandro González Iñárritu looking at the man in the (hall of) mirrors; the result is visually sensational but sometimes lethally patience-testing.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    My Father's Dragon
    Another smash from Cartoon Saloon, at once heartily funny and heartfelt. With this and The Breadwinner, director Nora Twomey is now two-for-two.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 John Nugent
    Living
    Really quite something: a rare remake that only augments and enriches the original. For Bill Nighy, meanwhile, it feels in every sense like the role of a lifetime.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
    Like any good “Weird Al” song parody, Weird takes the music-biopic template and transforms it into something utterly absurd. The result is a polka-popping, piss-taking joy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    Causeway
    Solid, but understated to a fault. Causeway’s biggest appeal is seeing Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry act up a quiet, powerful storm.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    Triangle of Sadness
    An absurd, iconoclastic riot. Ruben Östlund’s point may be blunt — yep, rich people are bad — but his telling of it is hilariously, breathlessly entertaining.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 20 John Nugent
    The School for Good and Evil
    An absolute shambles of a fantasy folly. Overlong, undercooked, and clogged with enough clichés that even its teen target audience will feel disrespected.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 John Nugent
    My Policeman
    Well-meaning but unfortunately misjudged, this clichéd melodrama is a minor stumble for Harry Styles’ continuing conquest of cinema.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    All That Breathes
    A thoughtful, meditative thesis on humanity’s relationship with nature, filmed with the kind of cinematographic beauty most fiction filmmakers can only aspire towards.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    Another stunning adaptation of the classic anti-war novel: epic and horrific, in equal doses. War has rarely felt this wretchedly, desperately pointless.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    Flux Gourmet
    A brilliant, bizarre, occasionally grotesque, horror-inflected cinematic delicacy. Sounds like a Peter Strickland film, then.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    The Greatest Beer Run Ever
    Peter Farrelly’s latest semi-serious effort is light, goofy and sometimes perilously frivolous. But like sharing a few beers with your buds, you soon warm to it.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    Sidney
    An apt tribute to a major figure in film history. The talking heads and archive clips do the job — but hearing it told by Sidney Poitier himself is the real treat.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    I Came By
    It doesn’t always work, but an unexpected, perfectly pitched bad-guy turn from national treasure Hugh Bonneville makes I Came By just about worth stopping by for.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    Queen of Glory
    Remember the name Nana Mensah — as an actor, writer and director, Queen Of Glory is a hugely impressive calling card.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 John Nugent
    Samaritan
    In a crowded marketplace, new superhero movies need a lot to stand out; despite some solid work from Sylvester Stallone, it’s not really clear what Samaritan is bringing to the table.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    Beast
    An old-fashioned, B-movie creature-feature with some CG gloss. Beast is as predictable as anything but it’s a fun, silly, well-made film about a man punching a big cat.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    The Feast
    A slow-burn, sluggishly surreal horror, The Feast takes its time getting to the point — but the bloody final act is something to really sink your teeth into.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    Day Shift
    The action is well-shot, and the buddy dynamic is fun. There’s plenty here that’s familiar, but it’s actually not a terrible way to spend a couple of hours with your Familiar.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    Luck
    If you can stomach the wobbly lessons, the sometimes clunky writing and the offensively bad Irish accents, this is a perfectly fine thing to pop your kid in front of for a couple of hours.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    Joyride
    It doesn’t always successfully balance its comic and poignant tones, but yet another powerhouse performance from Olivia Colman makes Joyride a disarming experience.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 John Nugent
    DC League of Super-Pets
    Despite a fun voice cast, this is a lazy effort that squanders its characters, and will likely bore anyone over the age of ten.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    The Gray Man
    Tinkering with the spy-action wheel rather than reinventing it, this is a pacy, ruggedly entertaining romp, with a punchy pair of lead turns from Gosling and Evans.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 John Nugent
    Brian and Charles
    Made with genuine affection and innately British whimsy, this is really just an odd-couple comedy about two lonely blokes — one of whom has a “washing machine for a tummy”.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 John Nugent
    Swan Song
    Though not always as profound as it aims for, Swan Song is a tender, warm-hearted reflection of a life well lived. If it’s possible for a prolific septuagenarian to be a revelation, Udo Kier is exactly that.
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