Josh Larsen

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LarsenOnFilm
For 904 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 8.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Josh Larsen's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 75
Highest review score: 100 Son of Saul
Lowest review score: 25 Murder by Death
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 773 out of 904
  2. Mixed: 73 out of 904
  3. Negative: 58 out of 904
904 movie reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    i'm thinking of ending things
    Kaufman’s last film as director, the stop-motion Anomalisa, was a meditation on misery that comforted viewers, if not itself, with its astonishing artistry. i’m thinking of ending things, while arresting in its own way, offers no such consolation. It’s depressing in form and function.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Matrix Resurrections
    Now this is how you reheat a piece of pop culture. Nearly 20 years after The Matrix Revolutions, which left its two main characters dead, director Lana Wachowski returns to the series with enough self-aware wit, narrative ingenuity, and filmmaking prowess to more than justify the endeavor.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Face/Off
    There’s no denying that Cage and Travolta are having a blast with what is essentially an acting thought experiment. They’re both fantastic.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Ne Zha 2
    During the many fight sequences, the action has a brightness and clarity—in terms of line work and movement—that should be studied by anyone working on the effects side of American superhero movies. There is admittedly too much plotting; in fact, you could argue that a final-act twist isn’t even necessary.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Some Came Running
    If Some Came Running survives its dated gender politics, that’s all due to MacLaine. Her Ginnie—overly made up and yet disheveled, with hamburger bun crumbs on her sparkly cocktail dress—is the only one to lend the movie an authentic sense of dignity.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Great Expectations
    As an adaptation of Great Expectations, this is scattershot and unsatisfying, but as a fever dream you might have after reading it, the movie mesmerizes.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Flying Down to Rio
    Even for a 1933 movie musical, Flying Down to Rio is a vaudeville show shamelessly trying to pass for a feature film. Thank goodness, then, that it can get by on sheer showmanship.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    My Octopus Teacher
    You’re guaranteed to come away with new respect for the octopus as a species and astonishment at the intimate connection Foster experiences.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Possessor Uncut
    Possessor cranks up the aesthetic volume on two familiar subgenres—the hired killer psychodrama and the sci-fi body-snatcher—until they meld into a destabilizing case of extreme cinema.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Under the Silver Lake
    A mostly meaningless film about meaninglessness, Under the Silver Lake nonetheless has enough fetid charm to justify wasting a few hours on it. After all, the movie ultimately suggests that wasting our time is the best we can do in this rotten, rigged life.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Key Largo
    Key Largo belongs to its villain, through and through.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Little Woods
    A predictable narrative is given rich contours in Little Woods.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Painter and the Thief
    The Painter and the Thief tells a remarkable story of artistic understanding, one which Rees gives a clever, two-part structure.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    About Dry Grasses
    There isn’t a boring frame in the film, even when the scenes involve little more than long conversations between two people.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Let the Bullets Fly
    As a political satire, Let the Bullets Fly is pointed and precise.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    To Have and Have Not
    The picture’s reason for being is Bacall, whose Marie “Slim” Browning slinks onto the screen asking Harry for matches and walks away with the entire movie.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Wonka
    Wonka may be more Paul King than Roald Dahl—it bears the clever kindness of Paddington and Paddington 2 far more than the clever cynicism of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory author—but a worse fate could have befallen the iconic title character.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    By its bombastic (and somewhat abrupt) final scene, you have to imagine that The Eyes of Tammy Faye accurately captures how Tammy Faye saw herself.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    I Feel Pretty
    At it best, I Feel Pretty works as shameless fierce send-up of contemporary beauty standards.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    Kong brings the personality, Godzilla brings the power, and we get to have the fun.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Time
    Time puts a face—and a family—to the systemic injustice within the American prison system, asking why it took an extraordinary woman’s extraordinary efforts to reclaim basic human rights.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Luca
    One of Pixar’s smaller, sweeter efforts.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    In the Heights
    If In the Heights is packed with enough bold choices to invite both effusive praise and endless nitpicking, that comes with the genre.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Bergman Island
    Bergman Island deftly interrogates the idolization of art and the lionization of artists, while also distinguishing between experiencing a place and sucking it for “inspiration.”
    • 95 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Don't Look Now
    This adaptation of Don’t Look Now by director Nicolas Roeg (Walkabout, The Witches) is primarily an achievement in hallucinatory editing.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Lifeboat
    This is one of [Hitchcock's] significant works, accented by wickedly effective insert shots and a handful of strong performances.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Pig
    This is, in many ways, a deeply thoughtful film—about loneliness, grief, anger, and finding something to truly care about. And Cage gives a performance that embodies all of those things.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    First Man
    Gosling excels at an open sort of stoicism, a way of keeping us at a distance on the surface while also giving us a peek inside. And so he’s a good fit for this take on Armstrong.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
    A romantic, flashback-rich narrative distinguishes this feature-length animated effort, which Warner Bros. was confident enough in to give a theatrical release.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    We Grown Now
    If the movie’s straightforward dramatic and dialogue scenes don’t have the same delicacy as its more poetic gestures—especially once increasing crime, police harassment, and discriminatory housing policies close in on these two families—the film still stirs the soul as a counter-document to alarmist history.
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