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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    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Fall Guy
    The Fall Guy isn’t perfect, but as a crowd-pleasing, romantic action comedy, driven by the magnetism of its stars, it feels like an increasingly rare treat.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Yes, God, Yes
    The true revelation is Dyer. A fresh presence amidst the boys’ club of Stranger Things, she’s incredible here in a performance that ranges from understated drama to physical comedy.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Sisters
    There is no doubt the material is elevated by the interplay between Fey and Poehler.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Two Popes
    Whenever the film settles on the two leads—who both melt into these real-world personas so thoroughly that Hannibal Lecter himself is soon forgotten—it becomes an intimate portrait of faith as a struggle, even for those at the very top.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Janet Planet
    This is a sad film, if beautifully observed, about a young girl learning that she won’t always be able to have her mom to herself—that, in fact, she never really had her in the first place.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Feels Good Man
    Director Arthur Jones delivers a fascinating deep dive into meme culture, tracing how something like this can happen so quickly in our viral age.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Prince of the City
    Prince of the City mostly feels like a competent procedural, but it occasional startles with images of similar artistry.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Transit
    In the fractured funhouse mirror that is Transit, contemporary France by way of World War II looks an awful lot like the United States in 2019.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Blow the Man Down
    Blow the Man Down snagged me right away with its bold, stylized opening.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Bikeriders
    What’s missing, in comparison to Nichols’ other movies, is an internalized angst.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Beach Rats
    Honest, incisive, and deeply sympathetic, Beach Rats is an intimate portrait of the cost that is paid when a teenager feels societal pressure to remain closeted.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
    What Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh did for Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Burton and Taylor do for Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? They remind us that sometimes writing and directing must simply step aside and concede the power of performance.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Crow
    Lee gives this familiar figure of vengeance a soft, singular touch.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Pearl
    Watching Pearl, the first movie I thought of was The Wizard of Oz. This is as if Dorothy got sucked up by a tornado and dropped down in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre—holding the chainsaw.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Flora and Son
    If Carney had wanted to dive into the darkness of this drama—and Hewson has the heavy eyelids to do it—he might have enabled her to give a powerhouse performance. This perhaps isn’t the great Flora and Son we might have wanted, but it’s the pretty good one we’ve got.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Gaslight
    It’s often asked why battered women don’t “just leave.” Gaslight evokes the sort of psychological intimidation and cruel mind games that make it so much more complicated than that.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Shirley
    Shirley isn’t a masterful film, but it suggests that Decker has one in her.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Thunder Road
    As a narrative, Thunder Road doesn’t entirely cohere—various plot strands involve Jim’s ex-wife, his daughter, and his partner on the force—yet Cummings remains riveting, never letting you get an easy fix on this troubled, troubling character.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Bullitt
    Bullitt earned its reputation for Steve McQueen’s lengthy car chase through the hills of San Francisco, and the sequence does have a gritty, low-tech authenticity. Yet there’s more to the movie than squealing wheels.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    A Quiet Place Part II
    On the surface, A Quiet Place Part II is another expertly crafted and well-acted monster movie, much like its predecessor.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Trip to Greece
    The silliness is as sharp and improvisational as ever, as are the impressions.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Ernest and Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia
    There is pleasure and poignancy in that adventure, even as it grows, but I was content to immerse myself in the seemingly hand-sketched, watercolor-hued opening sections.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Phoenician Scheme
    Certainly The Phoenician Scheme still fits within what I’ve come to call “Wes Anderson’s restoration cinema.” It just does so more plainly, less poetically.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    All That Jazz
    Bob Fosse’s half-confession about what a jerk he was to the women in his life may pull a lot of punches, but there’s just too much art on the screen to completely disregard the effort.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    A Star Is Born
    There’s joy in watching Cooper, for the most part, actually pull this off—including the gamble of casting an acting novice in the crucial title role.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Nightingale
    There has been debate over the graphic depiction of violence in the film, which is sickening and unblinking. Still, the explicitness undoubtedly forces you to face the brutal trauma that was inflicted upon women in this particular time and place—indeed, has been inflicted throughout history.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Avatar: The Way of Water
    A work of blockbuster auteurism, Avatar: The Way of Water wildly, weirdly expends massive resources on a vision at once generic and bizarrely idiosyncratic, for better and for worse.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Grand Hotel
    How thoroughly does Joan Crawford own Grand Hotel? She makes Greta Garbo superfluous. A star parade (and Best Picture winner), Grand Hotel unfairly encourages such comparisons.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
    Gazzara is riveting as man who exudes cool and calm—style—while also stinking of panic.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Woman King
    Unfortunately the screenplay, by Dana Stevens, relies on crowd-pleasing story beats and injects a groan-worthy romantic subplot; the movie yearns a bit too much to be a hit. At least director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, Beyond the Lights, The Old Guard) brings a lively musicality to the sequences depicting Dahomey cultural rituals, as well as a clean ferocity to the many (and gruesome) battle sequences.
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