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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    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    Ikiru
    The genius of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru is the way this deeply sentimental film continually deflates sentimentality.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    The Wizard of Oz
    The Wizard of Oz is frantic, enchanting and spookily surreal.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Memoria
    Weerasethakul casts spells, and this is a particularly auditory one, the weaving of a liminal soundspace.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    Close-Up
    Does Close-Up reveal the truth? I’d prefer to say it reveals the beauty of distortion.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    Brief Encounter
    Shockingly modern in sensibility, construction, and execution, Brief Encounter is very different from what one thinks of as a David Lean movie, whose historical epics have come to define posh, mid-century, cinematic excellence.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    Cool Hand Luke
    The incessant, rhythmic swishing of the chain gang’s scythes burrows into your brain – and then adds Newman’s supernova performance. It’s a gulag melodrama, if such a thing is possible.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    The Act of Killing
    Part historical document, part character portrait and part art project, The Act of Killing ultimately registers as something altogether more powerful: an exorcism.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Never Rarely Sometimes Always
    At first glance it’s as if the masterful Romanian abortion drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days had been remade as a piece of scruffy American neorealism. But then comes The Scene.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    The Zone of Interest
    Ultimately, The Zone of Interest demonstrates what it means to have moral vision, to choose to see—or, in this case, hear.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    The Souvenir
    Watching The Souvenir is like watching a friend drown, and being unable to help.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    Goodfellas
    The movie’s morality lies in its form.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Secret Agent
    Moura captivates as the quietly seething central figure, while Filho’s use of saturated colors and lively diegetic music make The Secret Agent a sumptuously unsettling experience.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Burning
    There is a soft sadness that permeates the film and steadily spreads, until it gradually devours each of the main characters. It may devour you.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Drive My Car
    As Yusuke Kafuku, the theater director, Hidetoshi Nishijima delivers a master class in withholding, while still giving the audience everything we need. He’s both stoic and seething.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    It Was Just an Accident
    Despite the casual quality of its title, It Was Just an Accident—the latest film from dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi—carries serious moral weight.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Saint Omer
    Far from a courtroom procedural, however, Saint Omer expands beyond those wood-paneled walls to consider how culture, colonialism, biology, and race determine what women experience—and how society views them because of those determinations.
    • 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.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Killing
    If anything identifies The Killing as a Kubrick picture, it is the movie’s overall sense of fatalism – even as we watch how carefully things are planned, there is a sense of impending doom.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    Swing Time
    If Swing Time isn’t the pinnacle film in the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers partnership, it surely has their pinnacle production number: Never Gonna Dance, with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Dorothy Fields.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    Son of Saul
    If the moral horror of the Holocaust is at once crystal clear and unfathomable, then Son of Saul exists in that tension, employing the art of cinema to create a singular act of remembrance.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Little Women
    Ably mixing past and present sensibilities is no easy feat, but every person in Gerwig’s ensemble cast manages it.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Flee
    Gently yet urgently, Flee gives intimate attention to one refugee’s story, while reminding us that Amin also stands in for millions upon millions of others across the globe who are subject to dehumanization as they simply seek a safer life.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    A Brighter Summer Day (1991)
    There is nothing like nostalgia here, but in the quiet consideration of how these days actually passed—what was dear about them, what was dangerous, and what has been irrevocably lost since then—A Brighter Summer Day gives early teen life, in all its complexity, a burnished reverence.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Nickel Boys
    Nickel Boys overflows with formal ingenuity and daring.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    The Boy and the Heron
    It’s nearly an apotheosis, in that the movie synthesizes his greatest achievements into a stirring, standalone work of art.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Hit the Road
    Already, the younger Panahi has a firm command of the (largely) fixed camera; an eye for incorporating dramatic landscapes into the mise en scene (the family’s goodbye, a long shot against drifting clouds, is a heartbreaking stunner); a penchant for stylistic flourishes (including a magical flight into the stars); and an affinity for performance.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection
    Mosese’s camera is dispassionate, but deeply attentive.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Anora
    Anora is a tale of two shots: its first and its last.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Favourite
    As for the actors, Weisz gets to showcase her skill for subterfuge, while Stone reveals new levels of manipulation and deceit. But it’s the lesser-known Colman, as Queen Anne, who ultimately wrests control of the film.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Halloween
    You know those countless slasher flicks in which a psychotic maniac slices his way through horny teenagers, only to be thwarted by the virginal heroine in the end? Halloween is the fountainhead. Despite countless imitators, however, few have been able to match the level of craft and psychological depth on display here. Halloween is a landmark, and a legitimately enduring classic.
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