Josh Larsen

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LarsenOnFilm
For 903 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 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: 772 out of 903
  2. Mixed: 73 out of 903
  3. Negative: 58 out of 903
903 movie reviews
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
    Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings isn’t perfect. There’s a bit too much exposition involving myths, history, and character backstory; that climax inevitably abandons the intimacy of the fight scenes for gargantuan CGI. Yet by that point the movie has earned too much goodwill to be affected much by such complaints. I’m sure there are plenty of punchplosions to come in the MCU, probably even delivered by Shang-Chi himself, but at least Ten Rings offers a momentary respite from the reverberations.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Nine Days
    Nine Days is slow going at first—it sometimes feels as if the title is a reference to its running time—but eventually this pensive, existential thought experiment blossoms into something more cinematic.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Josh Larsen
    Respect
    We get some great music in Respect, but only a surface sense of the rest.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Larsen
    The Suicide Squad
    I don’t know if I’ll ever be a connoisseur of kill-shot comedy, but director James Gunn at least makes it somewhat palatable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Annette
    Whatever else he ends up doing in his career, Adam Driver will always have Annette. Surely this will go down as his most notorious performance (and yes, I’m including his snit-fitty—and thoroughly magnetic—turn as Kylo Ren in the Star Wars movies).
    • 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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    The Green Knight
    At its heart, The Green Knight is about the very idea of legends and myths: how they grow, what they reveal, what they conceal.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    Amazing Grace
    Holy Moses! (No need to desecrate this with any more words.)
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Old
    Old is vintage M. Night: a high concept brought ever higher by a filmmaker apparently incapable of second-guessing himself.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Josh Larsen
    No Sudden Move
    Cheadle is wonderful—weary and gravelly as an underestimated ex-con playing everyone’s assumptions about him to his advantage.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Zola
    A dizzying story told at a dizzying pace, Zola might register for some as a transgressive lark (it certainly has comic touches, including a montage of Stefani’s clients’ penises). My experience was more like a simmering panic attack; it’s “fun” in the same way Uncut Gems was fun.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
    It’s not just the historical footage that makes the documentary special, however; it’s also what Questlove and his filmmaking team do with it.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Josh Larsen
    Black Widow
    Black Widow certainly suffers from MCU bloat—dutiful references to other installments in the franchise, an overly convoluted plot leading to a two-hour-plus runtime, an endlessly explosive action finale that takes place mostly in front of green screens—yet a strong cast and emphasis on character ultimately overcome much of those grievances.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Larsen
    F9: The Fast Saga
    Director Justin Lin (making his fifth Fast film) nicely balances chaos and clarity in one early chase scene through the jungle, but later lets the visual bombast take over.
    • 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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Undine
    The movie considers what it means to move on, to reconcile with the past while creating a new future. For both a city and a person. And, perhaps, a sea nymph.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    All Light, Everywhere
    All Light, Everywhere is very smart and extremely meta (Anthony often films himself and his crew setting up a shot, to emphasize the observational point), though it can be a bit dry.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Holler
    Much of Holler’s plotting feels driven by issues (factory layoffs, opioids) rather than allowing those issues to naturally exist within the narrative, but Adlon brings an exhausted authenticity to the film that makes up for it.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 25 Josh Larsen
    Cruella
    Exhaustingly over-directed (Craig Gillespie zooms in from an establishing shot to a close-up in nearly every other scene), the movie is also a nonstop parade of grating, obvious needle drops.
    • 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.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Shiva Baby
    Shiva Baby has a comic claustrophobia that almost makes you choke, so intense is its depiction of familial/traditional walls closing in on its main character.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Josh Larsen
    Wrath of Man
    Wow, when this thing eventually curdles, it really curdles into something rank.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    About Endlessness
    It’s another astounding assemblage of dryly humorous, immaculately designed, fixed-camera vignettes, if an even more morose collection than the previous ones.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Together Together
    Hang in there with Together Together. What may seem at first like a slender character study eventually grows into a more expansive exploration of loneliness, before ending on a perfect, powerhouse final shot.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Josh Larsen
    Godzilla vs. Kong
    Thanks to little filmmaking touches, Kong has real personality, which helps us come to care for his plight.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Raya and the Last Dragon
    A triumph of design, Raya and the Last Dragon is held back by a lackluster story, one cobbled together from various influences (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, an array of Southeast Asian cultures) and bent in service of a tortured—and somewhat confused—lesson about learning to trust.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Larsen
    The Trial of the Chicago 7
    This is too neat, tidy, and digestible of a take on such a wrenching topic—especially when we know the forces of injustice at work here were only temporarily stymied by this trial, and hardly defeated.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Larsen
    Pieces of a Woman
    When Pieces of a Woman is at its best, it’s focusing on this traumatized couple and how neither knows how to make room for the other’s grieving process, partly because their respective processes conflict. Unfortunately the movie wants to be so much more.
    • 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.
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