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
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Emma.
    As adapted from the beloved Jane Austen novel by screenwriter Eleanor Catton and director Autumn de Wilde, Emma. is a cheerful confection—brightly colored, briskly consumed—and as such a worthy representation of one of the great literary characters.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Josh Larsen
    Soul
    Pixar’s 23rd animated feature is an exercise in psychedelic existentialism that astonishingly increases in inventiveness as it goes along. Then, before you’re overwhelmed, it shifts into a lower gear, eventually arriving as a stirring and relatively simple meditation on what it means to be alive.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
    Fiction, I’d argue, best captures the universal, while documentary—like journalism—details the specific. If Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is a singular achievement, it’s in the way the movie manages to do a little bit of both.
    • 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.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Wolfwalkers
    Stewart, Wolfwalkers borrows something from werewolf mythology, another thing from Irish history, and more than a few things from the animated fantasies of Hayao Miyazaki and emerges with a dazzling feature that ultimately establishes its own distinct pattern.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Larsen
    The Wolf of Snow Hollow
    Cummings is a unique talent; Snow Hollow is just an awkward fit, beyond the ways he intends.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Bad Hair
    Bad Hair really needs a loud, live audience, preferably around midnight, to reach its full potential. But it’s a fun, guffaw-producing horror comedy even without that.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Larsen
    Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
    The dispiriting truth is that Borat Subsequent Moviefilm’s staged pranks can’t compete with our awful reality. The movie is trying to expose people who have already been walking around the past four years with their pants down.
    • 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Under the Shadow
    It works itself up into a fine froth by the climax, and even manages to score some political points against the repressive Iranian regime in the process.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Shithouse
    At its best, the movie captures the thrill of those moments, whether romantic or friendly, when you realize something special is happening.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    David Byrne’s American Utopia
    This is a work that thrums equally with Dada despair and do-the-right-thing agitprop, while somehow still managing to culminate in liberating exuberance. If American Utopia paints a doomsday scenario of the state of the union, it also offers joyous hope for a national rebirth.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 38 Josh Larsen
    Hubie Halloween
    Not the worst of Adam Sandler’s Netflix vehicles, but not any good either.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    On the Rocks
    Here and there, Coppola seems interested in poking that Murray persona. On the Rocks would have been much better if Murray had done some poking too.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Dick Johnson Is Dead
    Works of art like these are more than creative endeavors. They function more as testaments: to the lives of their subjects, to the awfulness of death, and to the inspired ways we cling to the former, even in the face of the latter.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Josh Larsen
    Kajillionaire
    At its best, the movie is a destabilizing look at family as a big con. Yet the chemistry between Rodriguez and Wood never sings, which becomes a problem as the movie shifts to focus more on their relationship.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Antebellum
    Antebellum—if you stick with it—reveals itself to be a sharp consideration of the lasting legacy of American slavery, right down to the present day.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    The Nest
    The Nest proceeds pretty much how we expect before ending on a grace note that feels well-earned. It’s a compelling story, but what makes the movie special is the fact that we’ve had Coon to watch along the way.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Josh Larsen
    Our Time Machine
    The documentary displays such winsome artistry that you also leave feeling energized. It’s an invigorating act of creative defiance in the face of Alzheimer’s disease.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 38 Josh Larsen
    Mulan
    The cultural context is at once vague and oppressive—there’s constant talk of “chi” and “ancestors”—to the point that it’s nearly rendered meaningless. With Yifei Lu in the title role, posing elegantly but not given much of a chance to project any sort of inner life.
    • 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.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Larsen
    Tenet
    One of Nolan’s greatest attributes as a filmmaker is his trust in the intellect of mainstream audiences—audiences who have rewarded that trust by making challenging, original works like Inception huge hits. This time, though, it might have been smart to dumb things down a bit.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Larsen
    The Personal History of David Copperfield
    This is largely Dickens as farce, which is occasionally fun—Peter Capaldi is a delightful Mr. Micawber, whose creditors are so insistent they try to yank his rug out from under his front door—but it often feels forced.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Josh Larsen
    Tesla
    There’s a playfulness and a romanticism to the technique—a way of placing the characters both within and without history—that elevates Tesla from being a snarky art installation to something, presumably like Tesla himself, with a soul.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    She Dies Tomorrow
    She Dies Tomorrow is compelling, but I can’t say I ever truly felt the infectiousness that’s experienced by the characters.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    I Used to Go Here
    A smart, sweet gem of a comedy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Josh Larsen
    Black Is King
    Black Is King—like the offstage sequences of Homecoming or the soft-glow segments of Lemonade—is ultimately a project of image cultivation. African history, African-American experience, Timon and Pumbaa—all bend in service of a staggeringly talented star. It’s an astral projection that nearly functions as an eclipse.
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