Josh Spiegel

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Consequence, Polygon, Slashfilm
For 82 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 34% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 65% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 14.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Josh Spiegel's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 51
Highest review score: 100 Minari
Lowest review score: 10 Pinocchio
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 20 out of 82
  2. Mixed: 41 out of 82
  3. Negative: 21 out of 82
82 movie reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Josh Spiegel
    The Color Purple
    Blitz Bazawule and a cast of talented performers do their best, but the end result just doesn't gel.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Spiegel
    A Haunting in Venice
    A Haunting in Venice does try to spice things up, but all the skewed angles in the world can't hide the fact that this mystery is half as eerie as it wants to be, and roughly as entertaining.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Josh Spiegel
    The Little Mermaid
    Giving a movie marks for not being as bad as possible is the same as giving someone a participation award. Could this have been worse? Of course, which also means it could have been a hell of a lot better. Maybe with a different director. Maybe with faster pacing.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Josh Spiegel
    The Super Mario Bros. Movie
    The Super Mario Bros. Movie brings together the many recognizable characters of the franchise, the musical flourishes, the colorful design, and even some replication of familiar gameplay, into a brisk 90-minute package that is as critic-proof as it is largely uninspiring.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Josh Spiegel
    Murder Mystery 2
    The saving grace of Murder Mystery 2 is that Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler have a renewed sense of charm, bouncing agreeably off each other as a married couple struggling to revive the unique magic they found in their first adventure.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 45 Josh Spiegel
    Shotgun Wedding
    Shotgun Wedding could've worked, even with the script as is, if the cast was a little sharper, a little less prone to yelling half of their dialogue, and a little more willing to get weirder and more unexpected. But only one of the ensemble got that memo.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Josh Spiegel
    Spirited
    A movie like Elf, as its opening credits suggest, seemingly sprung to life out of a children's book. Spirited evokes the sense that it sprung to life out of a series of focus-group sessions among corporate executives.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Spiegel
    Ticket to Paradise
    George Clooney and Julia Roberts remain two of the best, most charismatic movie stars to ever grace the silver screen, and we're fortunate to have cinematic proof of their heat and chemistry. Ticket to Paradise just isn't that proof. It's OK. But it should've been better.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Spiegel
    Beast
    Beast is no great shakes, but it's also a rare enough summer movie, in that it knows its limits, it delivers on its specific promises, and it doesn't belabor the point.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Josh Spiegel
    Bullet Train
    Considering the majority of modern mainstream fare, we can look at "Bullet Train" as a mild win, a presumably high-budgeted action film that boasts no superheroes, no extended universes, nothing like that. But though this film clears that low bar, Bullet Train is only ever mildly fun, while reminding you of movies that are often a whole lot better.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Josh Spiegel
    DC League of Super-Pets
    On its own, DC League of Super-Pets is a tolerable, painless, sometimes mildly clever summertime experience, but comparing it to other DC animated fare only highlights its more meager aims.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Spiegel
    Thor: Love and Thunder
    As hard as the cast and Taika Waititi try, though, it just doesn't work. "Thor: Ragnarok" felt effortless. "Thor: Love and Thunder" is working very hard, and not getting a lot to show for it.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Spiegel
    Minions: The Rise of Gru
    This is neither a uniquely marvelous film nor a teeth-gnashing pain. It’s OK in the moment, and it evaporates as soon as the end credits roll.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 55 Josh Spiegel
    Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood
    This is a sweet, friendly, low-key affair that often feels less like a story and more like a home movie Linklater collected to share with his grandkids.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Josh Spiegel
    Deep Water
    Deep Water has its pleasures, some of which are of the inexplicably daffy variety . . . And when you compare Deep Water to ... well, just about every other movie available right now, either in theaters or streaming, it really does feel like a singular sensation.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Spiegel
    Hotel Transylvania: Transformania
    If there is anything new to this film, it's the sense that the series is self-aware enough to understand that it's time to wrap up.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Josh Spiegel
    The 355
    The 355 is the cinematic equivalent of Hydrox. It's a bland and generic retread of something that's well-liked, if not beloved, something that feels vaguely like the real thing.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 60 Josh Spiegel
    Home Sweet Home Alone
    Home Sweet Home Alone runs counter to whatever standard expectations any audience member would have about what to expect from a film in this franchise. To those of us who disdain the original, that actually works in its favor for the first hour. To others, this film may be alienating and perplexing. But it's a pleasant holiday surprise if you're willing to go with it.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Josh Spiegel
    Cry Macho
    It's now hard to imagine that "Unforgiven" felt very much like Eastwood closing the book on his Western era. Cry Macho is more of a slow-paced postscript to that book, but a surprisingly well-worn and welcome postscript nonetheless.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Spiegel
    Queenpins
    Queenpins boasts a cast of talented ringers, who elevate the muddled material far more than it deserves, without actually resulting in an all-around good movie.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Josh Spiegel
    Vivo
    Vivo is plenty colorful, with a bright pastel palette both when the film’s action takes place in Cuba and in Florida, though the backgrounds are far less detailed than would be ideal. It’s good, but not good enough. The same is true of the story, and of the songs.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Josh Spiegel
    Jungle Cruise
    Jungle Cruise is, on the whole, not quite as enjoyable as Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and of course nowhere near as good as the Indiana Jones franchise or even The Mummy, partly because it is entirely unable to shake loose of those reference points. But it’s still a solid summer action film, or at least a solid enough entry for this specific summer
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Josh Spiegel
    Gunpowder Milkshake
    There’s a lot of flash and style, and all in service of an empty story with unmemorable gunplay.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Spiegel
    Spirit Untamed
    Spirit Untamed is inoffensive, which both makes it far more tolerable than most other DreamWorks Animation titles and also not terribly good in and of itself.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Spiegel
    Cruella
    Yes, it could’ve been worse. But as daring as this film’s costumes are, and as fun as Stone and Thompson (and Hauser and Fry, to be fair) can be, it can’t help but give into its lazier instincts.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Josh Spiegel
    Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse
    Despite the mostly younger cast, Without Remorse is a bland throwback to the late 1980s and early 1990s, hearkening to an era of such simplistic notions of good and bad that its script could have been unearthed from a time capsule. Sollima’s direction is journeyman-like, which wouldn’t be a demerit if the film he was directing didn’t feel so lifeless.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Josh Spiegel
    Thunder Force
    Thunder Force has too good of a core idea to be left so unexplored. Melissa McCarty can’t be stopped, but she continues to be content making films that leave her talent frustratingly untapped.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Josh Spiegel
    Flora & Ulysses
    Flora & Ulysses is, at its core, a very nice and sweet film. It’s low-key, but frankly, that’s fine. Sometimes, the stakes in life don’t have to get much higher than whether or not two struggling adults can find each other again, and whether or not a child can traverse a world without a strong family unit.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Josh Spiegel
    Safety
    The title says it all: Safety hits recognizable beats and never really challenges its setup, making for a maddeningly, mystifyingly safe crowd-pleaser.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Josh Spiegel
    Godmothered
    Most of what Disney+ has released among its live-action fare is the kind of mid-budget movie that served as the Disney studio’s bread and butter in the 1990s. Godmothered, even with its connection to the Disney fairy-tale universe, is very much in line with those watchable, wholly unremarkable films. It helps that Jillian Bell and Isla Fisher do their best in predictable roles, but the roles being so predictable is hard to look past.
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