Katie Rife

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IGN, IndieWire, Polygon, RogerEbert.com, The A.V. Club, TheWrap
For 545 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 60% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Katie Rife's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Little Women
Lowest review score: 0 The Haunting of Sharon Tate
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 363 out of 545
  2. Mixed: 160 out of 545
  3. Negative: 22 out of 545
545 movie reviews
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 67 Katie Rife
    Selah and The Spades
    If you took "Harry Potter," put it in a paper bag with "The Wire," and shook it vigorously, you’d get the basic idea behind Selah And The Spades — a film that, to its credit, is only partially defined by those two elements.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 67 Katie Rife
    The Mortuary Collection
    The Mortuary Collection recalls everything from Hammer Horror to Sam Raimi at various points throughout the film. It’s less successful at actually transcending those influences, although Spindell’s devotion is endearing.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Magpie
    There’s nothing especially revelatory about the scenes where Anette sits in the country home that now feels more like a prison, wondering how her life got to the point . . . But her response to said feminine mystique is demented enough to make this a wild and satisfying ride.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    The Pink Cloud
    Gerbase, making an impressive feature debut, proves herself a sensitive observer of human nature. The Pink Cloud joins a tradition of sci-fi films like Her that are less interested in their futuristic concepts than how they might affect people.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    I Used to Go Here
    I Used To Go Here would rather be painfully relatable than cutting.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Katie Rife
    Smile
    Sadly, despite a compelling lead and strong craft behind the camera—the color palette, in shades of lavender, pink, teal, and gray, is capably chosen and very of the moment—Smile is diminished by the sheer fact that it’s not as fresh a concept as it might seem.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Omni Loop
    While the film’s time-loop premise does engage with the usual themes of appreciating every moment and the preciousness of life, it also ties the concept to the scientific method in a way that feels fresh and interesting.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Harvest
    Saying that it makes these concepts “fun” or “accessible” is an overstatement, as “Harvest” can feel interminable even when a viewer is engaged with its ideas. But it does bring them to vivid, even bawdy, life.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 Katie Rife
    Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
    The story is absolutely fascinating, even if the filmmaking isn’t.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 58 Katie Rife
    The Night House
    The latest film from The Ritual’s David Bruckner seems to have forgotten that it’s supposed to be a horror movie first and a metaphor second.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 Katie Rife
    Tales of Terror
    Two of the segments reflect Corman’s admitted weariness with the material, but the middle segment, The Black Cat, turns a hybrid of Poe’s stories The Black Cat and The Cask Of Amontillado into a winking romp through the campy side of Gothic horror.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Imperium
    Radcliffe’s performance also ramps up toward the end of the movie, when the pressures of undercover life and his struggle to empathize with these people — his main asset as an undercover agent — really begin to weigh on him.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Language Lessons
    Luckily, Morales and Duplass have the chemistry and the acting chops to carry this unexpectedly moving film.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    My Friend Dahmer
    It’s another portrayal of mental illness that keeps My Friend Dahmer from fully immersing viewers in its reality.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Small Town Crime
    An amiable crime dramedy from a more under-the-radar pair of filmmaking brothers, Ian and Eshom Nelms.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    The Captain
    The film is consistently beautiful to look at in an “industrial metal album cover” kind of way, pairing dimly lit, black-and-white cinematography and artfully composed mise-en-scéne.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 Katie Rife
    Dead Man's Wire
    One does not hire Bill Skarsgård unless one is looking for a lanky, off-putting weirdo. But Skarsgård does a good job of making his character’s frustration and rising panic grounded and relatable. This helps immensely when we get to the finale, which complicates the us-vs-them narrative.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Concrete Cowboy
    It’s a little corny at times, but it looks good and has heart—and, let’s be honest, Black cowboys are pretty damn cool.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 58 Katie Rife
    Vox Lux
    It’s a more cynical, and arguably more realistic, depiction of the unique malignancies of fame than this year’s other Oscar-baiting pop musical, "A Star Is Born." But ultimately, it’s no more insightful.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 Katie Rife
    Fresh
    Despite its bolder choices, however, Fresh doesn’t push the body horror as far as it could, and works better as an empowerment fable than as an actual thriller.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Sanctuary
    This is a film fueled by writing and performance. Writer Micah Bloomberg’s script ingeniously incorporates the movie’s themes into its structure, and Qualley and Abbott—but especially Qualley—playfully keep the audience guessing throughout.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Better Watch Out
    The film will continue to defy your expectations.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Gretel & Hansel
    If one of the boundaries being tested in this film is viewers’ patience, the reward for—to use a refrain repeated throughout the film—“trusting the darkness” is well worth the commitment.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Upgrade
    Whannell strikes out on his own with his first truly original concept as a writer-director...in a film whose production is as ambitious as its story is formulaic. Thankfully, the former mostly compensates for the latter, making Upgrade a genre-bending summer treat for those who don’t mind a little (okay, a lot) of blood with their popcorn.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 Katie Rife
    The Life of Chuck
    As a filmmaker, Flanagan deals in raw, go-for-broke emotion; it’s just that this time around, he’s using that passion to affirm the audience, not disturb them.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    The Girl with All the Gifts
    Starts off strong but dilutes its impact with every consecutive reveal.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 Katie Rife
    Oxygen
    As one might expect, much of the responsibility for keeping Oxygen compelling rests on Laurent, who runs through all the stages of grief, from denial to acceptance, as she thrashes against her high-tech prison. She’s supported by ingenious filmmaking.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    A Simple Favor
    If your tastes in crime fiction lean more toward whiskey-soaked detectives, A Simple Favor might be bubbly enough to give you a headache despite the darkness of its themes. But that’s okay. More prosecco for the rest of us.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 67 Katie Rife
    Wonder
    The film features some of the most clichéd aphorisms about kindness and inner beauty this side of an inspirational wall hanging. But honestly? It could have been a lot worse.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Katie Rife
    Shin Godzilla (Godzilla Resurgence)
    So, yes, Shin Godzilla is dialogue-heavy, and sometimes it fails to make much sense. And after that knockout battle scene in the middle of the film, the end conflict is a little anticlimactic, especially for Western audiences used to a lone hero sacrificing themselves to save the day instead of the successful execution of a coordinated team effort.
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