Lovia Gyarkye

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The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times
For 345 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Lovia Gyarkye's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Seeds
Lowest review score: 10 Madame Web
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 211 out of 345
  2. Mixed: 127 out of 345
  3. Negative: 7 out of 345
345 movie reviews
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    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Sirât
    Ironically, Sirat gets muddled near the end. Although the last act is in many ways the liveliest — viewers will be jolted by a series of bleak twists — it’s also where Laxe relinquishes narrative coherence in the service of making his metaphors more literal.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Self Reliance
    Self Reliance fares better when it plays up its fictional reality TV show. Johnson flexes his familiarity with the landscape and its mechanics.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Ricky
    Ricky struggles with underbaked narrative threads and breathless direction that can verge on unfocused.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Dune: Part Two
    Part Two is plagued by a nagging shallowness when it comes to portraying the Fremen, an indigenous people fighting for self-determination within the empire; the film has difficulty fully embracing the nuance of Herbert’s anti-imperial and ecologically dystopian text.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Lovia Gyarkye
    Daniela Forever
    Vigalondo’s film has a compelling premise, but the story (he also wrote the screenplay) gets away from him, resulting in a film that never quite hits its stride.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Lovia Gyarkye
    Damsel
    Fresnadillo’s film puts on fewer airs of disruption than other versions of this story, so the narrative comes off as less self-satisfied. Still, it struggles to sustain an inspirational tenor.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Lovia Gyarkye
    Disenchanted
    Disenchanted lacks the charisma and curiosity of its predecessor.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    How to Blow Up a Pipeline
    While these stories are relatable and well-acted by a sturdy cast of exciting talent, they lack the potency of depth. How to Blow Up a Pipeline is skillfully executed — it hits all the right beats as a genre film, especially when it comes to ratcheting up the tension ­— but suffers from the same narrative limitations as Goldhaber’s equally compelling debut feature Cam.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Lovia Gyarkye
    Reptile
    There’s no doubt, from the way Reptile creeps in the first half, that Singer is a skilled director. But there’s something to be said for restraint, which the helmer, who wrote his screenplay with Benjamin Brewer and the film’s star Benicio Del Toro, doesn’t exercise enough of here. In an effort to prove its cleverness, Reptile clanks, rattles and stumbles in its second half.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    My Dead Friend Zoe
    The vigilance of the character building doesn’t translate to the narrative. The story at the center of My Dead Friend Zoe — a young woman suffering from PTSD and tasked with caring for her aging grandfather — is oddly unyielding, never relaxing enough to fully engage or move us.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Civil War
    Garland has always been a director of big ideas, and Civil War is no exception when it comes to that ambitiousness. But he’s also reaching for an intimacy here that his screenplay doesn’t quite deliver on.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Bottoms
    The jokes keep coming, but without a meaningful foundation — fleshing out the motivations of the group’s members would have helped — they start to wear thin.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Creed III
    In the spirit of its predecessors, Creed III gears audiences up for a fight of the century: The battle between Adonis and Damian is billed as one between an underdog and a man with nothing to lose. But the implications of those categories are murky and unsettling.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Emergency
    Emergency mostly stays close to the surface of the issues it presents, which results in a darkly funny but frustrating viewing experience.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Something You Said Last Night
    Something You Said Last Night testifies to its director’s dexterity with constructing subtly meaningful moments, but without more insight into its protagonist, the film can feel unintentionally impenetrable at times.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Mother and Son
    Léonor Serraille’s film Mother and Son contains moving strokes, but struggles to make a lasting emotional dent.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Lovia Gyarkye
    Catch the Fair One
    Where there should be intimacy, we get distance. Where one might expect steady meditation, the narrative jitters impulsively.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Represent
    The film deduces that these women need meaningful support, but doesn’t fully explore what that might look like — whether it would come in the form of campaign teams, money, endorsements or all of the above.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Relay
    The best parts of Relay harness the details of Ash’s brokerage. Mackenzie’s direction is never tighter than when he’s focused on message relays, burner phones and the bureaucracy of the post office.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    How to Train Your Dragon
    How to Train Your Dragon honors the charm of the original. I’s not an essential remake, but at least it’s not an offensive one.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Lovia Gyarkye
    Honey Don't!
    Honey Don’t! is a better movie than Drive-Away Dolls thanks to an engaging whodunit plot, but it ultimately suffers from the same issues as its predecessor: The film feels like a series of gags with nowhere to go.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Lovia Gyarkye
    Blood Brothers: Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali
    Blood Brothers struggles under the weight of its subjects.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Lovia Gyarkye
    True Things
    Although the film handles the process of being subsumed by love well, the characters ultimately feel too thin to make Kate’s awakening persuasive.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Quickening
    Quickening does not end on a completely satisfactory note, and part of that has to do with the overall disjointed feel of this poetic project. Still, its narrative ambition and visual acuity make me excited to see what Waseem does next.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Lovia Gyarkye
    Fear Street Part Three: 1666
    This bloated finale (running almost 2 hours long) perfunctorily ties up the narrative loose ends with little finesse or energy — a shame because the earlier two entries, chock full of pop culture references and subversive thematic underpinnings, had immense potential.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    The Idea of You
    The Idea of You functions best as a carefree treat — a feel-good romantic comedy that delivers some laughs and bursts with the magnetism of its lead. That it manages to wiggle in some lessons about self-discovery is merely a bonus.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    The Imaginary
    For a film all about creative fancy, The Imaginary doesn’t always offer the kind of compelling moments one might expect. The fine animation can be blunted by a predilection for obvious exposition, dialogue that doesn’t stretch the imagination as much as it could.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Sasquatch Sunset
    The Zellners’ fondness for wacky scenarios, the film’s unexpected turns and its deep appreciation for the natural world culminate in a project at once committed to a comedic bit that overstays its welcome and a somewhat poignant narrative competing for space and attention.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Lovia Gyarkye
    Jolt
    What Jolt lacks in originality and subtlety it at least somewhat makes up for in verve.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Lovia Gyarkye
    Thirteen Lives
    It’s a restrained rendering of the events, a drama that plays, at times, like a documentary. But if Howard’s decision to spotlight the Thai characters in this harrowing narrative is a sound one, there’s an unfamiliar stiffness and self-consciousness in the director’s approach — an inability to marry the fast-paced, no-nonsense heroics that are his strong suit with more emotionally textured storytelling. The resulting awkwardness prevents the movie, for all the surreal tension and bravery it depicts, from feeling urgent or surprising.
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