Maitland McDonagh

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Film Journal International, TV Guide Magazine
For 2,280 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 43% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 53% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 10.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Maitland McDonagh's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 55
Highest review score: 100 Devil in a Blue Dress
Lowest review score: 0 The Hottie & the Nottie
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 738 out of 2280
  2. Mixed: 1,265 out of 2280
  3. Negative: 277 out of 2280
2280 movie reviews
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    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Ladrón que roba a ladrón
    This good-natured genre piece gets the job done while sneaking in a couple of pointed observations about contemporary Latino immigrant life.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    You Kill Me
    Director John Dahl keeps a firm hand on Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely's razor-sharp hit-man-in-rehab comedy, which mines the same dark vein as "Gross Pointe Blank"(1997) and "Matador"(2005), and the payoff is both slily funny and startlingly fresh.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Children of Men
    The screenplay, which differs significantly from the novel, is uneven, but the distorted mirror it holds up to the present is disturbingly clear.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    The Forbidden Kingdom
    To see the two of them on screen together, even past their primes, is a delight.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Roll Bounce
    Frothy, sentimental and thoroughly good-natured, Malcolm D. Lee's tale of coming-of-age at the roller disco doesn't have an original bone in its body, but it's as energetic, eager to please and endearing as a sloppy, wriggling puppy.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Cobra Verde
    Linear storytelling was never Herzog's strong suit even under the best of conditions. His strength lies in capturing lucid lunacy on film, and Manoel da Silva's descent into the jaws of madness is a straight shot into the heart of darkness, a place familiar to both Herzog and Kinski.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    White Palms
    The film's climax, which cuts back and forth between the 16-year-old Dongo (Silas Radies, whose younger brother plays Dongo as a ten year old) making his dangerous debut with the fly-by-night Aurora Circus and the 2002 competition that takes him back to Hungary for the first time in years is nothing short of riveting.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    In Bruges
    Little more than a shaggy-dog tale about two hit men killing time in the picturesque, medieval Belgian city of the title, goosed with crackling dialogue and generous dollops of gore.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Sketches of Frank Gehry
    Rescued from its inclination to smug, celebrity-testimonial-driven hagiography by Gehry's own considerable charm and infectious enthusiasm.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Beauty in Trouble
    A subtle, unsparing portrait of families whose fragile dynamics fray under pressure. Its strength lies in the complexity with which the characters are written.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    An Inconvenient Truth
    Gore looks as energized and purposeful as Mother Earth looks sickly and mad as hell, which is no doubt why many commentators suggested it was less an environmental action statement than a test balloon for future political ambitions.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Michael Clayton
    While Gilroy deploys the occasional exploding car, the film's climax is all words -- angry, carefully sharpened words -- with the stopping power of large-caliber bullets.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    The PianoTuner of EarthQuakes
    Seething with suggestions of perverse pleasures and inchoate horror, this dark fairy tale won't win the Pennsylvania-born, London-based Quay brothers any new fans -- it plays to the converted, and the converted know who they are.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Surf's Up
    A cut above the noisy, pop-culture joke-larded norm, and it's much more than a "Happy Feet" knockoff.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Talk to Me
    Cheadle and Ejiofor are riveting together; they have the kind of apparently effortless chemistry that makes every scene they share a delight. With a dynamite soundtrack under their feet, the two of them rock the house.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Black Friday
    Opening with the Mohandas Gandhi epigram "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," it humanizes the bombers without excusing their actions.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Elsa y Fred
    Sentimental, formulaic, predictable and shamelessly manipulative, Marcos Carnevale’s tale of late-life love is also genuinely heartbreaking and heartening.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Maitland McDonagh
    Brick
    First-time writer-director Rian Johnson's gimmick is that his SoCal teens talk like film-noir yeggs and dames, slinging hard-boiled shade and spitting out terse, rat-a-tat dialogue peppered with slang that was yesterday's news 40 years before they were born. But the result is, against all odds, marvelously entertaining.
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