Manuel Betancourt

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Los Angeles Times, The A.V. Club, Variety
For 70 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 65% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Manuel Betancourt's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Eyimofe (This Is My Desire)
Lowest review score: 25 Madame Web
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 47 out of 70
  2. Mixed: 20 out of 70
  3. Negative: 3 out of 70
70 movie reviews
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Manuel Betancourt
    Maestro
    If the film is a tad baggy and unruly that seems by design and thus less a critique than an accurate assessment. But overall and while painting so boldly on such a broad canvas (the film spans decades and calls on its actors and make-up department to work overtime in delineating the passage of time) Maestro emerges as a bombastic aria of a biopic befitting its central subject.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Manuel Betancourt
    The Mother of All Lies
    The Mother of All Lies is an astonishing work whose maturity comes from El Moudir’s wide-eyed approach to her family history, where memory and history are quite literally reduced to playthings in order to process the unspeakable events they conjure up.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Manuel Betancourt
    Orlando, My Political Biography
    With Orlando, My Political Biography, Preciado has crafted a towering manifesto that’s as nimble in presenting abstracted gender theorizations as it is in capturing moving emotional truths (credit here must also go to the film’s dynamic editor, Yotam Ben David).
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Manuel Betancourt
    May December
    With May December Haynes has crafted an implausible blend of raw authenticity and stylized histrionics that’s fueled by a curious intellectual inquiry: what role do we play in our own story?
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Manuel Betancourt
    At the Gates
    Aiming to be a tense drama about trust, the film struggles to balance the personal and cultural stakes at the heart of its neat conceit.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Manuel Betancourt
    Pain Hustlers
    While it’s wildly entertaining to watch a performer walk such a tightrope, at some point you lament that the opioid crisis has been reduced to a circus sideshow.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Manuel Betancourt
    The Holdovers
    The Holdovers may peg its tale on a truism that can feel trite (you never know what others are going through). But Payne, Hemingson, and its central trio of actors find welcome nuances within that platitude.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Manuel Betancourt
    Nyad
    If, at the end of the day, Nyad feels like a well-oiled crowd-pleasing sports drama with a heartwarming (if slightly insidious) message about never giving up, that doesn’t blunt its impact.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 67 Manuel Betancourt
    Dicks: The Musical
    This is as broad as comedies get these days. But its shock-and-awe sensibility is somewhat exhausting.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Manuel Betancourt
    Dumb Money
    Smart, playful, and perhaps efficient to a fault (there’s only so many times a rap song can be used as a narrative stitch to take us from one character to another), Gillespie’s latest is an enraging David vs. Goliath, ripped-from-the-headlines tale that deserves to be seen to be believed.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Manuel Betancourt
    Rotting in the Sun
    With its tricky tone and its wildly ambitious themes, it’s not surprising to find Silva’s outrageous, salacious film stumbling as it brings its many threads into focus. Like Sebastián’s art and his journal in the film, Rotting in the Sun remains a patchwork of quotes and ideas and provocations hastily if hilariously stitched together.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Manuel Betancourt
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
    Quippy, zippy, and punchy, this teen-focused take on everyone’s favorite pizza-loving vigilantes is a refreshing reappraisal of a property that could very well have felt stale in 2023.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Manuel Betancourt
    The Stroll
    The Stroll is a powerful piece of trans history-making, a document that feels wounded, lived in, and yet joyfully alive.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 58 Manuel Betancourt
    Elemental
    Its world building is so vast and so intricate (the city has a Wetro and you can watch films like Tide And Prejudice!) that it overshadows the textured plot about the burdens placed on second-generation kids.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Manuel Betancourt
    Concerned Citizen
    With its piercing, probing final moments, which turn self-flagellating into thorny cathartic territory, Haguel has crafted an intimate portrait of privilege that’s as damning as it is discomfiting.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 100 Manuel Betancourt
    The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future
    Rather than let its timely concerns be embalmed in didacticism, Alegría has crafted a film about healing generational trauma through new modes of living and experiencing desire — of reshaping the world in a way that feels inclusive and expansive, and which does away with relics of a past that should be left to rot at the bottom of a river.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Manuel Betancourt
    Chile '76
    What begins as a muted marital melodrama slowly boils into a restrained political thriller, with an ease and skill all the more impressive in a first feature.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Manuel Betancourt
    Chevalier
    As a celebration of a musical genius, Chevalier is a wildly entertaining ride, a thrilling history lesson in the making that remains as timely as ever.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Manuel Betancourt
    Showing Up
    To say Showing Up centers on the moments in between Lizzy unwittingly caring for a broken pigeon and making sure she has enough pieces to show at the gallery is accurate. Yet, in true Reichardt fashion, the point is not the plot so much as the spaces in between what’s happening on screen.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 58 Manuel Betancourt
    Moving On
    This Paul Weitz project may be a reminder that good chemistry and stellar leading ladies can only get you so far.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Manuel Betancourt
    65
    Aiming to be a gripping survival thriller, 65 rarely surprises. With only two characters to speak of, the stakes feel decidedly low.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 67 Manuel Betancourt
    Your Place or Mine
    Your Place Or Mine isn’t that invested in crafting a world that looks anything like ours; it’s arguably more interested in giving its supporting cast’s ace one-liners (which, I’ll admit, is where the film sporadically got me chuckling).
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Manuel Betancourt
    Somebody I Used to Know
    The film’s rom-com template feels more like a structure to play with, a solid foundation on which to question the very tenets of romance and comedy.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Manuel Betancourt
    Close
    Close is exquisite, tender, and bruising in equal measure, managing to feel both like an open wound and a balm.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Manuel Betancourt
    Of an Age
    Equal parts wistful and sensual, vivid and gentle, Stolevski has gifted us with a swoon-worthy romantic drama that looks at that first blushing crush not as an ephemera in need of being remembered but as a living memory that can pulsate and ache precisely because it’s never left you.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 Manuel Betancourt
    Spoiler Alert
    When the film lets its guard down—namely, whenever Aldridge gets to deploy his charm as Kit or manages to let Field echo a weathered kind of Steel Magnolias screen presence—the film sings. Yet its attempts to distance itself from the very genre of a film it so clearly is (there wasn’t a dry eye in the house by the time I left my screening) end up shortchanging its impact.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Manuel Betancourt
    Bantú Mama
    At once an intimate portrait of a makeshift family and a treatise on motherhood and motherlands, Bantú Mama is a quiet achievement.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Manuel Betancourt
    Huesera: The Bone Woman
    Examining the bone-breaking work that being a mother can be, Garza Cervera’s tale is most thrilling for the ways it refuses any tidy answers about a woman’s place and wallows (and finds plenty of terror) in the ambiguities therein.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Manuel Betancourt
    Please Baby Please
    Kramer sketches out a feverish queer manifesto on gender that feels both novel and familiar.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Manuel Betancourt
    The Immaculate Room
    Despite its thrilling central performances and its sleek production design, The Immaculate Room has more ideas than it can hold together, and emerges, quite ironically it must be said, as quite a muddled mess.
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