Mary Pols

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For 226 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Mary Pols' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Inside Out
Lowest review score: 0 Jack and Jill
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 112 out of 226
  2. Mixed: 94 out of 226
  3. Negative: 20 out of 226
226 movie reviews
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Mary Pols
    Grandma
    Weitz knows his muse. But he’s smartly made room for Tomlin to explore her own wisdom, to look into a mirror (literal and figurative) of an older woman’s past and present with remorse, tears and, best of all, delighted laughter at discovering something new in herself. At 75, Tomlin remains the coolest.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    Southpaw
    Southpaw is a foreshadowing machine, but it works, movingly, because Fuqua (Training Day) tempers the melodrama inherent in screenwriter Kurt Sutter’s (Sons of Anarchy) script with a muted tone and clear confidence in his cast.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Mary Pols
    Inside Out
    Inside Out is nearly hallucinogenic, entirely beautiful and easily the animation studio’s best release since 2010’s "Toy Story 3." Stylistically Inside Out is nothing like Richard Linklater’s "Boyhood," but for its scope in examining the maturation process, it might well be called "Childhood."
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    Enough Said
    A wry and moving look at a time in life that tends to get short shrift in U.S. cinema.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    The Way, Way Back
    It is derivative and too deliberately zany, but still a heartfelt charmer.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    Despicable Me 2
    Despicable Me 2 is far more entertaining than the disappointingly bland "Monsters University" and as a sequel stands level with the first film, and may have the edge on it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    White House Down
    What makes White House Down not just tolerable but frivolously entertaining is its slapstick soul; a scene where the presidential limousine does doughnuts on the South Lawn plays like an homage to the Keystone Kops.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    This Is the End
    It is intensely raunchy and silly and joyous and tapped right into my inner teenager in a glorious way.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    What Maisie Knew
    Some moviegoers may opt for an easier cinematic pleasure than this carefully crafted, discomforting look at familial misery in hyper drive, but it is the most provocative movie about parenting I’ve seen since "The Kids Are All Right."
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    The Kings of Summer
    The slight but captivating indie-comedy The Kings of Summer has the ragtag look and feel of a movie made in some teenager’s basement
    • 94 Metascore
    • 90 Mary Pols
    Before Midnight
    Bravely and with penetrating intelligence, Before Midnight elevates instead the practical, a partnership: frayed by disappointment, worn by time, but for the very luckiest—which we sincerely and selfishly hope includes Jesse and Celine—durable for the long day’s journey into night.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Mary Pols
    Mud
    Glorious vision of youth and truth, love and loss, your name is Mud.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    The Place Beyond the Pines
    The Place Beyond the Pines can’t be said to be anyone’s movie but Cianfrance’s. Structured as a triptych, the movie is novelistic, earnest and somewhat exhausting — an ambitious effort that tries to be many things. And it is definitely something: a sprawling, engaging study in fathers, sons and sins.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    Room 237
    Maybe they’re all right. Or wrong. It can’t be settled. What matters is that people are still crazy about the beauty of a beautiful movie about going crazy.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    Beyond the Hills
    Beyond the Hills may be the best movie no one will want to see in 2013.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    A Place at the Table
    The movie is called A Place at the Table and it specifically addresses our country’s hunger crisis. But it also speaks to larger hungers. Hungers for independence, a dignified life, a better chance for ones children — in short, the American dream. See it and weep.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    Beautiful Creatures
    Beautiful Creatures is good fun and I want to know what happens next for Lena the teenaged witch.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    Warm Bodies
    Warm Bodies is the first movie worth paying to see in theaters this year. It’s an inventive charmer that visits all the typical movie scenarios of young love amid chaos and disaster, but with a new dimension: one of the romantic leads is a zombie.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Mary Pols
    The Impossible
    The Impossible is technologically a marvel - the tsunami experience is harrowingly believable - but also emotionally rich. I hesitate to use this term, since it is so often equated with hokey, but The Impossible is life-affirming.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    Save the Date
    A slim but likeable little romantic comedy that feels like a sweeter cousin of HBO's Girls.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    Dragon
    When a mild-mannered peasant unsheathes the powers he has long kept hidden, the results can be spectacular. The same can be said for Peter Chan Ho-sun's Dragon, a martial-arts morality play as lithe as it is forceful.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    Hitchcock
    It's a feel-good frolic, which is fine for anyone who prefers their Hitchcock history tidied up, absent the megalomania, the condescending cruelty and tendency to sexual harassment that caused his post-Psycho blonde discovery Tippi Hedren to declare him "a mean, mean man."
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    A Royal Affair
    A slam dunk in the genre, satisfying every period piece craving: torrid affair, mad king, bastard child, throngs at the palace gates and a history lesson that will be fresh to many.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    A Late Quartet
    A Late Quartet serves as an acting showcase, particularly for Walken and Hoffman, and makes for an interesting study in artistic ego.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Mary Pols
    Wreck-It Ralph
    The most inventive and entertaining family movie I've seen this year, packed with wickedly smart humor and joyful animation.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    Chasing Mavericks
    Chasing Mavericks may treat its characters with a little too much reverence, but it gives its titular subject its awe-inspiring due.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Mary Pols
    Sister
    Director Ursula Meier's Sister is a penetrating study of familial bonds, quietly devastating in parts, beautiful on whole and destined to make you fall in love with a practiced and entirely amoral preteen thief.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    Pitch Perfect
    A spirited, irreverent and hugely fun comedy.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Mary Pols
    Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel
    The mind may clamor for more, but the eye, traveling over this visual history of Diana Vreeland, is pleased.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Mary Pols
    Arbitrage
    Gere is being talked about as an Oscar contender - he's never been nominated. January is a long time off yet, but his name is certainly worth putting on the long list.
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