Matt Singer

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ScreenCrush, The Dissolve
For 419 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 36% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 61% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Matt Singer's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 American Graffiti
Lowest review score: 10 The Emoji Movie
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 176 out of 419
  2. Mixed: 196 out of 419
  3. Negative: 47 out of 419
419 movie reviews
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    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    The Alto Knights
    When all is said and done, The Alto Knights imparts very little about these two men that couldn’t be gleaned by reading their respective Wikipedia pages, and it does it at a sluggish pace and with little visual flair. Some of the biggest and best names to ever work in gangster movies contributed to this film; De Niro and Pileggi, obviously, but also producer Irwin Winkler and director Barry Levinson. Despite their many contributions to this genre in the past, they’ve got nothing new to say here. And they provide zero evidence that casting De Niro in both lead roles is anything more than a gimmick.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Napoleon
    At times, Napoleon is a costume drama. For long stretches, it is a bloody war film. And occasionally — in its best moments — it becomes a sordid and twisted love story about the unbreakable bond between two people: Napoleon Bonaparte, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and his wife Joséphine, played by Vanessa Kirby.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Lorne
    Like Saturday Night Live itself, there are too many great comedians involved for it not to be at least occasionally funny. But it’s surely not among Neville’s most insightful films. Michaels guards his secrets like someone in the Witness Protection Program.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Pacific Rim: Uprising
    The first half of the film setting up the characters’ meager backstories and conflicts is boring. The second half is livelier but dumber, with the kaiju rising yet again from the depths of the Pacific to rampage through some extremely computer-generated cityscapes. There isn’t a single second where anything involving the jaegers or the kaiju looks real.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    The Flash
    The good barely outweighs the bad here, at least enough for me to give The Flash a marginal recommendation. A lot of the reviews of The Flash from early screenings called it one of the greatest DC Comics movies ever made. Maybe in another universe that’s true. In this one, I thought it stumbled across the finish line.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Mank
    It is a beautiful film, as all Fincher films are, and it contains several compelling performances. But if all that artifice and powerhouse acting add up to something particularly profound, I did not find it during my initial viewings of the movie.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Silence
    With his mastery of composition, editing, and music, Scorsese has made some of the most engaging movies in history, experiences that express fascinating ideas through gripping stories, compelling characters, and unparalleled craft. Here, all of those elements seem sublimated to the larger points Scorsese wants to make.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Dumb Money
    It’s not boring and there are a few decent laughs. But it also does feel like exactly the movie you would expect a big Hollywood studio to make from this material.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    i'm thinking of ending things
    The best way I can think of to describe the experience of actually watching I’m Thinking of Ending Things is to imagine you’ve been asked to assemble a complicated piece of furniture without the instruction manual. All of the pieces are there; and you see how some of those individual parts connect and work together. You can admire the obvious intelligence and care that went into crafting those pieces. But the path to a coherent whole is not entirely clear — and often deeply frustrating.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Fifty Shades Darker
    Fifty Shades Darker is a very faithful sequel; a milquetoast continuation of a bland romance between two boring people.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    The Jungle Book
    Favreau’s Jungle Book is at its best in moments of visual splendor; when his camera pulls back to admire the sweep of the CGI foliage or yet another dazzling computer creation wanders into frame. Those images have a clarity that the rest of the movie often lacks.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
    The’re not a lot of momentum to Hotel Transylvania 3; this is a children’s film after all. But the character and location designs are inventive and appealing, and there are several memorable set pieces, including a wordless scuba diving sequence that draws heavy inspiration from classic Warner Bros. cartoons.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Maestro
    This couple’s connection feels authentic and lived in — but I must confess that at a certain point I began to feel like an additional dimension was missing, some sort of tangible connection between Bernstein’s outward persona and his marital stresses, or between his sexuality (and the steps he took to hide it) and his musical output.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    The Revenant
    If Iñárritu wanted to show how life on the frontier was miserable and monotonous he succeeded — by making a movie that is miserable and monotonous. Some of the greatest cinematography in history can’t change that fact.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Extraction
    Extraction might outdo Children of Men in some minor technical ways, but it can’t hold a candle to it as a whole. The movie comes alive around the 34-minute mark; it’s a bit of a slog until that point — one I confess I might have turned off long before its bravura centerpiece if not for professional commitments.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Raya and the Last Dragon
    The many similarities between Raya and Mulan and Moana suggest that Disney’s honed in on a new formula for their fairy tales, one that emphasizes (to borrow a phrase from a television series that anticipated the appetite for these kinds of stories) warrior princesses. In this case, at least, the formula works.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    On the Rocks
    Felix isn’t On the Rocks’ main character, but he is its most interesting one, the one who seems to have the most to say and the most to hide; the one that writer/director Sofia Coppola gives her strongest comedic material and saddest monologues; the one who’s played by Bill Murray in yet another performance that feels so tossed off and yet so finely tuned
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Fair Play
    Dynevor and Ehrenreich are both very easy on the eyes, and when the story allows — which is not that often — they do have chemistry together. Their final scenes crackle with a darker and more disturbing energy as well. But Fair Play’s middle section gives neither of them very much to do beyond a repetitive series of clashes.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    A Field in England
    Even though the film’s overall impact is blunted by Wheatley’s frequently inscrutable plotting (co-written with Amy Jump), Rose’s images...speak louder than words.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Spaceship Earth
    If you think quarantine life is tough, just wait until you see what happens in a biosphere.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Wind River
    The crime story, involving the hunt for the men who murdered this girl, is strictly by-the-numbers (and there are a few clue that still don’t fit together in my mind) but Sheridan proves himself a surprisingly effective director of action.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Hoppers
    Hoppers director and co-writer Daniel Chong throws a lot of ingredients in the pot here, but I’m not sure they all blend together into a coherent stew. The film has a couple fun gags, an uplifting theme, and a touching subplot about Mabel and her grandmother (Karen Huie). Still, as a story it’s a bit of a jumble, as if someone took a nature doc and hopped it into a mystery movie that was hopped into a broad comedy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Jay Kelly
    The final act pickles Jay Kelly’s tragicomic vibe into something more overtly and excessively sentimental.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Zootopia 2
    Sure, yes, technically speaking Zootopia 2 is intended for your children. This is a colorful, energetic, and extremely busy animated film about talking animals. But while these critters’ adventures keep the kids occupied, a lot of the movie’s humor, tucked into its corners and backgrounds of the frame, is aimed squarely at their parents and guardians, at least those who love a groan-inducing play on words.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    M3GAN
    While most of 2022’s holiday toys are destined to be dumped in storage bins or even the garbage in a matter of weeks, I have feeling M3GAN is going to stick around a lot longer than that.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Midsommar
    The stuff about this couple in decline is lacerating and painful in the best and most hilarious ways possible. The stuff about the solstice is standard horror fare made unfurled, with exceptional craft, at a snail’s pace. And the longer Midsommar goes, the further it gets from the pain and the loss that fueled its emotional core, until it has lost touch with the things that made it special.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Doctor Strange
    The bad news is the studio’s most innovative visuals are wedded to one of its most formulaic origin stories. In some scenes, Doctor Strange is Marvel’s most exciting movie yet. In others, it might be its most boring movie since Iron Man 2.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Matt Singer
    Luca
    Combine some of the Italian master’s whimsy with even more of Disney’s The Little Mermaid, along with plenty of Pixar’s now-standard bittersweet lessons about growing up and you get Luca, an affectionate portrait of friendship that never quite rises to the level of the beloved animation studio’s best efforts. Maybe it’s just a little too simple, both in construction and stakes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Matt Singer
    Brad's Status
    With little drama or humor, it mostly amounts to watching a guy complain about his fairly decent life for 100 minutes.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Matt Singer
    Memory: The Origins of Alien
    Essentially, Memory is too superficial a treatment of the chestburster sequence to validate making half of a movie about it, and it’s also too lengthy an exploration of it to give the other elements of the movie their proper due.
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