Matt Zoller Seitz

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New York Magazine (Vulture), Newark Star-Ledger, RogerEbert.com, Salon
For 732 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 68% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 29% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Matt Zoller Seitz's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Shoah: Four Sisters
Lowest review score: 0 Alice Through the Looking Glass
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 593 out of 732
  2. Mixed: 86 out of 732
  3. Negative: 53 out of 732
732 movie reviews
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    • 29 Metascore
    • 25 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Animal Farm
    Orwell did not intend “Animal Farm” as light entertainment.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 25 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Balls Up
    Wahlberg should not be cast in any role predicated on the idea that he’s good with words and ideas. Hauser is one of the best actors in the English language and will escape this disaster and do more great work, so there’s that.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Hallow Road
    Hallow Road is an earnest attempt to make a movie no one has seen before, only to end up with one few will want to watch again.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Play Dirty
    Although it has a solid cast, some amusing bits, and lots of imaginative violence, “Play Dirty,” a comedy-thriller-action movie about the theft of already-stolen treasures in a plot to topple a dictator, is easily the most forgettable of Shane Black‘s films, as both writer and writer-director.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    AJ Goes to the Dog Park
    It has a lot of the flaws that are common to super-low-budget movies produced outside of the system, such as it is, including hit-and-miss performances and a look that falls somewhere between a “Saturday Night Live” short and a student film.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Madea's Destination Wedding
    Admittedly, the logistics of filming a Tyler Perry film with Perry performing multiple roles is not what most viewers will be thinking about. But there’s little else to recommend it except for the performances.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Fountain of Youth
    When future generations of media scholars need an example of a work that gathered up and displayed with peerless skill all of the techniques yet devised for a new medium—in this case, second-screen entertainment, which superficially resembles cinema or television, but is meant not to make any demands on anybody—”Fountain of Youth” might be the work that they they name-check.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Penguin Lessons
    Based on a 2016 memoir by Tom Mitchell, “The Penguin Lessons” wants to be a thoughtful light entertainment about ideals and courage, but ends up seeming grotesquely misguided.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Millers in Marriage
    Millers in Marriage isn’t a science fiction movie. Which is unfortunate, because if it were, we might’ve gotten a decent explanation for why one minute of the characters’ lives makes you feel as if you’ve aged a month.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 12 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Unfrosted
    A handsomely produced, nearly empty experience, "Unfrosted: The Pop-Tarts Story" is hard to describe because it's tough to tell what the filmmakers were going for, much less argue about whether they achieved it.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Willie and Me
    Even for a picaresque plot comprised of incidents and moments, it's a flat and disjointed effort that lurches forward and stops and lurches forward again throughout its brief running time—a labor of love that doesn't deliver.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Next Goal Wins
    Next Goal Wins exists as proof of the invulnerability of a certain movie template and as a Frankenstein patchwork of previous films.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Old Dads
    Old Dads has a great cast, but it's barely a movie. That's a shame, because it's the directorial debut of Bill Burr.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
    This second sequel is escapist in a next-level way: it escapes from drama as well as life.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 12 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Out-Laws
    Nearly every aspect of this feature from Tyler Spindel, formerly a second unit director for Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, is derivative and desperate and, at the same time, bizarrely pleased with itself.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Waking Karma
    Waking Karma is the kind of small movie you root for even when it fails to live up to its potential. There's a lot that doesn't quite work, but you can tell by the strong performances and the production's overall sincerity that everyone involved was hoping to create something memorable; the missteps are mainly about what the film decides to emphasize.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 25 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Fourth of July
    This is the kind of earnest but inept and obliviously indulgent indie flick that a film festival's artistic director would program in full awareness of its deficiencies, because they thought the name of someone associated with the project (in this case, the director) will put butts in seats.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Desperate Hour
    Once in a while, you see a film where it's clear that everyone involved is operating at the peak of of their skills, yet the whole is so misguided that the result is still awful. Such is The Desperate Hour.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Shattered
    Unfortunately, the craftsmanship is lacking.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    A Week Away
    This isn't an unwatchable movie, just an underachieving and forgettable one, and somehow that's more irritating than a disastrous swing for the fences would've been.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 25 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Pixie
    The crime comedy Pixie dissolves in the mind as you're watching it. You've seen it before. And the "it" you've seen before is the most derivative version of "it."
    • 52 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The United States vs. Billie Holiday
    The United States vs. Billie Holiday is so misguided that it's hard to know where to start griping about it. It wallows in cruelty, misery, and degradation without providing insight into the historical personages who are so thoughtfully depicted by its cast.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Music
    There's nothing fun about panning a feature by a first-time director, especially when it seems to come from a place of good intentions, but Music, a musical fantasy drama about an autistic teen, is bad. Mystifyingly bad. Verging on "What were they thinking?" bad.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Most Wanted
    A mediocre film that's unaware of the poor choices it's making is much harder to watch than a bad film that relishes its stupidity and poor taste. At least the second kind of film can be fun.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Irresistible
    But still! Even if Irresistible were released a year ago, when its face-down-on-the-bar, abandon-all-hope vibe would've made more sense, it would still be entering a pop culture landscape in which "Sorry to Bother You" and "The Death of Stalin" existed, and it would seem imaginatively as well as politically bereft in comparison.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Bad Therapy
    The dark comedy Bad Therapy, about a married couple that becomes prey for a disturbed and manipulative therapist, contains so many promising elements that it's a shame that it never figures out how to mold them into a satisfying shape.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    A Million Little Pieces
    It's the kind of film where you start trying to guess which of the characters will turn out to be a figment of the narrator's imagination. The answer, of course, is all of them.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Con Is On
    The comedy thriller The Con is On is a Who's Who of 1990s indie film character actors, but the movie ends up delivering a lot of cliches from that brief but extremely specific era of filmmaking, and not necessarily the ones you might want.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 12 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Flower
    The cast's heroic exertions fail to save Flower from its own worst tendencies.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 38 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Death Wish
    The new Death Wish is a vigilante film that's also about vigilante film cliches, when it remembers to think about such things, which is only occasionally. Most of its attempts to subvert or freshen up familiar elements aren't well developed, and they're certainly never strong enough to counter the bloodlust and gun worship that's invariably going to power this kind of project.
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