Matt Zoller Seitz

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New York Magazine (Vulture), Newark Star-Ledger, RogerEbert.com, Salon
For 734 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 7.2 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: 594 out of 734
  2. Mixed: 87 out of 734
  3. Negative: 53 out of 734
734 movie reviews
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Sharp Corner
    This is a quiet classic. Every choice is just right.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Nosferatu
    It reminded me of being a child and seeing the original "The Exorcist" and feeling as if I was seeing a documentary record of evil, one that was itself cursed, and that I should not even be looking at, because by looking at it, I ran the risk of releasing that evil into the world.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Pig
    It's attentive to regret and failure in ways that American films tend to avoid for fear of bumming viewers out and making them warn other people not to watch the movie. And it seems to understand the way people mythologize others and themselves, and the reasons it happens.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Procession
    This is an unrelentingly gripping and often disturbing film that dares to visualize (with taste and restraint) some of the vilest behavior the species is capable of, and take full measure of the psychic damage it inflicts on innocent victims.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    First They Killed My Father
    Angelina Jolie's First They Killed My Father is far and away her best work as a director: a rare film about a national tragedy told through the eyes and mind of a child, and as fine a war movie as has ever been made.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Private Life
    The film's writer-director, Tamara Jenkins is a brilliant chronicler of upper-middle class white people and their foibles, and her eye for detail is anthropologically exact, empathetic but never begging for sympathy.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
    McQuarrie understands that these films are essentially tall tales with a sense of humor, skating on the edge of parody at all times while maintaining a poker face.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros
    The vast majority of "Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros" finds Wiseman and his cinematographer James Bishop finding a good spot to observe two or three or many more people doing a thing and just leaving it there and watching what happens. Each of these moments is rich enough to feel like a short film unto itself: sometimes explanatory, other times subtly funny or empathetic.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Wrath of Man
    The completeness and sureness of the movie’s aesthetic is a joy to behold, even when the images capture human beings doing savage things. You don’t really root for anyone in this film. They are criminals engaged in contests of will. But the film is not a value-neutral exercise. There is an undertone of lament to a lot of the violent action.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Life of Chuck
    This is a musical movie, not just because it features musical numbers. It weaves its spell not merely by what it does, but how it moves, and what it chooses to say or not say, and when it decides to proceed to the next scene.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Survivor
    Like its lead character, and the actor who plays him, Barry Levinson's The Survivor initially presents as familiar and comprehensible. The biographical drama then proceeds to surprise its audience, not with plot twists—we're told at the outset what the character's issues are, and have a pretty good idea of where the story is going to end up—but with how it keeps finding little ways to complicate and deepen every relationship and moment.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Sam Now
    Sam Now is remarkable not only for its powerful subject matter and the restrained, intelligent way it examines its key players, but for how it simultaneously reaches the audience and everyone involved in the story.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Civil War
    Civil War is a furiously convincing and disturbing thing when you're watching it. It's a great movie that has its own life force. It's not like anything Garland has made. It's not like anything anyone has made, even though it contains echoes of dozens of other films (and novels) that appear to have fed the filmmaker's imagination.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Abacus: Small Enough to Jail
    As gripping as the movie is as a legal thriller, it's even more notable as a portrait of a community.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Police Story (1985)
    Police Story is one of the great 1980s action films. It’s also one of the most 1980s action films.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
    Whatever your feelings about Tarantino and his work, this is a tremendous visceral experience, with radiant colors, slate-somber black-and-white, and geysers of crimson blood. To quote the end of another Tarantino film, it just might be his masterpiece.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    A Bread Factory Part Two: Walk With Me a While
    The most surprising and challenging thing about Part Two is how it takes one of the central ideas from Part One—art's ability help us understand and express ourselves in everyday life—and externalizes it, so that creativity that might otherwise have been confined to the stages of the arts centers erupts into the world outside.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    A Bread Factory Part One: For the Sake of Gold
    A Bread Factory is an idealistic statement about the importance of art in everyday life. It's about how a scene from a play or a line from a poem can cast a new light on your problems or dreams, maybe put a whole new frame around your life, your community, and the culture and nation that helped shape you.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Look Into My Eyes
    It may seem fragmented, elusive, or “arty” to modern audiences who aren’t into older movies and have no reference point for what they’re watching. Hopefully not, though, because it’s an often profound and touching documentary that engages your attention differently than movies usually do.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Changeover
    It's worth seeking out no matter how much trouble you have to go to, because it's special: assured but modest, full of surprises. It doesn't go the way you expect it to, and yet in retrospect each move seems inevitable, like the incremental fulfillment of a prophecy.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Shoah: Four Sisters
    The women are all compelling though never too-polished storytellers. Whether they succumb to the horror of what they're describing and start to cry or remain stoic throughout becomes part of the experience of hearing the tale.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Dead Man's Wire
    Through the ending and postscript, which leave you unsure how to feel about what you’ve seen but eager to discuss it with others, this is a nostalgia trip of the best kind.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Hundreds of Beavers
    Hundreds of Beavers, a boldly bizarre, nearly wordless slapstick comedy about a 19th-century trapper doing battle with nature, exceeds expectations in every way, including the promise of its title.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Inherent Vice
    Inherent Vice is a film about a stoner which itself seems stoned. This is just one small part of what makes it distinctive.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Knight of Cups
    The film seems to be fighting a losing battle to make sense of itself, to coalesce into a statement, to not fade away. This feels right. Knight of Cups is not a young man's movie. It's an old man's movie. A philosophically engaged, beatific, starchild-as-old-man's movie. The end is coming.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Apollo 11
    It's magnificent and unique, an adrenaline shot of wonder and skill.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    A Ghost Story
    I rarely see a movie so original that I want to tell people to just see it without reading any reviews beforehand, including my own. David Lowery’s A Ghost Story is one of those movies.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine
    It is wrenching but never exploitive. It is impressively skeptical of the same mission that it takes on its shoulders: to make something positive from a senseless crime without diminishing its senselessness. This film doesn't just revisit an atrocity, it moves through it, and finds meaning in it.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Hereditary
    Creepy beyond belief, Hereditary is one of those movies you shouldn't describe in detail, because if you do, it will not only ruin surprises but make the listener wonder if you saw the film or dreamed it.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    100 Bloody Acres
    Don't see this movie if you have a weak stomach, or if you don't like movies that mix horror-movie violence and cornball humor. Don't see if it you're expecting production values beyond a couple of vehicles, a farmhouse and about twelve buckets of gore. Don't see this movie if your definition of a great or classic film is one that bowls you over with the importance of its subject or the awesome scope of its vision. Do see if it you want to be be reminded that it's possible to make a relaxed, engrossing, funny, sometimes scary movie on almost no money.
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