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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    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    Loud, smart and ferociously committed to its premise, and it leaves an intriguingly bitter aftertaste.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Kokomo City
    Imaginatively edited, sexually explicit, and filled with eloquent and often boisterous individuals of a sort who rarely get to claim a spotlight in documentaries, the trans sex worker portrait Kokomo City is a blast of creative freedom in an increasingly corporatized period of nonfiction filmmaking.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Witness
    This is a powerful movie, but perhaps its greatest triumph is that for a brief time it resurrects Kitty Genovese, and lets us see her as a person.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Official Competition
    The film's main goal is to make us laugh and pull the rug out out from under us. But while there's a bit of pathos here and there, the movie doesn't add up to much in the end.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Contemporary Color
    You could call it a musical performance documentary and not be wrong, but it's trying to do other things too, some expertly and others not so well; but there's never a point where you quite get a handle on it because it keeps changing in front of your eyes.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The One and Only Dick Gregory
    The uncanny confidence of Dick Gregory comes through from the opening minutes of The One and Only Dick Gregory, and he only becomes more formidable as the film unfolds.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 63 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Paul McCartney: Man on the Run
    All told, “Man on the Run” feels like an extra-long podcast episode featuring a celebrity promoting the latest project, coupled with a 90+ minute montage cut together so there’s something to look at on YouTube.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    BlackBerry
    This is a movie about people whose successes and failures originate in the same places: a tragedy shot and edited like an action comedy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Tori and Lokita
    The lead performances are extraordinary. They're real-seeming, in the manner of so many gifted but relatively inexperienced performers who haven't yet had the spontaneity crushed out of them by the cliches of formal training.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Grief of Others
    Wang's movie is empathetic enough not to pass negative judgment on the characters as they muddle through their experience.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Humans
    At times the movie feels like Hereditary without the supernatural elements and gore. It's a psychological horror movie about the ordinary miseries and compromises of family.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    One of Us
    One of Us is so strong as-is that its more harrowing sections — particularly Ari's account of his childhood suffering and the details of Rachel's fight for freedom — are so already hard to watch that you might want to turn away.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Merrily We Roll Along
    This is filmed theater in the purest sense.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Lost City of Z
    Those who don't know anything about the tale going in (a category that included me) might be gobsmacked by what happens. The order of events doesn't stick to any established commercial movie template. What happens feels as random yet eerily inevitable as life itself.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Ex Machina
    A rare and welcome exception to that norm.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Zootopia
    If Zootopia were a bit vaguer, or perhaps dumber and less pleased with itself, it might have been a classic, albeit of a very different, less reputable sort. As-is, it's a goodhearted, handsomely executed film that doesn't add up in the way it wants to.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Holding Liat
    The Israelis in "Holding Liat” are perfect subjects for a documentary about wartime trauma that hopes to reach beyond partisan enclaves.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Spontaneous
    Whenever Spontaneous starts to run out of imaginative juice, it turns a tonal corner and either puts a smile on your face or wipes it off.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Rodney King
    This is Smith's show, and it's all about the writing here, with Smith serving more as a town crier, an information delivery device in human form.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Logan Lucky
    The movie is put together with the no-fuss confidence of Soderbergh's best entertainments, staging comedic banter and suspense sequences with equal assurance, even playing sly perception games with the audience by making you wonder how smart or dumb the characters (and the movie) actually are.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    High Life
    With its brutal violence, explicit sex, and up-close views of blood, sweat, urine, and semen, it is proudly an R-rated film, verging on NC-17—though the X-rating, which was discontinued by the MPAA almost 30 years ago, might feel more appropriate.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Every Body
    Every Body is a moving, fascinating look at a too-often-ignored subset of the world's population, filled with empathy and understanding but also a cool, analytical anger about what history has put them through.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Mississippi Grind
    It's bracing in its simplicity. It's a character portrait, period.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Let It Be Morning
    Let It Be Morning is a quiet film that builds to a powerful ending.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Tatami
    The premise is innately powerful and offers a lot of room to bring the world beyond the arena into the arena, expanding the horizon of the sports picture. There isn’t anyone anywhere who can’t relate to “Tatami” on some level, even if they’ve never competed in sports.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Matt Zoller Seitz
    The Jungle Book
    In every way, this quietly majestic film should be considered a triumph.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Matt Zoller Seitz
    Jockey
    This is a drama that prizes journalistic or documentary values, as well as the "epic naturalism" of films by directors like Terrence Malick and Chloe Zhao in which the camera might be as interested in flowing water, a sunset, a flock of birds, or a line of silhouetted horses as in whatever the characters are doing or saying.
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