Michael O'Sullivan

Select another critic »
Washington Post
For 1,854 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 50% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Michael O'Sullivan's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Flipside
Lowest review score: 0 Tomcats
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,051 out of 1854
  2. Mixed: 394 out of 1854
  3. Negative: 409 out of 1854
1854 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Antarctica: A Year on Ice
    Yes, it features some of the most rapturous footage of calving glaciers and ice floes — alternately freezing and thawing — that you’re likely to have seen (much of it captured on equipment designed and built by the filmmaker). But it is the simple glimpses of ordinary life in an extraordinary place that are the most stirring moments in the film.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    On Chesil Beach
    On Chesil Beach can feel like observing a deli worker slice a small piece of rancid cured meat, in increasingly transparent slivers of prosciutto-like thinness, and then holding them up to the light for inspection.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Emily the Criminal
    A kind of gravitational pull emanates from Aubrey Plaza as the title character in Emily the Criminal, a passably diverting crime thriller where, in place of a moral center, Plaza delivers a performance that is entertainingly blackhearted.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    War of the Buttons
    Moving without being melodramatic, War of the Buttons is a tale of the worst -- and the best -- that people of all ages are capable of.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    The Five Devils
    It has elements of melodrama, of the soap opera even. But the film’s magical realism heightens its otherwise conventional contours and sharpens its otherworldly pleasures.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Hotel Mumbai
    The callousness with which the terrorists operate is palpable and conveyed with a degree of verisimilitude that borders on sadism. Hotel Mumbai is a clockwork thriller, but man, is it hard to watch.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    The Alpinist
    There is a revealing narrative here: a conflict, a climax and a denouement that you may not expect. The Alpinist has built-in drama, simply by virtue of who and what it sets out to document.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Z for Zachariah
    The acting is strong, with Robbie and Ejiofor turning in performances that feel powerfully authentic, even in moments of ethical confusion. Maybe especially in moments of ethical confusion.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    The Apparition
    Peculiar yet provocative film, which exerts a slow, mesmeric pull over the course of nearly 2 ½ hours.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Populaire
    Populaire is a mostly delightful and entirely unironic throwback to the kind of film they stopped making about 50 years ago.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle
    In some ways, Mowgli feels like an origin story. There’s a slight but unmistakable suggestion of a potential sequel to its open-ended climax.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    The Man Who Sold His Skin
    At times, The Man Who Sold His Skin plays like a cultural parody, but its aim is dead serious, and more sobering. The pathos and tragedy of the global refugee crisis is its target, not the pretensions of the international art market, and it, from time to time, delivers a sting.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Lean on Pete
    At the center of this oddly riveting little picaresque is a performance of such quiet power by Plummer — as an antihero both rash and precociously resourceful — that it’s easy to overlook the film’s flaws.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Live From New York!
    Live From New York! is a fun, not academic walk down memory lane.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Life of a King
    The film is an effective, even heartwarming, tale of one man’s commitment to teaching that playing by the rules is more important than winning.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes
    Ultimately, Divide and Conquer offers useful lessons — and maybe even a little hope — for people on both sides of the national divide, about just how we came to this terrible, but not irreversible, place.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Beloved
    By the time it glides -- not lumbers -- to the closing credits, it's also amazingly moving.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It
    The first Latina actress to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony — the “EGOT” superfecta — Moreno doesn’t just seem to keep getting better and better, but more and more interesting.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    The Tender Bar
    Tender also is an apt description for the gently heartwarming tone of this appealingly low-key, faded Kodachrome coming-of-age story, capably directed by Clooney from a screenplay by William Monahan (“The Departed”).
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Thirteen Lives
    Thirteen Lives is a solid achievement, technically and dramatically, using a ticktock timeline and periodically superimposing on-screen maps of the miles-long cave system to build tension. Like its protagonists, it isn’t flashy but is all business. It gets the job done with a minimum of histrionics, yet a mountain of suspense.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Tamara Drewe
    In addition to all the rollicking, ribald humor, Tamara Drewe also has a couple of flashes of darkly comic violence. In a literary sense, it's poetic justice, really. Punishment meted out for bad behavior.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Kusama - Infinity
    Directed by Heather Lenz, the film offers insight and eye candy, despite the fact that it is far more traditional — in style and format — than its subject.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Babyteeth
    Written by Rita Kalnejais, based on her own 2012 play, Babyteeth works precisely because it refuses to accommodate expectation.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    The Company You Keep
    At its core, The Company You Keep is a good, solid thriller about a fugitive trying to clear his name. But it’s a much more interesting movie at the edges.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Cold in July
    The first half of Cold is tense and suspenseful, albeit in a conventional way; the second half is sickeningly compelling. It’s hard to watch and hard to look away from.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    The German Doctor
    Puenzo has a knack for plumbing the heads and hearts of teenage girls. The director coaxes a mesmerizing, unmannered performance out of Bado, who is making her feature-film debut.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Honey
    Trinca delivers a marvelously unfussy performance, rendering her complex character gradually, along with the effects of the opposing forces that tear at her.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Rosenwald
    Rosenwald isn’t just a portrait of a great, selfless American and his powerful company, but an excavation of an ugly strain of our own history, and a reminder of what one person can do to uproot it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    At Eternity's Gate
    Much like the painter, who died without the recognition he deserved, the movie approaches greatness without quite achieving it.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Michael O'Sullivan
    Black Sea
    The film’s patina of richly textured grime lends the film a gloomy, claustrophobic beauty that serves its mood, as well as its satisfyingly misanthropic message: Greed isn’t good, and most people aren’t either.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »