Moira Macdonald

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The Seattle Times
For 615 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 71% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 26% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Moira Macdonald's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 Parallel Mothers
Lowest review score: 25 Fifty Shades Darker
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 505 out of 615
  2. Mixed: 74 out of 615
  3. Negative: 36 out of 615
615 movie reviews
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Equity
    It’s fun to watch Samantha playing her sources like a teenager plays a video game — expertly, offhandedly — and fascinating to witness the machinations between Naomi and Erin, neither of whom ever tells the other what she’s thinking.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Fighting with My Family
    Take “Billy Elliot,” trade the refined world of ballet for the “soap opera in spandex” of professional wrestling, swap the preteen boy for a young woman, throw in The Rock — because every movie is better with The Rock, right? — and you’ve got Fighting With My Family, a shaggily likable underdog tale.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Moira Macdonald
    The Meddler
    These characters don’t seem like types chosen from a screenwriting manual but like people we might know, with quirks and feelings and flaws and hearts.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Early Man
    Most of the movies from the British stop-motion wizards at Aardman Animations are pure delight, full of endlessly replayable moments and the kind of enchanting silliness that seems to transport you, however briefly, to a better world. Early Man, their latest effort, is merely good, which is to say that it’s well-crafted and enjoyable.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Moira Macdonald
    Professor Marston & the Wonder Women
    Angela Robinson’s fascinating and surprisingly sweet-natured film is a different sort of superhero origin story, and an appropriate bookend to this summer’s “Wonder Woman.”
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Moira Macdonald
    Richard Jewell
    Eastwood’s very good with actors, and the central trio of Richard Jewell make the film worth watching.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Moira Macdonald
    Everybody Knows
    There’s a lovely sense, throughout the film, of how real life sometimes interrupts things, the way a child’s prattling disrupts the pretty wedding ceremony, or how even in the midst of grief breakfast must be made.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Moira Macdonald
    The Wedding Banquet
    Despite a plot twist you’ll see coming all the way from Vancouver, The Wedding Banquet is a worthy successor to Ang Lee’s classic, and a chance for a group of actors to shine together and separately. There’s plenty of silliness, but also time to be moved by quiet moments.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Moira Macdonald
    Thank You for Your Service
    Thank You for Your Service is a harrowing, honest and beautifully acted film about lives blown to bits and then put back together; not entirely, not immediately, but piece by tiny piece.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Avengers: Infinity War
    It’s filled with moments that click, but it just feels too big.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    F1: The Movie
    Though it’s fun watching Pitt swanning about in his nonchalant way — and a delight to see Kerry Condon, as a F1 technical director, finding some playful chemistry with him — this movie is entirely about the driving, and the speed.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 38 Moira Macdonald
    A Quiet Place: Day One
    Nyong’o’s prodigious talents are sadly wasted in this noisy, pointless movie, which never approaches the cleverness — or the genuine scariness — of the first two in the franchise.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Moira Macdonald
    No Time to Die
    No Time to Die has moments of pleasure, lots of them, but ultimately it feels heavy in a way a Bond movie shouldn’t; its pacing is off and it can’t quite sell the earnestness and even sentimentality of much of its storyline.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Beatriz at Dinner
    Hayek plays her role with such gentle conviction, the movie quickly becomes something else: a sort of tragedy of manners.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Moira Macdonald
    Weiner
    His name might be a punchline, but his story — and the human toll that it took — isn’t.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Moira Macdonald
    Rustin
    You leave the film knowing that you’ve met a hero, but that this remarkable man deserved more.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Nocturnal Animals
    Nocturnal Animals is, I think, a beautiful mess, but I might have to watch it again to be sure.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    The Little Stranger
    The Little Stranger is a haunted-house movie, but not one with cheap scares. In fact there are few scares at all — it’s mostly just an atmosphere of lingering, musty dread — and horror-movie fans should be warned that it’s all quite subtle. But it’s haunting, in its quiet way.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    The Idea of You
    We fall in love with this couple, just a bit, and want them to be together. And Hathaway and Galitzine make a charmer of a pair.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Moira Macdonald
    A Private Life
    A Private Life is a murder mystery only on its surface; at its heart, it’s an exploration of a lonely woman’s extremely active mind, and an unexpectedly moving story of becoming more present in one’s real life, rather than one’s imaginary one.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Juliet, Naked
    As rom-coms go, it’s pretty much everything you want, even if it’s not quite distinctive enough to linger.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Jay Kelly
    “Jay Kelly” is a playful movie made with palpable love for cinema and its magic.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Shortcomings
    The cast is a delight — Cola, between this film and “Joy Ride,” is officially the funniest best friend of summer 2023 — and the film has some thoughtful things to say about identity, attraction, ambition and moving on.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Moira Macdonald
    Wonder Woman
    Diana’s a superhero without a chip on her shoulder; she was raised in love, and Gadot lets that belief shine through her eyes. You’re both drawn to this woman and in awe of her.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Long Shot
    It’s a raunchy comedy, with a plot that ends up hinging on a very R-rated video. And, most surprising of all, it’s also a conventional and rather sweet rom-com.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Furious 7
    Having, presumably, run out of surfaces on the ground, the mad driving crew of Furious 7 resort to backing their cars off a plane and clutching their steering wheels while driving, er, falling through thin air. Why do they do this? Because it’s fun … to watch, that is.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Moira Macdonald
    Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood
    “Scotty” the documentary, entertaining as it is, leaves its hero’s surface mostly unscratched; his life seems a story still not fully written.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
    The eighth entry in the movie franchise that began in 1996 (based on a television series that began in 1966), is a competent, smart, expensive and sometimes thrilling action movie; it is also a very long one, in which we are given time to wonder whether spy/superhero/very intense runner Ethan Hunt (Cruise) ever just gets up in the morning and decides to take it easy that day.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Moira Macdonald
    The Gospel According to André
    The Gospel According to André leaves you wishing you knew a little more about this complex, elegant gentleman and his lifelong love affair with style.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Moira Macdonald
    Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
    There’s so much that Black Panther: Wakanda Forever does right that it’s frustrating to blame it for the one flaw it can’t help. But you watch it wondering about the movie that never got made, the story that never got finished, the life cut short too soon. Maybe, in a few years, this franchise can make a truly fresh start; this movie efficiently and skillfully lays the groundwork for that. It takes time, as wise Wakandans remind us, to move on.
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