Oliver Jones

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Observer
For 200 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 52% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Oliver Jones' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Blaze
Lowest review score: 0 Transformers: The Last Knight
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 118 out of 200
  2. Mixed: 40 out of 200
  3. Negative: 42 out of 200
200 movie reviews
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    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The Nest
    The real issue undermining Durkin’s sophomore effort is central to the weaving of the film’s conceit. It looks like a horror movie, swims like a horror movie, and quacks like a horror movie, but it isn’t a horror movie. So then what the hell is it? Good question. After a long, slow build-up, The Nest winds up being as vacant as the Surrey country house of the title, and leaves the viewers feeling every bit as empty.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The League
    By presenting this crucial cultural phenomenon in a staid documentary form and in the reverent tone of a hushed docent, The League has the unintentional impact of making Black baseball seem like ancient rather than living history.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The Trial of the Chicago 7
    Instead, by reshaping this charged moment culled from somewhat recent American history in his own image, Sorkin has made The Trial of the Chicago 7 about something else entirely: himself.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Armageddon Time
    James Gray’s Armageddon Time is the kind of movie you get when a talented filmmaker thinks back upon the painful moments of his childhood and then, after close reflection, decides to remake The 400 Blows.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The Inspection
    To be successful in confronting, understanding and dismantling the institutional homophobia that continues to be a cancer in American life requires depth, perspective, and a sense of inquiry—three qualities in short supply in The Inspection.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Luce
    The result is a well-intentioned but ultimately torpid film, one that feels much more concerned with saying something important than it is the far more noble task of conveying a compelling story worth telling.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Spider-Man: Far from Home
    If Spider-Man Far from Home is a triumph, as many will argue and its box office will undoubtedly confirm, it is a triumph of capitalism, not art. It is the film’s fervent hope that we, as consumers, are starting to lose our ability to tell the difference.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Peterloo
    This is a movie that’s back-loaded to the extreme: all of its action takes place in the last 20 minutes. Not that Leigh would ever be confused with Tarantino, but it would have been considerably more engaging to have started with the main event and moved backwards to how we got there.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Mulan
    It is a visually enthralling, high-gloss commercial for state power and repressive constructs. This is a product precisely tooled to be what the global marketplace demands of entertainment that is this expensive to make—a win for capitalism that will leave many filmgoers who found a powerful reflection of themselves in the original film feeling like they’ve lost something important and essential.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Vengeance
    While Vengeance doesn’t always rise to the level of its ambitions, it is admirable to see Novak spit acid towards the privilege systems that make careers like his possible...But by repeating the same reductive and representational mistakes of the media it so pointedly criticizes, Novak’s film unwittingly becomes yet another part of the problem.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Frozen II
    Both the songs (once again written by two-time Oscar-winners Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez) and the relationships between the characters — strong points of the original film — register with less energy and originality this time around.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
    To its credit, the latest and seemingly last Guardians installment— which at times can feel like a Spotify playlist in search of a movie— mostly manages to drown out the corporate exhaustion of its parent company with copious and often inspired needle drops, even more hit-or-miss one-liners, and a visual playfulness that recalls actual comic books.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The Lodge
    Despite the lofty and even admirable aspirations of this particular entrant to the ever-growing genre, what it has to offer bears little difference from all the rest: namely, a couple of really bad nights in a very bad house.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The Bad Guys
    From its gas-passing piranha (voiced by In the Heights’ Anthony Ramos) to its reliance on phrases like “butt rock” and “grumpy pants” that seem grown in a lab to make the 12-and-under set giggle, the movie plays its target audience like a fiddle.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The Matrix Resurrections
    The net effect of all this techno-philosophic yackety-yak is the not altogether pleasant feeling that you are simultaneously watching a movie while being trapped in an elevator with someone desperate to explain what it’s all about and why you should like it.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The Rental
    A film that is part infidelity drama and part slasher film while never fully committing to either idea.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
    Every good magician knows that the real trick is making the audience care. For all of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’s mind-bending universe jumping, that particular magic never manages to arrive in the theater.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Isn't It Romantic
    Rarely if ever has a film ostensibly about and informed by cinema been so thoroughly un-cinematic...And un-emotional: that spark of love is also missing in action. Perhaps this is why the film chose to drop the question mark from its title. If it had been posed as a query, the answer would have been, no, not nearly enough.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The Banker
    The Banker is a sadly facile and largely surface level rendering of a profoundly complex problem that deserves more attention.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    It: Chapter Two
    We end up spending way too much time running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fear.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Cry Macho
    So much of Eastwood’s career over the last two decades has proven that his age and experience has incredible cinematic value when he holds himself to the high standards he set for himself years ago. When he doesn’t, which is sadly the case with Cry Macho, the uninspired results leave you with wistful memories of what once was.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The One and Only Ivan
    It’s also the kind of storyline that gives quite a bit of cover to the film’s lesser attributes—namely its general small-mindedness and squishy moral logic.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Elemental
    Pixar’s Elemental is a movie about failing infrastructure, though that may make it sound more interesting than it actually is.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Aladdin
    The new film never lags and some of the sturdiest elements from the original — namely the catchy and descriptive tunes by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice — remain every bit as strong as they were in 1992.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    The Tender Bar
    It’s diluted, a little flat, but sweet and familiar enough to evoke long ago memories, if not quite strong enough to give you a reason to bother to remember.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    SuperFly
    Music video director Director X, making his feature debut, presents it all in a compelling and often intoxicating manner. There is something narcotic and languid about his pacing and camera work that feels purposeful and stylistic when the script is focused but comes off as stumbling and haphazard when the story looses momentum, which is often.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
    While the presence of both Law and Depp is a little distracting — the film could also be called "The Proxy War of the Long in the Tooth Former Hotties" — the acting is generally strong. But here the film’s best assets are also criminally underused.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    You're Cordially Invited
    The enterprise snaps to life only sporadically, primarily when its well-chosen character actors manage to steal moments of vitality away from the profound indifference that surrounds them.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
    Landing in multiplexes more than a year late after some business reshuffling and rewrites (not a good idea for your bad guys to be Ukrainian gangsters at this moment in history), Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a slick and empty-headed spy thriller that is almost instantly forgettable.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Oliver Jones
    Last Christmas
    This is a movie where the characters utter the word “weird” enough times to fill an Advent calendar; in truth, the only thing that’s actually weird about it is how middle-of-the-road and mild it is.
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