Peter Debruge

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Miami Herald, Premiere, Variety
For 1,770 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Peter Debruge's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Josephine
Lowest review score: 0 Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,028 out of 1770
  2. Mixed: 593 out of 1770
  3. Negative: 149 out of 1770
1770 movie reviews
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    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Peter Debruge
    BlacKkKlansman
    Lee’s latest is as much a compelling black empowerment story as it is an electrifying commentary on the problems of African-American representation across more than a century of cinema.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Peter Debruge
    Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
    It’s a delight to find these two, plus their penguin nemesis, back on the big screen.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Peter Debruge
    Janet Planet
    It’s striking proof of an original sensibility.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Peter Debruge
    Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds
    A truly spectacular psychedelic excursion in the vein of head-trip classics “The Fantastic Planet” and “The Yellow Submarine.”
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Debruge
    Being 17
    This vibrant portrait feels like something of a revelation, which is remarkable, really, considering how many more films have tackled coming-of-age than the relatively niche experience of coming out.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Peter Debruge
    Antlers
    What makes suggestion-driven Antlers so disturbing isn’t the movie’s tension- and dread-building mechanics so much as the way the filmmaker burrows into the minds of his two main characters.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Peter Debruge
    Free Solo
    For those who love the thrill of high-adrenaline adventure docs, National Geographic’s Free Solo will be a hard experience to top.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Peter Debruge
    Palm Springs
    It’s an irreverent take on a form where earlier iterations were obliged to take themselves seriously. And somehow that liberates what felt like a slick but ironic riff on a tired genre to do something sincere.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Peter Debruge
    The Kingdom
    It’s like “The Sopranos,” as seen through Meadow’s eyes. And though we’re all familiar with the lesson that the cost of vengeance is a never-ending circle of violence, Colonna’s retelling lands like a bullet in the head.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Peter Debruge
    It Follows
    It Follows is remarkably effective for most of its running time, ratcheting up the tension, then stinging the audience periodically with one of those jolts that sends everyone levitating a couple inches above their seats. But the excitement wears off after a point.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Peter Debruge
    Driveways
    That uncommon and all-too-welcome gift — like some kind of fragile wildflower, emerging tentatively through cracks in the concrete: a film about kindness.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Peter Debruge
    Night of the Kings
    With this project, in which magical realism lends everything a mystical dimension, Lacôte confidently delivers on the promise of his 2014 Cannes-selected “Run.”
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Peter Debruge
    The Animal Kingdom
    “The Animal Kingdom” isn’t a traditional genre movie so much as a coming-of-age story with a creature-feature twist — picture a moody French “Teen Wolf,” minus the laughs. ... Stumble even for a moment, and the whole movie could feel silly, which is what makes the fact that it works all the more remarkable.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Peter Debruge
    These Birds Walk
    Instead of explaining the system through conventional narration, which would have been extremely helpful, the filmmakers immerse auds in the world they found, capturing its subjects’ behavior with startling candor.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Peter Debruge
    Broken Voices
    Provazník’s focus is not on trauma, and it’s fitting that such a sensitive, understated treatment of real-world abuse should end on a poignant note of solidarity.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Peter Debruge
    Ghostlight
    Any critic sitting through their show probably wouldn’t have much patience for all the characters’ personal catharses, but seen from the right distance, as beautifully told as this, the experience amounts to something special.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Peter Debruge
    Self Reliance
    Johnson delivers a silly and frequently surprising why-we-need-people parable that leans on laughs in lieu of peril.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Debruge
    Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
    Delivers a polished and well-researched look at America 's largest corporate bankruptcy with a laser-sharp focus on the personalities, practices, and fates of the top executives behind the Enron meltdown.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Peter Debruge
    There Is No Evil
    There Is No Evil comes across as four films for the price of one, none of its segments anemic, and each contributing fresh insights to the paradoxes of capital punishment in Iran.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Debruge
    War for the Planet of the Apes
    It’s fitting that the visual effects have advanced so dramatically since 2011, as it allows the series to suggest that its ape protagonists have evolved to an equivalent degree, and yet, “War’s” story is beneath their intelligence.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Debruge
    You Won't Be Alone
    The film’s last act brings everything full circle in a way that should satisfy both horror and art-house audiences, but then the movie, like its protagonist, is never content to be just one thing.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Peter Debruge
    Short Term 12
    This compelling human drama finds fresh energy in the inspirational-teacher genre, constantly revealing new layers to its characters.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 38 Peter Debruge
    Supercross
    For anyone who digs hardcore motorcycle racing, Supercross delivers enough engine-revving, dirt-spewing motorcross action to satisfy even the most intense adrenaline craving.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Peter Debruge
    Life and Nothing More
    Whereas a Hollywood director might use subjective framing or emotional soundtrack cues to nudge audiences’ reactions in a certain way, Esparza strips away nearly all those techniques to a pure, neorealist approach: life and nothing more.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Peter Debruge
    C'mon C'mon
    C’mon C’mon proves plenty poignant, but it’s less entertaining than it might have been.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Peter Debruge
    Knives Out
    Knives Out recalls a time when audiences could still be surprised by such mysteries, before the genre devolved into a corny parody of itself. Johnson keeps us guessing, which is good, but the thing that makes this a better mousetrap than most isn’t the complexity, but the fact he’s managed to rig it without the usual cheese.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Peter Debruge
    Challengers
    Another filmmaker might have subtracted himself in order to foreground the story, whereas Guadagnino goes big, leading with style (and a trendy score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross).
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Peter Debruge
    Give Me Liberty
    Give Me Liberty catches us off guard with its sense of humor, which amplifies the sheer absurdity of certain situations while respecting the fundamental humanity of its characters — further reflected in the choice of casting actors with disabilities.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Debruge
    The Holdovers
    The Holdovers is a film about class and race, grief and resentment, opportunity and entitlement. It’s that rare exception to the oft-heard complaint that “they don’t make ’em like they used to.”
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Peter Debruge
    Sieranevada
    [Puiu] manages to weave a tapestry — or family quilt, if you will — in which deception and the hopeless search for truth is judged both on the micro level (as in extramarital affairs) and a more global scale (which is where questions of Romania’s Communist past, 9/11 and Charlie Hebdo fit into the picture), and where disturbances in either sphere ripple out into the world at large.
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