Peter Rainer

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Christian Science Monitor, Dallas Observer, Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine (Vulture)
For 2,765 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.6 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Peter Rainer's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
Lowest review score: 0 Mixed Nuts
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,744 out of 2765
  2. Mixed: 866 out of 2765
  3. Negative: 155 out of 2765
2765 movie reviews
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    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Rainer
    Ghost in the Shell
    It’s unfortunate, if predictable, that Hollywood found it necessary to almost entirely eliminate deep think in favor of deep action. As for Johansson, I have no big problem with cross-racial casting, but she’s so glum and seemingly uncomfortable here that you wonder if maybe she didn’t harbor the same misgivings as her detractors.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 67 Peter Rainer
    The Last Laugh
    At a time when many of us look to comedy to keep us sane, the question is especially pertinent, although the answers here aren’t especially penetrating.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 83 Peter Rainer
    Frantz
    The sources of this happiness become far more complex when Adrien’s revelation is imparted (only to Anna). At this point the movie’s moral compass spins.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 67 Peter Rainer
    Wilson
    It should all be sharper and funnier than it is.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 42 Peter Rainer
    Life
    Given the fact that Life was co-written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who co-wrote the wacked-out “Zombieland” and “Deadpool,” the film’s glum earnestness is doubly disappointing.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Rainer
    After the Storm
    There are times in this lovely, complacent movie about uncomplacent circumstance when I wanted to be shaken up, and wasn’t.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 67 Peter Rainer
    Beauty and the Beast
    Seeing it will probably send you back to the original animated movie for refreshment.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Rainer
    The Sense of an Ending
    Without an actor of Broadbent’s poise and humor, The Sense of an Ending – which, I must add, is appropriately also the title of a famous work of literary criticism by Frank Kermode about theories of fiction – would be a bit too fusty.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Peter Rainer
    Get Out
    What makes Get Out more than just a slam-bang scarefest is that, in its own darkly satiric way, it is also a movie about racial paranoia that captures the zeitgeist in ways that many more “prestigious” movies don’t.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Rainer
    Kong: Skull Island
    The action and special effects are mostly first-rate and Vogt-Roberts maintains a vaguely satiric tone that sidesteps schlockiness.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Peter Rainer
    My Life as a Zucchini
    The film is a real rarity, made even more so by the fact that what has moved us so profoundly are a bunch of pop-eyed plasticine figures.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Rainer
    Wolves
    It’s all terribly cliché-ridden and predictable, and the best I can say for it is that Shannon and Gugino do their best to convince us otherwise.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 67 Peter Rainer
    Logan
    Set in 2029, Logan is the closest thing to a valedictory the Marvel universe has yet concocted. Depending on how sentimental you are about these things – me, not much – it’s a bittersweet event.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 83 Peter Rainer
    I Am Not Your Negro
    Alternately discursive, philosophical, agitprop, and accusatory, the film itself is a species of essay.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Peter Rainer
    Kedi
    The Istanbul interviewees believe it is their responsibility to look after the cats but not confine them as indoor pets. This responsibility is a matter of almost spiritual deference.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 58 Peter Rainer
    The Great Wall
    There is barely a whiff of genuine transcendence in this grand-scale extravaganza. The special effects are courtesy of Industrial Light and Magic, but the magic here is largely industrial.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Rainer
    A United Kingdom
    At least “Hidden Figures” was savvy enough to please its crowds. A United Kingdom, with its saintly good folk and sneering bad folk emptily exhorting, is closer to a dry historical tutorial.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 83 Peter Rainer
    I Am Jane Doe
    It’s an important subject, lucidly presented.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Peter Rainer
    The LEGO Batman Movie
    The film’s only real drawback, shared by its predecessor, is that it is simply too inventive. There must be more jokes and gags and throwaways per second than in 20 other comedies put together. It’s both exhilarating and exhausting.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 58 Peter Rainer
    The Daughter
    As any kind of introduction to Ibsen, this film is more a turnoff than a turn-on.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 58 Peter Rainer
    The Comedian
    If nothing else, I hope that The Comedian signals an attempt by De Niro to once again take acting seriously. Without much supporting evidence, he’s still routinely called our greatest living actor. There’s still time to make good on that.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 83 Peter Rainer
    The Salesman
    Farhadi’s new film, The Salesman, isn’t his best, or even second best, but it offers up glints of what, at times, makes him one of the best directors around.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 67 Peter Rainer
    Gold
    His performance in Gold, as Kenny Wells, isn’t quite up to his Oscar-winning work in "Dallas Buyers Club," but it’s nevertheless a rousing feat without which this movie would have far less to recommend it.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Rainer
    The Red Turtle
    The Red Turtle benefits from being open to all sorts of possibilities and interpretations because we sense that Dudok de Wit respects our imaginings. He allows them to take shape right alongside his own.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 67 Peter Rainer
    The Founder
    The Founder remains fascinating largely because Keaton is so good at guile and bile. Not once does he wink at the audience or overplay the obvious. His Kroc is magnetically repellent – more so, I venture to guess, than the filmmakers intended him to be.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Peter Rainer
    Split
    Shyamalan is a one-trick pony who needs to find a new rodeo.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Rainer
    Silence
    Silence, though conceived on a grand scale, is an almost obsessively personal, at times even private, film.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 67 Peter Rainer
    Patriots Day
    The film, which swivels frantically between first responders, survivors, and investigators, has a percussive force, but its best scene, unbearably tense, is a quiet one, when a Chinese app designer (an excellent Jimmy O. Yang) is carjacked by the Tsarnaev brothers.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Peter Rainer
    Land of Mine
    It’s clear from the way writer-director Martin Zandvliet sets up the story that the fiery Rasmussen, who denies the boys adequate rations and pens them indoors at night, will eventually soften. It’s to the film’s credit that he does so in ways that are eminently believable.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 67 Peter Rainer
    Toni Erdmann
    It’s all fitfully sharp and amusing but hardly a masterpiece.
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