Rene Rodriguez

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For 1,942 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 50% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Rene Rodriguez's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Manchester by the Sea
Lowest review score: 0 The Mangler
Score distribution:
1942 movie reviews
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    I Killed My Mother fares less well when Dolan gives in to some ill-conceived stylistic flourishes (understandable for a young, first-time filmmaker) or when his reach as a dramatist exceeds his grasp (an incident involving thugs who gay-bash Hubert, for example, feels superfluous). But the crux of the film is the furious, tempestuous bond between Hubert and Chantale, and through their volcanic fights, you can see Dolan's considerable talent at its least adorned. [23 Apr 2010, p.G7]
    • Miami Herald
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie is at its best when it flirts with becoming a meta-sequel — a film whose characters know they’ve been in a movie called “Trainspotting.”
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Kong: Skull Island is fast, playful and ridiculous, a big-budget extravaganza with the soul of a spirited B-movie.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    In Logan, the clawed mutant Wolverine finally gets to slash through the constraints of a kid-friendly PG-13 rating, and the result is bloody, vicious fun. The squeamish will avert their eyes, and young children should not be allowed anywhere near this movie, no matter how many X-Men action figures they own.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The Salesman doesn’t have the same precision and emotional wallop of his previous films: The plot hinges on a couple of convenient contrivances, and the first half meanders a bit.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    The filmmakers’ fondness and respect for all things Batman are what elevate The Lego Batman Movie past the trappings of a funny cartoon. Who could have guessed, in the era of non-stop comic-book pictures, that a movie that uses toys as protagonist would do the most justice to the enigmatic Bruce Wayne?
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie is quiet and serene, but it stirs and inspires and amuses. In the small details of an ordinary life, Jarmusch finds wells of beauty and empathy. The movie is an exploration of the deep pleasures of creativity.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Rene Rodriguez
    Silence feels like a career summation for a filmmaker who has spent his life exploring his faith through his work. Here is a movie about the importance of religion that will move you, regardless of whichever God you worship — or don’t.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Rene Rodriguez
    Here is a celebration of the artistic drive that is also a daring feat of showmanship, as technically accomplished in its own way as “Mad Max Fury Road” or “The Revenant."
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Rene Rodriguez
    But this is also his funniest, nimblest picture: There are long stretches in it that could pass for a comedy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    She's such a fascinating, faceted character that halfway through "Christine" you almost forget about what's coming.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Hacksaw Ridge may be too syrupy for cynical tastes and too brutal for the timid.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    This may not be Park’s best or gravest picture. But it might be his most entertaining.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Rene Rodriguez
    Sometimes, the simplest, smallest things require the greatest courage. Moonlight is Miami’s first bonafide movie masterpiece.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    It’s ABOUT something, which has become a rarity in Hollywood pictures. Sometimes, the smallest stories cast the largest shadows.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Phillips keeps the movie funny and riotous without glamorizing his characters’ misdeeds. The film is a comedy, but it’s never trivial, and the filmmakers don’t let the government’s participation in what transpired slip by unnoticed.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Best of all, the story moves as fast as that bullet train, careening from one impossible predicament to the next while the characters jostle to survive.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    De Palma never achieved the box-office and Oscar glory of his contemporaries (Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese), but this documentary is a testament to a talent that merits a place at their table.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The Neon Demon is a voluptuous provocation, a stylish free-fall down a gonzo rabbit hole that is as entrancing as it is maddening. Here is a rarity in this season of summer movie doldrums: A film that is guaranteed to elicit strong reactions.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie generates suspense by keeping its focus on the detective and the attorney, two professionals trying to do their jobs the best they can. They just happen to be required to confront unspeakable evil, try to understand it, stare it in the eyes.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    The scale of Finding Dory is bigger than that of "Finding Nemo," but I started missing the smaller, more intimate excitement of the fishing tank inside the dentist’s office in Nemo.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    Another strange, sometimes harrowing exercise in absurdity that resonates despite its weirdness.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Weiner tells a different story — a riveting portrait of a man so consumed by hubris and confidence that he is utterly blind to his failings.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    The emotional connection we develop with her as the movie unfolds pays off in the final 20 minutes, which is about as happy of an ending as anyone could imagine, except this one really happened.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    This is more of an exercise in experiential cinema, as well as a blistering critique of a society that drives its poorest to unimaginable acts for mere survival.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    In its last half-hour, A Bigger Splash becomes a specific kind of story, and it’s not as pleasurable or strange as what preceded it.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    The Nice Guys never lives up to the promise of its hilarious first 10 minutes, but Crowe and Gosling are good enough to leave you hoping for a sequel.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    After the nihilistic deconstruction of Deadpool and the flattening self-importance of Batman v. Superman, Captain America: Civil War reminds you how funny and exciting these pictures can be when they’re done right — you know, like comic books. The summer movie season has barely begun, and already the remedy for superhero film fatigue has arrived.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie has been smartly built to satisfy hardcore fashionistas and red-carpet gawkers in equal measure.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Viva is "Rocky" in drag and sequins, transplanted to Havana. The movie is pure formula, but it’s surprisingly effective anyway, because director Paddy Breathnach and screenwriter Mark O’Halloran don’t sugarcoat the reality of life on the island.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The most intriguing character in the movie is the confused, tormented Conrad, who initially comes off as the kind of troubled adolescent who will end up riddling his classroom with bullets.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie has an exhilarating energy that is never exhausting, and the filmmaker’s trademark excesses, although toned down, are still at play. The meek should be wary; for everyone else, it’s party time.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    This is a smart, wise and compassionate movie about young people in the act of finding out who they are and not always behaving properly but never crossing the line into cruelty or crassness. If you happen to have been around during 1980, the soundtrack is just a bonus.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The Wave builds up a nice bit of genuine tension and hits some surprisingly dark notes.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    No, it’s not all that sophisticated. But compared to glib junk like Zoolander 2, The Brothers Grimsby is practically high art. Unlike Ben Stiller, at least Cohen is trying.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    Dark, nasty fun that gets better when you play it over in your head. But the plot holes seem even larger in hindsight, too. Just tamp down those expectations, then tamp them down some more.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie is filled with small, loaded moments that resonate like gunshots in an echo chamber.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The film’s visual artistry works as an ideal counterbalance for Kaufman’s heady brand of middle-aged despair.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    The fact that the last line of dialogue is spoken five minutes before the end credits roll is telling: Words matter little in a movie that favors seeing and feeling above all else. It’s a work of pure, furious sensation.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Although not quite as over-the-top visually as his Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, Youth is still spectacular, filled with tableaux (a group of people sweating silently inside a sauna, a naked man and his prostitute inside a hotel room) that juxtapose the desires and personalities of young and old without dialogue.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    But there is so much information to process in The Big Short that only hedge fund managers and stock brokers will be able to track every nuance and shading of this complicated story.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    But Tarantino isn’t glorifying the ugliness; he’s condemning it. He just wants to put on a grand show at the same time. “Are you not entertained?” he seems to be asking. Yes. Yes, we are.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    What’s missing in The Force Awakens – and this is a major, critical flaw – is a fresh story template, a plot that doesn’t build toward a climax you’ve already seen, played out in practically the exact same way. That’s the kind of failing that a lot of fans will overlook while they bask in the undeniable bliss-out the movie delivers. But in hindsight, as you play the film back in your mind, the huge lack of imagination and freshness become more problematic.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    Flowers is a quiet, eloquent movie about big, overwhelming emotions, and the constant presence of its eponymous plants, in all kinds of colors and shapes, is a metaphor for the ways in which we respond to what life throws at us, be it a sudden trauma, a perpetual state of melancholy or an unexpected opportunity for romance. Some people blossom and bloom; others wither and give up.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    Director Ryan Coogler has pulled off a miracle: He taps into the beautiful simplicity and deep well of emotion of the 1976 original, capturing its essence and spirit while branching out into a new story.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Return to Ithaca is a bracing and surprisingly vocal expression of angst and frustration by people torn between love for their country and the harsh letdown that resulted from their loyalty.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Rene Rodriguez
    Spotlight is simply a great story exceedingly well told, through characters whose fingers are perpetually stained with ink.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Grim, relentless and immensely satisfying, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 sends out the dystopian sci-fi franchise on a feel-bad high. Readers of Suzanne Collins’ source novel, who already know what’s coming, will be pleased by the movie’s merciless fidelity to the source material (or perhaps, considering the book is the least popular in the trilogy, will just be annoyed all over again).
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie, shot in lovely, grainy 16mm by cinematographer Ed Lachman, is so elegantly staged you can practically smell the characters’ perfume. Haynes’ direction is methodical and precise without being fussy or oppressive. Every detail has been weighed and considered.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The strained, strange relationship between father and son ultimately becomes the emotional center of The Clan, culminating with an astonishing closing shot guaranteed to induce startled gasps. It’s a great, jarring moment that is the work of a filmmaker clearly in love with his craft — and a flavor for the darker side of human nature.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    Steve Jobs, which by many accounts plays loose with the facts, is at its weakest when it tries to humanize its protagonist.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Here is a crime drama that punches you in the gut, full on, and dares you not to blink.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie kicks off with a wonderful setpiece that shows off Spielberg’s ability to tell a story primarily through visuals — is there any other filmmaker working today better at this?
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    The sound never loses its urgency, its sense of immediate danger, straight through to the closing shot of the film.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    This is a love letter to lunacy (and an unspoken tribute to the iconic towers) that lets you feel what it’s like to tread where only gods dare.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Yes, The Martian does look like it was shot on Mars, even though the film’s tone is suspiciously light and cheerful for Scott, who tends to thrive on a chillier, more dour habitat.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Breathe is empathetic and humane — the movie cares equally about both girls, each damaged in her own way — and it ends with a brusque, unexpected reminder that kindness and patience can easily curdle.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie is slight and, at 75 minutes without end credits, barely qualifies as a feature-length film. But Tomlin is a wonder.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Despite moments of intense suspense and glints of bizarre horror, Tom at the Farm is ultimately a psychological thriller.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Borrowing its title from a mix tape Cobain compiled as a teenager, the film, made with the cooperation of his widow, family and former bandmates, remains compelling and moving no matter how familiar you already are with the singer’s story.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie isn’t a thriller, but it still generates a strange sort of emotional suspense - an incredibly intense drama that makes you hold your breath, and it builds toward a total knockout of a final scene in which the story is resolved with hardly a word.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    This iconoclastic filmmaker seduces you with ridiculous laughs, then sends you home contemplating your mortality and your place in the world.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    A wobbly enterprise saddled by stilted dialogue and convenient contrivances. But view it as a Woody Allen film, and the plot thickens.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie is better when it’s poking sly fun at Cruise’s superheroic screen persona (look at the expression on his face when Ethan realizes just how big the guy he must fight is) than when it asks you to buy into its far-fetched antics.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Condon and screenwriter Jeffrey Hatcher reward your patience by bringing the threads together in a beautiful, stirring manner that celebrates the genius of the literary icon while also honoring the man McKellen is playing.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Despite its considerable faults, this bizarre, fascinating story is impossible to shake off, like the expression on the face of one of the brothers as he's talking about his father and begins getting choked up (instead of crying, he smiles convincingly, evidence of a life led having to learn to hide his emotions for fear of reprisal).
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    Saring, often funny comedy.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    If Inside Out doesn’t stack up with the best Pixar movies (Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Toy Story), that’s because there’s less plot here than usual, and even at a lean 95 minutes, the movie starts to drag a bit just before it ends.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    That’s one of the great accomplishments of Ascher’s film: Intercutting his interviews with fictional recreations of what the subjects are describing allows you to see a version of what they saw, and you don’t need to believe any of it for The Nightmare to give you a major case of the creeps.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    Yes, Aloha is a mess. But messes can be fascinating, and there’s a lot of tenderness and beauty and heartbreak here, too.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The main thing writer-director Michele Jouse, who was close to Shepard, wanted to do with her intimate documentary Matt Shepard Is a Friend of Mine was to give a voice to those who are still mourning him and allow them to share their stories.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Tomorrowland is a crazy, disjointed mess. But it’s the good sort of crazy, and it’s the sort of mess you want to lose yourself in.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Rene Rodriguez
    With Mad Max: Fury Road, director George Miller delivers the sort of jumbo-sized entertainment that makes you spontaneously break out in appreciative laughter: The breadth of his imagination and showmanship makes you giddy.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    A revealing and bluntly honest portrait of a previously unknown filmmaker.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    Like "A Separation," which used the story of a dissolving marriage to illustrate the unexpected consequences of a rigid, inflexible society, About Elly turns what starts out as a breezy comedy into an engaging and substantial exploration of human nature and how sometimes, without intending to, we hurt the ones we love most — including ourselves.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Today, you can see it for yourself and bask in all its insane glory.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Whedon knows this is all nonsense, but it can be great fun, too. Age of Ultron is all rush and sensation with little substance. But what a feeling.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The fact that Garland manages to cram in speculative ideas about the perils of a society that relies too heavily on technology is a bonus. In Ex Machina, love hurts, big time, for man and machine alike.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    The Salt of the Earth is a celebration of the power of art to change the world, as well as an exploration of the considerable toll gifted artists sometimes pay for their talents, and their courage to push forward regardless.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    True Story marks the directorial debut of Rupert Goold, a respected British theater veteran who also co-wrote the script and knows how to engage the viewer with simple scenes of two people talking (with a few modifications, this could have easily been a play).
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    In the movie’s best scene, Bisset lays into Depardieu with the rage and anger of a woman who has tolerated bad behavior for too long (there’s a fiery spontaneity to their verbal sparring that makes you wonder if the scene was improvised).
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Rene Rodriguez
    White God is the rare sort of movie in the era of computer-generated special effects where you can’t believe your eyes, because what you’re looking at is real.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Eastern Boys explores whether these lost boys are damaged beyond repair or are still capable of being saved.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    One thing nearly all the anecdotes in The Hunting Ground have in common is their resolution: A lack of justice.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The screenplay is fiendish, clever and airtight: Like a magician, Coimbra uses sleight-of-hand, but he never cheats, and the film is even more engaging on second viewing, when you really know what’s going on before your eyes.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The infectious dark comedy Wild Tales (Relatos salvajes) argues that payback is more satisfying when it’s doled out in fiery, bloody and outrageous doses.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    A marketable counterpoint to last year’s "Boyhood."
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Rene Rodriguez
    Despite the lack of substance, Run All Night is far better than those clunky "Taken" movies with their timid PG-13 ratings. If you’re gonna cut Neeson loose against the mob, a bloody R is the way to go.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    Maps to the Stars is haunted by ghosts, the way the film industry is haunted by its past, and Cronenberg gradually tapers down the dark humor and starts to amp up the ugliness of these blank, superficial lives.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Not all of the characters in the movie get just and fair send-offs, but Virzi’s stylish picture argues that’s the price we pay when a capitalist society trains us to place our own selfish interests above everything else. It’s a rat race that ultimately has no winners.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    The movie is a furious, in-your-face whirlwind of emotions, but it’s never tiresome or bellicose, and its raucous, messy energy is invigorating.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Rene Rodriguez
    It’s a cry of despair and soul-shaking desperation, leavened with shades of Dostoyevskyan angst.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Abel is a man with ideals in a world that has no use for them: If he’s going to succeed, he’s going to have to use his wits instead of bullets, and although the odds against him are formidable, watching his struggle is riveting entertainment.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    With Moore’s formidable, Oscar-bound performance, the picture transcends the usual cliches of the genre to become something far more moving and profound.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    Cotillard, who earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance, plays the character as a woman hanging on by the barest of threads.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    Expertly shot and choreographed in Eastwood’s clean, unfussy style, the Iraq sequences are taut, harrowing and at times excruciatingly suspenseful, particularly a setpiece in which Kyle faces off against his Iraqi counterpart, a superb sniper who has made it his mission to take down the American sharpshooter.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    Instead of a history lesson, Selma plays like suspenseful, absorbing drama.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The Imitation Game is vibrant and lively, engaging you on three levels: The fascinating way the Nazis managed to outwit the rest of the world until Turing came along, how his giant contraption (essentially the world’s first computer) will work, and what will happen to him and everyone he knows when the truth about him is finally revealed.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Rene Rodriguez
    The new version uses addiction as a vehicle to tackle larger themes, eloquently explored by Monahan’s dialogue, which sings in a way uncommon to tough-guy crime-dramas.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Rene Rodriguez
    Foxcatcher is too cold of a movie to love, but that chilliness is intentional and transfixing, a parable about the darkest corners of the minds of men that dares to whisper instead of shout.

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