Roxana Hadadi

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Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine (Vulture), Polygon, RogerEbert.com, The A.V. Club, The Playlist, Variety
For 125 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 64% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Roxana Hadadi's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Attica
Lowest review score: 10 Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 96 out of 125
  2. Mixed: 25 out of 125
  3. Negative: 4 out of 125
125 movie reviews
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    • 92 Metascore
    • 70 Roxana Hadadi
    Memoria
    The quiet poignancy of the film’s previous vignettes are almost overshadowed by the goofiness of Weerasethakul’s final explanation. And though that doesn’t ruin the film, it doesn’t quite match Memoria’s other layers of curiosity and complexity, either.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Roxana Hadadi
    Flee
    A country can be a home, and a home can be erased, and the aching, lovely Flee trafficks in the space between belonging and wandering.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    Hit the Road
    There is a sparseness to Hit the Road that reveals the intuitiveness of Panahi’s filmmaking, his grasp of these characters and how they tug and poke at each other, and his understanding of the ways fear, paranoia, and loss turn us into people we might not like, let alone recognize.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Roxana Hadadi
    Attica
    Attica is a jarring, engrossing, and enraging reminder of how those in power will lie, humiliate, kill and cover up to retain it, and the documentary is one of the year’s best.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Roxana Hadadi
    The Inheritance
    Asili experiments with cinematic form as he considers “inheritance” as legacy, heritage, and tradition, resulting in an engrossing, challenging film that allures and confronts you in equal measure.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    The First Wave
    Viscerally disturbing and achingly humanistic.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    Ascension
    Through her unfussy direction and sly editing, Kingdon’s collection of vignettes is a reminder that the destructively frenzied cycle of consumption and waste always trickles down.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    To a Land Unknown
    To a Land Unknown presents the cousins’ ordeal as something no person should have to go through, something unnatural and surreal and Kafkaesque. But there’s also a creeping devastation in how the film convinces us of their pain and of all the opportunities and chances that were stolen from them through statelessness.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    The Seed of the Sacred Fig
    Thanks partially to actual protest footage filmed by Woman, Life, Freedom participants, there’s a thoroughness to the way the film presents the perspectives of the young women living in the country.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 63 Roxana Hadadi
    The Rescue
    It would be impossible not to be emotionally moved by this story, and in that way, The Rescue delivers. But between Vasarhelyi and Chin’s inability to speak with the boys or their families, and the documentary’s initially languid pacing, The Rescue feels like half a story told fairly well, but still, half a story.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    The Blue Caftan
    Maryam Touzani’s film is as precise and vivid as its titular garment.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Roxana Hadadi
    Limbo
    The narrowness of the frame forces us closer to what is caught within it, and the result is often bracing or achingly tender.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Roxana Hadadi
    I Was a Simple Man
    A 100-minute spell of beauty and melancholy, intimate and grand in equal measure, a film that derives its power from the universality of its final destination and the relatability of the pain, love, and regret that pave the guiding road.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    Neptune Frost
    Neptune Frost is a mission statement by way of a musical, and its defining image is a middle finger taking up the whole lens.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 91 Roxana Hadadi
    There Is No Evil
    The film’s as compassionate as it is unsettling, and as provocative as it is poignant.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Roxana Hadadi
    Nitram
    When Kurzel does penetrate the unkempt veil of Jones’s hair and closes in on his face, it’s to capture how the actor sprints from one emotion to another, alluding to the impetuousness and spontaneity at play within Nitram.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
    The franchise has always centered Blanc as the champion of the underserved, but in leaning away from his shenanigans and slapstick and making space for someone like Father Jud to illustrate the film’s worldview, Wake Up Dead Man shows how much it has on its mind.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    Costa Brava, Lebanon
    Akl and Clara Roqet’s script provides depth to these characters and immerses us in each of their perspectives and relationships — which shift along lines of blood and love.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Roxana Hadadi
    Bergman Island
    In its strongest, most evocative scenes, Bergman Island feels like peering in someone else’s window, sensing an echo of your own experiences, and marveling at all the ways a stranger could remind you of yourself.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Roxana Hadadi
    7 Prisoners
    Survival is easier said that done, and 7 Prisoners is a fraught thriller that wonders at the fragility of the human soul.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Roxana Hadadi
    The Fever
    When progress stops feeling like progress is what Da-Rin captures in The Fever, and fantastic lead actor Regis Myrupu is a conduit for a calamity that builds and builds.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Roxana Hadadi
    Seyran Ates: Sex, Revolution and Islam
    From a purely technical viewpoint, Lorentzen’s one-side-only methodology makes Seyran Ateş: Sex, Revolution and Islam a lopsided viewing experience, one that seems tailor made for viewers predisposed to agreeing with Ateş’s critical opinions on Muslims, and no one else.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Roxana Hadadi
    Love, Antosha
    Though clearly an adoring tribute, Love, Antosha allows its subject a sort of complicated humanity that expands our understanding of him, largely by locating a tension between his zealous approach to acting and his increased disinterest in celebrity.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Roxana Hadadi
    Under the Fig Trees
    Under the Fig Trees is a big-minded film that grounds its ideas about labor, sexism, faith, and modernity in the zippy rhythms of its characters’ negotiations around friendship, romance, and work. Most of the film’s runtime is people talking, but with evocative dialogue and lived-in performances from mostly first-time actors, it’s an unapologetic slice of life.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    Saloum
    The people who maintain the status quo are those with power, and those with power are often unwilling to share: with those who are weaker, with those who are younger, with those who are other. The propulsive energy of the film is driven both by that injustice and by the scars it leaves on places and on people, and so the horror, the horror, of Saloum is both timeless and timely.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 91 Roxana Hadadi
    I'm Your Man
    I’m Your Man offers a perspective on humanity that’s equally whimsical and melancholy, and its intimacy is a welcome change of pace in science fiction, a genre that too often mistakes violence and colonialism as the only drivers of drama.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 83 Roxana Hadadi
    Clemency
    Alfre Woodard captures with exquisite nuance the emotional and physical toll it might take on someone, spending years overseeing executions; she grounds the film, which otherwise strikes a balance between broad empathy and a pointed call for criminal justice reform.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Roxana Hadadi
    Fancy Dance
    Alongside Gladstone’s expressive performance, Fancy Dance’s ability to choreograph that criticism gives the film a singular grace.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Roxana Hadadi
    Bye Bye Tiberias
    The documentary may be understated, with its long dialogue-free stretches. But the distractions that pull Abbass’s stare away from her daughter’s lens give Bye Bye Tiberias a pointedly political backbone that the documentary buoys with clever editing and a tangible self-assuredness.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Roxana Hadadi
    Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy
    Although the documentary is a brisk 74 minutes, filmmaker Elizabeth Carroll seems to so fully capture Kennedy’s unfiltered personality that Nothing Fancy becomes not just a portrayal of a world-famous authority on how various communities within Mexico farm, prepare, and eat their traditional dishes, but also a commentary on how we view or judge places through their food. Kennedy has complaints, and Nothing Fancy lets her air them.
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