Russ Fischer

Select another critic »
The Playlist, TheWrap
For 42 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 52% higher than the average critic
  • 0% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Russ Fischer's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 60
Highest review score: 91 Mandy
Lowest review score: 25 Point Break
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 17 out of 42
  2. Mixed: 21 out of 42
  3. Negative: 4 out of 42
42 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Russ Fischer
    Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    The Rise of Skywalker; is as much metafiction as Johnson’s film was. Rather than asking questions about what we really want from a series like “Star Wars,” and whether we’re ready to allow our childhood fictions to grow with us, J.J. Abrams and crew decide to lean on the emotional warmth of reunions, friendships, redemptions, and goodbyes. There is some heartfelt value here, or at least, some of it does admittedly produce some anthemic feels, but it doesn’t hold much weight.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 42 Russ Fischer
    Terminator: Dark Fate
    Hamilton, Reyes, and Davis do everything possible to inject emotional energy into this slashing, crashing sequel, but in the end, even their efforts are ground up by the action movie machine.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Russ Fischer
    Shazam!
    Shazam! is carried aloft by an exuberant performance by Zachary Levi as the title character, all muscles and wide-eyed naïveté.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Russ Fischer
    Captain Marvel
    Moreso than any other movie in the back half of Marvel’s first decade, it’s tough to shake the feeling that Captain Marvel is an extended prologue to a story that is still off on the horizon. This character has the potential to be Marvel’s answer to Superman, with all the questions about power and ethics that implies, but her story is rushed here, and sometimes forced.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Russ Fischer
    The Greasy Strangler
    The Greasy Strangler is utterly honest, to the point of purity. For all its idiosyncrasies and blank lack of comprehension with respect to any taboo, this film believes in its corrosively yearning inhabitants, their unrefined desires and untrained bodies.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Russ Fischer
    Mechanic: Resurrection
    Even flashy, grumpy Jones can’t act like a defibrillator powerful enough to crank this generic movie into competition for Statham’s better solo outings.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Russ Fischer
    Imperium
    The star’s transformation from nebbishy office kid to a frankly imposing skinhead street soldier is unsettling and impressive.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Russ Fischer
    Morris from America
    Morris From America shines a deserved spotlight on Markees Christmas, who will hopefully be given more opportunities to command the screen, and it allows Craig Robinson a framework in which to deliver a career-best performance.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Russ Fischer
    Five Nights in Maine
    Restraint is a good impulse when dealing with such a simple story of grief, and Curran’s approach does lead to good incidental visions of each character’s devastated state. Yet Five Nights in Maine is as frustrating as it is mannered; we never see these characters truly engaging the pain they clearly feel.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 85 Russ Fischer
    Pete's Dragon
    David Lowery‘s ease with actors and command of tone make Pete’s Dragon one of the best remakes in recent years.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 33 Russ Fischer
    Independence Day: Resurgence
    There’s no heart in this movie, no urgency.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 33 Russ Fischer
    The Legend of Tarzan
    I can respect the intent to craft The Legend of Tarzan as a new chapter for the hero, one which is aware of all the shortcomings of many Tarzan stories that have gone before. And yet the film minimizes its own best ideas and falls back on adventure film tropes, old and new, in a way that undermines its attempt to decontextualize Burroughs’ aging swinger.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Russ Fischer
    The Conjuring 2
    As it fritters away character work and ideas about faith and devotion, this is a film clever enough to scare us but not smart enough to accomplish anything more.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 50 Russ Fischer
    Warcraft
    Warcraft may provide grand, thunderous spectacle as it transforms human actors into hulking Orcs, but when trying to perform the alchemy of transmuting genre archetypes into characters with soul, the magic fizzles out.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 91 Russ Fischer
    The Nice Guys
    The Nice Guys, which the screenwriter also directed, is the best of Black’s films. It is eccentrically, sometimes broadly funny, with top-notch performances from Crowe and Gosling and a pitch-perfect sense of timing to help smooth over some of the script’s fault lines and blind spots.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 58 Russ Fischer
    Money Monster
    The film is never as savage as the first-act anarchy suggests it might be, and its best ideas are subsumed into familiar thriller concepts. Good craftsmanship elevates the result above workaday thriller territory, but ultimately Money Monster never rages in the “mad as hell” mode that’s always kept just out of reach
    • 52 Metascore
    • 42 Russ Fischer
    X-Men: Apocalypse
    Apocalypse feels like a cog in Fox’s perpetual-motion blockbuster machine, paying lip service to the story’s allegorical potential as it grinds our interest to dust.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 42 Russ Fischer
    Elvis & Nixon
    The actors test one another like boxers perpetually about to throw the first punch, but all the buildup around their encounter is flabby and forgettable.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Russ Fischer
    Captain America: Civil War
    Striking and consistently engaging, the Russos deftly craft compelling blockbuster entertainment out of a a moral and emotional conflict, and that’s more impressive than any overblown display of loud and vulgar power.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Russ Fischer
    Hardcore Henry
    Sure, there's a bit of spectacle to the film's utterly ridiculous violence. Even that dulls, however, without character or stakes to inject urgency into the parade of broken bodies.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 58 Russ Fischer
    The Boss
    McCarthy has a great knack for vicious verbiage, and in combination with her supreme physical control there's pleasure in seeing Darnell tear an opponent to shreds, even (or especially) when she's in the wrong.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 67 Russ Fischer
    The Jungle Book
    The strikingly realistic scenery is dappled with color, light and shadow to create dramatic stages for masterful character animations— if only the story played out on this impeccably-realized fantasy had the same persuasive command.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 42 Russ Fischer
    Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
    Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice is an extraordinarily odd, idiosyncratic movie that presents aggressive, even warlike concepts of Batman and Superman without entirely justifying the eccentric visions.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Russ Fischer
    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    Fey's work is strong, yet it's difficult to squash the impression that this could be a more powerful movie, and an even more significant showcase for Tina Fey.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Russ Fischer
    The Lure
    Crafted as a kaleidoscope of color and nightclub sparkle, The Lure's glitter does not distract from the fact that this is a technically confident and often quite accomplished piece of filmmaking, with a rare ability to dance intuitively between linear plotting and phantasmagoric fantasy.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 42 Russ Fischer
    Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
    It is shriekingly loud but never surprising; goofy, but rarely funny.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 42 Russ Fischer
    Swiss Army Man
    Swiss Army Man is a big swing — there's no denying the risk in putting two well-known actors in a film where one plays a barely-mobile corpse — but also a big whiff that rarely connects its characters and situations to humor or empathy.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 33 Russ Fischer
    Yoga Hosers
    Kevin Smith's Yoga Hosers is a flabby, goofy, comically inert cartoon.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 83 Russ Fischer
    Tallulah
    Heder's direction shines, shaping the film around the cast as each woman plays out their own specific nuances of loss and insecurity, and, occasionally, optimism. Tallulah is an impressive feature debut, and a welcome showcase for the talents of Page, Janney, and Blanchard.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 83 Russ Fischer
    The Intervention
    The Intervention may not offer many new experiences, but its combination of tart and sweet is satisfying.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Russ Fischer
    Eddie the Eagle
    This gentle comedy is more interested in doing justice to the spirit of his achievement and the style of late-'80s comedy than the details of his life, but the resulting confection is sweet and simple.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 83 Russ Fischer
    The Birth of a Nation
    In script and performance, the film is an articulate howl of anguish and rage given depth by a discerning comprehension of the ways various communities can rely on faith for very different means.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Russ Fischer
    Captain Fantastic
    Captain Fantastic uses bleak but gentle comedy to pinpoint the variety of ways we wrestle with grief, but the film undermines Mortensen's performance and its own thematic ambitions by presenting the character as little more than an idealized fantasy figure.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Russ Fischer
    Belgica
    Belgica is just like its characters, unwilling to shake a fascination with superficial pleasures to dive into any significant interactions.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 58 Russ Fischer
    13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
    Bay's overwrought tendencies simultaneously lead to the film's most compelling sequences of tense, bloody battle even as they forestall the more nuanced storytelling that would be crucial to truly unpacking the attacks. Bay may see the film as a cry of truth; muffled by his own predilections it's only a whisper.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 25 Russ Fischer
    Point Break
    This Point Break doesn’t ever connect with anything, even its own desire to celebrate the extreme.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 58 Russ Fischer
    Sisters
    In the end there's nothing surprising in Sisters, except for the fact that it isn't anything more than a party movie.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Russ Fischer
    Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    Abrams makes big decisions and takes chances that command respect, especially in the very safe current tentpole film industry, but he doesn’t always quite sell them as he could. Still, as this new chapter props the franchise back up on sturdy legs, the Force seems to be in capable hands with a fresh forward direction.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 58 Russ Fischer
    Don Verdean
    This is ninety minutes of comic actors having a genial go at middle-of-the-road material. It doesn’t have any guts, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t funny.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 67 Russ Fischer
    Lizzie
    While [Chloe Sevigny's] work is commanding and a dedicated set of tough, engaged performances from the ensemble add life to the odd legend, awkward structural choices bleed away the film’s emotional punch long before the credits roll.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 58 Russ Fischer
    Piercing
    In the end Piercing seems more interested in aesthetic playfulness than getting the most out of these characters. Playing towards comedy helps some of the more freaky scenes go down, but that’s not a substitute for substance.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 91 Russ Fischer
    Mandy
    Through Cage, the film’s straightforward revenge plot becomes a King Crimson album played at half speed and twice normal volume; a bizarre and bloody outing with a strong heart beneath the surface.

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »