Sara Stewart

Select another critic »
New York Post
For 607 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 50% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Sara Stewart's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 Dolemite Is My Name
Lowest review score: 0 Would You Rather
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 324 out of 607
  2. Mixed: 176 out of 607
  3. Negative: 107 out of 607
607 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    The Witch
    It’s a creepy little gem, and its imagery will stay with you long after you’ve left the theater.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    20th Century Women
    Despite being set in the late 1970s, 20th Century Women feels like the perfect movie for this moment.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Trainwreck
    It’s very funny and sweet and even a little weepy, and it has maybe the best scene ever filmed of dirty talk gone wrong. In other words, it’s a Schumer/Apatow production — may there be more of them to come.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Wetlands
    Take note, Lars von Trier: This is how you do a truly funny, subversive movie about a woman’s obsession with the human body and sex.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Spider-Man: Homecoming
    Here’s a franchise you’d think had been done to death (wasn’t the last webslinger reboot, like, two years ago?), and yet Spider-Man: Homecoming feels fresh and new, an endearingly awkward kid brother to the glamorous “Wonder Woman.”
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Call Me by Your Name
    Call this movie by its name: Masterpiece.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    The Broken Circle Breakdown
    This Belgian drama is the real deal, an alternately wrenching and ecstatic viewing experience, adapted from a play by lead actor Johan Heldenbergh.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    The Danish Girl
    Capping off the year that transgender stopped being transgressive, the story of artist Lili Elbe (Eddie Redmayne) makes for one of the year’s finest films.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
    Sure, it’s just a space Western, but “Star Wars” is one of the our most popular modern mythologies. Johnson respects that. He’s infused the storyline with new energy and artistry, and I can’t wait to see it again.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Detroit
    Detroit may be tricked out with the Motown and miniskirts of the era, but its police-brutality narrative, assembled with firsthand accounts of that day, has chilling parallels with the here and now. It is not an easy watch, and it is an essential one.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Dolemite Is My Name
    This comic biopic is a blast from start to finish.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
    It’s the rare biopic that doesn’t wander into predictability.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
    It’s his home movies with Love and baby — some playful, others drugged and drooling — that fans will find the most emotional viewing. As the credits roll, it’s hard not to just root for the sensitive, progressive, fiercely creative Cobain and wish that he’d lived long enough to find a little peace of mind.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Gloria Bell
    Sebastián Lelio’s remake of his 2013 Chilean movie “Gloria” is, indeed, a glorious celebration of Julianne Moore at her peak.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    The Lighthouse
    By turns funny, sinister, haunting, historically fascinating and mythical, The Lighthouse is one of the best films of the year.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Little Women
    This Little Women is two-odd hours of good cheer and lovely ensemble performances. It’s a warm fireplace hearth of a film, albeit one with a tendency to spit out fiery embers.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    The Salt of the Earth
    Many of the images — and Salgado’s accounts of taking them — are as soul-shattering as they are breathtaking.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Sara Stewart
    Baby Driver
    This is the song of the summer in movie form, a playful ode to car chases, Motown, diners, that moment when you find the exact tune that matches your mood, driving stick, crime capers, ’80s movies and love.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Tangerine
    The two working girls at the center of Tangerine are played by engaging newcomers: Kitana Kiki Rodriguez as the freshly out-of-jail Sin-Dee Rella, and Mya Taylor as her best friend Alexandra.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Love, Antosha
    Love, Antosha manages to be both a deeply sad farewell and a fascinating introduction.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Roma
    This is a film that challenges moviegoers in a way that a Marvel movie or rom-com will not, and it is worth taking the time and concentration — and, if possible, the trip to the theater — to view a true master of the craft at work.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Tea with the Dames
    In a perfect world, Tea With the Dames could be a series. Let us be flies on the wall for this posse’s weekly gathering for tea and convivial cackling. And I say this with the delighted surety that they would tell anyone who proposed this idea to go straight to hell.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Naz & Maalik
    Naz & Maalik does what all great New York movies do: ground unique, engaging stories in the middle of the glorious chaos that is our city.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Moana
    Moana stands head and shoulders above this year’s earlier aquatic animated hit, “Finding Dory”; it’s so transporting it will have your kids begging you to book the next flight to the islands.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Suspiria
    Director Luca Guadagnino pirouettes far from the easy-living, Italian-countryside romance of last year’s masterpiece “Call Me By Your Name” for an arthouse-meets-Grand Guignol reboot of one of the freakiest horror movies to come out of the 1970s. And he pulls it off in delicious, gut-punching style.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Just Mercy
    Profoundly moving and, at times, almost unbearably sad.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    I, Tonya
    Profane, darkly funny, violent and tragic.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Eighth Grade
    A masterful ode to one of life’s most universally awkward phases.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    The Babadook
    The film’s slightly confusing ending doesn’t spell anything out, but that’s all right: We’re left sitting in the dark shivering, reassured there are still some directors who can leave us well and truly creeped out.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Vice
    Billed as a dramedy, the film has plenty of “WTF” funny moments, but it’s always laughter tinged with darkness.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    How to Survive a Plague
    How to Survive a Plague, while a shaggier-structured documentary than many, is a heart-wrenching portrait of one of the saddest, most heroic chapters in American history.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
    This rural drama is the best yet from playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh (“In Bruges,” “Seven Psychopaths”), and one of Frances McDormand’s greatest performances.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Arrival
    Arrival makes a moving case that we’ve only scratched the surface of what we think is possible — and what we define as intelligence.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Black Panther
    Like all the best comics movies, this one’s got a villain (Michael B. Jordan) so compelling he nearly steals the show from the hero (Chadwick Boseman). And sure, the futuristic African country of Wakanda may be fictional, but it’s brimming with cultural resonance.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Moonlight
    There is so much pain in Moonlight that it’s a little hard to breathe at certain moments. But there are others, of connection and redemption, that positively glow.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Mudbound
    It’s a tale as messy as its muddy fields, and it’s a must-watch.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    Mistaken for Strangers
    Not since “American Movie” has there been such an entertainingly clumsy, warts-and-all documentary about making a movie, this time courtesy of Cincinnati filmmaker Tom Berninger.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    The Biggest Little Farm
    In a time when climate news is near-uniformly depressing, this is a nature documentary that pays loving and hopeful tribute to the complex web of life — and it won’t scare your kids.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    West of Memphis
    This is a compelling and comprehensive guide to one of the most Kafkaesque crime stories in American history.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 88 Sara Stewart
    The To Do List
    I’d like to see a sequel about her freshman year at college, please. There were still a few items on that list left unchecked.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Kubo and the Two Strings
    Despite a traditional-seeming quest for a suit of armor and a sword, the film’s intrinsic message is all about the transformative powers of music and love. It’s a movie the whole family can rock out to.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Palo Alto
    The result is a thoughtful, dreamlike (at times, nightmarish) tour through the day-to-day lives of several suburban California teens.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Marie's Story
    Marie’s Story will feel familiar, which is mostly a tribute to the enduring power of Helen Keller’s biography.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Life Partners
    Fogel’s focus is female friendship, and the challenges presented by growing older and pairing up. It all makes for a rocky road, regardless of the romantic rival’s gender.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    You Were Never Really Here
    The Scottish director’s short, blunt thriller is so violently nerve-jangling that it feels like a stretch to recommend it, exactly.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Keanu
    A funny, shambling buddy comedy that mostly serves as a vehicle for our two stars to do what they do best, which is riff on race and pop culture.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    The Mustang
    It’s Schoenaerts, one of this generation’s finest actors, who makes The Mustang a moving look at human potential for redemption and rehabilitation.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Bettie Page Reveals All
    In one of Hugh Hefner’s least creepy moments ever, he describes how they became friends later in life; with his help, she finally obtained the legal rights to her rampantly used image.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Battle of the Sexes
    It’s a feel-good film with a somewhat curdled legacy: You could clip just about any piece of sexist dialogue here, label it 2017 and pass it off as plausible.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Black Rock
    This indie, female-centric riff on “Deliverance” is spare, smartly written and shot through with moments of twig-snapping tension.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Born to Fly
    Director Catherine Gund most successfully depicts the visceral impact of Streb’s work with her footage of the 2012 Olympics.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    The Skeleton Twins
    Finally, a post-“Bridesmaids” film that lets Kristen Wiig shine — and brilliantly taps into co-star Bill Hader’s vulnerable side, too.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Good Boys
    This is a raunch-com that goes for — and gets — stunned laughs.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    The Post
    As satisfying and polished as you’d expect.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Song One
    It’s not quite “Once,” but Song One, featuring original music by Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice, captures a similar, unselfconscious beauty in the way music can make sense of big, ungainly emotions — as James puts it, “for three to five whole minutes.”
    • 50 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Lolo
    Even the most extreme punishments are softened by hilariously neurotic dialogue. Vive la Delpy!
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Fed Up
    In a move sure to infuriate “nanny state” critics, director Stephanie Soechtig names the US government and food corporations responsible for a campaign to get Americans addicted to junk food — particularly, and most dangerously, sugar — as early as possible.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Trapped
    Scary and sad, Trapped is for anyone who cares about the precarious future of reproductive health for American women.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Darling
    Be advised: The film opens with a warning about “flashing lights and hallucinatory images,” and, while effectively unsettling, these do eventually get a little hard on the eyes.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Abominable
    It’s never too early to introduce your kids to the magic and emotion of the monster movie.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
    By the time its credits rolled, I was ready to forgive Rogue One any imperfections. Its last 10 minutes are spectacular and dark, with a final flourish that should give any “Star Wars” fan goose bumps — and a new hope that the next main installment will be this good.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    The Girl in the Book
    Though its resolution is a bit pat, most of The Girl in the Book is a smart and pointed look at abuses of power and roles women too often play in the literary world.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    J.T. Leroy
    At a certain point, the pattern of Knoop’s reticence, then acquiescence to Albert’s masquerade becomes slightly repetitive, but JT LeRoy still gives a compelling inside look at the head-scratching hoax that succeeded, in part, due to musty notions of what a hot shot writer ought to look like.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Boy and the World
    Virtually dialogue-free and animated in a cacophony of playful bright colors and ominous industrial landscapes, Boy & the World plays like a dream segueing into a nightmare.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    In a World...
    My own voice-over would go something like this: “This summer. One woman. Will see this movie. Again.”
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Author: The JT LeRoy Story
    Author is one of the most entertaining documentaries in recent memory — and, possibly, the origin story of catfishing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Girlhood
    Girlhood veers between being a celebration of sisterhood (albeit an occasionally violent sort) and a chronicle of the cycle of poverty.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Fifty Shades of Grey
    The film never pretends to be other than what it really is: soft-core porn for the ladies, diluted with an “R” rating.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
    The star gives us a generous and hilarious portrait of life as an aging legend.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Emma.
    De Wilde has a good grasp of Austen’s sense of humor, and she plays it up with some amusing bits
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Doctor Strange
    With a mischievous, metaphysical flourish, Doctor Strange administers some much-needed CPR to the flagging superhero genre. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel — a power-hungry villain (Mads Mikkelsen) tries to unleash hell on Earth, blah blah blah — but it’s a heck of a lot more fun than I’ve had at a Marvel movie lately.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    The Voices
    Ryan Reynolds is chillingly perfect as a nice-guy factory worker struggling with schizophrenia and murderous impulses in this tonally wild indie, which is nearly too horrifying to be funny — but not quite.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Thelma
    With its gray skies, moody ambience and ominous orchestral score, Thelma fits the cliché about Scandinavian entertainment being dark as hell — in the best way. It’s also gorgeous.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Midsommar
    Midsommar is no slouch on chills, but they creep up slowly, like a bad trip from one of the Swedes’ festive glasses of hallucinogenic tea, and are leavened with an occasional dash of humor.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Sisters
    A witty and occasionally wise take on sibling bonds and adulthood — even if the latter only arrives kicking and screaming.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Stoker
    Sure, it’s got its horror aspects. But for my money, this movie belongs alongside “Secretary,” “Ginger Snaps” and “Thirteen” in the family of deliciously dark female coming-of-age stories.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Monkey Kingdom
    On the whole, though, you couldn’t do much better than Monkey Kingdom to get kids invested in learning about, and protecting, the natural world.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Drinking Buddies
    In some ways, it feels like an indie meditation on the eternal “When Harry Met Sally” question: Can men and women be just friends? Here, though, the focus is on the small, often unsaid moments that define a friendship — and a murky attraction.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Every Last Child
    Grim but worthwhile.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Doin' It in the Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC
    Daunting though it may be for the aspiring pick-up entrant, this is a fun and worthwhile ode to one of New York’s greatest summer pastimes.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Lost Girls
    Garbus’ film is at its best when giving voice to the female relatives of these victims, who come together to pressure the cops — who’ve been instructed to downplay the possible connection between the killings — to do more.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Cry Macho
    Some of the acting feels cardboard; the plot points are never shocking. Eastwood’s love interest is about four decades his junior. And yet, the director casts a Zen cowboy spell that makes it all sort of irresistible.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Little Men
    Kinnear brings heart and nuance to a character in the terrible position of being asked to evict the mother of his son’s best friend. It’s a no-win situation in which no one is the bad guy — a gentle, intelligent oasis in this summer of heated name-calling.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    The Assistant
    Never seen, but often heard bellowing profanities from the other end of Jane’s desktop landline, the boss and his eyebrow-raising closed door meetings dubbed “personals” provide the menacing undertone of this day-in-the-life drama.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Dora and the Lost City of Gold
    Disney, take note: This is how to do a winning live-action update of a cartoon.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Lilting
    Khaou’s film features masterful performances from Whishaw and Cheng, whose dialogue is somehow intensified, rather than diluted, through the third-party voice of the translator. But some emotions, the film suggests, are impossible to adequately articulate in any language.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Saturday Church
    Under the generous debut direction of Damon Cardasis, there’s enough heart and raw truth here to uplift the moments that falter.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Life of Crime
    Schechter’s soul-scored film is impeccably styled for the time period, and its easy pacing reminds me of the gold standard for Leonard adaptations, “Out of Sight.” It’s not that good, but it’s within striking distance.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    mother!
    Calm down, “Black Swan” guy. Viewers will survive; some may find, as I did, scenes he intended to be terrifying as ridiculously over-the-top. But Mother! is undeniably a wild, memorable ride. It’s a Rorschach test of a movie to interpret however you like.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Brad's Status
    White excels at writing dislikable protagonists — topped by Laura Dern on the HBO series “Enlightened” — while giving his characters enough humanity not to be monsters, and the potential for change.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Paterson
    There is an honesty and realism to Driver’s performances that work well in the part of a blue-collar poet who feels no need to court the spotlight.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Novitiate
    Holy moly, Melissa Leo makes a scary Mother Superior.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Maidentrip
    What the film lacks in plot twists it makes up for in sheer amazement.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Coherence
    Writer/director James Ward Byrkit, in his feature debut, achieves effective chills with only eight actors and a living room, intermixing quantum physics (shout-outs range from Schrödinger’s cat to “Sliding Doors”) with the very mundane human tendency toward bad judgment calls in a crisis.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    When Animals Dream
    Casting aside warnings and physical threats from the townspeople, this once-demure teen girl embraces her wild side with a gory, punk-rock abandon.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Merchants of Doubt
    As they’re akin to spectators at a magic show, viewers ought to keep an eye out for what the Merchants of Doubt don’t want us to see.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Where to Invade Next
    It’s substantial food for thought, but too scattered for a two-hour running time.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Ghostbusters
    Overall, though, Paul Feig’s (“Spy”) reboot of the 1984 classic is a goofy, big-hearted romp.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    20 Feet from Stardom
    In a film that’s often sad but not without its triumphs, director Morgan Neville smartly explores the complex role that ego and self-promotion play in this profession.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Sara Stewart
    Wildling
    A supernatural “What’s Happening to My Body?” parable in company with “Carrie,” “Ginger Snaps” and last year’s “Thelma,” Wildling is low-key with an undertone of menace, skillfully directed by Fritz Böhm in his feature debut (though some of his nighttime scenes are so dark it’s genuinely hard to tell what’s going on).
prev
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »