Scott Foundas

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L.A. Weekly, Variety, Village Voice
For 852 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Scott Foundas' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Inside Llewyn Davis
Lowest review score: 0 Grind
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 447 out of 852
  2. Mixed: 278 out of 852
  3. Negative: 127 out of 852
852 movie reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Climates
    It's something of a family affair -- only this time, instead of casting his relatives in the leading roles, Ceylan has cast himself and his real-life wife, Ebru, as Isa and Bahar. And if, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, such a decision might foster a mood of lurid home-movie voyeurism, both Ceylans are such commanding and subtly expressive performers that any charges of nepotism here are as erroneous as in the storied collaborations of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    The Bling Ring
    The Bling Ring traces an intriguing feedback loop of which it is knowingly a part: a movie that affords its subjects the very immortality they so aggressively sought.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    The Rundown
    Surprisingly airy, jungle-set adventure, boisterously winking at Huston, Peckinpah and the same Saturday-morning serials that birthed Indiana Jones. R.J. Stewart and James Vanderbilt's tongue-in-cheek script, a hybridization of "Midnight Run" and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," provides lots of amusing byplay for its two mismatched stars.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    This Ain't California
    “Dogtown and Z-Boys” meets “The Lives of Others” in This Ain’t California, a spirited not-quite-documentary portrait of the skateboarding subculture that flourished in East Germany in the early 1980s.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    The Namesake
    A richly compelling story of family and self-discovery.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    A Most Violent Year
    In his third turn behind the camera, writer-director J.C. Chandor has delivered a tough, gritty, richly atmospheric thriller that lacks some of the formal razzle-dazzle of his solo seafaring epic, “All Is Lost,” but makes up for it with an impressively sustained low-boil tension and the skillful navigating of a complex plot (at least up until a wholly unnecessary last-minute twist).
    • 38 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Never Die Alone
    An electrifying modern-dress noir, directed by Ernest Dickerson with a tough, terse, unapologetically brutal attitude that evokes the heyday of Sam Fuller and Robert Aldrich.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Girl with a Pearl Earring
    Webber spins a slight but considerably enchanting tale of impossible romance and artistic discovery.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    The Terminal
    This buoyant, optimistic fable seems to share in the late Ronald Reagan's optimism for America. It does so with the help of a gifted comic ensemble led by Tom Hanks.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself
    If we never do find out exactly why Wilbur is so intent on offing himself, it almost doesn't matter, given Sives' magnetic, star-making performance and the careful, elating mixture of comedy and pathos.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Won't Anybody Listen
    Richly satisfying both as subversive, music-biz primer and as gritty, true-life underdog story.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    War Story
    Anchored by Keener’s understated, psychologically acute performance, director Mark Jackson’s spare, quietly powerful sophomore feature demonstrates an impressive control of mood and tone and the ability to tell a story largely without words.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Rosewater
    Stewart’s confident, superbly acted debut feature works as both a stirring account of human endurance and a topical reminder of the risks faced by journalists in pursuit of the truth.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    A Silent Love
    All three actors are more than up to the challenge, particularly the radiant Salazar, who feasts upon that rare gift of a role that allows an actress the wrong side of 40 to be funny, sexy and vital without apologizing.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Bad News Bears
    There may be no other actor (Thornton)working today (or as frequently) who is this good each and every time out.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Crossing the Line
    Crossing the Line, like its subject, remains a fascinating and frustrating enigma -- a declassified government report still marred by redacted passages.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr
    It’s a film about the excruciating pursuit of money and self-gratification, which Hyams makes strangely analogous to the everyday workplace, suggesting that the conflicts and aggressions being worked out in the no-holds-barred ring are merely a more primal expression of what anyone who works any kind of job encounters daily.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    The Astronaut Farmer
    This is gloriously self-aware hokum, a fantasy movie that is, above all, about our need for fantasy and escapism -- and even our need for movies like The Astronaut Farmer -- to help us combat the depression and disappointments of the everyday.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Avengers: Age of Ultron
    The new movie is a sleeker, faster, funnier piece of work — the sort of sequel (like “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” “Superman II” and “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” before it) that shrugs off the self-seriousness of its predecessor and fully embraces its inner Saturday-morning serial.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    The President's Last Bang
    This meticulously well-made picture is disarmingly funny at times - not least during the ballet of bloody absurdity that is the assassination itself - but also subdued and straight-faced, with one eye planted on 1979 and the other on the violent student demonstrations looming in the distance.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Trainwreck
    A somewhat shaggy, frequently hilarious romantic comedy that, like much of Apatow’s best work, delicately balances irreverent raunch with candid insights into the give-and-take of grown-up relationships.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
    At its best, Behind the Mask offers some, um, cutting insights about mass-media blood lust and the cult of the serial killer, and in Baesel, who is by turns charming, manic and thoroughly scary, it has a gifted young actor who clearly relishes a role he can sink his pitchfork into.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
    One of the best part 3's ever made, and Rodriguez's knack for concocting the most imaginatively deranged children's entertainments since "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" remains unassailed.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    End of the Century
    At the picture’s best, it recalls Michael Winterbottom's "24 Hour Party People" in its tribute to the music of the times and the way in which that music provided a voice to a generation of social misfits.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Heaven Knows What
    Holmes may not have the polished technique of a formally trained actress, but she has an innate capacity for drama, and whether or not she can go on to play roles further removed from her own experience, she’s electrifying in this one.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    James White
    Familiar in its general trajectory, but unusually raw and ragged in its emotional architecture, Mond’s fraught portrait of a mother and son in crisis sports a pair of knockout performances by Cynthia Nixon and “Girls” alumnus Christopher Abbott.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Metal: A Headbanger's Journey
    At once playful and thorough, the documentary is also stacked teased-hair high with wicked performance footage.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Jauja
    In Jauja, Alsonso saves his most dazzling trick for last: a sudden plunge down a Lynchian rabbit hole that should, by all means, rupture the film’s hypnotizing atmosphere, but instead pulls the viewer in even deeper.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Tip Top
    An utterly brazen mix of screwball comedy, film noir and sharp social commentary that hits its own strange bullseye more often than not, Bozon’s third full-length feature (and first since 2007’s WWI musical, “La France”) benefits immeasurably from actors willing to go as far out on a limb as their intrepid director.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Mr. Holmes
    The more vital subject of Mr. Holmes turns out to be our need for stories themselves and, in particular, the role of fiction as an escape from the pain and loss of everyday life.
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