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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    • 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.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Foundas
    Beyond the Reach
    A preposterously bad, grade-Z adventure yarn.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Foundas
    La Sapienza
    The unresolvable tension between logic and feeling animates Eugene Green’s La Sapienza, an exquisite rumination on life, love and art that tickles the heart and mind in equal measure.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Foundas
    Desert Dancer
    Desert Dancer traffics in the kind of spirited rebel-youth archetypes who’ve been endemic to dance movies for decades.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Foundas
    The Longest Ride
    Appealing performances by a trio of second- and third-generation Hollywood kids keep this three-hankie twaddle more bearable than it deserves.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    Far from the Madding Crowd
    What does register at every turn is a vibrant sense of time and place that pulls us into Hardy’s bygone world even when the drama falters.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Foundas
    Experimenter
    Experimenter offers a heady brew of theories about the essence of human nature, and a Peter Sarsgaard performance that catches Milgram in all his seductive, megalomaniacal brilliance.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    Backcountry
    MacDonald has seen enough horror movies of varying kinds to know what audiences expect, and one of the pleasures of Backcountry is how skillfully it toys with those expectations, setting us up for something like a Mumblecore “Straw Dogs” and ending up somewhere closer to a landlocked “Jaws.”
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq
    This genuine curio gets surprising mileage from Houellebecq’s deft, self-effacing performance at the center of a lively comic ensemble.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Foundas
    Do You Believe?
    When all its threads are finally pulled into place, Do You Believe? proves about as spiritually enlightening as a Kmart throw rug.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Foundas
    Zombeavers
    Zombeavers is not a total wash, and seen at night, under the right combination of low expectations and controlled substances, it may even seem better than it really is.
    • 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.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    Furious 7
    Furious 7 provides both a satisfying chapter in the movies’ preeminent gearhead soap opera and a tactful, touching memorial to Walker.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Foundas
    Danny Collins
    Beneath the sitcom cutesiness and boldfaced sentimentality, the film manages to keep just enough reality coursing through to stay grounded.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 10 Scott Foundas
    Kidnapping Mr. Heineken
    About as appealing as day-old beer littered with cigarette butts, the abysmal caper drama Kidnapping Mr. Heineken is one of those international co-productions produced for all the right tax-credit reasons and none of the right artistic ones.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Foundas
    Accidental Love
    The disparate tones never gel, and the movie has an airless, stop-and-go feel, as if a studio-audience laugh track were intended but never inserted.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Foundas
    Queen of Earth
    An unnerving, acidly funny work that fosters an acute air of dread without ever fully announcing itself as a horror movie.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Scott Foundas
    Jafar Panahi's Taxi
    A film of quiet but profound outrage, laughing on the surface, but howling in anger just beneath.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    The Summer of Sangaile
    At its best, The Summer of Sangaile captures the special intensity of those relationships in which everything seems to fade away save for the other person.
    • 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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Entertainment
    Take it or leave it, Alverson’s fourth feature is singular stuff, and it reconfirms the director as one of the truly bold voices in the all-too-homogenous U.S. indie film scene.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Foundas
    Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
    For Scientologists, going clear refers to a coveted status awarded to those who have completed a certain level of auditing. But for the men and women on screen here, it means something else: reclaiming their own voices and demanding to be heard.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    I Smile Back
    What propels the film forcefully along is Silverman, who pulls us down so deeply inside Laney’s sickness that everything else seems to fade away (much as it does in the character’s own life).
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Results
    Once he’s worked through the basic set-up, Bujalski puts the plot on the back burner and lets his characters collide and ricochet off one another with a laconic comic grace.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Foundas
    Mistress America
    If nothing else, Mistress America confirms Gerwig as one of the great, fearless screen comediennes of her generation — a tall, loose-limbed whirligig who careers through scenes with the beatific ditziness of a Carole Lombard or Judy Holliday.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Foundas
    Z for Zachariah
    Z for Zachariah is a handsome-looking film (shot in widescreen, on remote New Zealand locations, by veteran David Gordon Green d.p. Tim Orr) and it doesn’t lack for provocative ideas, though it never digs quite deep enough into any of them.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    What Happened, Miss Simone?
    Garbus embraces Simone in all her multitudes and contradictions — or at least as many of them as can be comfortably squeezed into a 100-minute running time.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    The Wolfpack
    So weirdly fascinating is the tale of the Angulo clan that one wishes The Wolfpack were that much sharper, more searching and coherently organized. Still, there is much to enjoy in director Crystal Moselle’s debut documentary feature.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    Queen and Country
    Queen and Country lacks the immediacy of “Hope and Glory,” in part because there’s no single animating event here to rival the Blitz... But it remains a pleasure to spend time in the presence of these characters, and a third volume — perhaps focused on Bill’s entrance into the British film industry — would hardly be unwelcome.
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