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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    • 89 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Foundas
    The Lives of Others
    The Lives of Others wants us to see that the Stasi -- at least some of them -- were, like their Gestapo brethren, “just following orders." You can call that naive optimism on Donnersmarck's part, or historical revisionism of the sort duly lambasted by the current film version of Alan Bennett's "The History Boys." I, for one, tremble at the thought of what this young director does for an encore.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Unleashed
    The most enjoyable film Besson has had his name on in eons.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    Land of Plenty
    The flawed, fascinating Land of Plenty is easily Wenders' most vital work in more than a decade -- a troubling meditation on terrorism paranoia, poverty and homelessness.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    A one-joke movie if ever there was, but the joke happens to be a good one -- a Tracy-and-Hepburn-style battle of the sexes in which Kate can fly and blast through walls -- and director Ivan Reitman (who made Ghostbusters) feels at home with the mix of screwball and supernatural.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Foundas
    Johnson Family Vacation
    The picture shows vital signs only in a few scenes where Cedric takes on the additional role of his own lecherous uncle, but it's too little too late.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    The Weather Man
    The Weather Man begs to be taken seriously and can't easily be dismissed; it kicks around in your mind for a good long while after you've seen it. Cage, who does his finest work since "Leaving Las Vegas," has stripped himself bare of the patented tics and mannerisms he honed in one Jerry Bruckheimer movie too many.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Foundas
    House of 1000 Corpses
    A cobwebbed, mummified horror entry that makes obvious, cartoonishly grotesque demands for attention.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Foundas
    The Edukators
    Put simply, this second feature by the young Austrian director Hans Weingartner is a put-on -- a glib anti-capitalist rant in which the rhetoric rarely rises above the you-too-can-save-a-child-for-less-than-the-price-of-coffee level.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Foundas
    She Hate Me
    A scabrous, provocative and often funny social satire about the American dream, Spike Lee's flawed but fascinating She Hate Me addresses everything from corporate malfeasance to the African AIDS epidemic, barely catching its breath in-between.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Foundas
    The Honeymooners
    This appalling multiculti upgrade of the ’50s sitcom is about as funny as a bus accident.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    War of the Worlds
    The imagery is startling not just for its symbolic resonances, but for the breathless intensity with which it sears the screen.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Foundas
    Kwik Stop
    A screwball road movie set in a middle-of-nowhere town, Kwik Stop suggests "It Happened One Night" as reimagined by David Lynch or Hal Hartley.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Last Holiday
    Queen Latifah gives a spectacular performance in this hugely enjoyable wish-fulfillment fantasy.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Foundas
    The Chorus
    The Chorus is sham art and questionable entertainment, but at the very least it sends you whistling out of the theater.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Scott Foundas
    Chrystal
    McKinnon's direction is nothing if not atmospheric -- his best scenes unfold with a pungent languor that suggests the power of the backwoods to turn hours into days and days into years. If only the sum total were a movie more "In the Bedroom" than it is everything-but-the-kitchen-sink.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Foundas
    Godsend
    Kinnear and Romijn-Stamos appear to be vying for the title of filmdom's least-convincing married couple, while Robert De Niro, as the movie's modern-day Dr. Frankenstein, takes his own expert career slumming to a new depth -- he's become an evil clone of a once-great actor.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
    Not just the funniest but the smartest comedy around by a mile.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Foundas
    Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
    Welsh director Sara Sugarman and the great cinematographer Stephen Burum (Hoffa, The Untouchables) keep the visuals bouncing along in bright, primary-color-intensive fashion, but the movie has no real heart and even less soul.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Scott Foundas
    Club Dread
    Chandrasekhar is a master forger of images and situations from horror movies past, but unlike Wes Craven did in "Scream," he doesn't build on them in any way, and the result is the opposite of what's intended; the movie is stultifying.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    Revolution #9
    Looks with fresh eyes at a new millennium in which, seemingly, the entire world is bought and sold in neatly wrapped packages engineered for mass consumption.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Kingdom of Heaven
    In its depiction of a fleeting, but nevertheless factual, peace in the Middle East, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven may seem a more quixotic Hollywood fantasy than all six Star Wars movies lumped together.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    Who Needs Sleep?
    The result is (no pun intended) a powerful wake-up call, not just for Hollywood but for a nation that once fought passionately for the eight-hour workday and now, ever more willingly, works itself to death.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Scott Foundas
    Lucía, Lucía
    After a lively first half-hour, the scenes start to feel heavy, as though Serrano suddenly decided he was actually making a meaningful drama, and the ensuing, halfhearted political satire is like an extra weight on top of that.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Foundas
    The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam
    Though the story hardly lacks for event as it traces Khayyam's ascension from the peasantry to the royal court, the period costumes and sets look to be on loan from Medieval Times, as do most of the actors, and the boxy, harshly lit compositions make everything feel even more cardboard.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Scott Foundas
    Wonderland
    The vaporous Wonderland never moves beyond its grungily romanticized view of the past.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    Irene in Time
    Moments of genuine insight alternate freely with those of banal psychologizing, but even then there can be no denying that the filmmaker has an ear for a certain brand of self-absorbed discourse often overheard in restaurants and bars in the shadow of the Hollywood sign. And given the choice, I’ll take Henry’s home movies over Jonathan Demme’s any day of the week.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 80 Scott Foundas
    Death Defying Acts
    This won't be remembered as one of the prodigiously talented Armstrong's great films (My Brilliant Career, High Tide, Little Women), but it's still 90 percent better than everything else out there.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 20 Scott Foundas
    An American Carol
    Astonishingly inept alleged satire.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Scott Foundas
    The World's Fastest Indian
    A warm, spacious road movie with a stirring sense of the wide-open landscapes of the American West.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Scott Foundas
    Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
    The film unfolds at a deliberate pace, with a soundtrack occupied less by dialogue than by the sounds of water flowing and crickets chirping. And if you listen carefully enough, you might just hear the sound of one hand clapping.
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