Simon Abrams

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L.A. Weekly, RogerEbert.com, Slant Magazine, The A.V. Club, The Playlist, TheWrap, Village Voice
For 854 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 40% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 54% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 10.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Simon Abrams' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 55
Highest review score: 100 Viet and Nam
Lowest review score: 0 Zookeeper
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 390 out of 854
  2. Mixed: 239 out of 854
  3. Negative: 225 out of 854
854 movie reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Baahubali: The Epic
    Baahubali: The Epic may not deliver a better edit or experience, but it does highlight what was already great, especially once it settles into a groove following a ten-minute intermission break. By that point, most of the cuts have already been made, leaving the leisurely pageantry of Rajamouli’s regal milestone to speak for itself and at its own preferred volume, too.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Hell of a Summer
    Co-directors and writers Billy Bryk and “Stranger Things” star Finn Wolfhard pay homage to ‘80s body count pics with a sappy but likable coming-of-age comedy about a group of summer camp counselors who are stalked and slayed by a masked killer.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Babi Yar. Context
    The dual nature of “Babi Yar. Context” as both an essay movie and a cut-up historic document might create an uneasy tension with viewers who would like to know more about whatever they’re looking at. If nothing else, Loznitsa succeeds at being upsetting.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Sex
    Dialogue does most of the heavy-lifting here, just like in “Love”, the first and most recently released entry of Haugerud’s thematically related series. Haugerud’s knack for visual storytelling also makes a difference, specifically in how he presents the city of Oslo and its features as an enriching backdrop.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Monster Hunt
    Chinese blockbuster Monster Hunt is a sappy, crowd-pleasing, tonally wonky fantasy-adventure/comedy that pits dorky-looking monsters against over-acting cornball comedians/monster-hunters.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    The White Storm 2: Drug Lords
    The Hong Kong Triad mob thriller The White Storm 2: Drug Lords is a cynic’s delight, though often not in the ways you might expect. As a message movie, The White Storm 2 is pretty toothless.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Southbound
    A prime example of a horror omnibus film: even the weaker segments have something to recommend them.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Rubble Kings
    Had Nicholson taken advantage of Melendez and Suarez's seemingly easy-going nature, Rubble Kings might have been great. As it is, the film is a one-sided, but satisfying tribute to an alternatively terrifying and beguiling city that we can only revisit in movies.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Tornado
    Your enjoyment of “Tornado” depends on how much you want to root for thinly drawn characters who don’t look strong enough to carry an entire movie. They can and they can’t, depending on how patient you’re feeling.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Kuso
    Kuso may often feel unproductively loud, and monotonous, but it is a head-scratcher worth contending with.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    The Soul Collector
    There’s something eerie, and sometimes even dreadful at the heart of The Soul Collector, a new South African horror movie about the damage done by hungry ghosts and their ignorant descendants. Mostly because The Soul Collector often suggests more than its streamlined plot and mythology can express.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    The Queen of Black Magic
    The unsettling mood and creeping pace of the Indonesian horror movie The Queen of Black Magic take some getting used to.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Rubikon
    Rubikon never offers viewers deep answers to its bigger questions, but it does pose enough questions to keep things moving while you watch.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    I Did It My Way
    I Did It My Way exemplifies the current state of mass-oriented Hong Kong genre cinema, leaning hard on its seasoned cast to both remind viewers of better movies and carry this one around the bases fast enough that you still get your money’s worth.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Kill
    Kill tics off most of the essential boxes for a good popcorn flick, making it easy to resist but harder to pass up.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Caged
    Watching Harlow struggle with the simultaneously impersonal and obviously prejudiced nature of his imprisonment is often enough to make Caged seem like more than the sum of its parts.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    The Witch: Part 2. The Other One
    I’m not sure where this particular wannabe franchise is going or if anybody but initiated viewers will care to find out, but I could watch another one.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Escape from Mogadishu
    A giddy chase scene almost singlehandedly rescues Escape from Mogadishu, an otherwise unmoving South Korean political thriller about the real-life Korean diplomats who fled Somalia during that country’s 1991 civil war.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Escape
    Escape finds an interesting subject in that ambiguous line, but never examines it closely enough to convey what it’s like to be invisible while in service to your own country.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Destroy All Neighbors
    Ray and his co-stars’ easy chemistry makes you want to hang out with Will, if only to see where the plot twist takes him. “Destroy All Neighbors” wouldn’t really work without that essential playfulness; the fact that it works at all suggests that Ms. Lee and her team are the movie’s real MVPs.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Monstrous
    Christina Ricci does most, if not all, of the emotional lifting in the lightweight horror drama Monstrous, a period piece about a single mom and her son who, in 1955, run away from home and re-settle in an isolated lakeside house.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Earwig
    Hadžihalilović's latest is both too hazy to make a great adaptation and too focused to be genuinely dream-like.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Host
    It’s nice to see that the first horror movie to specifically address our present hellish circumstances is as unpretentious and tidy as it is.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Road Games
    By preferring to keep viewers in suspense until the film's finale, Pastoll makes it harder to recommend a movie that has many good ideas, but no clue what to do with them.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms
    While “Creation of the Gods I” is not yet a personal, let alone essential, series, you can see glimpses of the epic that director Wuershan has arguably been working his way up to since “The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsman,” his wildly uneven, but occasionally disarming 2010 breakthrough.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    The Neon Demon
    The Neon Demon only works when Refn finds the right middle ground between obliquely hinting at and explicitly spelling out what his movie's about.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Asako I & II
    To be clear: Asako I & II is not a bad movie, just one that doesn't convey much beyond its creators' intentions. There are moments of poetic beauty scattered throughout, like the few scenes that don't push the otherwise cloud-light plot along.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Mother Schmuckers
    Co-writer/co-director duo Harpo and Lenny Guit’s apparent disregard for their viewers’ comfort can sometimes be quite funny, depending on your tolerance for messy, meandering absurdist comedy.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    Paulina
    Paulina is, in that sense, worth seeing, even if its basic plot repeatedly stalls. It is a thoughtful movie, but not necessarily a fulfilling one.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Simon Abrams
    World on a Wire (1973)
    Fassbinder's sumptuous 205-minute epic is intriguing as a prototype for later and more palatably cynical sci-fi standards like "Blade Runner" or even "Total Recall."
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