Stephanie Zacharek

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Film.com, Movieline, Salon, Time, Village Voice
For 2,384 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Stephanie Zacharek's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 A House of Dynamite
Lowest review score: 0 The Hunt
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,325 out of 2384
  2. Mixed: 868 out of 2384
  3. Negative: 191 out of 2384
2384 movie reviews
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    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Stephanie Zacharek
    White Noise
    It’s hard to know exactly what Baumbach is going for here, other than perhaps reminding us that the key to living is just going about your life. But you probably don’t need two hours and 16 minutes’ worth of movie to tell you that.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Stephanie Zacharek
    Me Time
    With the trillions of entertainment options available today, we can all afford to be a little more discriminating in how low we’re willing to stoop, and Me Time sets the bar around ankle height.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Stephanie Zacharek
    Funny Pages
    Funny Pages still feels slight and only vaguely shaped. Well-observed details are great, but they’ll only take you so far.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Stephanie Zacharek
    Three Minutes: A Lengthening
    If Stigter’s film is at times somber, it’s more often ruefully poetic.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Stephanie Zacharek
    Beast
    In the end Beast is, frankly, sort of dumb.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Stephanie Zacharek
    Look Both Ways
    A filmmaker can do a lot with this Sliding Doors-style idea; there’s also plenty that could send it careering off the rails. But Look Both Ways has a mild sweetness that makes it go down easy.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Stephanie Zacharek
    Day Shift
    Day Shift delivers everything it promises, which isn’t all that much. But Foxx goes above and beyond the call of duty, seemingly without even trying. Before you know it, his shift, and ours, is over, and the time has passed painlessly enough.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Stephanie Zacharek
    Bodies Bodies Bodies
    Bodies Bodies Bodies is one of those movies that wins you over scene by scene, before sealing the deal with its marvelous, ludicrous ending. See it with a group of friends you love. Or even just low-key resent.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Stephanie Zacharek
    Bullet Train
    It’s a shrill, razor-shredded mess, a fringy assemblage of action, cartoony violence, and allegedly snappy dialogue that has the soporific effect of white noise. This is proof that too much lousy action is worse than no action at all.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Stephanie Zacharek
    Thirteen Lives
    Luckily, we have the benefit of being able to read the future even as we watch Thirteen Lives, and that leaves us free to enjoy Howard’s crackerjack storytelling skills, not to mention the picture’s bracing, casually heroic lead performances.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Stephanie Zacharek
    Vengeance
    Vengeance is a small but ambitious film, and the murder mystery is its weakest element: Novak has so many threads going that he doesn’t quite know how to tie them up. But he’s made a shrewd satire that’s a pleasure to watch.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Stephanie Zacharek
    Nope
    Because Nope, enjoyable as a spectacle but conceptually barely thought through, is all over the place. Peele can’t take just one or two interesting ideas and follow their trail of complexity. He likes to layer ideas into lofty multitextured quilts—the problem is that his most compelling perceptions are often dropped only to be obscured by murkier ones.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Stephanie Zacharek
    Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
    This is a story about following one’s dreams and then learning there’s a lesson attached to those dreams—you might catch more than a perfume whiff of sanctimoniousness here. But it’s rare to find movies that value the mere idea of beauty, and this one—directed by Anthony Fabian—does so unapologetically.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Stephanie Zacharek
    The Gray Man
    The Gray Man inadvertently pulls off a mission you’d think would be impossible: rendering its stars nearly invisible, or at least just people you can’t wait to get away from.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Stephanie Zacharek
    Where the Crawdads Sing
    This is a movie that seems to be striving to please a crowd, but its cornpone humility only becomes wearying.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Stephanie Zacharek
    Persuasion
    Unfortunately, Persuasion isn’t a great movie, maybe not even a good one. But its problems are failures of filmmaking, not necessarily of adaptation: Cracknell, who has until now worked largely in theater, may make some choices that undermine her aims, but she gives no indication of being careless with the material—her affection for it comes through.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Stephanie Zacharek
    Both Sides of the Blade
    In Both Sides of the Blade, Sara isn’t acting like a man; she’s simply being herself, and the raw texture of her desire, and how it affects her behavior, isn’t something we can either applaud or disapprove of. It’s just there, in all its cruel, ragged splendor.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Stephanie Zacharek
    Thor: Love and Thunder
    Thor: Love and Thunder is packed with gags and jokes, advertising itself so loudly as “Fun!” that it ceases to actually be fun. This is the way with Waititi, a gifted director who, now that he’s no longer required to wield a light touch, seems to have forgotten how to do so.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Stephanie Zacharek
    Minions: The Rise of Gru
    Minions: The Rise of Gru is hardly the best of the Despicable Me movies or spinoffs...But the ridiculousness quotient of The Rise of Gru—directed by Kyle Balda, Brad Ableson and Jonathan del Val—is still high enough to spark at least mild rejuvenation. And whether you have one eye or two, six hairs sprouting from your pate or none at all, you could probably use a little of that right now.
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