Tim Grierson

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Los Angeles Times, Paste Magazine, Rolling Stone, Screen Daily, The A.V. Club, The Daily Beast, The Wrap, TheWrap
For 1,182 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Tim Grierson's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Christine
Lowest review score: 10 The Emoji Movie
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 575 out of 1182
  2. Mixed: 555 out of 1182
  3. Negative: 52 out of 1182
1182 movie reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    The Plague
    The film has much to say about peer pressure and male rites of passage, although Polinger’s points can become repetitive and his insights not especially deep. Still, this uneven mixture of coming-of-age drama and psychological horror suggests a filmmaker with a flair for unsettling atmosphere.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    The Midnight Sky
    Examining a post-apocalypse through the eyes of a few souls left to carry on the human race, The Midnight Sky is an uneven but ultimately thoughtful and moving survival story.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    On the Basis of Sex
    The storytelling in Sex is ho-hum, but the sincerity of the undertaking — and the issues at the film’s centre — make it hard to resist, no matter what objections might be raised.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Share
    If nothing else, this intimate, well-observed drama should prove to be a nice calling card for its first-time feature filmmaker.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Maya
    As much as her camera patiently and sensitively observes Gabriel and Maya, they still feel a bit distant, their unspoken hopes and fears just out of reach — for us and perhaps for them, too.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Kokuho
    Kokuho is a hearty melodrama with a little bit of everything — sex scandals, betrayals, unlikely comebacks, health scares — but the film’s gaudy plot twists (which shouldn’t be spoiled) belie the filmmaker’s unsentimental attitude regarding stardom’s perils.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    The Woman King
    The Woman King doesn’t always successfully juggle its myriad narrative ambitions, but director Gina Prince-Bythewood has crafted battle sequences that are exciting and moving at the same time.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Funny Pages
    The prickly protagonists of Funny Pages would not be pleasant company in real life, but writer-director Owen Kline’s proudly dyspeptic feature debut gives his characters a scruffy integrity that makes them perversely fascinating.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Cha Cha Real Smooth
    There’s a slightness to this tale, and also a nagging familiarity in its exploration of twenty-something restlessness, but Raiff’s compassionate eye — paired with Dakota Johnson’s melancholy turn — results in a touching, understated affair.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    All That's Left of You
    Each new segment of All That’s Left of You is its own self-contained drama, but they build on one another, the past’s invisible weight bearing down on children who cannot fully comprehend the sorrow that came before, but have grown up knowing nothing else.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    I Feel Pretty
    Like its appealing main character, I Feel Pretty is a smart, funny comedy that isn’t always confident enough in its potential greatness.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Homegrown
    Homegrown never makes excuses for its subjects — there’s no blaming their ugly views on economic disparity — but the disturbing ordinariness of these men is chilling.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    The Conjuring 2
    Lacking some of the simplicity and elegance of the first instalment, The Conjuring 2 is nonetheless a smoothly efficient horror movie, building to a powerhouse finale rooted in our emotional connection to the film’s well-drawn main characters.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    The Sun Rises on Us All
    With its restrained tone and measured performances, The Sun Rises creates a fragile world populated by characters who don’t know how to move forward — either separately or, perhaps, together.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Till
    Following up her Sundance prizewinner Clemency, director Chinonye Chukwu brings intelligence, sorrow and rage to what eventually becomes a courtroom drama, but the film is most effective when it pushes against its conventionality, locating the psychic scars within this woman and the nation.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Waves
    Sometimes Shults’ reach exceeds his grasp, resulting in a self-conscious epic that wants to hammer home its characters’ emotional wreckage. Nevertheless, Waves is also powerfully immersive, investing so passionately in these individuals that it’s hard not to do the same.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Everything Went Fine
    With superb understatement, Marceau communicates Emmanuele’s seemingly inexhaustible patience, while hinting at all the unresolved feelings she has about this impossible man.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
    The film’s professional polish and slick accessibility sometimes come at the expense of probing insight, but those still grieving his suicide should find comfort here.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Whitney
    Whitney is strongest when it connects Houston to the larger history of Black America, illustrating how this glamorous performer grew up in poverty and never entirely escaped the obligation of helping to pull up her underprivileged family members.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind
    Coen draws from existing interviews and performance footage to create a portrait that is far from definitive, and yet the film’s snapshot quality manages to amplify what is so mythic about the 86-year-old legend — and also what remains so vexing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Fire Island
    Although the film doesn’t always deftly balance sentiment and broad humour, it is fun to spend time with such raucous company.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Rustin
    The film can sometimes be dramatically simplistic, relying on perfunctory montages and creaky expositional dialogue, but Domingo ensures that Rustin is a layered and vibrant character, pushing Rustin to be bolder than it otherwise is.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Knives Out
    This thriller can sometimes be too mechanical — a breezy exercise if not always an emotionally satisfying one — and yet the large cast’s willingness to get on Johnson’s brainy, sprightly wavelength makes this an enjoyable romp.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    The Ugly
    The Ugly is less concerned with the machinations of the whodunit and more invested in how physical appearance defines both ourselves and our feelings about others.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Captain Marvel
    Brie Larson gives Carol the right mixture of sweetness, humour and swagger, underlining the film’s message of self-empowerment with a light touch.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Babylon
    Running over three hours, and swamped with sex, drugs and over-the-top set pieces, this swaggering drama seems infused with the impetuous energy of its characters, resulting in a film that’s drunk on its own ambition, wildly uneven but never, ever boring.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Tim Grierson
    Zootopia 2
    If the Zootopia series is about looking past our biased assumptions about others, the new film makes the point most effectively as its two leads open up about their own shortcomings, allowing themselves to be vulnerable. Goodwin and Bateman are certainly most appealing when their characters are at their most genuine.
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