Todd McCarthy

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The Hollywood Reporter, Variety
For 1,835 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Todd McCarthy's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Mulholland Dr.
Lowest review score: 0 Showgirls
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 947 out of 1835
  2. Mixed: 724 out of 1835
  3. Negative: 164 out of 1835
1835 movie reviews
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    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    Nina Wu
    Some will say that Nina Wu is a courageous work for exposing the abuse powerless young actresses face when trying to break into an acting career, while others will no doubt feel that, by what it shows, the movie remains part of the problem. As unevenly presented here, it’s a wobbly tightrope.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Todd McCarthy
    1982
    Perhaps if it had assumed the point of view of one character, such as a longtime teacher at the school, the film might have been invested with some weight and insight. Instead, it just sort of sits there onscreen, provoking no special reaction one way or the other.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    Tesnota (Closeness)
    Closeness, the original title of which, Tesnota, also apparently implies being walled-in or suffocated, is dramatically erratic, with tense and compelling sequences alternating with diffuse and/or flat interludes that don't advance the narrative or pay off in other ways.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    The Hunt
    This action-drenched roller-coaster of a film tries to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to generating a tidal wave of violence — but it undeniably delivers the goods when it comes to action and impudence.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Todd McCarthy
    The Last Full Measure
    This Vietnam War-themed drama is one of the dullest films made about that oft-dramatized conflict.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    The massive jumble of standoffs, near-misses, tense confrontations, narrow escapes and slick victories, while momentarily exciting, can lack plausible motivation and credibility. More often than not, one wonders not so much what just happened but why, and what was at stake.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Todd McCarthy
    Spies in Disguise
    Antic and frantic, Spies is very much a one-joke affair, which is fine for a short but woefully insufficient for a 101-minute feature.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Todd McCarthy
    21 Bridges
    The ever-righteous profile maintained by Boseman’s detective gets to be a bit limiting after a while; if anything was going to have multiple dimensions in this film, it should have been him, but the script is instead built around the goal of providing maximum movement and hoped-for tension. It’s got the former but only sporadically achieves the latter.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    Frozen II
    Frozen 2 has everything you would expect — catchy new songs, more time with easy-to-like characters, striking backdrops, cute little jokes, a voyage of discovery plot and female empowerment galore — except the unexpected.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    Doctor Sleep
    It doesn’t have Jack Nicholson, Stanley Kubrick or even much of the Overlook Hotel, but Rebecca Ferguson and other good actors provide some shine of their own in Doctor Sleep, a drawn-out and seldom pulse-quickening follow-up to The Shining that still has enough going on to forestall any audience slumber.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Todd McCarthy
    Lucy in the Sky
    Lucy in the Sky is the odd film that starts cosmically big and gradually becomes narrower and more conventional as it goes along, to diminishing returns.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    Motherless Brooklyn
    Ultimately, frustration and fatigue prevail over the film’s intellectual acuity and political insight; neither is any true emotion ever forthcoming. This is odd and disappointing.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    Jojo Rabbit
    The cartoonishness of it, while amusing at the outset, doesn’t wear well as matters deepen and progress.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    The Goldfinch
    In the end, there’s too much good stuff missing and yet not enough to serve as a satisfying meal.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    Hope Gap
    Hope Gap may engage the mind up to a point with its pithy dialogue and resourceful players, but it offers little insight into the complexities and wages of wedlock.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    The Assistant
    The central character never develops in an interesting way. Well before the wrap-up of this brief tale, her cultivated recessiveness becomes tiresome and, in these particular circumstances, a bit dull.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    The Laundromat
    Despite the filmmaker's obvious smarts and oft-proven skills, there's a kind of off-putting effrontery about Soderbergh's approach here that rather sours the whole experience. The tone is brittle, the attitude arch, the performances by a savvy and diverse cast uneven.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    Angel Has Fallen
    It's all utterly preposterous, and yet Waugh handles the big scenes pretty well.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    Where'd You Go, Bernadette
    Richard Linklater's 19th feature becomes compelling in its final act, but before that too often appears tonally addled and dramatically dawdling.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    Dora and the Lost City of Gold
    In essence, every dramatic goal is achieved far too easily, every opponent is ultimately made of straw. The characters are never truly challenged, as if the filmmakers are afraid that any credible peril might prove too frightening for some little kid.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    The Lion King
    By and large, very few remakes, other than Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot reproduction of Psycho, have adhered as closely to their original versions as this one does. Everything here is so safe and tame and carefully calculated as to seem pre-digested. There's nary a surprise in the whole two hours.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    Spider-Man: Far from Home
    The young cast, led by Tom Holland as the bashful web-slinger and Zendaya as a shy girl slow to lose her inhibitions, is plenty appealing as well as funny. But without a proper, full-on villain, as well as an adequate substitute for Robert Downey Jr.'s late, oft-mentioned Tony Stark, this comes off as a less than glittering star in the Marvel firmament.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    Shaft
    To listen to Jackson doing street talk is akin to reveling in Olivier reciting Shakespeare — in other words, it's one of the great pleasures of the language. Edit the film down to his dialogue and you have a wonderful greatest hits collection.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    Men in Black: International
    In and of itself, this revamp is mildly engaging but also feels like it's expending a great deal of energy for quite modest entertainment returns.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    Dark Phoenix
    Played at an unmodulated level of subdued excitement that never quickens the pulse, longtime series producer Simon Kinberg's directorial debut lacks the exclamation point fans have justifiably been hoping for at the end of a road.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Todd McCarthy
    Tommaso
    A bit more discipline would have helped this one, which struggles to hold viewer interest across two full hours but would likely register more strongly with 15-20 minutes removed.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Todd McCarthy
    Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love
    The doc swells with wonderful archival footage that immerses you in the hedonistic environment the principals occupied, but in ranging wide it somehow doesn’t go deep, or at least deep enough, into its twin protagonists to satisfy as the full story.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 40 Todd McCarthy
    A Hidden Life
    Unfortunately, instead of embracing the weighty moral, religious and political components of the story, Malick has alternately deflected and minimized them.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Todd McCarthy
    Trial by Fire
    The filmmaking here is plain, prosaic and earnest. For some, just getting worked up all over again about capital punishment will be enough, but without flair or fresh insights into its chosen subject, this just seems like spinning more wheels about on oft-discussed subject.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Todd McCarthy
    The White Crow
    Writer David Hare and director Ralph Fiennes have a good feel for the artistic world the story inhabits and professional dancer Oleg Ivenko does a more than creditable job in personifying one of the 20th century’s most celebrated artistic figures, but the narrative bounces all over the place trying to cover too much ground when concentrating on the core drama would have far better served the desired end.
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