Vadim Rizov

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The A.V. Club, The Dissolve, Village Voice
For 43 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 20% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 74% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 27.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Vadim Rizov's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 38
Highest review score: 91 The Souvenir: Part II
Lowest review score: 0 Unplanned
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 43
  2. Mixed: 20 out of 43
  3. Negative: 17 out of 43
43 movie reviews
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    • tbd Metascore
    • 0 Vadim Rizov
    Trump Card
    By this point, D’Souza is unconvincingly frothing on the soundtrack about how “the socialist left and the Democrats want to make us grovel” and “make us worms,” but the whole premise is, predictably, a radical, cynical misunderstanding of Orwell.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 0 Vadim Rizov
    No Safe Spaces
    No Safe Spaces caters to its intended viewers’ least savory biases, making sure all student activists shown fit into particular categories—overweight, gay, or simply “angry and black”—that stoke the resentment of the target demographic.
    • 10 Metascore
    • 0 Vadim Rizov
    Unplanned
    There’s not a single scene that speaks to characters with lives outside their streamlined narrative function; they’re performers in a parable traced over a Chick tract, filmed with a bland competence at odds with the true perversity of the material. Old-school Pure Flix: Welcome back!
    • 1 Metascore
    • 0 Vadim Rizov
    Death of a Nation
    D’Souza fails, as ever, to make an argument that would resonate outside the QAnon echo chamber.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 0 Vadim Rizov
    God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness
    A Light In Darkness isn’t as offensive as the first film—it lacks the requisite misogyny and Islamophobia, and does a better job of looking like it’s almost a real movie—but it’s not far behind, an emblematic film for the foul moment.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 25 Vadim Rizov
    A Question of Faith
    The plot’s mechanics in tying the families together are often clumsy and contorted, in ways that are strange without being particularly interesting.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 25 Vadim Rizov
    The Emoji Movie
    There was probably never going to be a version of this film that would prove even remotely plausible as a movie someone felt passionately about making for artistic reasons; as far as expanding on smartphone-related IP, this is an even weaker starting point than Sony Animation’s recent The Angry Birds Movie.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Vadim Rizov
    Trolls
    Trolls is a pretty standard piece of subpar DreamWorks product: loud and shiny, more than a tad frantic despite a generic set of characters.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 33 Vadim Rizov
    I'm Not Ashamed
    Inelegantly compressing the year up to the shooting, I’m Not Ashamed has more than its fair share of clunkiness.
    • 2 Metascore
    • 0 Vadim Rizov
    Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
    That a film already busy with historical reenactments, interviews, and conspiracizing of the wildest sort should end with three consecutive musical numbers suggests a kind of vaudeville structure to D’Souza’s work.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 25 Vadim Rizov
    God's Not Dead 2
    The first film pandered to a heavy persecution complex; this installment’s relatively subtler, but there are dog whistles aplenty.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 33 Vadim Rizov
    90 Minutes in Heaven
    While 90 Minutes In Heaven has a professional sheen miles above the clunky products peddled by PureFlix (God’s Not Dead) and their ilk, that just makes it duller.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 25 Vadim Rizov
    War Room
    Much of what follows is turgid and, for non-believers, ridiculous.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 16 Vadim Rizov
    Faith of Our Fathers
    It’s obnoxious, to say the least, to use the Vietnam War as an excuse to affirm the importance of telling all and sundry about Jesus at all times (i.e., “testifying”), under all circumstances.
    • 20 Metascore
    • 0 Vadim Rizov
    The Word
    Director Gregory W. Friedle, his cast, and crew perform their jobs so poorly across the board, it’s an inadvertent negative demonstration of the professionalism separating even the shoddiest Hollywood production from this kind of self-financed amateur-hour attempt.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Vadim Rizov
    The Rescuers
    This kind of dully formulaic filmmaking accomplishes little more than congratulating viewers for caring enough about historical atrocities to watch.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Vadim Rizov
    Benji
    Benji is pretty dreadful, constructing its skeletal dramatic momentum from Benji foiling a robbery plot hatched by some very dim-bulb burglars who hole up in a decrepit mansion. Benji’s family consists of two unappealing child actors, their hectoring dad (he hates mutts!), and a theoretically endearing maid, all of whom define anti-charismatic.

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