Vince Mancini

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For 254 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 59% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 38% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.4 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Vince Mancini's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe
Lowest review score: 16 The Dead Don't Die
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 161 out of 254
  2. Mixed: 72 out of 254
  3. Negative: 21 out of 254
254 movie reviews
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    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Vince Mancini
    Apostle
    It seems to attempt both schlocky fun gore and disturbingly realistic gore, which feels like an uneasy mix. Whatever line there is between fun, cathartic gore and enervating, off-putting, borderline mean-spirited gore, Apostle crosses it, at least for me. Not exactly a fun time by the end, and it was hard to divine a higher purpose for it (something about religion, I guess?). Hell of a premise, cast, and setting though. And points for boldness.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 58 Vince Mancini
    Destroyer
    Perhaps Kusama was trying to bring a greater authenticity to the self-destructive detective trope, and fine, that’s a reasonable goal, but the movie around it isn’t quite grounded enough to pull it off.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 83 Vince Mancini
    Bad Times at the El Royale
    That Goddard is so conversant with pop cinema tropes is both his greatest strength and his weakness.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Vince Mancini
    Border
    It’s not quite horror, crime, or comedy — it really just is “fantastic,” in every sense of the word.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 91 Vince Mancini
    The World Is Yours
    Some movies provoke and challenge, others are just fun as hell. The World Is Yours is firmly among the latter, feeling “Hollywood” in all the best ways, though it’s also sneaky smart. If you have any friends that hate arthouse movies and refuse to read subtitles, this is the movie to convert them.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 91 Vince Mancini
    El Angel
    The Angel is funny as hell, outrageous without feeling sensational, visually beautiful, and immensely enjoyable as unpredictable eye candy. It’s one of those movies that’s so fun that it ends up feeling much shorter than it actually is.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 91 Vince Mancini
    Hold the Dark
    It’s not the kind of film you watch waiting for “the answer.” Saulnier isn’t going to solve the equation for you in Hold The Dark. But he is going to kick your ass.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 83 Vince Mancini
    I Think We're Alone Now
    I Think We’re Alone Now is compelling from start to finish, yet somehow not entirely satisfying. Not because there’s anything wrong with it, simply because I wish there was more.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Vince Mancini
    Searching
    Searching has a big performance and a big gimmick, and it’s hard to say which is the bigger discovery.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 67 Vince Mancini
    Let the Corpses Tan
    Gleefully crafted and full of memorable shots.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 75 Vince Mancini
    The Happytime Murders
    Happytime Murders isn’t the funniest or the smartest movie I’ve ever seen, but I forgive it because it isn’t trying that hard. At least, joke-wise. There’s something beautiful about the level of craft that goes into just one puppet, that in many cases ends up appearing in a single, one-off joke about pubic lice.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Vince Mancini
    Operation Finale
    For the most part, Operation Finale is a good story, well told. Yet something about it isn’t entirely satisfying either. It deftly eschews the most simplistic takes, but what it offers in return — the banality of evil, essentially — isn’t quite groundbreaking either. Still, it’s more than worth it to watch Ben Kingsley and Oscar Isaac spar for a bit.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Vince Mancini
    Crazy Rich Asians
    Crazy Rich Asians is just really easy to watch. It’s formulaic, but doesn’t cheat; has insanely low stakes, but transparently so. It’s a kitschy pop song done very well.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 67 Vince Mancini
    Mile 22
    Mile 22 is such a freakish chimera of disparate genre influences that it’s kind of fascinating.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 67 Vince Mancini
    The Meg
    As relatively weak as the CGI is, The Meg is brilliant at giving its dopey characters consistently entertaining dialogue and striking the perfect balance of clever/stupid without being overly self-aware.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 58 Vince Mancini
    The Darkest Minds
    Long on set up and leaden dialogue, short on resolution, The Darkest Minds is set in an apocalyptic future where teen movies no longer have endings. Oh, wait that’s the present.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Vince Mancini
    BlacKkKlansman
    In BlacKkKlansman you sense Lee’s passion more than his technique. In a welcome surprise, it’s also funny. It’s easily Lee’s most crowd-pleasing movie in years, almost to a fault.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Vince Mancini
    Mission: Impossible – Fallout
    Mission Impossible: Fallout is not a triumph of literal realism, orderly plotting, or restraint, but it’s proof that thoughtful execution, comedic timing, and a true moral center count for much more.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 67 Vince Mancini
    Blindspotting
    Blindspotting excels at capturing a feeling and expressing it with style and kitsch, but there are times when you wonder what new insight they’re offering beyond the rhymes.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 83 Vince Mancini
    Generation Wealth
    Generation Wealth is, as Greenfield surely intended, a valuable and necessary work of cultural anthropology, that entertains even as it horrifies. It’s an important watch that never feels like homework.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 67 Vince Mancini
    Puzzle
    Puzzle is one of those rare movies whose acting is so good it elevates a mediocre story.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 58 Vince Mancini
    The Spy Who Dumped Me
    The Spy Who Dumped Me‘s action is just so big and loud that it obliterates any quiet character moments or clever wordplay.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Vince Mancini
    Sorry to Bother You
    A movie with this strong of a message can easily come off preachy, self-righteous, and didactic, but Riley’s sense of humor and flair for absurdity save it from any of that. Boots Riley feels compelled to say but doesn’t presume to know. He has a way of dreaming rather than grandstanding, of pondering rather than prescribing.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Vince Mancini
    Eighth Grade
    Eighth Grade is both a stunning achievement in cinematic veracity and maybe not the best watch for anyone who’s spent their adult life trying to forget middle school. It’s so traumatic and awkward and embarrassing that there were times I wanted to retreat back inside my own body.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Vince Mancini
    The Equalizer 2
    In the past, this kind of character, who abhors swear words but kills with obvious relish, would’ve been positioned as an interesting contrast. In The Equalizer 2 it just feels like unexamined orthodoxy. It feels like the symptom of a very American kind of brain sickness.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 91 Vince Mancini
    Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
    Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot is a straightforward biopic about an interesting guy, starring one of our best actors. It’s a story of adversity, self-discovery, and redemption. It’s not the kind of story we’ve never seen, but it’s a perfect showcase for Gus Van Sant’s skill.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 83 Vince Mancini
    The First Purge
    It still has the scary masks and jump-scares, but whether through its creators’ cleverness or current events, it is now disturbing on a much deeper level. The social commentary no longer feels like fake sloganeering.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 33 Vince Mancini
    Gotti
    Gotti is technically inept, where every scene feels like a disconnected sizzle reel for a different movie than the previous one, but the fascinating thing it about is less what it fails to do than what it’s trying to do.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 58 Vince Mancini
    Tag
    Tag never transcends the basic fact of being the kind of movie with a slow-motion rap walk scene, and even when it’s decently funny and reasonably entertaining (which it usually is!), it remains ever constrained by the basic shticky irreality of the format.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Vince Mancini
    Ocean's 8
    The central flaw of Ocean’s 8 is that “people looking cool” isn’t much of a story. It’s a poster, maybe even a trailer, but not a story, and not a movie.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Vince Mancini
    First Reformed
    First Reformed is bleak and bone dry, a little self-indulgent, and it screams neither “fun” nor “production values.” It is the opposite of a “romp.” But damned if it doesn’t stay with you.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 83 Vince Mancini
    Deadpool 2
    Is Deadpool 2 obnoxious? Is it needlessly self-aware? Is it drunk on its own fairly tame naughtiness? Is it so stuffed full of unrelated pop culture references that it sort of feels like a meme shirt come to life? The answer to all those questions is a resounding yes, but it’s also, weirdly, refreshing.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 25 Vince Mancini
    Breaking In
    Even on a technical level Breaking In is shockingly inept.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 58 Vince Mancini
    Life of the Party
    In hitting so many bullet points from the boardroom presentation justifying its existence, it’s a wonder that Life of the Party manages to work in anything personal or natural at all. And it does, which is a testament to the talent of the people involved (McCarthy, Gillian Jacobs, and Maya Rudolph especially). I just wish I could see them in a movie that wasn’t trying to be everything to everyone.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Vince Mancini
    Tully
    The Tully character is a perfect outlet for Cody’s writing. One of Cody’s most charming attributes is her flair for small wisdoms. There’s some sneaky trenchant life analysis happening throughout Tully, which is what keeps the every day family stuff from feeling mundane or self-indulgent.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Vince Mancini
    Overboard
    The remake has the right tone, an interesting angle, a delightful supporting cast, and Anna Faris acts her butt off, but there are times it feels like she’s doing it opposite an upturned broom.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 75 Vince Mancini
    I Feel Pretty
    I Free Pretty is surprisingly resonant for a high concept light comedy, offering all the catharsis of watching someone truly discover herself and own it, as well as the awkwardness and pain of watching someone needlessly tear herself down and self-sabotage.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 67 Vince Mancini
    Super Troopers 2
    Super Troopers 2 is broad and hammy, like a lot of comedy, but unlike a lot, it makes little pretense to realism. It’s proud dad humor. It pokes you in the ribs enough times that the obnoxiousness eventually takes on a weird charm.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 67 Vince Mancini
    Midnight Sun
    It’s still saccharine, overwrought, blandly acted, painfully earnest, and uber-dramatic, and constantly staring longingly at the night sky and bodies of water for some reason, but… teen romance is all of those things. It fits. Maybe the Sparks formula isn’t so bad as long as Sparks himself isn’t involved.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 58 Vince Mancini
    Ready Player One
    In spite of how visually dazzling and legitimately entertaining it is, Ready Player One is at its heart, a celebration of the gormless rube. It is a paean to the schmuck. To celebrate it uncritically is to become one.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Vince Mancini
    Isle of Dogs
    Few directors are better at endings, at tying things up in a neat little bow like Wes Anderson, and Isle of Dogs, like many of his movies, ends strongly enough that you’ll forgive a little dragging, a bit of narrative floundering, throughout the middle section.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Vince Mancini
    Tomb Raider
    The action set pieces are hit and miss, mostly not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and if there’s one thing Tomb Raider is actually good at, it’s giving death more gravity than you usually see in these kinds of movies, where faceless henchmen are dispatched with nary a second thought. For the most part, though, Tomb Raider is content to be the kind of movie that reminds you of other movies without differentiating itself from them.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 25 Vince Mancini
    A Wrinkle in Time
    If anything, the trouble with Wrinkle is that you never really get a sense of DuVernay’s personal touch. In fact, it feels a lot like Brad Bird’s big budget, equally smarmy 2015 Disney film, Tomorrowland. Both attempt to be so broad and universal that they feel disconnected from anything human.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Vince Mancini
    Death Wish
    Roth and Carnahan’s motivations here remain murky and Death Wish never justifies its existence. Divorced of context, it’s like sauce and tomato without the burger.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 55 Vince Mancini
    Game Night
    It’s hard to say Game Night is entirely bad. I laughed a lot and its creators are clearly capable of crafting a joke. Yet they seem to have either an incomplete or an incredibly cynical conception of what a movie is.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 95 Vince Mancini
    Annihilation
    It proudly exists on a visceral, sub-verbal level; that’s part of the magic of it. It’s a movie that’s easy to spoil and hard to describe, where mystery is most of the point and interpretation tends to cheapen. Which is to say: just go see it.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Vince Mancini
    Early Man
    It’s content to be what it is — a bit of silliness, really. It’s an excuse for goofy slapstick and wordplay. And it’s the rare light fare that can be light without feeling like chintzy gift shop pandering.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 25 Vince Mancini
    Fifty Shades Freed
    Fifty Shades Freed is meant to make us believe that a matching tea towel marriage doesn’t preclude shirtless Fabio romance novel cover sex, but everything is so catalog-ready and scrubbed free of humanity that it actually does the opposite.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Vince Mancini
    Mom and Dad
    Mom And Dad feels like a concept that got pitched, sold, and shot without ever getting written. It’s premise and pantomime. It’s set-up, an hour of running and yelling, and the end.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 30 Vince Mancini
    12 Strong
    Historical analysis aside, even if you’d parachuted into the theater from the early aughts and knew nothing of politics or the future, 12 Strong still wouldn’t be very good. In fact, the closest thing it has to a redeeming quality is that you can hate it irrespective of politics; it’s objectively bad.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Vince Mancini
    Marshall
    Having been conceived by a lawyer, Marshall feels designed to present the case that Thurgood Marshall was a great man, without letting too much nuance cloud the issue. Depth, complexity, moral gradations — these are dangerous notions in a story you’re presenting before a fickle jury. Marshall takes the same approach.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Vince Mancini
    Only the Brave
    Only The Brave (or, The Granite Mountain Hot Shots, the vastly superior title by which it was originally known), feels like the world’s best two-hour beer and/or pick-up truck commercial, and I mean that as a compliment.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 25 Vince Mancini
    Assassination Nation
    The “social commentary” feels exactly as derivative as the rest of the film, like someone artlessly smushing together imagery they’ve seen, a sort of uncanny Muzak of hip provocation written by a less coherent Bret Easton Ellis.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Vince Mancini
    The Catcher Was a Spy
    The film doesn’t try to alter Berg’s most essential quality, that he was a mystery.
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