Wendy Ide

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Screen Daily, The Observer (UK)
For 1,329 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Wendy Ide's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Alien
Lowest review score: 20 Holmes & Watson
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 759 out of 1329
  2. Mixed: 538 out of 1329
  3. Negative: 32 out of 1329
1329 movie reviews
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan
    Temple has always used archive material playfully; here, it’s particularly riotous, like a chaotic patchwork quilt tacked together by one of Shane’s drunk aunties.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Fancy Dance
    While Fancy Dance has a tendency to labour its points a little too emphatically, Gladstone and Deroy-Olson are both phenomenal; their connection, played out in shared glances and urgent wordless messages, is palpable, persuasive and vital.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Asia
    This impressive Israeli feature debut from Ruthy Pribar stars a mesmerising Shira Haas.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Pity
    Pity, which Makridis co-wrote with Yorgos Lanthimos’ regular collaborator Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, The Lobster), strikes a tonal balance between ruthless and wry, which positions it comfortably alongside the best of Greece’s current new wave.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Longlegs
    There’s an unexpected elegance to this window into unimaginable evil.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Every Body
    Heartbreaking as this story is, the picture’s peppy energy results in a film that is celebratory and defiantly upbeat.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    Alice, Darling
    What’s impressive about this psychological thriller, the debut feature film from director Mary Nighy, is how tuned in it is to the dynamics of female friendship.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Silver Dollar Road
    Peck’s film – which, with its themes of race and failures of American justice, has a kinship with Ava DuVernay’s 13th and Garrett Bradley’s Time – is both infuriating and also unexpectedly uplifting in its celebration of family unity.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Wendy Ide
    The Royal Hotel
    A psychological thriller, it’s all the more tense for Green’s smart understatement of the genre elements.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Blanquita
    Guzzoni crafts a suitably glowering and hostile atmosphere for this story, which delves into the very murkiest corners of Chilean society.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    The 8th
    There are charismatic figures fronting the movement, but the real power comes from each of the many shared, sad stories from women whose lives were affected by the law.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Wendy Ide
    Babyteeth
    There’s a fearlessness to Murphy’s film-making, a slightly wayward, maverick spirit. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Inu-oh
    It’s fair to say that in this singular piece of filmmaking, with its dense deep-dive into arcane legend and mythology, selling out is certainly not on the cards for Masaaki Yuasa right now.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Urchin
    This gritty social realist character study is spiked with striking and unexpected detours.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Better Man
    Better Man is a notable step up for Gracey. The synthetic, rather soulless panache of The Greatest Showman demonstrated his skills as a slick visual stylist, but here he directs from the heart, tapping into the rawness and vulnerability beneath the CGI monkey suit.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography
    Not only is it an affectionate and personal film – the subject, Elsa Dorfman, is a long-standing friend and Morris’s emotional investment in her story is evident in every frame. It’s also far more informal in approach than his normal forthright technique.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Small Body
    With its colour palette of mossy greens, terracotta and earth tones, and its matter-of-fact approach to themes of folklore and mysticism, this gorgeous first feature from Italian director Laura Samani is as enchanting as it is unusual.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    The Promised Land
    This very enjoyable Nordic western from Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair), based on a true story, is at first driven by grit and macho hubris. But thanks to the women in his life . . . the captain belatedly comes to realise that there is more to life than potatoes and royal-sanctioned prestige.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    Hoard
    Carmoon’s depiction of trauma, grief and mental health in crisis as a kind of putrid, repellent stench that clings to the skin, stings the eyeballs and turns the stomach makes for a queasily insalubrious viewing experience. Hoard is a film I admire, but struggle to like.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    The Nightingale
    It’s a punishing watch; a harrowing film which boots home its message by gouging at the vulnerable soft spots of the audience. Like the world she depicts, Kent’s storytelling shows no mercy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    Presence
    The element that makes this intriguing – the ghost POV shooting technique – is also a problem, undermining the suspense and distancing the audience from the vulnerable girl whose fate is in the balance.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Maestro
    With its nonlinear structure, Maestro feels a little like a scrapbook of life moments – glittering career achievements; crackling explosions of domestic tension – and Cooper keeps up a zesty, kinetic energy throughout.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Wendy Ide
    Relic
    Strong central performances from Emily Mortimer, Robyn Nevin and Bella Heathcote, as three generations of women from one family, contribute to a sense of claustrophobic unease; a tone which is unnecessarily bludgeoned home by the over-excitable sound design.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy
    Crisply British and deliciously no-nonsense, Kennedy is a wonderfully bracing character for Elizabeth Carroll’s deft documentary.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
    Set in the murkily atmospheric underworld of 1980s Hong Kong, wildly entertaining, eye-poppingly violent triad martial arts flick is an old-school throwback to the action cinema heyday of the territory.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Olga
    Shot with a documentary-style naturalism and propulsive restlessness that mirrors Olga’s ferocious drive, this is a terrific, timely feature debut.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!
    Josef Kubota Wladyka’s third feature film is a playful and whimsical confection, a deft blend of escapist kitsch and the real emotional heft that Kikuchi brings to the role.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Wendy Ide
    Apples
    A meditation on memory, identity, grief and loss, with the narrative device of a global pandemic thrown in for good measure: Apples might initially sound like a tough sell. But this hugely accomplished, satisfyingly textured first feature is really something special.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    On the Adamant
    The film’s observational approach means that little context is provided for the techniques used here, or for the lives and circumstances of the daily visitors. But the warm, non-judgmental embrace of Philibert’s approach is profoundly affecting.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    The Heiresses
    A superb first feature from Marcelo Martinessi, this entirely female-driven story is full of gentle wit and playful observations on the crumbling upper echelons of Paraguayan society – there are parallels with early Lucrecia Martel, and with Sebastián Lelio’s exploration of older female sexuality, Gloria.
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