Xan Brooks

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The Guardian, The Independent, The Observer (UK)
For 194 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 45% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 53% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Xan Brooks' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 69
Highest review score: 100 Riefenstahl
Lowest review score: 0 Melania
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 100 out of 194
  2. Mixed: 91 out of 194
  3. Negative: 3 out of 194
194 movie reviews
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    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Xan Brooks
    The Wall
    Julian Roman Pölsler's bewitching debut manages to be at once a creepy sci-fi parable, a feminist Robinson Crusoe and a clear-eyed ode to the wonders of nature experienced in solitude. Walden pond with added wall.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Xan Brooks
    The Prey
    Director, Eric Valette, is an exuberant market-stall trader, hawking knock-off ingredients.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Xan Brooks
    Blood Ties
    This hoary, hackneyed old cop-opera...is served with such relish that the fun proves infectious.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Xan Brooks
    The Congress
    The Congress contains tricks aplenty and ideas in abundance. The problem comes in herding these scattered, floating elements towards a satisfying whole.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Xan Brooks
    A Hijacking
    Danish director Tobias Lindholm spins an exacting drama out of a crisis on this deft, verite-style account of Somali piracy in the Indian ocean. Full credit to A Hijacking for resisting the siren-call of Hollywood histrionics in favour of the nuts-and-bolts.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Xan Brooks
    All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
    Mandy Lane feels bogus and compromised: an unreconstructed horror romp in the guise of a nerdish intellectual.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Xan Brooks
    Dog Pound
    Perhaps this tells us nothing new about life on the inside in the US (there are rapes, riots and suicides), but it at least handles its brief with pace and precision.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Xan Brooks
    Lore
    Australian director Cate Shortland's drama is overflowing with such poetic visual touches, conjuring up a fairytale landscape of long shadows, wafting curtains and waving fronds.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Xan Brooks
    Mama
    It has been converted into a proficient, machine-tooled horror flick, stuffed full of shocks and buttressed with back-story. Mama got so flabby the second time around.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Xan Brooks
    Spring Breakers
    Full credit to Korine, who sustains this act of creative vandalism right through to the finish. Spring Breakers unfolds as a fever dream of teenage kicks, a high-concept heist movie with mescal in the fuel tank.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Xan Brooks
    Beautiful Creatures
    The plot is wildly silly and shot full of holes, maundering endlessly on its slow trawl towards the climax. But the cast at least play it like they mean it, and keep it honest for a spell.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 40 Xan Brooks
    A Good Day to Die Hard
    I don't think it knows where it's going. I'm not even sure it cares.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Xan Brooks
    Bullet to the Head
    Even Stallone's rumbling voiceover possesses the drooping tone of a lullaby – like 45rpm vinyl played at 33. And if you think that reference is retro, you should see the actual movie.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Xan Brooks
    Rise of the Guardians
    If Rise of the Guardians is finally never more than the sum of its parts, the parts themselves have real appeal.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Xan Brooks
    Skyfall
    All of which works terrifically well up to a point.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Xan Brooks
    The Master
    The themes may be contentious, but the handling is perfect. If there were ever a movie to cause the lame to walk and the blind to see, The Master may just be it.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Xan Brooks
    Little White Lies
    Little White Lies unspools as glossy, high-grade tosh, a sun-dappled Big Chill, without the rigour or insight required to make you care about these people and wonder which bed they will eventually wind up in.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Xan Brooks
    Chicken with Plums
    Sit in the front – and don't peer too hard – and Chicken With Plums casts an undeniable spell. It is bold, exotic and distinctive, particularly during the animated angel of death sequence.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Xan Brooks
    The Dark Knight Rises
    The Dark Knight Rises may be a hammy, portentous affair but Nolan directs it with aplomb. He takes these cod-heroic, costumed elements and whisks them into a tale of heavy-metal fury, full of pain and toil, surging uphill, across the flyovers, in search of a climax.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Xan Brooks
    Alps
    Follow the film-maker. Let him lead you by the nose. Lanthimos knows exactly where he's going.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Xan Brooks
    Dark Horse
    There is little in the film's pitch-black interior that wasn't tackled better – with more bite, wit and abandon – in "Happiness," "Welcome to the Dollhouse," or "Storytelling."
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Xan Brooks
    Patience (After Sebald)
    In keeping with the spirit of Sebald's writing, Gee's film is teasing, elegant and perhaps inevitably unresolved: an invitation as opposed to a destination.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Xan Brooks
    Damsels in Distress
    If it's possible for a picture to be at once ideal and imperfect, then Damsels fits the bill.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Xan Brooks
    The Hunger Games
    The Hunger Games is that rarest of beasts: a Hollywood action blockbuster that is smart, taut and knotty. Ably filleted from the Suzanne Collins bestseller, it's a compelling, lightly satirical tale.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Xan Brooks
    Zama
    [Martel's] film is haunted, haunting and admittedly prone to the occasional longueur insofar as it runs to its own peculiar rhythm; maybe even its own primal logic.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Xan Brooks
    Foxtrot
    A nightmarish triptych of loss, waste and grief that is nonetheless arranged with such visionary boldness that it dares us to look away.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Xan Brooks
    Touch of Evil
    Amazingly, Welles gets away with it. Citizen Kane may be the more weighty, rounded work, but Touch of Evil is a heap more fun.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Xan Brooks
    The Invisible Man
    The Invisible Man boasts a brilliantly chill and confident performance from (an almost entirely unseen) Claude Rains and a gloriously over-the-top supporting turn from Una O'Connor as his inquisitive landlady. Moreover, its tart, acid tone largely honours the spirit of the novel.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Xan Brooks
    The Walker
    One could class The Walker as a thriller, in that it features a murder, a political scandal and a fraught chase that ends with a car crash. But these elements all seem a little rote and rudimentary. Instead, the film's real focus is on the character of Page and his perilous relationship with the world he inhabits.
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