Film Journal International's Scores

  • Movies
For 225 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Alien
Lowest review score: 10 The Happytime Murders
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 31 out of 225
225 movie reviews
  1. although it’s far too fannish—this is not a movie that wants to dig deep into anything uncomfortable—it does give the rocker her props, while reminding fans of some modern rock history.
  2. while All About Nina does not add anything new to this genre, writer-director Eva Vives’ film does benefit from the female perspective. It also showcases a fearless performance from Winstead.
  3. Beautiful is the apt description for this hilarious masterpiece that embraces reason, celebrates truth and ultimately believes we're civilized enough to accept both.
  4. It is a tremendous disappointment to find such estimable folk meandering in an only intermittently amusing story of no clear point or theme.
  5. Knightley shines in period films (Anna Karenina, Pride & Prejudice) and here inflects Colette with a boldness and forthrightness that create a bridge between Belle Epoque Paris and today's zeitgeist.
  6. From the get-go, Levinson makes every wrongheaded directorial decision imaginable in an apparent effort to make one loathe Assassination Nation—and his success in that regard proves this teensploitation schlock’s lone triumph.
  7. Should there not be enough travail or unhappiness in your life, this dud’s for you.
  8. Even if you disagree with Moore, it’s hard not to admire his bravura filmmaking.
  9. A few minutes into The House with a Clock in Its Walls, you realize Eli Roth knows what he’s doing—and that means carefully mixing the scares and stillness for a horror comedy that’s made-to-order for certain monster-loving 10-year-olds.
  10. As fascinating and well-crafted as it is, The Public Image Is Rotten is ultimately a vanity project, authorized by Lydon and his manager and meant less as an unvarnished journalistic documentary but as a burnishing of, well, his public image.
  11. Ruizpalacios doesn’t waste the movie beating up on Juan’s foolishness. He’s painting a broader picture of ennui, lost suburban souls who seem to want nothing more than to tool around in their car and talk nonsense.
  12. There are disjointed elements here—a modern-leaning script, driftless performances and an overwrought score from Jeff Russo, its clanking piano more suited to an out-and-out Gothic thriller—that Macneill is ultimately unable to wrestle into a cohesive, compelling whole. The result is a dull retread of a story that deserved better.
  13. Ross’ debut is scattershot, and lacking in the consistent purpose that articulates a filmmaker’s intent.
  14. It's the camerawork by director of photography Brett Lowell and cinematographer Corey Rich (along with many other contributors) that impresses the most here. Close-ups show just how precise and physically challenging the climbers' moves are.
  15. The acting is not the problem. It rarely is. And, within parameters, the movie is not dull. Just don’t expect to feel much short of guilt in response to your own apathy.
  16. The film—Weitz’s first since 2015’s indie Grandma—feels a little cheap and shortchanged.
  17. In story and in visual style, The Predator feels less like a Shane Black movie than a generic, middling Hollywood blockbuster helmed by a workmanlike studio hack who occasionally asked Shane Black for advice.
  18. Director-producers Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer, along with narrator Wendell Pierce (of TV’s “Treme”) keep the tone light, but the underlying message is both timely and worth remembering: You can mess with Mother Nature, but she will mess back.
  19. Kendrick’s interplay with Lively’s big, alluringly langurous temptress is deliciously diverting, but the script could have used some judicious editing; a surfeit of credibility-straining, overly antic plot developments crowd the last third of the film, which until then had an intriguingly languid pace.
  20. The songs, written by Gaga, Cooper, Lukas Nelson, Jason Aldean and Mark Ronson, are all terrific and will make a helluva soundtrack album, and Lady Gaga’s performances are electrifying. Combine that with the genuine-feeling romance between the co-stars and the heartbreak of its dissolution, and you have one soaring and searing piece of movie entertainment.
  21. Despite its structural hiccups, Demange’s film still manages to highlight the humanity of a family and community that fights to survive their no-win circumstances and aspire to pass on something hopeful to their descendants.
  22. This doc is far more about being gay than being a gay dancer, with not enough extended performance footage to give you an idea of their real capabilities. This lack also softens the impetus of the movie’s inevitable contest climax, which takes place at the Gay Games in Cleveland, with one of the featured couples winning big.
  23. Although hardly conceived or executed on the scale of his work, Proust kept popping into my mind as I watched this disarming film, with its meditative accretion of the fascinating little details that comprise a life.
  24. Despite all of the mediocrity, there are a handful of sweet moments in the film.
  25. Devoid of any corniness, sentimentality or condescension, Pick of the Litter is a must for dog lovers, but it will also serve all those needing reminders of how kind, decent and giving humans can be and the role dogs play in our lives.
  26. An awesome and inspiring doc from the team behind Meru.
  27. The approach, while admittedly daring, leaves the game viewer, although certainly dazzled by much of the footage, rather wanting more than Bartsch verbalizing the arc of her life and ambitions, yes, but in a distorted layered and overlapping soundtrack that, intentionally, is not always decipherable.
  28. Languid, associative, at times dragging, at other moments deeply affecting, thanks to a song and a trick of the light, Ethan Hawke’s Blaze is difficult to define.
  29. While the film’s vision of Nelly Arcan may ultimately remain just slightly out of focus (a notion that’s duly literalized in its final shots), Mylène Mackay’s powerhouse turn seems certain to resonate.
  30. Briskly paced, the film makes for a visually exuberant experience as it cuts quickly among photos and video clips of Kusama’s flashy artwork, commentary from critics, gallery owners and fellow artists (delivered both on-camera and as audio over images of Kusama’s work) and footage of the maverick artist herself.

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