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For 361 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 72% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 27% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 72
Highest review score: 100 Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Lowest review score: 0 Seventh Son
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 246 out of 361
  2. Mixed: 88 out of 361
  3. Negative: 27 out of 361
361 movie reviews
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  1. Boyhood
    Boyhood is more than a movie; it is a vibrant, living thing, and it is beautiful, and it is sad, and it is wise, and it is sprawling, and it is intimate, and it is painful, and it is more than any filmmaker could have intended, and, yes… when it comes to trying to capture truth in a way that cannot be argued or denied or even summarized… I am sure that nothing will ever be this good again.
  2. Manchester by the Sea
    Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester By The Sea is an extraordinarily wise and well-observed film about what can happen to someone when life gives them more than they can handle, and Casey Affleck's lead performance is, simply put, the model of what great film acting should look like.
  3. Carol
    Only the combined talents of both Blanchett and Mara can make the film's powerfully realized finale work.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mr. Turner
    Mr. Turner's passions and neuroses feel more peculiar to Leigh and his own work. It's tempting, even, to view the film as biopic-as-self-portrait, revealing shades of one life through another.
  5. Inside Out
    Co-directors Pete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen have told a very, very small-scale story when you look at what happens in the actual physical world. But in doing so, they've done something very powerful, because they have paid full respect to just how turbulent and important the inner life of a child can be.
  6. Spotlight
    Like any creative endeavor a film is the sum of its parts. In the most elementary terms it needs a screenplay as a base, a cast to bring the script to life and a director to orchestrate the pieces into something of considerable impact. Excuse the hyperbole, but Tom McCarthy's Spotlight is an example of when all those pieces fit together almost perfectly.
  7. Son of Saul
    In terms of filmmaking prowess, "remarkable" may not do Laszlo Nemes' holocaust drama "Son of Saul" justice.
  8. Mad Max: Fury Road
    There is nothing easy or predictable about what George Miller delivers with Mad Max: Fury Road, a stone-cold action master class, beautiful and brainy and startling in the ways it throws off the current definition of the blockbuster.
  9. Whiplash
    By far, the best part of the film is the last twenty minutes or so, and it's so good that it almost makes up for some of the missteps along the way.
  10. Anomalisa
    Anomalisa is an extraordinarily wise film about the reasons we turn to other people and the enormous difficulty of doing so.
  11. The Grand Budapest Hotel
    It is safe to say that The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of those breakthrough moments, a movie that is so beautifully realized from start to finish that I almost doubted myself on the way home. Could I really have enjoyed that film that much?
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Citizenfour
    CITIZENFOUR is an expertly crafted expose with unprecedented urgency.
  13. Brooklyn
    It's a damn good movie.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
    Birdman dares to be ambiguous, but unlike most essays in ambiguity, it is also a hell of a lot of fun.
  15. The Diary of a Teenage Girl
    For all of Heller's impressive direction, she could have delivered something soulless without Powley's contributions.
  16. Gideon's Army
    What Gideon's Army does is make a respectful case on the behalf of a profession that too often gets maligned.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Life Itself
    Life Itself gives measured and pragmatic reflection to many of the things that are most interesting about Ebert's personal and professional life.
  18. Force Majeure
    Force Majeure is an impressive and adult piece of work, bracing and intelligent.
  19. Room
    Room is simply a movie about mother and son trying to adapt to the outside world after years of forced captivity. And the surprise is how succinctly it captures this drastic life change from the perspective of five-year-old.
  20. Amy
    Amy also turns the camera back on the viewer who saw, mocked and ignored Winehouse’s descent as it transpired across the media landscape. How could the world collectively denigrate a woman whose addiction was destroying her? In this era of reactionary social media it’s a warning to all of us to be wary of stoning the next Amy in the digital town square.
  21. Everybody Wants Some!!
    Everybody Wants Some!! offers a mature and crystal-clear voice, a filmmaker of enormous muscle who makes it all look ridiculously easy.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Watchers of the Sky
    [Edet Belzberg] wants this to be a documentary that doesn't just prompt casual discussion, but rather raises the biggest issues imaginable. Her approach is analytical, poetic and, when one of the subject tells the story that gives the film its name, unexpectedly emotional.
  23. The Witch
    Eggers manages to create a sense of mood and dread that is so suffocating at times that it feels like we're watching something genuinely transgressive, something we should not be seeing.
  24. Kubo and the Two Strings
    Kubo works because it is so direct, so honest about the emotional story it’s telling. Knight may have epic ambitions, but he keeps the stakes very personal.
  25. Snowpiercer
    The action sequences in the film are spectacular, and there's one in particular that I think is an all-timer, both in the way it's imagined and in the way it's accomplished on film, but this isn't a film about empty sensation. It's a richly realized science-fiction world, and the cast is just tremendous.
  26. De Palma
    DePalma emerges as a charming storyteller, funny and slightly wicked, and he offers up some terrific anecdotes about his casts, his process, and his choices over the years.
  27. The LEGO Movie
    Beautifully shot, impeccably paced, and with a voice cast that nails it in every role, large or small, "The Lego Movie" is a genuine delight.
  28. Red Army
    Gabe Polsky has made a smart and incisive film about an important moment in the history of a now-fallen empire, and he happened to make it wildly entertaining as well. No easy feat.
  29. It Follows
    At its best, the film has moments that are creepy and that work on some strange primal level.
  30. Creed
    By the time Coogler wraps things up, his film manages the difficult trick of looking back with earned nostalgia and standing alone as a genuinely strong dramatic piece.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The End of the Tour
    Thanks to Margulies and Ponsoldt and thanks to Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg, End of the Tour mostly does right by David Foster Wallace, a not insignificant feat when you're dealing with a figure who generates such passion.
  32. The Lobster
    Lanthimos presents a fully formed original vision that hits a perfect tone even when the narrative begins to get away from him a bit.
  33. Steve Jobs
    Sorkin’s voice dominates the discourse and the film rarely has a chance to catch its collective breath. While you have to give the duo credit for attempting an unconventional structure, it’s a choice that arguably only works thanks to the contributions of a stellar ensemble.
  34. The Assassin
    Hou and cinematographer Ping Bin Lee (“Renoir”) produce some stunning images on location (one conversation takes place as a fog beautifully emits from the bottom of a valley), but it’s hard to find a thematic connection between the directing style Hou has chosen and the story.
  35. Sicario
    Sicario starts and ends with Blunt’s impassioned performance (and she's spectacular in her final scene), but it’s Del Toro who is the real standout.
  36. Top Five
    Top Five is, above everything else, really entertaining. It is a successful sophisticated spin on Hollywood formula, and it feels like Chris Rock finally finding a filmmaking voice that is just as limber and funny and sharply satirical and angry and even romantic as Rock's stand-up.
  37. Closet Monster
    Dunn demonstrates an impressive ability to bring his unique interpretation of the coming out process to life.
  38. Bridge of Spies
    I was pleased to see that "Spies" is not a thriller so much as an ode to both American diplomacy and the tradition of moral movie fathers along the lines of Atticus Finch.
  39. Foxcatcher
    These performances are beyond reproach, which makes it even stranger that the film never quite turns into the crushing experience it feels like it should be.
  40. Inherent Vice
    This movie is so funny, so strange, so wonderfully charmingly deranged.
  41. Skyfall
    Despite the very real threat and the personal stakes and the grim weight given to things, director Sam Mendes manages to pay sophisticated, sincere homage to the conventions that define the Bond series while remembering that one of the things that makes the series such an enduring presence is fun.
  42. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
    While Hunt For The Wilderpeople is very funny, what makes it stick is the way Waititi allows the relationship between Hec and Ricky to develop slowly, and how nimbly he sets the emotional stakes for both of the characters.
  43. The Martian
    It takes a genuine master craftsman to take something as complex and difficult as this and make it look easy, but it also takes an artist with a great ear to take something as dense with exposition as this is and make it practically sing.
  44. Love & Mercy
    In essence, we get to study Brian's break with sanity and his eventual healing, but by keeping the focus tight on these two moments, the film becomes emotionally exhilarating.
  45. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    It must have seemed like a nearly-impossible task when JJ Abrams and his collaborators set out to bring "Star Wars" back to life, but they've more than done it. They've made something honest and beautiful and, above all, fun, and I find myself energized by the movie and by the promise it represents.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Clouds of Sils Maria
    Poised between melodrama and chamber piece, then, Clouds of Sils Maria is either too silly or not silly enough.
  47. A Most Violent Year
    J. C. Chandor's A Most Violent Year is a powerfully told story, a thrilling surprise, and both Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain do remarkable work.
  48. Gone Girl
    Gone Girl is not Fincher's best film, nor is it the most conventionally satisfying of them, but it feels like this is a movie that represents the very best that Hollywood craft can offer at the moment.
  49. Mountains May Depart
    Jia probably made a mistake directing the 1999 sequence in such an over-the-top and stilted tone (it also feels more like 1989 than the turn of the century), but the rest of the film is incredibly well done.
  50. Beasts of No Nation
    Fukunaga not only directed the film but also co-wrote the screenplay and served as director of photography. His efforts have resulted in a brazenly confident piece of cinematic art where every image immerses you deeper and deeper into Agu’s horror.
  51. Green Room
    Just on a technical level, the film represents such a big jump forward for Saulnier that you should expect the studios to immediately start arguing over which giant soulless franchise should occupy his time in the near-future.
  52. Selma
    In a year of remarkable performances, Oyelowo is simply magnificent as Dr. King.
  53. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    "Dawn" is not just a good genre movie or a good summer movie. It's a great science-fiction film, full-stop, and one of the year's very best movies so far.
  54. The Tribe
    This is brutally strong filmmaking, aggressive and alive and impeccably accomplished.
  55. Zootopia
    As crazy as the design of the world is, Zootopia ends up feeling like a genuine place. There's a vibrancy to it that runs through everything from the pace of the storytelling to the background details of the world in which the story takes place.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Tracks
    With the Outback desert a pretty indomitable (not to mention indomitably pretty) presence from the outset, Tracks seems a woman-versus-land story only until it emerges that the land is a reflection of the woman herself.
  57. Finding Dory
    Say what you will, but Pixar understands innately that making their audience feel something deeply is the greatest magic trick in movies, and all of their work as technicians and artists are always focused on making that happen. Finding Dory may be familiar magic, but there’s magic in it all the same.
  58. The Gift
    Edgerton, who also wrote the screenplay, shows a masterful touch in playing with conventional expectations.
  59. Victoria
    Hands down one of the best films of the year, Sebastian Schipper has directed a one-shot film that is truly a captivating cinematic experience.
  60. Paddington
    It's an excellent showcase for Paul King, for the tremendous character animation by Framestore, and for Ben Whishaw's delicate, inquisitive work as the title character, and it is one of those rare family films that actually seems to think of children as smart and full of empathy.
  61. Mississippi Grind
    One thing Mississippi Grind has in spades is soul, and that's a better bet than narrative mechanics any day.
  62. Wild Tales
    Beyond being very smart and funny, it's also a great looking movie.
  63. The Jungle Book
    It’s mind-boggling that this entire thing was shot on soundstages using greenscreens. Favreau’s jungle feels like a real place, but it’s heightened and stylized and it feels like a perfect fit for the talking animals who make up the majority of the cast.
  64. While We're Young
    The film is at its best when it simply focuses on this strange dynamic between the two couples and the way they are each looking for something from the other that they don't dare articulate for fear of having to grapple with these weaknesses or flaws in themselves.
  65. Grandma
    The fact Tomlin is so good also highlights the film's biggest problem. Too much of what works in Grandma comes from the subtle touches Tomlin, Elliott and Harden bring to their characters, not Weitz’s script.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jauja
    Intermittently playful, consistently confounding, finally petrified, it's a film of fussy, cultivated austerity.
  67. How to Train Your Dragon 2
    This is a sequel that has its own story to tell and that gets right down to it, and it expands on the ideas from the first film, but in a way that tells a thematically satisfying and complete story. In other words, this is how franchises are supposed to work.
  68. Guardians of the Galaxy
    Guardians Of The Galaxy is the most charming Marvel movie so far. The primary ensemble (Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, and Vin Diesel) is perhaps the most winning group of characters they've introduced in any of these movies.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    99 Homes
    Other than the unsubtle but vivid storytelling, the main joy of 99 Homes is seeing two excellent but very different actors spark off each other for almost the entire runtime, in a brace of performances both brilliant and brilliantly matched.
  70. Housebound
    Housebound is that rare film that manages to be funny without defusing any of its scares.
  71. Midnight Special
    This is a very raw, sad, and beautiful film about faith and fatherhood, and it feels just as grounded and big-hearted as the other films Nichals has made.
  72. The Revenant
    It is as impressive as any movie released this year, but the storytelling falters in some fundamental ways that keep me from completely adoring it. Innaritu dreams big, and he has the muscle to back it up. The Revenant may not be his best film yet, but it's hard to imagine many filmmakers who are working at a higher level than he is these days.
  73. 10 Cloverfield Lane
    Economically told from the start, the film moves beautifully.
  74. Nightcrawler
    The film plays with tension beautifully, and there are a few set pieces that I think are all-timers.
  75. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
    The Hunger Games: Catching Fire more than makes the case for this as a franchise that's going to get better as it goes, and I am genuinely excited to see how they wrap it up.
  76. Mistress America
    Baumbach has cast a wonderfully talented group of up-and-coming actors around Gerwig and Kirke, but it's the screenplay and the leads' incredible chemistry that makes it all so entertaining. There are so many one-liners that you miss because the previous line of dialogue is just as smart and laugh-inducing.
  77. Frank
    Frank rides a really strange tone, and director Lenny Abrahamson deserves credit for how he manages to make the strange and the sad and the funny all feel like it's part of the same film.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    What Happened, Miss Simone?
    When Garbus lets Simone show us why she's special What Happened, Miss Simone? is successful and vital.
  79. Spy
    There is a giddy sense of glee that runs through most of this movie, making it feel like Feig can barely contain himself with all of the things he wants to do and show you in the movie.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Battered Bastards of Baseball
    It's full of laughs and, towards the end, I even got a bit choked up in places.
  81. Captain America: Civil War
    What makes Captain America: Civil War such a terrific accomplishment is the way it takes what could have been the most crass and overcrowded story to adapt as a film and instead transforms it into an examination of just who these heroes are and what impact they’ve had on the world around them, and vice versa.
  82. X-Men: Days of Future Past
    It feels like the single most successful attempt to pull the shape of one of the beloved comic stories into the film world. It also feels like Bryan Singer has finally figured out how to shoot an action scene where the X-Men actually look and feel like the X-Men, and where the fantastic is handled the right way.
  83. Land of Mine
    The characters are so well drawn (and the relatively young cast steps up to the plate) that combined with the material’s natural tension you’ll find yourself riveted to the proceedings.
  84. Trainwreck
    Trainwreck is more than funny. It's also wise, and that hard-won wisdom makes this a can't-miss for anyone who feels bruised by love, but never beaten.
  85. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
    I would argue that this may be the funniest of the films overall, and with Robert Elswit shooting it, it's absolutely gorgeous, with crisp, clean action choreography that you can actually see.
  86. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
    It's a fresh, beautiful and heartbreaking achievement that continues to surprise until the very last scene. It's dangerous to call something an instant classic, but sometimes it's simply the truth.
  87. Southside with You
    Southside With You is quietly romantic, but more than that, it burns with a deep sense of optimism.
  88. Wild
    Witherspoon does really uncompromising work here, playing Cheryl without any hesitancy or any fear or any ego. It's not a glamorous role, and she doesn't try to make Cheryl seem perfect, and she doesn't sand off this woman's rough edges.
  89. Sully
    There are no real stakes, and I find the attempts at creating suspense to be almost offensive. Irritating, at the very least.
  90. Interstellar
    I was moved by Interstellar, and there are stretches where it is as good and as pure as anything Nolan's made. You can feel just how important all of it is to him in every frame of the thing. I don't love all of the film's dramatic choices, though.
  91. Big Hero 6
    As much as the action stuff works and would indicate that any other property Marvel entrusts to the animation side of things is in good hands, Big Hero 6 gets by more on the charms of its comedy.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Mommy
    If Mommy counts as a slight creative step back, and I would argue that it is, it's at least an elegant and purposeful one.
  93. Beyond the Lights
    Mbatha-Raw is shockingly good in creating both the "Noni" public persona and the real Noni.
  94. American Sniper
    Overall, American Sniper is a solidly-staged but unexceptional picture, filled with overly familiar dramatic situations and a surprisingly blindered view of the world around its central character.
  95. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
    I think Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol is the most consistently entertaining, most laser-focused entry in the series so far, and while I would argue that it is very much a sequel to the third film and not just a disconnected piece of a flexible franchise, it is also a great rollicking self-contained spy movie adventure on a grand scale, and it's preposterous fun.
  96. Straight Outta Compton
    Both of its time and of the moment, Straight Outta Compton is potent and largely successful, and makes a hell of a case for why this was a story worth telling.
  97. Tale of Tales
    A slightly bumpy two hours of storytelling, but it's peppered with wonder and unexpected humor.
  98. Hail, Caesar!
    Even when they're silly, Joel and Ethan Coen are as smart as any filmmakers working, and Hail, Caesar! is a clever cartoon filter through which they examine some very sincere spiritual ideas.
  99. Dope
    The unexpected comedy bits, great music and an insightful point of view all contribute to making "Dope" something special, but it simply wouldn't fly without Moore.
  100. Still Alice
    The film lives and dies on Moore’s portrayal. She succeeds smashingly.
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