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For 5,173 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 59% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 38% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 69
Highest review score: 100 The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
Lowest review score: 0 Pixels
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,574 out of 5173
  2. Mixed: 1,333 out of 5173
  3. Negative: 266 out of 5173
5173 movie reviews
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  1. Mifune: The Last Samurai
    A thin, dull, and by-the-numbers biography that fails to capture its subject’s irrepressible spirit or properly contextualize his importance.
  2. The History of Sound
    While The History of Sound suffers from some pacing issues and detours that turn up as dead ends, following Lionel’s path as a budding ethnomusicologist collecting songs and sounds to record on cylinders, this is a lovely movie capable of wounding and haunting you.
  3. The Long Dumb Road
    While Mantzoukas and Revolori charm – consider them your new, unexpected go-to buddy comedy duo – The Long Dumb Road soon runs out of gas, chugging through a series of increasingly unbelievable contrivances.
  4. Film Socialisme
    Film Socialism is a weighty, intentionally cryptic product that's easy on the eyes and heavy on the mind.
  5. Synchronic
    Dornan and Mackie are adrift through most of this movie, but the heartfelt thrum of their final scene together is a testament to the intrinsic humanity of their performances — and to the grace of a visionary filmmaking team that’s capable of creating the most beautiful moments, even if they often lose sight of the most effective way of reaching them.
  6. Dora and the Lost City of Gold
    Moner’s charisma keeps things pushing forward, and so does the film’s appealing spirit. If only every big screen adaptation of a beloved existing property could feel this funny and fresh, there’d be less to fear about an industry besieged by recycled material that never takes a risk.
  7. Anna and the Apocalypse
    Like its star, Anna and the Apocalypse merrily charges through danger. It’s a genre mash-up populated with cliches...but McPhail finds small moments to make his characters unique.
  8. Official Secrets
    Like its heroine, Official Secrets is shouting into an echo chamber.
  9. The Creator
    But the most fundamental reason why “The Creator,” for all of its shortcomings and clichés, ultimately sold me on its optimism is that it succeeds as a blueprint where it fails as a movie.
  10. Before We Forget
    Before We Forget may not be in quite the same league as Guadagnino’s work, but fans of the latter will find plenty to long for here, even if the sluggish modern-day components detract from the compelling, sensitive love story they look back upon.
  11. The Imperialists Are Still Alive!
    The first-time director's refreshingly credible portrait of a boho character with Middle Eastern origins rectifies the aforementioned canonical gap in a witty, naturalistic generational snapshot.
  12. It's Me, It's Me
    Just strange enough to get inside your head, it's ultimately less committed to the meaning behind its events than the lucid means by which they take place.
  13. Homecoming
    The result is a movie that registers as slight by its end, despite the talent found within its confines. What is nonetheless evident, however, is that Bemba and Gohourou are worth watching as they go forward in their careers.
  14. Misha and the Wolves
    Exploiting now-familiar techniques of documentary misdirection in the service of easy suspense, Misha and the Wolves wastes a golden opportunity to interrogate the slippery nature of historical truth (and a Herzog-worthy heroine along with it), opting instead to spin a self-satisfied yarn that offers little insight into anything beyond our natural tendency to believe the most ecstatic truths.
  15. Theater of Thought
    A characteristically playful documentary.
  16. Unlocking the Cage
    Qhile the 90-year-old Pennebaker doesn't appear to deviate from the observational aesthetic that has defined his life's work, Unlocking the Cage is nevertheless an ill-fitting first for he and his partner: an issue-based film.
  17. The Guilty
    If you’ve seen Moller’s The Guilty, well, you’ve basically seen Fuqua’s, but Gyllenhaal’s performance adds a go-for-broke turn that capitalizes on the actor’s deep emotional reserves.
  18. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    While director Sam Fell continues the stop-motion brilliance of Peter Lord and Nick Park’s original, set pieces and winking homages are given primacy over character stakes leading to a somewhat grating emotional ride.
  19. The Feast
    Despite its refined palate and dashes of local flavor, The Feast remains empty calories — haunting only for how it seems to admit as much in the very last shot.
  20. Hold the Dark
    As Hold the Dark sputters to an unsatisfying finale, Wright’s character promises to explain everything that came before. The movie’s great punchline is that he’ll never be able to sort it all out — and we’re right there with him, reeling from a disquieting saga that has no patience for anyone in need easy answers, but keen on leaving us gasping for breath.
  21. My Cousin Rachel
    The film is visually breathtaking, and anchored by two strong performances. But the loyalties in My Cousin Rachel seesaw too dramatically for tension to build satisfyingly; the film runs hot and cold when it really wants to simmer.
  22. Hors Satan (Outside Satan)
    The problem with Outside Satan is that the filmmaker has remained faithful to expectations without enlivening them. It's a curious exercise unworthy of his expertise, but then he may realize as much.
  23. Young & Beautiful
    At times a rich, intimate observation of emerging sexuality, the movie also maintains a quiet, observational rhythm that peaks around wintertime when things grow dark for the character and then more or less watches her grow up.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Piece By Piece
    Piece by Piece is ultimately surface-level entertainment, a light, visually-inventive ride without much to offer its audiences beyond a reaffirmation on the values of hard work and believing in one’s self.
  25. Nyad
    It’s only in the film’s final moments that Diana realizes the power of the team, but “Nyad” would have felt just that much deeper if the film itself recognized it earlier. There’s more to “Nyad” than Diana, and there’s more to this story than swimming.
  26. Ash
    Trying to fight this film’s sensations, as unpleasant as they may be at times, will bring nothing but misery. So just give in, vibe out, and take solace in the fact that “Ash” is way more accessible than Flying Lotus’ first film.
  27. On Swift Horses
    On Swift Horses is a stunning tableau of almost-romances, weaving together ephemeral moments of magic with the pain that inevitably follows when the universe takes them away.
  28. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
    Sharpe’s portrait is so determined to capture the full rainbow of Wain’s singular hues that it soon becomes a muddled soup of mismatched quirks.
  29. Denial
    A simple courtroom drama that never betrays its convictions, the film is a basic but bitterly urgent reminder that history is far more fluid than fact, a garden that must be tended to at all times lest it wither and grow weeds.
  30. Heel
    You might wish Heel were a bit funnier, a bit scarier, a bit more twisted, but it’s still pungently creepy in the right ways and anchored by a suite of top-tier actors capable of wringing empathy out of the darkest Freudian corners of a fucked-up family.
  31. Cheap Thrills
    Savagely assaulting the desperate state of a blue collar family man, the comedic thriller Cheap Thrills establishes a ridiculous premise early on and takes it to various extremes, again and again, until you just have to accept the crazy venture on its own terms or simply give up.
  32. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
    Where The Covenant most shines is in the riveting intensity of both its performances and its action.
  33. Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    Featuring stars Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown doing predictably divine work (do these two performers know any other way?), “Honk for Jesus” is equal parts hilarious and painful, an incisive upbraiding of the sorts of people who should have long ago realized no one — especially nattily attired pastors — is above God.
  34. Downton Abbey: A New Era
    "A New Era” doesn’t feel like a cash-grab, but a true continuation. Lush settings, well-appointed sets, and an eye-popping wardrobe only add to the magic, and good luck not happily sinking into two hours of confectionary entertainment. (The endless jokes about the film industry somehow only add to the zip of it all.)
  35. Pope Francis - A Man of His Word
    The film shows a refreshing interest in his current existence, rather than becoming a by-the-book retread of his pre-pope life.
  36. Battleground
    Messy, personal, timely, brimming with ideas, overflowing with pain, and without answers: that’s the debate, and that’s the doc.
  37. Piercing
    Piercing too often gets lost in the fog of its deranged characters, but just as frequently transforms their lunacy into a heightened form of escapist entertainment. In a movie where everyone’s crazy, “Piercing” makes their malady infectious.
  38. I Want Your Sex
    A Gregg Araki movie will never be boring, and this one is a good time even when it’s tripping over itself to complicate its story and disguise the fact that it’s trying to serve as a teachable moment.
  39. Atomic Blonde
    Oscillating between the relentless energy of “John Wick” and the dense plotting of a John Le Carré novel, Atomic Blonde never quite finds a happy medium between the two. But when Theron goes back to kicking ass, nothing else matters.
  40. I'm Your Woman
    I’m Your Woman owes much to Brosnahan’s evolving performance as she goes from terrified housewife to trenchant survivalist over the course movie, and the movie consolidates the strengths of Hart’s previous work.
  41. Halftime
    Micheli’s film is less than artful, scattered with limited talking heads (mostly Lopez’s business partners and her mother, briefly), random flashbacks, occasional archival footage, and a series of short sequences that could frame their own films (particularly quick-cut segments about Lopez’s early years, her treatment by the press, the obsession with her body, the constant tabloid attention), but none of that is the draw: it’s Lopez.
  42. Anna Karenina
    Wright's extraordinary long takes draw you into the universe of Anna Karenina with a seamless approach that a straightforward literary adaptation could never accomplish.
  43. Perfect Strangers (Perfectos Desconocidos)
    Perfect Strangers takes too much time to get to its big game — nearly its full first act is consumed by introductions and set dressing, most of it unnecessary, considering how believable the group’s chemistry is — but once it kicks into gear, the effect is dizzying.
  44. California Schemin'
    It’s fun enough at first, thanks to McAvoy’s energetic direction and strong turns from its young stars.
  45. First Winter
    Dickinson's hauntingly naturalistic look at disgruntled young adults trapped in the country following an urban disaster plays like "Martha Marcy May Marlene" transported to a post-apocalyptic survival narrative -- with lots of yoga and sex.
  46. Burning Sands
    McMurray fixates too much on the brutality of his subject, foregoing any meaningful character development. The result is a film about punishment that is quite punishing to watch.
  47. Easy's Waltz
    Vaughn pours himself into the role, but he also seems to understand that going big and broad for this one is a misstep. Easy isn’t a caricature, even if the people and events around him increasingly feel that way.
  48. Banana Split
    Like any romance, Banana Split is constrained to some familiar beats, but Kasulke, Marks, and Power have such a handle on what makes the film tick — and Marks and Liberato are so charming and fun — that even expected turns feel clever and fresh.
  49. In Between Dying
    For all of its elusiveness, In Between Dying is a film that wants to be found.
  50. Les Miserables
    Hooper's approach comes across as the equivalent of sitting in the front row of a stage play while the entire cast leans forward and blares each song into your eardrums.
  51. Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge
    This Diane Von Furstenberg is plenty engaging, but as a tribute to the woman who reinvented the modern dress, it doesn’t reinvent anything itself.
  52. Your Monster
    Lindy’s passion for and connection to the material is obvious (how could it not be?), as is her desire to twist a sad story into something fresh and often funny. Sweet, even! But an unhinged final act, plus a jaw-dropper of a finale, seems at odds with everything else she’s revealed, and this genre-spanner goes from, well, spanning to something else: not being able to hold onto any of its many spinning plates.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    What makes the film compelling is the fact that even though Norman Krasna’s script contains no friction between the needs of the genre and the impulses of the characters, Hitchcock creates it anyway.
  54. Simon Killer
    With a dense, often impermeable style and a mentally unstable protagonist, Simon Killer is like watching the disturbed anti-hero of "Afterschool" all grown up.
  55. Knock at the Cabin
    As sturdily crafted as Knock at the Cabin may be, Shyamalan’s funny games never achieve the profundity they’re reaching for, ending up as a preachy end-times message movie wrapped up in a slick horror package.
  56. Kiss of the Spider Woman
    Kiss of the Spider Woman is a flashy ode to the fairies and the radicals, the maricóns who’ve repurposed their oppression and media literacy into an outsize, fuck-if-I-care-what-you-think political identity. Yet there’s nothing revolutionary about the movie that contains them.
  57. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him
    While both pieces of the entire package generally work independently of each other, they have just enough ingredients to necessitate a viewing of the whole thing.
  58. Jimmy's Hall
    A minor work by Loach's standards, the movie nevertheless marks his most enjoyable effort in years.
  59. The Congress
    A wholly original and thoroughly surprising fusion of sensory overload and liberal philosophy bound to confuse and provoke in equal measures.
  60. Tallulah
    Though it falls short of its goals, Tallulah is an ambitious first film for Heder. A valiant effort, but ultimately, like its characters’ lives, a missed opportunity.
  61. V/H/S/94
    After nine years and four movies, it might be time to hit the “eject” button on the “V/H/S” series once and for all.
  62. Blood Quantum
    It may not be a great zombie movie, but it’s a uniquely powerful reminder of why zombie movies are great.
  63. Damsel
    The downside to the Zellners’ uncompromising approach is that they sometimes hold an inspired moment for too long. Certain scenes drag, and some banter has an airless quality that causes a few gags to fall flat. But it’s often rescued by nuggets of hilarious dialogue...and the steady realization that the movie always has been one step ahead of audience assumptions.
  64. Master Gardener
    While the central character’s arc will likely launch a dreaded “discourse,” there is a tenderness to Master Gardener that may prove its biggest surprise.
  65. The Ones Below
    Although Farr layers on the creepy until the last frame of The Ones Below, the film's ultimate reveal is hardly shocking, and that the film spends a gratuitous amount time unspooling it long after it's clear what has gone down feels indulgent and unearned.
  66. Borg vs. McEnroe
    What we’re left with is a staid little movie that races around the court and rallies itself to exhaustion, a historical drama that enshrines the narrative underpinnings of all great sports stories without doing anything to upend them.
  67. H Is for Hawk
    The trouble here has less to do with verisimilitude than engagement; this story about the power and pratfalls of emotional projection simply doesn’t inspire enough feeling for us to see much of anything on either of its two blank screens.
  68. Falling
    Mortensen’s first effort behind the camera never settles into the expected grooves of its genre or premise. On the contrary, the film vibrates at its own unrecognizable frequency as soon as it starts, and only allows for easy categorization during the clunkier moments when it bumps against clichés like a boat that would rather crash into lighthouses than use them for guidance.
  69. Unsane
    Unsane brims with curiosity about digital technology, discomfort with corporate bureaucracies, and is spiked through and through with icy wit – in short, it could never be anything but a Soderbergh film, and a particularly delicious one at that.
  70. The Weekend
    Deadpan in her delivery and facial expressions, Zadie is indeed a mess, but she’s working her way toward something better, and Meghie’s frisky comedy gives her the space to make some strides. As the weekend amusingly crumbles around her and the rest of her cohorts, Zamata tentatively approaches something like maturity (and definitely like getting the hell over Bradford), giving shape to a mostly freeform narrative.
  71. Bullet Train Explosion
    Even as the Shinkansen decouples some of its cars at full speed and performs death-defying track changes in order to avoid crashing into other trains, it never really feels like anything is meaningfully at risk, and Higuchi’s setpieces are seldom intense enough to offset the lack of danger that’s baked into this project from the start.
  72. Spring Breakers
    Atmospherically, Spring Breakers is an elegant evocation of noir storytelling, littered with misdeeds with girls and guns at every turn.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Brood
    Cronenberg has become known as a purveyor of body horror, in which the monstrous arises from within rather than without. The Brood cunningly turns this motif into a metaphor for psychotherapy itself, which seeks to dredge up and cast out the monsters haunting the unconscious.
  74. Fingernails
    There’s nowhere for the movie to go once it establishes that the safety love offers can also be the source of its undoing.
  75. Someone Great
    The wit of Robinson’s series still occasionally peeks out in Someone Great, especially when her central trio are interacting, but smushed into a 92-minute running time, little of the best bits can actually breathe.
  76. Stowaway
    A nerve-shredding space thriller that starts strong before falling prey to blunter dramatic twists, few of which are as thrilling as the original idea that sets everything in motion.
  77. Triangle of Sadness
    The only thing Östlund’s po-faced characters can’t afford is to recognize the absurdity inherent to their lives, and so the movie keeps our response muted to a low chuckle, as if anything louder might reach the people on screen and cause the whole charade to fall apart.
  78. Let Him Go
    Here is a tanned hide of a movie about the violence that results from conflicting ideas of what this country should be, and while the writer/director of “The Family Stone” lacks the chops to tell this story with the suspense it demands (or the hard-nosed focus required to mine something new from the myth it deconstructs), he fully understands the symbolic power of seeing these actors lose something they can never get back.
  79. Freaks
    The fatal flaw of Freaks is that Lipovsky and Stein’s tantalizing approach gives way to mundane results, as the questions raised by their screenplay are considerably more interesting than any of the answers that follow.
  80. World War Z
    World War Z may wear its intellect proudly, but also consciously translates the zombie premise into a safer context for wider audiences. It's not the smartest zombie movie ever made, but might be the most commercial one.
  81. Maria
    Larraín’s freeform portrait of the diva’s final days seldom feels like more than a libretto: passionately sung, but lacking the detail and fullness needed to bring it to life.
  82. Hello, My Name Is Doris
    More than anything else, Hello, My Name is Doris effectively conveys the cruel ambivalence of an ageist society, and despite its formulaic ingredients, the movie responds to that setback with Field's exuberant, virtuoso turn providing the ultimate critical response.
  83. Bring Them Down
    Mostly, though, it does only that: Shock. Basic, trite, and without any hope for anything better ever happening.
  84. Aurora
    A slow burn thriller taken to the extreme, Cristi Puiu's Aurora continues the Romanian writer-director's obsession with time as his main narrative device.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Split
    Split avoids being entirely tedious thanks to McAvoy’s standout performance as he cycles through those personalities, sometimes from line to line.
  86. Normal
    Like a firecracker with a long fuse, Normal builds up, burns fast, makes a big noise, and then it’s gone.
  87. Mayor Pete
    Moss’ spry but often superficial film purports to explore what it’s like for an actual human being to run for the highest office in the land, and yet the competency and boy-scout-in-search-of-a-merit-badge resolve that (briefly) turned Buttigieg into an unexpectedly popular alternative to Donald Trump is also what renders him such an impenetrable subject for a documentary.
  88. Chef Flynn
    Meg is a complicated mother, but a very good one, and the love she harbors for her son permits Yates to detail the dynamic between the two of them without souring the vibe of this upbeat and inspirational portrait. Yates, however, is still a bit too cautious to dig into it.
  89. Scoop
    The film is too close to — and too impressed by — the simple fact of what just happened to see under the surface, or even bother to look that hard.
  90. Faces of Death
    Here is a smart, fun, and deeply unsettling post-modern slasher that know it can’t manufacture anything scarier than what people scroll past on their phones every day, and leverages that awareness into a multiplex-ready meditation on the terror of living in a world where even the worst atrocities have been flattened into digital wallpaper.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Laggies
    Even if the film doesn't leave much to ponder past the closing credits, it's enjoyable while it's unfolding, doing justice to the strengths of Shelton's ever-expanding filmography.
  92. By Design
    The film often feels as impossible to definitively grasp as the coveted furniture that it follows — but whether that’s a feature or a bug lies in the eye of the beholder.
  93. The Rip
    But the most important reason why The Rip is a slight cut above the average streaming fare is the lived-in history that Affleck and Damon bring to their characters’ dynamic.
  94. The Devil Wears Prada 2
    Fine enough, really, but if the first film was the kind of thing that never goes out of style, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” will last a season. That’s all.
  95. Free Fire
    Wheatley’s commitment to crowdpleasing antics makes it difficult to stop and consider the lack of depth. In a universe of shootout clichés, Free Fire manages to carve out its own niche, where the proverbial last man standing matters less than the journey to get him there.
  96. Keanu
    Wildly entertaining in parts, Keanu overstays its welcome and just keeps going, showing the growing pains of sketch comedy drawn out to epic proportions.
  97. Zero Charisma
    Directors Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews' directorial debut (from Matthews' screenplay) centers on a highly unlikable character who has alienated himself from social responsibility -- and forces you to sympathize with him against all odds.
  98. In the Earth
    In the Earth may not run deep enough to grow roots, but it’s the first COVID movie that dares to think beyond what it can see in front of its face, venture into the world outside, and confront how terrifying and necessary it’s going to be to commune with nature on new terms when the nightmare is over.
  99. Beau Is Afraid
    Few movies have ever so boldly explored how fraught the safety of unconditional love can be in such a cruel world, and even fewer — including Aster’s own “Hereditary” — have been so willing to sit with the irreconcilable horrors of trying to share that love with someone else.
  100. A Haunting in Venice
    The biggest selling point for Branagh’s Poirot movies has always been his clear passion for the source material and willingness to let Christie’s thrilling stories to stand on their own. But his slick Hollywood adaptations keep getting stuck in a purgatory that offers neither the excitement of the “Knives Out” movies nor the dry English charm of the original BBC Hercule Poirot specials. Perhaps the public service aspect of briefly returning some of Christie’s best works to the zeitgeist (and hopefully pointing some new readers towards her vast library) is sufficient justification for the series’ mediocrity
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