IndieWire's Scores

For 5,235 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 4.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 69
Highest review score: 100 La Gradiva
Lowest review score: 0 Pixels
Score distribution:
5235 movie reviews
  1. These are two magnificent women who live in the shadows of their own legacies, surrounded by petrified images of their former selves.
  2. Mind-blowing in the best possible way, The Ornithologist may not work for everyone, but those willing to embrace its puzzling ingredients will find a rewarding solution: further confirmation of a genuine film artist.
  3. Over time, Gold becomes nothing more than a masterclass in watching a great actor try to build a fortune out of dirt.
  4. Hindsight has revealed the quiet resonance that’s been humming inside this tiny film ever since it first set out to sea.
  5. Like all of Shinkai’s films, the richness of the light coats everything it touches with such an evocative hue of nostalgia that the plot only puts a damper on things (and there’s a lot of plot here).
  6. This morbid film takes body horror to a new level, but leaves its brains behind.
  7. At their worst, Affleck’s roles are stern and lifeless without soul, pretty sculptures with nothing inside. It was only a matter of time before he made a movie that embodied that lesser side of his career.
  8. Declaring Assassin’s Creed to be the best video game movie ever made is the kind of backhanded compliment that sounds like hyperbole, but the description fits the bill on both counts. Regardless of what you call this peculiar, arrestingly uninviting nonsense, the fact of the matter is that it’s the only blockbuster of 2016 that left me desperate for a sequel.
  9. Sing is the Platonic ideal of an Illumination movie. It’s a profoundly soulless piece of work that shines a light on the mediocrity they foist upon the children of the world.
  10. Passengers refuses to really wrestle with the compelling questions at its core, instead opting to lean on Lawrence and Pratt’s collective charm to keep things ticking amiably along.
  11. Not only is “Rogue One” the rare modern blockbuster that could have afforded to risk something real, it’s the rare modern blockbuster that gave itself a genuine responsibility to do so. And yet, for all of its excitement and occasional splendor, there’s nothing the least bit rebellious about it. It could have been special, instead it’s just… forced.
  12. With the bizarre way Whit and his crew talk about numbers and money, Collateral Beauty is just another story about spoiled rich people.
  13. The hit rate gets better as the film lumbers along and the scenarios grow more extreme, but it takes a certain degree of perseverance to roll with this thing until it pays off.
  14. At a time when calls for diverse media dominate the industry, Hidden Figures hedges its bets with a family-friendly commercial solution: warm and fuzzy storytelling that’s both progressive and safe.
  15. A slow-burn tale filled with beautiful imagery and understated performances, its elegance yields one of Scorsese’s most subtle efforts.
  16. Slash is much sweeter than it is satisfying, but it smartly observes that the road to adulthood has never been paved, and it makes a convincing enough case that teens shouldn’t be afraid of driving down their detours.
  17. Frank & Lola is scattershot from the start, and never makes a compelling case for why its story is being told.
  18. If The Founder comes up short of providing a satisfactory dramatization of its main storyline, at least it peels back the veil with sufficient intrigue. Yet it still leaves the sour impression that Kroc got the last laugh. Even in this less-than-flattering portrait, he remains its brightest star.
  19. Like any office Christmas party you’ve ever been forced to attend, it kind of feels a little bit too much like work to be fun, and — like any office Christmas party you’ve ever been forced to attend — it’s just a tiny bit too diverting for you to storm out before the whole thing crawls to its sad conclusion.
  20. If [LaBeouf's] ultimately powerless to make this film worth watching, his performance is a strong reminder that his work should never be taken for granted.
  21. Sincere, intelligent, and moving, it’s a welcome way to cap off a year in which we could all use a little solace like this.
  22. Too obvious and haphazard to boil over with the full caustic fury of its premise, Old Stone is nevertheless a bluntly effective thriller that makes great use of its gritty noir touches.
  23. A thin, dull, and by-the-numbers biography that fails to capture its subject’s irrepressible spirit or properly contextualize his importance.
  24. This is the story of evolving consciousness that leads to the birth of skepticism — and, more specifically, a mistrusting of authorities that yields the desire to seek out a better world.
  25. Washington, Henderson, Davis, and Hornsby are each “holy shit” great in their own ways, the four of them deepening the dynamics they forged together during their time on stage.
  26. Allied can never settle on a consistent tone, bumping along from smooth spy adventure to stylized war picture to treatise on marriage, all peppered with stilted attempts at humor for an added dash of incomprehensibility.
  27. Historians, media scholars and even Boston citizens may debate whether this is the most worthy way to honor those fallen in the attacks. But Berg mounts a heartfelt, harrowing tribute to the film’s real-life heroes.
  28. This is no simple story of girl power. In fact, it’s arguably less concerned with feminism than it is with the financial realities that impede it from taking root.
  29. Even if Locy doesn’t have a particularly great story to tell about this community, Hunter Gatherer warmly affirms the obvious fact that there are an infinite number of great stories to be told there. These days, some people could use the reminder.
  30. Once again, the screenplay (by Johnny Rosenthal and Shauna Cross) goes out of its way to put terrible lines in its characters’ mouths and dares viewers to laugh. However, it’s gotten harder to take this form of jarring lowbrow humor, especially when it serves no purpose beyond shock value.
  31. The “Potter” movies were so well conceived that they contain endless possibilities for more entries, and “Fantastic Beasts” takes the bait right on cue, not repeating a formula so much as enriching it with a spellbinding polish.
  32. Too conventional to function as shock comedy and too angry to spark spontaneous laughs, The Comedian is a film without a purpose.
  33. In a movie that likens passing legislation to pulling off a massive heist, eventually departing from reality altogether in a series of late-game twists so intricate they would make Danny Ocean blush, the sheer velocity of Chastain’s performance holds it all together.
  34. Beatty’s long-gestating project is a modestly enjoyable, well-acted nostalgia piece with just a touch of edge.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Even as Almost Christmas follows a series of predictable twists, that doesn’t negate its charm.
  35. Using an overabundance of plot to pave over a remarkable paucity of jokes, “Memoirs” quickly tailspins into a lifeless supercut of cheap action, terrible gags, and a series of scenes in which increasingly dangerous stereotypes are fooled into believing that Sam is an actual assassin.
  36. Biller spins an archly funny — but also hyper-sincere — story about the true price of the patriarchy. There hasn’t been anything quite like it in decades.
  37. Visually dazzling and loaded with charm, the movie is also blatant in its quest for cultural sensitivity.
  38. With the bawdy and intoxicatingly batshit Dog Eat Dog, Schrader is off the leash once and for all.
  39. Lynskey’s performance insists that every scene — no matter how warped or incestuous — ultimately returns to the notion that relationships are a balancing act between change and acceptance.
  40. This intimate, unvarnished, and occasionally transcendent micro-portrait may seldom leave Dunning’s property, but it takes stock of the whole world.
  41. A soaring, sweet documentary that welcomes its audience into an unexpected new arena, The Eagle Huntress offers up a movie-perfect story with a leading lady who has something to share with everyone.
  42. The Ivory Game may be a harsh wakeup call to anyone concerned about the future of the largest land mammal, but it’s also a keen evaluation of the efforts being made to correct the situation.
  43. Inconsistent tonality, uneven pacing, and far too many self-referential winks dilute this tale of unrequited love before it even has a chance to fully develop.
  44. Trolls is a spectacularly empty fantasia of bad songs, bright lights, and militant happiness. But there’s no denying how well the film bludgeons you into submission when it gets into its groove.
  45. Timely and opportunistic in equal measure, You’ve Been Trumped Too is first and foremost a hit-piece on a presidential candidate, an entertaining work of agitprop that recognizes how voters are swayed by individual case studies more than they are by abstract arguments.
  46. It’s a remarkable time capsule, and the whiplash of overnight fame has seldom been captured with such visceral force, but the film is so high on the absurdity of it all that it never relays any palpable sense of what it really feels like to suddenly be given everything you’ve ever wanted.
  47. As with all of the best installments of the MCU, the film’s unique strengths have a perverse way of highlighting the franchise’s shared weaknesses. But Doctor Strange deserves credit for treating several of the ailments that have been infecting the series, and for diagnosing several more.
  48. A film that often avoids any middle ground, making for a cut-and-dried courtroom tale that desperately wants to be anything but.
  49. Even as the movie lingers on the question of whether one woman has more talent than the other, Always Shine is an effective actor’s showcase for both of them.
  50. “Best Worst Thing” is more than a story about a Broadway show; its most poignant moments examine the thrill of dreams coming true, and the inevitable come down afterwards.
  51. Herzog shoots first, and asks how the footage might be pertinent to his project later; Into the Inferno often feels scattered and listless as a result, but this tactic is also responsible for so many of the movie’s most perfect moments.
  52. Moore’s premeditated attempts to wring some laughs out of this category 5 shitstorm are so half-assed that you wish he hadn’t bothered.... It’s as though he realized that the film could have been just as successful as a podcast, and compensated for that fact by shoehorning in some needless visual razzmatazz.
  53. The most surprising thing about Keeping Up with the Joneses isn’t that it’s actually funny, but that some touching unlikely friendships emerge amidst the outrageous action sequences.
  54. Cruise’s undeniable star power is all that keeps “Never Go Back” from feeling like it came off a studio assembly line, though you’ll still spend most of the movie wondering if you’ve been swindled into watching a movie about Ethan Hunt’s luddite twin brother.
  55. “Ouija” is genuinely frightening and smart, the rare horror prequel able to stand on its own merits and deliver a full-bodied story that succeeds without any previous knowledge or trappings. However, in outfitting this particular haunted house with monsters to spare, Flanagan loses the thread of what’s really scary: Everything we can’t see.
  56. One of the most compelling things about Karem Sanga’s raw and emotionally radiant First Girl I Loved is how well it captures the heart-pounding terror of becoming someone, the one-way nausea of committing to yourself.
  57. So long as “Billy Lynn” remains focused on his ambiguous mindset, it remains an engaging, somewhat theatrical character study. But Lee’s ongoing need to complicate his approach yields a movie trapped between conventional narrative tropes and questionable attempts to deliver something that registers on a more visceral level.
  58. The gentle, lushly visualized and exasperatingly diffuse Miss Hokusai is a missed opportunity in many respects, but it certainly does a magnificent job of validating its own existence.
  59. Desierto throws subtlety to the wind, but not without purpose.
  60. Angelou’s life and work was rich, significant, influential and hugely varied, and yet “And Still I Rise” is hobbled by unimaginative delivery and direction. In short, it’s limited, and Angelou’s own history proves that limitations must be fought against at every turn.
  61. If this fun but frequently exasperating new chapter in Godzilla’s never-ending story feels like a major anomaly, its eccentricities are what best allow it to channel the forward-thinking urgency of Honda’s original.
  62. While “Jason Bourne meets Temple Grandin” might sound like an interesting idea for a studio write-off, “James Bond meets Michael Clayton meets Rain Man meets all of their friends and enemies” is a dull movie that’s too full of distractions to pay out any dividends.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    If the first film was ploddingly, airlessly faithful to its source, this follows the second in being frantically paced, chaotic and increasingly exasperating.
  63. Though its final act lacks the sharp focus of the moments leading up to it, Tower is a fascinating blend of suspense and journalistic inquiry.
  64. This is the rare movie that’s redeemed by its unchecked nostalgia.
  65. The film’s hyper-naturalism is its raison d’etre, and Being 17 is at its best when it leans into that approach.
  66. Dazzling but disjointed, ambitious but unconvincing, Mirzya stumbles under the weight of its own epic aspirations.
  67. Things to Come may lack the urgency or cool that flecks the writer-director’s previous movies, but this is perhaps her richest piece to date, a warm, funny and profoundly sensitive portrait of letting go and learning to make new memories.
  68. No matter how basic Hawkins’ book might be in comparison to some of the ones that came before it, it’s hard to argue that it didn’t deserve better than this, that any story so smartly attuned to the need for women to hear themselves and each other should be reduced to such flavorless swill.
  69. The sturdiest ingredient in 13TH is the testimony from people who clearly know what they’re talking about.
  70. It’s a sober account of police militarization in the 21st century that, no matter one’s stance on the matter, makes a brutal statement.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    With ideological clashes that span countries, Among the Believers offers an intricate and frightening look into the microcosm of our current world’s biggest international issue.
  71. If there’s any interiority to Fields, Toller isn’t interested in finding it; Danny Says would much rather provide the umpteenth account of Andy Warhol’s social circle (to mention but one of the movie’s many asides) than dig beneath the dirt in an attempt to learn more about one of the key figures who helped shape that scene.
  72. It’s every cheap, fast, loose, pointless joke in the book, and barely any of them can clear a solid laugh.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Split avoids being entirely tedious thanks to McAvoy’s standout performance as he cycles through those personalities, sometimes from line to line.
  73. “Miss Peregrine’s” is a hollow ode to wonder and weirdness that suggests we’re running perilously low on both.
  74. Kim Jee-woon will always gravitate towards the bleaker side of the things, but “The Age of Shadows” suggests that his stories might benefit from just a little bit more light.
  75. Blue Jay doesn’t lean on destiny or succumb to the easy refrain that time is a great equalizer. There’s genuine happiness here, but heartbreak is always right behind it.
  76. It’s a crime drama chewed up by a cheeky sense of humor — or, maybe it’s a quirky comedy set against the miserable campgrounds that lie on the fringes of the criminal underworld.
  77. When The Lovers and the Despot finally crawls to a close, you’re left with one thought above all others: This could make for a really great movie, some day.
  78. This quiet, difficult little movie — so stubbornly opaque that its torpedo of a last shot almost makes it feel as though Franco has been trolling us the whole time — is the rare film that has the courage to stomach the reality of life after death.
  79. Neither wacky enough to work as pure punchline, nor smart enough to bend its looniness into something more substantial, Storks views the world with the same confused outlook of its wide-eyed infants.
  80. If nothing else, this loving — borderline fetishistic — concert movie makes a compelling case for the musicianship, artistry, and sheer athleticism of pop music. Well, good pop music, anyway.
  81. As a 92-minute commercial for a deeper look at the case, Amanda Knox is unquestionably intriguing; as a standalone offering, it makes one hell of an airtight case for something bigger and better.
  82. Bolstered by real events and true emotion, A United Kingdom opts for genuine, hard-won feeling, and the film studiously backs off from cheesy moments or over-the-top revelations.
  83. The romantic scenes are cute, but they feel at odds with the drama. The laughs land like chuckles, the love registers as mere fondness, and the salient observation that countries recast themselves during wartime is reduced to a fleeting detail.
  84. No amount of strong performances and good vibes can hide the sense that we’re just watching a paint-by-numbers routine. Nair puts so much effort into galvanizing the movie’s central figures that the slightest hints of conflict register as little more than an inconvenience.
  85. A beautiful wisp of an idea that is seldom compelling and almost never coherent, Planetarium squanders an irresistibly alluring premise.
  86. Not every moment stimulates a belly laugh, but that’s part of the point. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea is more thoughtful than meets the eye, a cockeyed ode to what it feels like when nobody takes you seriously.
  87. With no score and zero levity, Lady Macbeth maintains a constant atmospheric dread. Oldroyd crafts a masterful sense of uncertainty about how far Katherine will go to preserve her dominance.
  88. The endless chaos of nature embodies the abstract threat of imminent destruction; by imbuing these shots with a combination of mystical allure and darker possibilities, Diaz creates a haunting atmosphere that makes it possible to absorb the story even when it slows to a crawl.
  89. Unfolding like a symphony of small humiliations, there isn’t a moment in this movie that doesn’t feel at least vaguely familiar, and there isn’t a moment in this movie that doesn’t feel completely true.
  90. 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.
  91. The movie presents its plot like a ridiculous gamble, and keeps pulling it off, somehow managing to justify its existence.
  92. No matter its flaws, Tukel’s witty inversion of the buddy movie formula — set in an embellished world riddled by wartime dysfunction — has some legitimate ideas about the way feuds can last so long that neither side remembers what they’re fighting over.
  93. Lion, the first feature directed by Garth Davis, sufficiently realizes the emotional arc built into Brieley’s experience.
  94. Anchored by Natalie Portman’s achy-eyed performance, Jackie is, despite a few wrinkles at the end, about the best version of this story you can get.
  95. Told with the ramshackle energy of a first feature (but with a depth that hints at many more to come), Hart’s debut blossoms into a lovingly realized story of grief, getting by, and finding help in unexpected places.
  96. Cheesy without being self-aware, hobbled by rampant transphobia that the screenplay’s too dumb to address, this inane burst of campy stupidity can’t get beyond the sheer absurdity of its very existence.

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