IndieWire's Scores

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:
5173 movie reviews
  1. To talk about Toy Story 4 is to talk about Forky. This is a movie that doesn’t initially appear to have any compelling reason to exist — the forced but satisfying third installment of Pixar’s signature franchise seemed to wrap things up when it came out almost a full decade ago — and yet Forky alone is enough to elevate this potential cash-grab into the beautiful and hilarious coda that its long-running series needed to be truly complete. Forky is the hero we need in 2019.
  2. It’s a smart and sturdy behind-the-scenes look at a high-profile #MeToo drama, and succeeds at scrutinizing the conundrum facing countless women still afraid of speaking out.
  3. No disrespect to the similarly Proustian rewards of “Ratatouille,” but here is a 73-minute movie — animated by about 10 people — that manages to deliver twice the flavor with a fraction of the ingredients.
  4. So exuberant and full of life that it would probably convince you the movies were back even if they hadn’t gone anywhere, In the Heights is the kind of electrifying theatrical experience that people have been waxing nostalgic about ever since the pandemic began — the kind that it almost seemed like we might never get to enjoy again.
  5. At an economical 90-minute running time, Fire of Love packs a visual and emotional wallop, with enough close-ups on erupting volcanoes — one, at a point, is called “a bathtub with a hole in it, sowing death all around” — to leave you slack-jawed, terrified, and awe-inspired.
  6. The violent beauty of this film, which rips your soul out of your chest so completely that its seismic grief almost feels like falling in love or becoming a parent, is that it’s as much about the experience of having a child as it is about the experience of losing one.
  7. The Witch becomes a focused portrait of fixed rituals crumbling in the face of inexplicable forces, evoking the fear of change lurking in the shadows at every moment. Despite the setting, its scares are uniquely contemporary.
  8. There's a adrenaline rush even in the problematic finish, an eagerness that drives the filmmaking so that Looper is thrilling to watch even when it falls apart.
  9. Staggeringly beautiful and immensely true, the best animated film of 2016 — one of the year’s best films of any kind, really.
  10. Winsome, sweet, and often very funny, The Other Side of Hope is more of the same from Kaurismäki, and thank God for that.
  11. It’s a clever exercise in no-frills science fiction that should please fans of the genre, but it’s more than just a sci-fi exercise thanks to a script that prioritizes, and cares about, its characters.
  12. It’s an enticing challenge for the writer-director to develop a stylish mood piece out this flimsy material, adapted from a Jonathan Ames novella as a series of textured moments. The movie is an elegant homage to a mold of scrappy detective stories that often collapses into a concise pileup of stylish possibilities.
  13. Lowery manages to find entertainment value and genuine intrigue from his outlandish scenario, synthesizing the magical realism of his earlier films with a tighter grasp of tone.
  14. Ultimately, Widows works as well as it does due to the way McQueen juggles substance with entertainment value to such eager subversive ends. The movie engages with topics as complex as sexism, police brutality, and interracial marriage, but it still delivers on the car chases and gunplay.
  15. In its way, this small, handcrafted, and immaculately well-realized feature challenges the limited way that movies tend to depict loss.
  16. Lapid’s film is too fresh and intransigent to know how well it will age over time or hold up to repeat viewings, but on first blush it feels like a powerful howl that’s hard to hear clearly, and harder still to get out of your head.
  17. The filmmakers illustrate that governmental power is a fickle thing, prone to exploitation and good will alike, depending on who decides to pursue its offices.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Feeling as his films often do, both traditional and surprisingly ahead of its time, it’s one of the best films ever made on the subject of infidelity and marriage.
  18. With a keen eye for the capacity of fine art to address a complex range of attitudes and experiences, Museum Hours effectively applies Cohen's existing strengths to a familiar scenario and rejuvenates it by delivering a powerfully contemplative look at the transformative ability of all art.
  19. If On Her Shoulders struggles for an ending, perhaps that’s because we have to supply our own. People like Nadia can’t fix the world, but this vital documentary is proof that it’s heroic enough just to be heard.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Rowdy, profane and, happily avoiding the cheap theatrics of the triumphant finale usually found in sports films, The Bad News Bears is yet another wonderfully unruly example of the lost, lamented ’70s cinema.
  20. The Descendants constantly hovers on the brink of a dark comedy. But it never takes the big plug. By treading carefully, Payne has created his warmest, most earnest work, if not his best.
  21. First Man is an anti-thriller of rare intensity, with lived-in performances from Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy heightening the sky-high drama at every turn. It’s not a comprehensive look at the Apollo 11 mission, but revisits that famous story from a more intimate angle, even as it delivers a satisfying ride.
  22. Unapologetically long and messy, Snowpiercer offers an unhinged ride that's worth the investment for its mixture of batty personalities, consistently impressive visuals and mad swipes at heavy symbolism jam-packed together.
  23. The film’s only villain is the passage of time, and its protagonists are simply facing the unpleasant realization that their era is ending sooner than their lifespans.
  24. “Hard Times” offers no radical change from the (quite deliberately) repetitive construction of “Spring,” but does feature subtle shifts in focus and certainly a lot more in the way of incident and splintering effects.
  25. While The Fallout allows for lightness to occasionally emerge, the film never forgets the experience at its center, one that can never be fully forgotten.
  26. This movie is not about suicide, which would mean it would be about death. Rather, it’s about life, life that is far more complex than the soundbite clips from the past can give.
  27. The filmmakers have instead provided a brilliant window into the impact of the contemporary media circus on public life. While not exactly a figure of sympathy — he lied, after all, more than once — Weiner nevertheless maintains the charisma and drive to provide the movie with one of the most compelling anti-heroes in recent memory.
  28. Visually, emotionally, and spiritually, the film is embalmed in an antiseptic sheen. As such, despite its formal rigor and effective, economic approach to storytelling, “Stonewalling” is hard to connect with.

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