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For 71 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 12% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 87% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 90 Sirât
Lowest review score: 20 Alpha
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 33 out of 71
  2. Mixed: 36 out of 71
  3. Negative: 2 out of 71
71 movie reviews
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  1. It Was Just an Accident
    In many of Panahi’s past films, along with many Iranian artists working within the confines of a brutal regime, his cinema has been coded and metaphorical (though clearly not enough to avoid extreme censure). But this time, there’s no doubt with this explicit critique, which utilizes a familiar narrative formula but has the potency of a poison pen letter aimed to slash through the debilitating censorship demanded of auteurs expected to exist as prisms of propaganda.
  2. Two Prosecutors
    At a point in time, a film like Two Prosecutors would seem like an old fashioned recapitulation of a dark, disastrous period we’d safely moved away from. However, it’s difficult not to see crystal clear parallels, on an operational level at the least, with NKVD, an agency operating with complete autonomy, and something like the newly minted monstrosity DOGE in the US.
  3. Little Trouble Girls
    Djukić is profoundly interested in capturing the tormented process of women’s sexual experiences, shaped by the restrictions imposed upon them by society, religion, and each other.
  4. Closure
    Marczak is clearly a talented filmmaker, but his instincts seem better suited to narrative than documentary; his eagerness to flourish prevents a true marriage between form and direction.
  5. Young Mothers
    Arguably, there’s nothing innately wrong with Young Mothers, other than it feeling like a return to safer socio-cultural predicaments which characterized the directors’ earlier output, which often involved children.
  6. The Testament of Ann Lee
    Ultimately, The Testament of Ann Lee feels like Willa Cather’s version of The Witch (2015).
  7. The Mastermind
    Compared to Reichardt’s greatest hits thus far, it’s her least compelling presentation of a solitary, melancholic character to date.
  8. Timestamp
    While it contains powerful imagery, Gornostai isn’t digging too deeply into the mechanics of the education system, more so showcasing the resilient evolution of a besieged population.
  9. Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!
    The choreography feels restrained and intimate and when Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! swerves into fantasy its catchy and feels vibrant — and is methodically threaded with the notion of letting go, and that even finality can be cheerfully addressed.
  10. Father Mother Sister Brother
    Strange yet familiar, ending on a wistful note to the crooning of Anika, a favored artist of the director, the strange pain associated with not living up to the conditioned expectations of our prescribed roles is exactly what makes Father Mother Sister Brother feel poignant.
  11. Nouvelle Vague
    Essentially, Linklater is applying his own hangout tableaux to the New Wave alumni. But it fails to capture the energy of what exactly made them such trailblazers.
  12. Living the Land
    In many ways, Living the Land plays like the fictionalized version of moments in Wang Bing’s Youth trilogy, particularly in communal moments of intersecting realities. It’s a familiar human story, yet one which carves out its own fierceness as seasons change, life goes on, and new generations must contend with being unable to inherit the fruits of their parents’ toils.
  13. A House of Dynamite
    While this is vastly better than the B-grade action franchise generated by Olympus Has Fallen (2012), the fatal error of the film exists in its structural foundation.
  14. DJ Ahmet
    Simple, sweet, and perhaps a bit too disarming, familiar stakes and an ambiguous resolution make DJ Ahmet feel more mundane than it should.
  15. Eagles of the Republic
    Saleh’s script seems to be beating around the veritable bush for nearly two hours before it slams into violent gear, which effectively snaps the audience into a whiplash, but would have felt more effective had it arrived sooner. A tighter edit would greatly reduce the aimless, meandering quality, especially since multiple scenes regarding the film’s shoot also, by the nature of their falseness, feel flat.
  16. Gentle Monster
    Gentle Monster is perhaps a bit two striated in its examination of these two women and their eventual choices.
  17. La Grazia
    Certainly, Sorrentino does ask questions worth pondering. But the corresponding answers are often monosyllabic.
  18. Jay Kelly
    Between tidbits of enjoyable banter, Baumbach stages some of the most comically tone-deaf moments of his career.
  19. A Woman's Life
    Patches of narrative banality and fussy details are thankfully overshadowed by an effervescent lead performance which manages to unite all the messy threads into a satisfying melancholic portrait of a rigid personality who (maybe) finally learns a painful lesson in the necessity of exploring passion on her own terms.
  20. Everybody to Kenmure Street
    Despite its flaws, the film’s affirmation of immigration and shared humanity feels rare, timely, and quietly powerful in a divided Britain.
  21. Yellow Letters
    What’s shocking is how rough hewn the characters and sentiments are in Yellow Letters considering Çatak’s laser sharp focus in The Teachers’ Lounge.
  22. Nuisance Bear
    Nuisance Bear is many things at once – a critical look at the traces the erosion of long-held practices and vanishing ways of life added to technological encroachment and human interference making for another tangle of unintended consequences.
  23. Homegrown
    While examining the broader implications of political polarization and on a lesser frequency the fragility of democracy, journo-director Michael Premo’s debut often captures crucial moments of civil unrest with a well-placed camera.
  24. The Smashing Machine
    The emotional payoff of the film isn’t so much about triumph, but resilience. And the reality of never knowing how being yourself inspires others, even long after it might seem the opportunity to do so has passed.
  25. Flathead
    Martin sets himself up with an ambitious endeavor for a first time feature, but unfortunately, it’s just out of his reach. Utilizing abstraction to achieve universal sensations is almost like pulling off a magic trick — it looks easy when done well, but the seams split and show when it doesn’t come off just right.
  26. Dreams
    In the world of Franco, humankind always resorts to base brutality, and this is a hemorrhaging revenge film suggesting the cruelest crimes are those of the heart.
  27. Sheep in the Box
    Frustratingly limited and unfortunately banal, it’s one of the prolific filmmaker’s most disappointing efforts to date and feels desperately in need of an updated operating system as regards its narrative reach.
  28. Ballad of a Small Player
    It seems doubtful that Ballad of Small Player will serve as a third straight return to the Academy Awards for Berger. However, it does firmly establish the filmmaker as perhaps the finest purveyor of reliably high gloss pulp. But even as far as low stakes bets go, the film only offers a very modest payout.
  29. Rosebush Pruning
    If there’s any need to make another film about despicable, beautiful, filthy rich monsters, at least decide what, if anything, might be of interest to say. If families are rose bushes needing pruning, then so are scripts.
  30. The Electric Kiss
    Salvadori’s greatest crime is denying Antoine and Suzanne the space to develop the chemistry which makes their budding romance seem plausible.
  31. Parallel Tales
    Unfortunately, the end result feels as shockingly out of touch as a principal character’s devotion to a typewriter.
  32. Fire of Wind
    Ultimately a tad tiresome even with a slim running time of seventy-four minutes, Fire of Wind suggests Mateus has the eye of a formidable filmmaker, but the narrative feels like more of a concept than statement.
  33. Sauna
    It’s a film about learning how to navigate the fulfillment of our needs or the procurement of meaningful connections.
  34. A Sad and Beautiful World
    A Sad and Beautiful World captures the tension between the desperate need to leave and the eternal longing to return but the playtime that Akil and Akl do get together plays more like a highlight real than dramatically compounding.
  35. Maldoror
    Perhaps a bit more mainstream than might be expected from the distinctive human miseries usually employed by du Welz, Maldoror is an enjoyably meaty recuperation of an infamous scandal.
  36. Nightborn
    One’s familiarity with similar agonized portraits of motherhood may dictate how novel Nightborn might seem, though it’s lonely, traumatized Sara who makes one want to stay until the end credits.

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