Paste Magazine's Scores

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For 2,243 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 60% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 37% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.4 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Young Frankenstein
Lowest review score: 7 Reagan
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,591 out of 2243
  2. Mixed: 515 out of 2243
  3. Negative: 137 out of 2243
2243 movie reviews
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  1. Sicario: Day of the Soldado
    The movie’s action is no-nonsense, no-frills explosions and machine gun stuff, and it lacks the soaring vision of Villeneuve; Sollima is much more of a plunge-forward linear filmmaker. That approach has its advantages, though, and while I wouldn’t have wanted Sollima to try to tackle some of the thornier ethical issues of the first film, he’s more than capable of rampaging through and past them here.
  2. Leave No Trace
    What Leave No Trace portrays so beautifully, with so much unspoken grace, is that divide between living and surviving to live. One can find all of that dissonance in Foster’s fathomless eyes.
  3. Ant-Man and the Wasp
    The movie is ultimately harmless, trivial puffery that vanishes from your brain as quickly as you experience it.
  4. The Year of Spectacular Men
    If The Year of Spectacular Men makes any kind of statement, it’s that Madelyn and Zoey ought to work together more often. Put simply, they’re amazing, lively, sharp, snarky with a side of cheer—for the time being The Year of Spectacular Men feels like their gift to us, an unexpected blend of comedic tones and a perfectly bittersweet summertime respite.
  5. Tag
    Tag is a bit of a mess, the well-paced runtime not allowing gag-based physical comedy and dramedy to exist equally on the same plain, just barely fun enough to keep an otherwise one-joke premise elevated.
  6. Eating Animals
    This film is basically 100% about message, and that message is a dire one. There are probably people who will accuse this film of propagandizing or sensationalizing or exaggerating, but from what I can tell, that’s not particularly the case.
  7. The Raid 2
    Though the addition of “extras” like multiple locations, a larger cast of non-fodder characters and oh, actual dialogue, makes The Raid 2 much less unique a film than its predecessor, it still registers as a pretty vibrant entry into the Yakuza genre.
  8. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
    The newest Marvel blockbuster-to-be boasts an array of well-cast leads and supporting characters; a crisply paced, sensible plot; and above-average dialogue. Even more importantly, every scene and every character interaction prove that the movie’s creative team truly understands the core appeal of Cap himself—the tone of not just the character, but the comic book series from which he springs.
  9. The Amazing Spider-Man 2
    Ultimately, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is noteworthy for one thing—not waiting until the third or fourth film to achieve the overstuffed, increasingly garish look one associates with less popular (2007’s Spider-Man 3) and outright ridiculed (1997’s Batman and Robin) franchise efforts.
  10. Guardians of the Galaxy
    Marvel’s rambunctious entry into the space opera genre—and the cornerstone of its “Cosmic Marvel” roster of characters and storylines—so perfectly embodies what the preceding months of hype and hope foretold that even its weak points (and it has its share) feel almost like unavoidable imperfections—broken eggs for a pretty satisfying omelet.
  11. Ant-Man
    Ant-Man has more than its share of logic lapses and convenient (read: sloppy) scripting, but most viewers won’t care. In much the same way Guardians of the Galaxy was powered by the charisma and affability of Chris Pratt, Ant-Man is buoyed by the charm of Rudd.
  12. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
    As far as structure, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 has pretty much the same flaws as its source material. Freed from the confines of the literal arena from the first two books/movies, the overarching sequence of events seems ragged by comparison.
  13. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens
    Star Wars is fun again. Fans whose love for the series was forged with the Original Trilogy will see too much they recognize (and, later, missed) not to love this effort.
  14. Captain America: Civil War
    The way in which Captain America: Civil War brings together a dozen or so heroes, sorts them into not one but two teams and then flings them at each other is its own special delight for comic book fans long accustomed to such things on the printed or digital page. And it must be pretty exciting for non-fans, too.
  15. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
    By the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the audience is unlikely to feel they’ve seen anything that different from Vol. 1, but it’s clear that Gunn and company knew exactly what qualities made the first film so enjoyable, and what they needed to do to make sure this particular sequel was worth the wait.
  16. Incredibles 2
    By comparison, the long-awaited The Incredibles 2 is inescapably messier throughout. The villain and scheme are not quite as compelling, and the choreography of character and location—another hallmark of the first film—is a perceptible degree sloppier. Nonetheless, it feels great to be back.
  17. Action Point
    Such a thin plot from some of the Jackass guys would have been completely forgiven, or even blissfully ignored, if the stunts were on par, or at least close to, what we expect from these guys.
  18. Hotel Artemis
    Despite the ingredients at hand, Pearce and company never really pull it together in a manner that realizes the potential. The result is a pulp buffet that feels like it should have been a gourmet meal—a Golden Corral of genre conventions (that leaves the audience feeling about as satisfied).
  19. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
    Too often, Fallen Kingdom has all the soul and grace of a well-prepared business proposal—you can sense all the money being invested into an intellectual property in order to reap a sizable windfall and ensure the franchise’s continued commercial viability. It’s as scintillating as a retirement plan.
  20. Ocean's 8
    Ocean’s 8 feels a bit like a high-end knockoff in that way that lots of spinoff films can, although the compensation is the familiar delights of watching smart characters do their job very, very well.
  21. Hearts Beat Loud
    As a showcase for its leads, it’s delightful. All it’s missing is a touch of honest-to-goodness gravity to keep the story anchored.
  22. Won't You Be My Neighbor?
    The primary fascination of Won’t You Be My Neighbor? lives when it stands outside this man and stares at him, unfathomably, wondering what in the world must have made him tick. The film tries to do more than that, with varying levels of success, but that’s the core: Who is this guy?
  23. How to Talk to Girls at Parties
    How to Talk to Girls at Parties is a deliciously bizarre and refreshingly unique experience that not only manages to successfully meld two completely opposite tones—punk and whimsy—but to wrap them up into an exhilarating narrative that infuses a familiar sci-fi/comedy/romance structure with a host of surprises that even the most hardened genre scholar will appreciate.
  24. American Animals
    Layton’s failure is frustrating. American Animals is a rare thing, truth that’s legitimately stranger than fiction. Bereft of a cohesive structure, the movie loses purpose, and that rare, strange truth is lost in workaday heist tropes blended with workaday documentary portraiture.
  25. The Tale
    This beautiful, gripping, disturbing film deserves to be looked at with as much nuance as it offers. It’s not a damned hashtag-anything movie, it’s a potent and poetic autobiography that refuses polemic or politics. It manages to dive so deeply into the personal that it explodes into something universal.
  26. Everybody Knows
    Farhadi remains excellent at showing how easily family units can splinter after years of relative peacetime. But he can’t quite floor us as he once did—we’ve been braced to expect the unexpected from him.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 62 Critic Score
    The Image Book
    This could well be the old-man-yells-at-cloud meme in avant-garde cinematic form. Yet amid countless examples of pessimism both verbal and visual, Le Livre D’Image also occasionally ventures into hopefulness.
  28. Summer 1993
    Summer of 1993 does what movies do so well (and yet so rarely do), which is to let viewers see the world through the eyes of another.
  29. First Reformed
    It’s a gorgeous film, mourning the impossibility of being alive as it celebrates that which binds us, a conscious-rattling, viscera-stirring piece of art.
  30. Solo: A Star Wars Story
    It’s a pretty great blockbuster if you don’t think about it much.
  31. Beast
    Beast plays with enough restraint to sustain our doubts for most of its duration, its gentle and often lovely filmmaking lulling us toward false certainties about its underlying inhumanity.
  32. Dark Crimes
    Carrey commits one hundred and ten percent, fluctuating accent notwithstanding. It’s only a matter of time before his newfound artistic intensity will be matched to suitable material to create something special.
  33. Deadpool 2
    Deadpool 2 is at its best when it cheerfully doesn’t give a shit. The more it cared, the less I did.
  34. Book Club
    The natural chemistry between the four leads is what gives this material the energy it needs. They all bring their A-game here.
  35. Let the Sunshine In
    The blend of artistry and genre is breezy and dense at the same time, a film worth enjoying for its surface charms and studied for its deeply personal reflections on intimacy. You may delight in its lively, buoyant filmmaking, but you’ll be awed by the breadth of its insight.
  36. Revenge
    With Revenge, Fargeat has waved a blistering middle finger at rape culture and rape culture’s enablers. Revenge isn’t hers alone. It’s womanhood’s, too.
  37. Traffik
    There doesn’t seem to be any insidious motivation behind writer/director Deon Taylor’s vision for his film, no purposeful undermining of the real impact of sex slavery by coating it in a veneer similar to what can modestly be described as a highly eroticized, run-off-the-mill basic cable home invasion thriller. It’s misguided, not nefarious.
  38. Lu Over the Wall
    Does the experience improve under the influence? Possibly. Then again, Yuasa’s work is effectively intoxicating on its own merits, squiggly and colorful, animation off-kilter enough to send you on a cinematic trip so long as you let it wash over you.
  39. The Rider
    What cinematographer Joshua James Richards can do with a camera bears the weight of countless filmmakers in thrall to the pregnant possibility of this marvelous continent. Every frame of this film speaks of innumerable lives—passions and failures and tragedies and triumphs—unfolding unfathomably.
  40. Mrs. Hyde
    There are problems with Mrs. Hyde that have nothing whatsoever to do with Bozon’s puzzling creative choices, though for perspective’s sake, the problems are dwarfed by the choices.
  41. Tully
    The movie takes some risks near the end that underline the story’s central themes while also undercutting them. But Tully is at its best when it’s simply moving intuitively from one negotiated respite to the next.
  42. The Devil and Father Amorth
    It bears an overall feeling that we’re watching a work in progress.
  43. Avengers: Infinity War
    Avengers: Infinity War is epic in a way that has been often aspired to but never fully grasped when it comes to the translation from comic book panel to the Big Screen. It’s what happens when moviemakers take their source material seriously, eschewing unnecessary melodrama even as they fully embrace the grandeur, the sheer spectacle, of it all.
  44. Mercury 13
    The editorial balance between talking heads and visions from the past is fantastic, and it’s spot-on stylistically. Honestly, if this film doesn’t grab you by the heart, check your pulse to make sure you still have one.
  45. Kings
    It’s genre salad, and every ingredient is wilted at a moment in America where Kings’ historical makeup remains fresh.
  46. I Feel Pretty
    The movie keeps trying the bank shot of propping up its crazed premise while its lead actress, gamely, almost bravely, tries to undercut it. It never quite makes it, but you appreciate how hard it, and she, tries.
  47. Super Troopers 2
    Juvenile is as juvenile does, but the Broken Lizard fellows supplement their puerile nonsense with abiding endearment. They’re idiots, but sincere, disarming idiots. Like the characters they play in both movies, they mean well, but meaning well comes in second to antics when spending your career making concerted efforts to avoid responsibility.
  48. Rampage
    This is a ridiculous movie without much desire or energy to get too ridiculous.
  49. Zama
    Bewitching and masterfully rendered, Zama is an elegant, ravishing, often delightfully strange achievement.
  50. Blumhouse's Truth or Dare
    Truth or Dare commits the cardinal sin of a film with such a stupid premise; it tries to explain the spiritual source of the game.
  51. Godard Mon Amour
    Godard Mon Amour captures the complications and the controversy, but Hazanavicius struggles to drum up meaningful insights into what makes Godard Godard.
  52. Ghost Stories
    Ghost Stories’ failure to see its established ideas through to the end doesn’t totally negate the viewing experience. Each segment remains effectively chilling in a vacuum where the movie’s climax doesn’t exist.
  53. Wildling
    As Wildling’s center, Powley keeps our attention in her orbit, and Böhm constructs a universe around her that’s worthy of her talent (if at times too murkily filmed for its own good). But the movie loses its thread 15 minutes or so into its running time.
  54. Foxtrot
    With its unflinching and painstaking execution of such grim subject matter, Foxtrot is certainly not an easy watch, but an ultimately rewarding one.
  55. First Match
    Newman has pretty serious filmmaking chops: She shoots action cleanly, coherently, with an eye for the poetry of a well-executed suplex and the brutality of a back alley brawl. Her strongest work, though, is seen in her characters and in her lead.
  56. The China Hustle
    The China Hustle handily clarifies opaque topics and moves like a bullet, but the bullet catches us right in the gut. By the time the film ends you’ll wish you could go back to being ignorant again.
  57. A Quiet Place
    A Quiet Place is an extremely compelling experience—but it could have been greater still.
  58. Lean on Pete
    The power of writer-director Andrew Haigh’s sublime drama is that it can support myriad interpretations while remaining teasingly mysterious—like its main character, it’s always just a bit out of reach, constantly enticing us to look closer.
  59. Blockers
    If the film’s direction is workmanlike and the writers’ plotting flimsy, then the better to focus on the cast. They’re a joy to watch together.
  60. You Were Never Really Here
    Each of her previous movies captures human collapse in slow motion. You Were Never Really Here is a breakdown shot in hyperdrive, lean, economic, utterly ruthless and made with fiery craftsmanship. Let this be the language we use to characterize her reputation as one of the best filmmakers working today.
  61. John Carter
    It’s tempting to believe a great sci-fi yarn exists in Carter, somewhere in the no doubt thick sheaf of studio notes demanding more spoon-feeding of an audience they believe to be equally thick. But more likely, it’s possible that Stanton simply wasn’t ready to make the leap from animation to super-budgeted live action.
  62. Prometheus
    Despite consistently astounding production values, Prometheus is hobbled throughout by a screenplay that would have been jettisoned out of the airlock normally reserved for scripts rejected by the SyFy Original Channel.
  63. Dredd
    This is a film that aims squarely at respecting its source’s established fan base, and cares little for casualties who can’t hang on through its grindhouse paces.
  64. Wreck-It Ralph
    The world of Sugar Rush itself merits some mention, too. Deliriously inventive and pulsing with life, it almost seems a shame a real video game wasn’t developed from its blueprints; it’s a world in which one wants to linger.
  65. The Man with the Iron Fists
    The undertaking of an endeavor like this without prior feature film directing experience—as well as convincing a studio and many established talents to back him—is nothing short of extraordinary. But, in the end, The Man with the Iron Fists will have to settle for having crossed the finish line at all. Good hustle. Good hustle.
  66. Buffalo Girls
    That Buffalo Girls makes its stand as an empowering journey of perseverance and champion’s spirit, rather than a reflection on the larger societal underpinnings is not to its detriment.
  67. In Their Skin
    The most frustrating thing about Jeremy Power Regimbal’s directorial debut is there’s part of a very effective thriller here. It’s just not the good part.
  68. John Dies at the End
    Cult favorite director Don Coscarelli knows which way to twist the knobs and navigate through the static of mindfuckery that follows.
  69. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
    Unfortunately, Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola’s Hansel & Gretel is just another entry in Bland Fairy Tale Theater, a shapeless riff on those hapless German siblings with the worst parents ever.
  70. Warm Bodies
    Warm Bodies shambles along as inoffensively as its “regular” zombies—with little fright, little gore and an occasional chuckle. But, as a mild diversion that won’t bother either person on a date, one could do far worse.
  71. Side Effects
    Unsurprisingly, the substance of a movie genre is again enriched with his latest, masterfully spare and confident effort.
  72. Detour
    Despite doubling as a plausibility-straining endorsement for the battery life of Apple’s iPhone, Dickerson’s claustrophobic survival thriller proves itself a technically proficient, expertly paced affair.
  73. The Wolverine
    As much as director James Mangold’s cinematic interpretation had going for it prior to pre-production, it’s a pity it only seldom succeeds—largely due to the decisions made way back before Darren Aronofsky was attached to helm.
  74. We Are What We Are
    When it adheres to this storytelling maxim, Jim Mickle’s gender-flipped remake of Jorge Michel Grau’s well-received 2010 horror flick, We Are What We Are, is a powerfully expressed, atmospheric gem. If only it didn’t flinch from time to time, seemingly unable to resist the temptation to make sure the audience “gets it.”
  75. Bounty Killer
    Its ambition is as small as its budget, but hell if the filmmaker, cast and crew don’t seem more than enthusiastic in serving up the entirely nutrition-less titillation.
  76. La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus
    Kendall wisely avoids imposing Western values on the proceedings. The details of life intrinsic to the country speak for themselves, and the film forms more a story that amounts to fascination with the journey of the singular camioneta.
  77. Her
    Far from taking the comfortable approach as yet another cautionary sci-fi tale of technology run amok, Her isn’t interested in holding a dystopic mirror up to society. Jonze instead posits a wonderfully original alternative to Skynet and the Matrix—in the future, the first self-aware A.I. won’t destroy the world, but it may just break your heart.
  78. Alien Abduction
    Alien Abduction fails to thrill or chill.
  79. Under the Skin
    For those with the patience, and for those who simply love the way a fascinatingly unique film can so fully convey and shape a point of view, Under the Skin will reward the time spent in the theater.
  80. X-Men: Days of Future Past
    Singer threads the needle with such apparent effortlessness in stitching it all together, the seams are practically invisible. It may not be as showy as telekinesis or plasma-laser eyes, but it’s an uncanny gift nevertheless.
  81. The Expendables 3
    Joke’s way over, guys, and everyone’s now uncomfortable, thanks. Now, who needs a drink…?
  82. Ragnarok
    Ragnarok ain’t a home run, but it’s a solid double, and certainly enough to cause Hollywood scouts to raise an eyebrow.
  83. John Wick
    The blood-slicked, vividly drawn film universe John Wick illustrates is such a generous slice of pulp that, even if not original, per se, it exudes a confidence rarely seen these days, surefire franchises be damned.
  84. Exodus: Gods and Kings
    Even with exhilarating plague montages and stomach-dropping illusions of scale amid the many battles, the characteristically brilliant shots for which the famed director is known can’t compensate for the completely tone-deaf overall result—so far removed from the days in which the filmmaker brought us Alien.
  85. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
    So, then, what makes it the “best” entry? The more severe Rings-tone that Jackson has been attempting to graft on top of the (mostly) whimsical original source makes the most sense here. Also—and at the risk of coming off as pedantic—it’s because, technically, it’s the shortest of the three.
  86. Spring
    The love story at the center of Spring is mysterious, funny and often poignant—a tough enough thing even to describe, let alone commit to film.
  87. The Age of Adaline
    Maybe there is, in fact, something inherently valuable in producing a sincere effort of escapism, to transport the audience to a different, less cynical, arguably “better” time. But when the audience is collectively checking their watches, it’s probably not a good sign.
  88. Maggie
    On the strength of the leads’ performances—as well the semi-original setting in which the zombie apocalypse is relatively (and somewhat refreshingly) contained—Maggie nearly warrants a recommendation.
  89. Yakuza Apocalypse
    Fans of the director will doubtlessly find his latest overly familiar, while the Miike-uninitiated will be left scratching their heads as to how chocolate and peanut butter don’t quite make the whole confection more delicious.
  90. Resolution
    Justin Benson and Aaron Scott Moorehead’s feature directorial debut is an invigorating reminder that talented, original voices occasionally surge forth from the festival circuit grind.
  91. The Endless
    In The Endless, Moorhead and Benson show how sustained paranoia and foreboding can keep an audience hooked as effectively as special effects.
  92. Ready Player One
    I don’t know how he does it, or for that matter why, but Spielberg turns Ready Player One into something that’s both nostalgic and new, something impersonal yet uniquely his. It is not one of his better movies; it’s probably not even in the top half. It’s way too long and packed with too much extra junk. It is still, somehow, a gas.
  93. Sherlock Gnomes
    The reason such a colorful mainstream family time-waster should exist is to string together a bunch of zippy PG-rated action set-pieces. In that sense, the film succeeds at the basest level, thanks primarily to the beautifully crisp animation, a big step-up from the first film’s overtly plastic CG look.
  94. I Kill Giants
    It’s well-intended, it’s heartfelt and in its small-scale fashion it’s surprisingly ambitious, but it’s also content to cheat its own premise and withhold its genre pleasures, which effectively undermines Barbara’s journey.
  95. Isle of Dogs
    As much as the movie is an enrapturing, sometimes overwhelming experience, filled with passion and hard work and adoration for the impossible task of making such a singular movie at all, Anderson and his animation team find the film’s soul in these dog’s eyes.
  96. Pacific Rim: Uprising
    Pacific Rim Uprising’s jokey tone fails to leaven the movie’s leaden clatter, and so any attempt on Boyega’s part to be heroic feels a bit shrouded in irony. But at least he registers: Eastwood may be even duller than Charlie Hunnam was in the first installment, and Spaeny plays the spunky Amara with maximum attitude and a paucity of charm.
  97. Unsane
    Not all of Unsane’s twists and gambits work—you have to accept a certain amount of movie-movie ludicrousness to get on the film’s loopy wavelength—but Soderbergh’s vision of a smart woman eternally held down against her will has a wonderful, nasty kick to it.
  98. The Death of Stalin
    It takes a deft hand and a rare talent to make tyranny and state sanctioned torture so funny.
  99. Tomb Raider
    Outside of Vikander’s performance, Tomb Raider tends to go on autopilot, either too scared or uninspired to reimagine this blah action-adventure material.
  100. 7 Days in Entebbe
    With a deft docudrama approach (that doesn’t overdo the usual extra-shaky handheld camera and overtly grainy visual tone), Padilha shows a commendable technical control over that rare movie that could have benefitted from being much longer.
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