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 3.1 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. Love Hurts
    Though Quan and his supporting cast are often a delight, and the film’s fight scenes are worth strapping in for, this is a movie that makes a choppy mess of its brisk runtime, and wastes a lot of its potential with a molasses-slow, often baffling second act.
  2. Mulan
    While glorious to look at, the movie still feels slightly hollow. All the right pieces are there, but an emotional connection to the characters is lacking.
  3. Passing
    After establishing the characters with such elegance and grace, the movie proceeds to nudge them toward an endpoint that is beautifully shot but curiously chilly, lacking the catharsis of something more old-fashioned.
  4. Lisa Frankenstein
    Despite solid performances and hints of daring brilliance, Lisa Frankenstein feels disposable because its winks and nods downplay its uniqueness—not to mention that we are in the third decade of being perpetually awash in nostalgia for and satires of the 1980s.
  5. American Symphony
    American Symphony itself is at its most mundane when focused on the professional life of the rousing, youthful musical multihyphenate. And, because it builds its structure around the creation and premiere of his first symphony, much of the film bundles that mundanity into the kind of behind-the-scenes footage accompanying a concert doc.
  6. The Crow
    Like his Shell remake, the Sanders Crow makes something oddly compelling out of a bad idea.
  7. Meet Me in the Bathroom
    What’s most compelling about the documentary is the archival footage (some previously unseen) of the bands during their first fledgling efforts, though the presence of the tangible music that shot these musicians to stardom remains elusive.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Bubble
    Unfortunately, despite all this talent, Bubble never amounts to something wholly unique—falling into predictable tropes and a narrative that ends up being a little too self-serious for a parkour adventure with bubbles.
  9. The Rental
    The Rental has De Palma vibes with Fincher’s cool, but lacks the former’s exploitative pleasures and the latter’s cinematic expertise. It is, however, satisfyingly composed in terms of approach, giving the audience flashes of brutality to come or shooting it from a distance, heightening the shock and lending bloodshed sharp flinching power.
  10. The First Purge
    At its best The First Purge functions like a much-reduced Purge movie retread. It’s not that it’s bad, really. It’s that we’ve seen this before.
  11. Boston Strangler
    Ruskin’s examination of the social and political elements that enabled the Strangler, and which held people like McLaughlin in contempt for attempting to serve the public good, is bold. In his next film, he should apply that same boldness toward an aesthetic purpose, too.
  12. Flashback
    Flashback certainly isn’t perfect, and despite the effort it took to fully immerse myself in the narrative in a way that made sense, there is something admirable about the message it wants to put out in the world.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    Luther: The Fallen Sun
    Nobody watched Luther for serious social commentary or a moral compass—you watched it because Idris Elba is a beautiful man with arguably the world’s best voice ,and you got to see him catch bad guys played by other good actors. On that level, Luther: The Fallen Sun delivers.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 68 Critic Score
    7 Days
    As far as COVID movies go, 7 Days is certainly in the top tier of that still nascent subgenre—whether that’ll be true this time next year, we’ll have to wait and see.
  15. Wolfs
    It’s a star vehicle intent on dulling its leads’ shine, a slick blockbuster relying on narrative and visual restrictions, a cynical movie about the power of friendship. And yet, even as Wolfs undermines itself, it’s a charmingly prickly (or charming, despite its prickliness) mess.
  16. Triple Threat
    Like any obviously competent action director, Johnson establishes geography and spatial stakes with rigor, but then, like any incompetent action director—cough, Peter Berg, cough—he loses focus, the idea of the action overtaking its execution. It’s frustrating, because Johnson clearly understands what he’s doing.
  17. Revolution Rent
    This revolution may be televised, but aside from the rawness that too rarely brings it near its potential revolt, it’s an underwritten rerun.
  18. Mean Girls
    It is hard to capture the utter joy of watching a live musical on the screen, but it’s here that Mean Girls falters.
  19. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
    Gilroy isn’t a drudge, of course, and Washington is Washington. If nothing else, the film rides on his mesmerizing performance and on Gilroy’s talent for character study. But after Nightcrawler, seeing Roman J. Israel, Esq. coast on craft rather than on transgression is nothing short of a letdown.
  20. Spider-Man: No Way Home
    After so long playing with the legacy and impact of Spider-Man, No Way Home finds its way back.
  21. The Scribbler
    The Scribbler is overwrought, absurd, occasionally exploitative, completely lacking in subplot, takes a good 20-25 minutes to really get going and has acting that varies from excellent to, well, less-than-excellent. It’s also hugely fun!
  22. A Glitch in the Matrix
    While not compelling enough to be one of the two options—either a destructive or awakening force for our own personal simulations—winkingly proffered in the doc itself, A Glitch in the Matrix still has genuinely gripping segments.
  23. Finch
    A forgettable sci-fi with standout elements—making the most of what he’s got left, even if it’s not enough.
  24. In the Land of Saints and Sinners
    As movies about a Liam Neeson character marinating in regrets before punching and shooting his way out of immediate danger go, this is a pretty good one, by which I mean at one point Neeson smokes a pipe while driving a car. It’s also Lorenz’s best as a director by a fair margin, a movie that feels inspired by Eastwood and old Westerns, but not beholden to them.
  25. You Are Not My Mother
    Brimming with potential that it doesn’t exactly follow through on, You Are Not My Mother is nonetheless another aesthetically rich horror film that clearly mines an individual’s personal history.
  26. Summer of 69
    If the movie’s adult characters are conveniences, its evocation of teenage yearning-slash-horniness (and the ways those can get mixed up) feels pretty real, even in the more outlandish moments.
  27. The Instigators
    None of the players here were in Ben Affleck’s The Town, but this feels like a companion piece to that one, too, in both its entertainment value and occasional overplayed hangdog Damon-Affleck pathos.
  28. Giants Being Lonely
    While this suspension of narrative convention is a welcome deviation from the cut-and-dry formula of many coming-of-age films, Giants Being Lonely stops just short of actually saying something salient.
  29. The Batman
    The Batman is ambitious and dedicated to its vision, but despite some rather obvious clues, it can’t crack how to make the World’s Greatest Detective seem like one at all. Rather, we just have another passable Batman, not different enough to outrun his legacy’s ever-growing shadow.
  30. The Garfield Movie
    All told, it’s a surprisingly good time. The Garfield Movie may be as disposable as one of those numbered paperbacks that ex-kids of a certain age may fondly recall from their Scholastic book orders, but it approximates their sense of fun, too.
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