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. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Foxtrot
    With its unflinching and painstaking execution of such grim subject matter, Foxtrot is certainly not an easy watch, but an ultimately rewarding one.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. A Quiet Place
    A Quiet Place is an extremely compelling experience—but it could have been greater still.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. 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.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. Side Effects
    Unsurprisingly, the substance of a movie genre is again enriched with his latest, masterfully spare and confident effort.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.”
  25. 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.
  26. 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.
  27. 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.
  28. Alien Abduction
    Alien Abduction fails to thrill or chill.
  29. 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.
  30. 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.
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