Rolling Stone's Scores

Select another publication »
For 4,534 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.6 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 The Wolf of Wall Street
Lowest review score: 0 Joe Versus the Volcano
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,923 out of 4534
  2. Mixed: 982 out of 4534
  3. Negative: 629 out of 4534
4534 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Mountainhead
    Imagine a feature-length episode of Succession that treated the final season’s villain, GoJo CEO Lukas Matsson, as its main character and then multiplied him by four, and you’d have something like Mountainhead, Jesse Armstrong‘s caustic, corrosive satire of Silicon Valley mega-royalty run amuck.
  2. Bring Her Back
    The filmmakers want to jolt folks, for sure. But they also want to bring you to a place where the emotional after effects of that juddering linger long after the jump scares have faded away.
  3. Karate Kid: Legends
    Hardcore fans may get their kicks from seeing Macchio and Chan together. Everyone else will just feel like tempted to sweep the legs of everyone trying to cash in on a recently revived franchise and wring it dry.
  4. The Phoenician Scheme
    You leave impressed that Anderson can still manage to do what his does best without succumbing to self-parody here. The blueprint may be familiar. But it’s still a pretty foolproof plan.
  5. Highest 2 Lowest
    The impression is that you’ve just seen a great New York movie, with a great star turn at the core of it, and yet still feels like something’s missing. It’s ultimately an excuse to watch Washington go HAM.
  6. The Chronology of Water
    If there is personal expression abound in Stewart’s debut, there’s also precious little ego. Nor are the tics that too often prick or sink the work of actors feeling out what it’s like to call the shots.
  7. Eddington
    The overall lack of subtlety suits the age Aster is taking to task, though it also makes everything feel slightly wobbly on its feet. The viewpoint is both-sides misanthropy. Jonathan Swift has some notes.
  8. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
    Mission: Impossible — Final Reckoning feels like a conclusion to 30 years worth of proving that yes, you still can conjure up a certain vintage strain of Hollywood magic. It also feels like the end of an era.
  9. Caught by the Tides
    On paper, the endeavor sounds like the equivalent of a B-sides and rarities compilation. On screen, it plays like a sucker-punch masterpiece.
  10. Friendship
    The whole of Friendship isn’t as attractive as the sum of its disparate parts, and you wonder if a more concise, focused version of this look at the self-consciousness of dudes trying desperately to bond wouldn’t have hit better.
  11. Rust
    There’s a true-crime aura that hangs over every scene like a shroud — an unshakable sense that you’re not watching a Western so much as a ghost story.
  12. Thunderbolts*
    The primary goal of this entry is to establish a new team of heroes. The secondary aim is to stop what’s undeniably been a downward spiral. It succeeds in that respect at the very least. Don’t call it a return to form so much as a much-needed, extremely welcome return to a winning formula.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Accountant 2
    Affleck doesn’t sell it this time. He’s too busy going for the easy laugh. And so the supposed fun of the movie just doesn’t add up, like a long equation with a missing number.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sinners
    If Sinners is messy, it’s sometimes pretty glorious, too. Coogler is swinging wide and far beyond the boundaries of franchise fare.
  15. The Shrouds
    The Shrouds is, for all of its hallucinatory imagery and airport-read twists and turns, a blatantly personal film — arguably Cronenberg’s most personal since 1986’s The Fly.
  16. The Amateur
    Only a hair overlong at two hours, this is the kind of disposable airport spy thriller that Hollywood rarely makes anymore, and which generally plays fine, maybe best, on cable over a lazy Saturday afternoon.
  17. Drop
    As with Landon’s equally ludicrous Happy Death Day 2U (2019), the fun comes from seeing exactly how deftly and stylishly the director can pull these things off; it’s like watching a magician successfully perform a trick that you know isn’t a real illusion so much as an act of misdirection, extreme co-ordination and a specific set of well-honed skills.
  18. Warfare
    The only agenda in Warfare, in other words, is to give you a sense of not just what happened but how everything felt while it was happening. A tall order, to be sure, but one that Garland, Mendoza, their cast and the crew pull off shockingly well.
  19. A Minecraft Movie
    Regardless of whether you’ve ever played Minecraft or not, you’ll recognize the kind of endless ribbing, nudging, winking knowingness on display here; this is steeped in the self-aware absurdism of, say, those Old Spice commercials that aim to confuse and confound in the name of moving products off store shelves. A Minecraft Movie is essentially a 101-minute version of that.
  20. The Woman in the Yard
    Like a particularly concise, purposefully elliptical short story, The Woman in the Yard quickly milks this beguiling, WTF-is-going-on-here? scenario for all the dread it’s worth, while not necessarily being in a hurry to fill folks in on the full 411 regarding this sticky situation.
  21. Death of a Unicorn
    It has homicidal fantasy critters, lots of sharp and pointy horns, and absolutely no teeth.
  22. The Friend
    [Siegel and McGehee] get that this isn’t just a story about a woman bonding with a dog — it’s a tale of loss and sorrow that inherently knows such heavy feelings aren’t confined to a single species.
  23. The Alto Knights
    It still feels like you’ve wandered into a Mob-themed animatronic presentation at some amusement park — the Disney Hall of Famous Mafia Bosses — and dutifully watch as landmark moments in crime history are checked off and re-enacted. Take away the De Niro Con: The Movie bona fides, and you’ve got nothing but a fancy Discovery special.
  24. Snow White
    This Snow White may not be the worst live-action adaptation of an animated touchstone, though it’s a strong contender for its blandest. The movie does earn points as a bedtime story, however, because it will definitely put you to sleep.
  25. The Electric State
    It’s a bad movie, full stop. Which is a pity, because the pedigree looks great on paper.
  26. Black Bag
    It’s a great espionage thriller, and an even better scenes-from-a-marriage drama. Ian Fleming would love this. So would Ingmar Bergman.
  27. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
    There are surreal and absurdist touches throughout Nyoni’s second feature, and like the Zambian filmmaker’s awe-inspiring debut, I Am Not a Witch (2017), it proves she has a perfect sense of how to blend no-nonsense realism with its more magical counterpart.
  28. Mickey 17
    Bong is a consummate cinematic craftsman, virtually incapable of creating a dull frame. What’s happening within those impeccable compositions, however, feels like its suffering from an overabundance of business and undernourished storytelling.
  29. Last Breath
    The dramatized version simply floats, roils and plods forward as if being tugged dutifully along, ticking off checkpoints along the way. That IRL ending still reads as miraculous. Yet the whole thing feels still feels starved for creative oxygen.
  30. The Monkey
    It’s content to be just one long, sick joke without a punchline, designed to occasionally punctuate a stylishly nihilistic P.O.V. with a lot of OMG moments. You may love it or hate it.
  31. Universal Language
    There is no single category that you can slot Rankin’s mix of a wink, a nudge and an embrace into, so we guess “lo-fi masterpiece” will have to do until a better option comes along.
  32. The Gorge
    An extended rom-com meet-cute that just happens to have monsters lurking about, The Gorge works best when its just the two leads staring at each through binoculars, bantering via sketch-pad scrawlings and letting their flirtations organically morph something more intimate.
  33. Captain America: Brave New World
    It’s as if someone had gently ladled a teaspoon of artificial political-thriller flavor over a substandard Marvel movie, being oh-so-careful as to not upset corporate overlords or the status quo. A better title might have been Captain America: Business as Usual.
  34. Paddington In Peru
    Paddington in Peru sticks to its franchise’s overarching script, delivering exactly the kind of affection, silliness and gentle heartstring-plucking you now expect from the series.
  35. Parthenope
    Parthenope wants to be a feminine epic. It’s really just an update of those Bardot arthouse skin flicks, Italian style. But it can take solace in easily being an early contender for the horniest movie of the year.
  36. Love Hurts
    Love may hurt, sure. But it’s not nearly as painful as being forced to watch a great actor stuck in a bad movie.
  37. Armand
    It’s decent if often frustrating debut, buoyed by a star that’s shouldering a lot of the needlessly complicated narrative burden. We can’t wait to see what Tøndel’s fourth film looks like.
  38. Companion
    What gives this pulpy creation such a savory flavor and lasting bite isn’t just the puncturing of romantic clichés cemented 24 frames per second over decades, or the low-hanging-fruit pokes at society’s reliance on technology taken to extremes. It’s the way it makes you suddenly start questioning the whole notion of finding your soulmate if, given the opportunity, you can just purchase them and pay on installment.
  39. Peter Hujar's Day
    Directed by Sundance veteran Ira Sachs, Peter Hujar’s Day takes an extended conversation between talented, creative friends and elevates it to the realm of both first-rate voyeurism and the second-hand high of reliving a lost era.
  40. It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley
    Buckley hasn’t had a million portraits sketched of him, much less to this degree. The singularity of It’s Never Over, along with the access and the candor, makes up for a lot here.
  41. Opus
    Unfortunately, Malkovich thrusting in a metallic space suit may indeed be the sole takeaway of this attempt at a social thriller.
  42. Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius)
    It’s a music doc that takes its music-doc responsibilities seriously.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Midas Man
    The film is largely a competent but uninspiring telling of his tale.
  44. I'm Still Here
    What’s remarkable is how [Torres] never overplays anything, or goes for easy histrionics and rending of garments even when the movie itself becomes heavy-handed in the back half.
  45. Wolf Man
    What you’re ultimately left with is the typical catch-and-release horror template that occasionally sags under the weight of its own ambitions, as well as one that, having exhausted the idea’s potential early on, simply limps to the finish line.
  46. Hard Truths
    Leigh and all of his cast are so on-point here, so dedicated to breathing life into these everyday people, that every time he cuts away from Pansy and allows us unfettered glimpses into their lives outside her sphere of influence, you want to follow them into their own two-hour movies.
  47. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
    This sequel tries to expand into tonier genre horizons and gin up a sort of Den-iverse mythology, yet simply ends up playing tourist in smaller, more previously colonized territory.
  48. The Last Showgirl
    For a movie that continually asks its main character to recognize where dreams end and delusions begin, you wish it knew when to heed its own lessons.
  49. Better Man
    It’s all a very by-the-books music biopic, which the sole exception of which species is singing about manufacturing miracles and angels contemplating his fate.
  50. Babygirl
    It’s not just that Kidman shows you this woman’s sexual fulfillment — it’s the way she gives you everything happening around it, in the most intimate and telling of ways. And that’s why this feels like the most naked performance this A-list star has ever given, with the physical exposure being the least vulnerable aspect of it all.
  51. Nosferatu
    While there’s a fine line between loving a movie and being slavishly devoted to it, Eggers thankfully never crosses it. Rather, he molds the man-meets-vampire, things-go-awry story into his own rigorous type of horror filmmaking, and comes up with something stylish but not slick, feral but not overly fussy in its attempts to channel that old-fashioned folkloric feeling.
  52. Mufasa: The Lion King
    What the true legacy of Jenkins’ addition to the catalog may end up being, however, is a template for honoring the past while still managing to move things a few steps ahead. The circle of life, indeed.
  53. Kraven the Hunter
    What you’re left with is something that wants the brand-name recognition of being a Spider-Man project by proxy, but also wants to give you an overly violent, extremely gory vigilante movie that, despite featuring Kraven fighting a weak-tea CGI version of another well-known Marvel villain, has nothing to do with those films. Congratulations on failing twice, we guess?
  54. Nickel Boys
    What the filmmaker and his collaborators have given us is something truly special: a radical work of art that channels a tsunami of radical empathy. And it couldn’t feel more necessary or vital at this moment in time.
  55. A Complete Unknown
    It’s not as gamechanging as that snare drum that opens “Like a Rolling Stone.” But it still feels damn near electric.
  56. Nightbitch
    There is a sense that it could have gone farther out and pushed even more boundaries, especially before tying everything back up with a “happy” ending that feels mostly but not quite completely earned. But there’s still a bark and a bite here in the way that its allowing a specific strain of too-often stifled female rage to really bloom.
  57. The Order
    At it’s core, however, The Order is really a horror film, made all the more frightening because the monsters who live on these Everytown, USA, Maple Streets seem way too prevalent at the present moment.
  58. The End
    Ultimately, The End is a cult movie that, until it eventually finds its cult, will be more admired than loved. It isn’t the last word on the pending apocalypse. It simply has the fortitude to go out singing.
  59. Beatles '64
    What the Beatles did in 1964 alone continues to change the world—and Beatles ’64 is testimony to that ongoing story.
  60. Moana 2
    No one wants to rock the camakau too much here, and the overall sentiment seems to be something like Sequel 101: You loved the first movie, so here’s a second movie that’s a lot like the first movie. This is the good news if that’s what you’re after. If not, well: It’s one hour and 40 minutes.
  61. Gladiator II
    You will not necessarily be enlightened, empowered, or enthralled by all of Gladiator II. But you will almost assuredly be entertained.
  62. The Piano Lesson
    Yes, The Piano Lesson hits a few bum notes. Its melody nonetheless remains intact.
  63. Flow
    For many of us staring down the next four years, the idea that a community can come together to take on the rising tides couldn’t be more welcome or needed.
  64. Wicked
    Fans have been patiently waiting for the screen version of Wicked for decades now, and it’s safe to say that their faith will be rewarded. It’s also obvious that as much as this is still a tale of two witches, each blessed with equally beautiful voices, there’s a very clear standout here that’s lifting this occasionally leaden jazz-hands-extravaganza up to higher ground.
  65. All We Imagine as Light
    Kapadia, as masterful a filmmaker as they come, is happy to let viewers wonder where these stories will intersect, and how they’ll collide into or off of each other.
  66. Heretic
    To say that this horror movie hits all of the marks it needs to hit would be just south of blasphemous. The manner in which Grant both grounds the material and lobs it into over-the-top territory, however, is simply divine.
  67. Bird
    Bird may be the most divisive movie of Andrea Arnold’s career, and we’re including the gloriously feral 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights. But like everything else she’s done to date, it’s also rewarding in unexpected ways — the sort of film that taps into endless reservoir of empathy as much as it shocks you with extremities.
  68. Blitz
    It’s not Blitz’s sensory-overload sturm und drang that leaves you gasping for breath. It’s the sneak attack.
  69. Here
    On the page, the limitations somehow feel groundbreaking and expansive. Onscreen, the film somehow reduces the same notion of one angle/one thousand different moments to little more than a blinkered gimmick.
  70. Juror #2
    As for whether this is the last film Eastwood gets the opportunity to make, the jury is still out on that. But you can’t accuse him of resting on his laurels. Artists half his age couldn’t come up with a cinéma du airport read this intriguing.
  71. A Real Pain
    What Eisenberg accomplishes overall here, however, is beyond measure. It’s the real deal.
  72. Dahomey
    Easily one of the best and most modestly brilliant piece of nonfiction filmmaking you’ll see this year.
  73. Conclave
    Do not come to Conclave in search of some divine messages about power, corruption and lies percolating within a sacred space. Just embrace it for being the type of gobsmacking, pope-up-the-jams entertainment that will have you genuflecting with gratitude over its over-the-top ridiculousness.
  74. Venom: The Last Dance
    Why does this Last Dance feel so impersonal, so rote, so step-by-step predictable?
  75. Woman of the Hour
    Please welcome to the stage Anne Kendrick, Genre Auteur!
  76. Smile 2
    What this sequel really seems to be suggesting is that there is nothing scarier than an unstable pop star in 2024, poised on the edge of a public meltdown captured by a million cellphones and consumed by scandal-hungry social-media addicts. When it comes to possessing your soul, a supernatural demon can’t hold a candle to show business.
  77. Anora
    The writer-director gives these unsung, oft-judged heroes of labor empowerment via empathy and representation.
  78. We Live in Time
    We Live in Time is an actor’s movie, by necessity if not always by design. You know where the destination ends before the movie’s even begun. Pugh and Garfield make the endgame worth the journey, no matter where you place it.
  79. Rumours
    As something that seeks to confuse and delight you in equal measures, this is seven courses of absurdity, served with a side of tongue in cheek from a trio who know what they’re doing, even if you’re not always sure what that is.
  80. Piece By Piece
    Sometimes all of these little plastic avatars are a needless distraction from what is a compelling origin story by any measure. Other times, the LEGO-ification of it all provides a welcome distraction from some fairly cut-and-dried Music Documentary 101 business, with Piece by Piece putting a formally unique spin on a very familiar, if slightly incomplete arc.
  81. The Outrun
    Ronan can’t save The Outrun from its limitations as a drama, or from its worst stack-the-deck instincts. But she does lift this film up and infuse the storytelling with a genuine sense of what it means to try living one day at a time for the rest of one’s life.
  82. Joker: Folie à Deux
    What do you get when you cross a discordant riff on a fan favorite with a failed prestige project? Twice as much deux-deux.
  83. It's What's Inside
    This tale of self-involved millennials, a mystery machine, and a whole mess of purposefully mistaken identities is the kind of mashup of high-concept horror and ham-fisted satire that mistakes complicated for complex and a pile-up of confusing plot twists for storytelling.
  84. My Old Ass
    Elliott is a recognizable archetype. Thanks to Park’s writing and Stella’s ridiculously charismatic performance, she’s anything but a generic one.
  85. Omni Loop
    What truly makes this a movie worth searching out is the way writer-director Bernardo Britto’s sideways take on carpe diem sets the stage for its lead to rage, and somehow never lets the high-concept premise eclipse the performance at the center of it.
  86. Wolfs
    It’s all at the service of the Clooney-Pitt Show, and credit Wolfs for reminding you how fun the sight of these two guys running around while shooting guns, looking late-middle-aged cool and cracking wise, remains. This used to be a typical Friday night at the movies, and now it’s a rarity.
  87. The Substance
    The Substance won’t reset society’s fixation on youth or cure Hollywood’s sexist ills. It will, however, remind you that when you’re chasing your past by any means necessary, you are always your own worst enemy.
  88. Queer
    It truly is a solid match of moviemaker and source material. Yet none of this would work as well as it does without Craig.
  89. The Brutalist
    It’s not just that they don’t make movies like this anymore — of course they don’t! — so much as no one bothers to tell these types of sprawling narratives with this level of storytelling, chops, nerve and verve.
  90. His Three Daughters
    Thanks to Jacobs’ extraordinary ear for how people use words to wound and mask, and a holy trinity that knows not only how to speak those words but how to complement one another’s disparate performing styles, His Three Daughters ends up being nothing less than the single best movie you’ll likely see this year.
  91. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
    Maybe our expectations were too high. Maybe we should have said his name — Burton Burton Burton — three times, and the filmmaker who did that beloved original would reappear, grinning maniacally and giving us something a bit less undead and a bit more alive.
  92. Saturday Night
    It’s all admittedly funny and nerve-jangling, with the comedians mugging and the pressure mounting and the chances of Michaels’ dream of a show “made for the generation who grew up on TV, by the generation who grew up on TV” actually airing slipping away minute by ticked-off minute.
  93. Close Your Eyes
    You don’t have to know about Erice’s own backstory to appreciate this mournful, seeking work about life, art, loss, and the space where they all overlap.
  94. Blink Twice
    There’s so many sharp jabs here, so much well-honed Hitchcockian 101 technique on display, that you can’t dismiss this exercise in horror as social-rage sugar pill.
  95. The Crow
    It doesn’t take long to realize that what was meant to be a franchise-starter is, unlike its hero, permanently DOA.
  96. Daughters
    Rather than telling you how young women are affected by this, Patton and Rae show you. And to watch one of the interviewees go for being a joyous, giddy, chatty child to being a slightly older, more distant and jaded tween is heartbreaking.
  97. Alien: Romulus
    Does it tick off the boxes of what we’ve come to expect from this series? Yes. Does it add up to more than The Chris Farley Show of Alien movies? Well … let’s just say no one may be able to hear you scream in space, but they will assuredly hear your resigned sighs in a theater.
  98. Cuckoo
    Look at it through the lens of a dual star vehicle that isn’t afraid to sacrifice coherence in the name of cheap thrills, and this bird only slightly sings off-key.
  99. Good One
    Good One is, among its infinite attributes, an ode to a style of filmmaking that appears to be humble, yet still manages to be devastating and humanistic to its very core. Mostly, it’s just a great f*cking movie, full stop.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It Ends with Us
    It’s slick and eager to elide the moral messiness of the material with its lightly empowering messaging, but also competently executed with a starry performance at its center. That recipe almost makes you nostalgic for what it’s selling: The old-school, middle-of-the-road tearjerker, the Starbucks latte of movies. It’s not going to blow your mind, it might taste a little burnt at times, but occasionally it does the trick.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »