Rolling Stone's Scores

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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
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  1. Arrival
    Adams, her face a reflection of conflicting emotions, is simply stellar in an Oscar-buzzed performance of amazing grit and grace. Without her, Arrival might be too cerebral to warm up to. With her, the film gets inside your head and emerges as something intimate and epic, a linguistics odyssey through space and time. It's the stuff that dreams are made of.
  2. Doctor Strange
    What Robert Downey, Jr. is to "Iron Man" and Ryan Reynolds is to "Deadpool" – that's what Benedict Cumberbatch is to Doctor Strange. By that I mean, he's everything.
  3. Loving
    The film sneaks up on you, quiet-like, until its implications accumulate. And then it crushes you.
  4. Hacksaw Ridge
    Thanks to some of the greatest battle scenes ever filmed, Gibson once again shows his staggering gifts as a filmmaker, able to juxtapose savagery with aching tenderness.
  5. The Eagle Huntress
    Simon Niblett's cinematography, utilizing drones to catch impossible scenes of flight, is extraordinary, especially in the winter hunting sequences that end the film.
  6. Inferno
    Hanks is one of the most likable actors on the planet. But Inferno just lays there onscreen, pancake-flat and with no animating spark to make us give a damn.
  7. American Pastoral
    American Pastoral, Roth's magnum opus, needed a film revolutionary on the order of Paul Thomas Anderson, Alejandro González Iñárritu or the Coen brothers to re-imagine it for the screen. McGregor's timid approach does no one any favors, including Roth – and especially the audience.
  8. Moonlight
    Moonlight, which announces Jenkins as a major filmmaker, gets you good. It stays raw from first scene to last.
  9. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
    Cruise finds the core of Reacher in his eyes, with a haunted gaze that says this lone wolf is still on a mission and still a long way from home. That's the Reacher Lee Child created in his books. And Cruise does him proud.
  10. Certain Women
    Kelly Reichardt makes films that unfold at the speed of life, not Hollywood. She's a poet of the space between words, and the hypnotic and haunting Certain Women presents the writer-director at her artfully attentive best.
  11. Little Sister
    Clark is a talent to watch. He's made a transfixing film about a family that looks touchingly and unnervingly like yours and mine.
  12. The Accountant
    Preposterous can be defined in many, many ways. But for now, let's use the plot details of The Accountant as Exhibit A.
  13. 13th
    13th, available in theaters and on Netflix, is one for the cinema time capsule, a record of shame so powerful that it just might change things. Godspeed.
  14. The Girl on the Train
    That's Emily Blunt, and she is perfection, playing the hell out of this blackout drunk and adding a touch of welcome empathy.
  15. The Birth of a Nation
    A movie of potent provocation and surging humanity that ranks with the year's best.
  16. Masterminds
    The movie has been on ice awaiting release for over a year, owing to the bankruptcy of its studio, Relativity. But some of the jokes were moldy long before that happened. Masterminds owes us our two hours back.
  17. Deepwater Horizon
    Berg does a tremendous job of throwing us into the action with the help of dizzying handheld camerawork from Enrique Chediak.
  18. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    The film feels overstuffed and way too familiar, with Burton repeating tricks from his greatest hits (think Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands). And the fun runs out much before the film ends. But stick with it just for those times when Burton flies high on his own peculiar genius.
  19. Queen of Katwe
    The British, Nigerian-born Oyelowo has proved himself an actor of extraordinary power in roles as diverse as Dr. Martin Luther King in "Selma" and the resentful son of a White House servant in "The Butler." As Robert, the actor radiates warm humor and quiet strength.
  20. The Dressmaker
    Kate Winslet can do anything ... except save this movie from quirky overkill.
  21. Goat
    Goat means to shake you, and does it ever.
  22. The Magnificent Seven
    The new Seven isn't aiming for cinema immortality. It's two hours of hardcore, shoot-em-up pow and it's entertaining as hell.
  23. Blair Witch
    Every attempt at fright lands with a deadening thud. For shock value, Wingard and cowriter Simon Barrett simply repeat stuff from the original film, only this time louder, lamer, duller and stupider. Scarier? That got lost in the woods with whatever you spent for a movie ticket.
  24. Bridget Jones's Baby
    Sounds godawful in title and concept — but which in execution is a fizzy delight.
  25. The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years
    The documentary rightly keeps coming back to the music and the band's delight in making it. Good move. It truly is a joy forever.
  26. Snowden
    What's your take on Edward Snowden: A patriot deserving of a presidential pardon? A traitor deserving of execution, as Trump believes? Something in between? In Snowden the movie, in which a fiercely committed Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the title role, Oliver Stone removes all doubt. He's Saint Edward.
  27. Author: The JT LeRoy Story
    Your reaction to Author will come down the question that haunts the film, and assuredly Albert herself: Do the widely-praised writings of LeRoy become less praiseworthy when you know they were crafted under false pretenses? It's a question worth chewing on even if the film asking it stacks the deck.
  28. Sully
    The movie earns your attention and respect by digging deep, by finding the fear and self-doubt inside a man who'd never accept being defined as a hero. It's an eye-opener.
  29. Max Rose
    It's a shallow, melodramatic device that would sink most actors. But Lewis is not most actors. In fact, despite age and illness, he remains a mesmerizing star in front of the camera, compelling to watch even (and especially) when sitting perfectly still.
  30. A Tale of Love and Darkness
    It's important to note what Portman the filmmaker is doing here. She is most assuredly not providing CliffsNotes to Oz's book, letting us see what Amos sees and only partially understands.
  31. The Light Between Oceans
    Life mirroring nature in all its wayward ferocity. Too much? You bet. But Fassbender (Magneto in X-Men) and Vikander (an Oscar winner for The Danish Girl), who fell in love during the making of the film, fully commit to their roles and hold us in their grip. The movie, sad to say, can't keep its head above water.
  32. White Girl
    Is there anything less shocking than a movie that thinks it's shocking? See White Girl and discuss — and you should see it, if only for the all-stops-out performance of Morgan Saylor.
  33. Hands of Stone
    The Venezuelan-born writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz (Secuestro Express) knows how to muscle up momentum and bring the best out of actors.
  34. Don't Breathe
    What makes this so memorably nerve-frying is the way Alvarez and cinematographer Pedro Luque use night-vision and every trick in the book and ones not invented yet to trap us in their vise. Claustrophobics, you've been warned.
  35. The Hollars
    John Krasinski, as actor and director, tackles the most clichéd genre in the movie business — the dysfunctional family dramedy. The big difference is he pulls it off with uncommon humor and compassion.
  36. Southside with You
    Both Sawyers and Sumpter are terrific, world-class charmers who suggest the powerhouses they're playing without undue mimickry.
  37. Ben-Hur
    The last of the summer's movie epics is a digitalized eyesore hobbled in every department by staggering incompetence.
  38. War Dogs
    War Dogs is that rare contemporary comedy that knows how to make a laugh stick in your throat.
  39. My King
    That’s the power of My King. It sees that passion creates an unholy mess. Maïwenn doesn’t want to warm our heart, she wants to rip into it, and turn the concept of the Hollywood happy ending on its head.
  40. Anthropoid
    Of all the World War II movies about the plots to kill the architects of the Third Reich, Anthropoid is guilty of being the dullest.
  41. Sausage Party
    You leave the f--ked-up funhouse of Sausage Party thinking: Did I see this movie or hallucinate it? I mean that as high praise.
  42. Hell or High Water
    Chris Pine proves he can act. Ben Foster, well, he always could. And Jeff Bridges shows them both how it's done. Those are just three riveting reasons to pony up for Hell or High Water.
  43. Pete's Dragon
    Thanks to Lowery's humanizing magic, Pete's Dragon is that rare family film you really can take to heart.
  44. Florence Foster Jenkins
    So, you're probably asking, what kind of a movie is this? A damn fine and funny one, thanks to the way the estimable director Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, The Queen) conducts the piece.
  45. Nine Lives
    At 87 torturous, laugh-free minutes, the film could change the most avid cat fancier into a kitty hater.
  46. Little Men
    Little Men, with its two boys racing at life with the brick wall of maturity still at a distance, is funny, touching and vital. It's truly an exhilarating gift.
  47. Suicide Squad
    Suicide Squad wussies out when it should have been down with the Dirty Dozen of DC Comics. Audiences complained that Batman v Superman was too dark and depressing. So director-writer David Ayer (End of Watch, Fury) counters with light and candy-assed. I call bullshit.
  48. Gleason
    It promotes an awareness of ALS that goes beyond the best-intended any ice-bucket challenge — and ranks as a profound achievement.
  49. Bad Moms
    The movie cops out by going soft in the end, but it's still hardcore hilarity for stressed moms looking for a girls night out. Guys should also check out Bad Moms — you just might learn something.
  50. Into the Forest
    Rozema's minimalist approach pays dividends until a final third hobbled by overdone effects and a thrashing musical score. Too bad. The story being told on the faces of Page and Wood had eloquence and power enough to hold us rapt.
  51. Equity
    To the credit of this scrappy, admirably femcentric film, crisply directed by Meera Menon from a tightly wound script by Amy Fox (with Reiner and Thomas also doing double-duty as producers), Equity refuses to paint a rosy picture of women at the top.
  52. Jason Bourne
    Through it all, Damon keeps us glued to the war going on inside Bourne's head. It's a brilliantly implosive performance; he owns the role and the movie. It's a tense, twisty mindbender anchored by something no computer can generate: soul.
  53. Nerve
    There's a killer idea circling this tricked-up teen thriller, which is more than you can say for most summer movies. But the idea never lands because Nerve lacks the, well, nerve to follow through on its convictions.
  54. Indignation
    Indignation is one of the few adaptations of Roth's work to make it to the screen with its claws intact — Schamus reveals his gifts as a filmmaker who respect the words and the space between them in equal measure.
  55. Ice Age: Collision Course
    The fifth entry in the Ice Age series is a loud, lazy, laugh-starved cash grab that cynically exploits its target audience (I use the term advisedly) by serving them scraps and calling it yummy. Even two-year-olds can see through the hustle.
  56. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie
    Saunders and Lumley are all about keeping the party going. So grab your Bolly, darlings, and party on.
  57. Don't Think Twice
    It feels lived it, honest and painfully funny.
  58. Lights Out
    Predictable stuff, energized by some spiffy scare effects from cinematographer Marc Spicer who works wonders with underlighting. But the on/off tricks would grow tiring without actors who perform well beyond the call of fright-house duty.
  59. Star Trek Beyond
    Despite the futuristic tilt in the title, Star Trek Beyond works best when it boldly goes retro.
  60. Equals
    Equals is really about possibility in a world gone cold from insisting that things can't change. Sound like any place you know?
  61. Café Society
    Café Society isn't peak Allen, in the manner of such recent high points as "Midnight in Paris" (2011) and "Blue Jasmine" (2013), but the film — which could be helpfully subtitled Manhattan v Hollywood — feels lively, lived-in and fallibly human.
  62. The Infiltrator
    Sadly, Furman keeps shoving the movie into the box of clichés he thinks the audience wants. We don't, and you can tell that Cranston doesn't want it either.
  63. Ghostbusters
    The big surprise here is McKinnon, also an SNL MVP (her Hillary is already iconic). She's a live-wire whose every gesture, reaction and line-reading seems fresh and off-the-wall — a spontaneous eruption of hellfire hilarity.
  64. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
    It's a bummer that the jokes don't land often enough, especially in the final third when the tone takes a turn for the tame. WTF!?!
  65. Captain Fantastic
    The film doesn't take sides, but it does fairly, subtly and movingly represent them. Captain Fantastic takes a piece out of you.
  66. The Secret Life of Pets
    An animated fluffball that does everything to drive you crazy and ends up by being totally irresistible.
  67. Life, Animated
    In no way does Owen's story claim to be a cure-all. Instead of false hope, it offers up possibility, the chance of a stimulus that might get past the blocks of developmental disorder. That's more than encouraging. Life, Animated is truly inspirational.
  68. Our Kind of Traitor
    No knock on McGregor and Harris — fine actors both — but they never hold us rapt the way the plot demands.
  69. The Legend of Tarzan
    It's a heavy thematic load for a single movie to handle — especially this one, which nearly collapses from its burden. But it's hard to fault director David Yates, who captained the last four Harry Potter movies, for having ambition.
  70. The Purge: Election Year
    You can be a pissed-off Tea Partier or an Occupy advocate and find something here to stoke your fat cat hatred; either way, catharsis is doled out not in a dusk-til-dawn homicidal free-for all but two harmless hours in a theater.
  71. The BFG
    For special effects alone, there's no problem: They're spectacular. And there's no faulting Mark Rylance, a newly-minted Oscar winner for Spielberg's Bridge of Spies, whose motion-capture performance as a 24-foot giant is both subtly nuanced and truly monumental.
  72. Independence Day: Resurgence
    Independence Day: Resurgence pretends there's fresh ground to cover. There isn't, but director Roland Emmerich makes a good show of faking it.
  73. Wiener-Dog
    What happens to the film's title character — and the audience — shouldn't happen to a dog.
  74. The Shallows
    While this nailbiter sure as hell ain't swimming in the same classic waters as "Jaws," it gets the jolting job done.
  75. Free State of Jones
    Like the worst civics lesson, this movie bores away at you till your reactions are dulled.
  76. Les Cowboys
    Les Cowboys pulls in with no intention of letting you go. It's a workout worth taking.
  77. Swiss Army Man
    There are times when this mindbending bromance actually achieves a twisted tenderness. There are also times when you'd like to ride Manny's farts to the nearest exit. It's your call.
  78. The Neon Demon
    What I can't buy is that Refn has made a movie this lifeless and devoid of human interest.
  79. The Fits
    The Fits is more than a transporting film experience. It's cinema poetry in motion.
  80. Finding Dory
    If Finding Dory lacks the fresh surprise of its predecessor, it still brims with humor, heart and animation miracles.
  81. Central Intelligence
    Central Intelligence always takes the lazy way out. You go along for the ride because Hart and Johnson promise something they can't deliver: a movie as funny as they are.
  82. The Conjuring 2
    What makes The Conjuring 2 play deeper and darker than a warmed-over version of The Exorcist is director James Wan (Saw, Insidious, Furious 7). This Malaysian-born filmmaker can make his camera do terrifying tricks that are almost supernatural.
  83. De Palma
    Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, filmmakers themselves and De Palma fans to the bone, haven't gathered a bunch of talking heads to debate De Palma's significance. They just put the man himself on camera, mic him up and let him rip. The result is heaven for movie lovers.
  84. Now You See Me 2
    If you fell for the 2013 original — and surprisingly, many did — then Now You See Me 2 has got your number. For the rest of us, however, this longer, louder sequel adds up to what one character calls "a sack of nada."
  85. Warcraft
    What's onscreen is a godawful mess, leaving the actors to suck wind while the film collapses around them. If you've never played the game, you might as well watch the movie stoned.
  86. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
    Cowabunga, the vigilante demi-gods on a half shell are back, and more inane and irritating than ever. Their antics make the 112 minutes it takes to watch this frenetic followup to 2014's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a torturous mindfuck for any sentient being over the age of infancy.
  87. Me Before You
    It also doesn't grapple deeply enough with the core questions it raises, settling for telling a sob story that will go down easy at the box office. Still, you can't blame audiences too much for being seduced by two shining young stars in a movie romance that hits the spot, bitter and sweet.
  88. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
    Popstar mixes the hilarity with a surprising amount of heart. 4Real.
  89. Alice Through the Looking Glass
    The script by Linda Woolverton stays surface faithful to the characters created by Lewis Carroll, but the film has lost its soul.
  90. X-Men: Apocalypse
    Director Bryan Singer, who started the whole thing in high style with 2000's "X-Men," returns for a fourth time. Singer shows a lot of energy, but he and screenwriter Simon Kinberg (Fantastic Four, yuck) let the movie get way overcrowded.
  91. Weiner
    This spellbinder about a politician in free fall would be hilarious if it weren't so agonizingly true. OK, it's still pretty funny because Anthony Weiner — the subject of this documentary — can't stop shooting himself in the foot.
  92. The Angry Birds Movie
    There's no denying the movie's high spirits or its irresistible invitation to shake your sillies out.
  93. Maggie's Plan
    Without pushing or showing off, Miller creates a breezy comedy that pulls you up short. Buoyed by faultless actors who mesh beautifully, Maggie's Plan tickles you with laughs that can — suddenly or even days later — choke you up with emotion.
  94. The Nice Guys
    There are even times when Black seems to be letting Crowe and Gosling make the whole thing up as they go along. Not a bad thing.
  95. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
    Rogen and Byrne are crazy fun company.
  96. High-Rise
    Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump (his wife) have energized Ballard's parable of class warfare in the technology age with a daring approach that will touch a nerve or have you bolting for the exits.
  97. The Lobster
    The Lobster, with a score that samples everyone from Beethoven to Nick Cave, comes at you with images that burn and laughs that stick in the throat. Take the challenge of this movie — it'll keep you up nights.
  98. Love & Friendship
    I can't think of a more wickedly modern romantic comedy.
  99. Money Monster
    Foster's film doesn't doubt that money rules our lives. But it does wonder, provocatively, why we're dumb enough to let it.
  100. Being Charlie
    Many a road to movie hell is paved with good intentions. To that list of lost causes add Being Charlie, a well-meaning study of addiction that hits too many banal beats to snap us to attention.
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