Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 7,775 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 33% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 64% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 Mulholland Dr.
Lowest review score: 0 Jojo Rabbit
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4,349 out of 7775
  2. Mixed: 1,493 out of 7775
  3. Negative: 1,933 out of 7775
7775 movie reviews
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  1. Tears of Gaza
    There's no coddling the audience in Vibeke Løkkeberg's verité heave of disgust as the full consequences on the Palestinian people of Operation Cast Lead are made sickeningly clear.
  2. They Call It Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain
    The images and interviews Robert H. Lieberman and his crew have managed to capture are eye-opening enough to justify the dangerous effort.
  3. Tales of the Night
    Michel Ocelot's recent cartoons cleverly advance Lotte Reiniger's prototypical stop-motion technique into the digital age.
  4. Headshot
    This "Buddhist film noir," as writer-director Pen-ek Ratanaruang calls it, is surprisingly slow-moving and soulful for a film full of double-crosses and cold-blooded killing.
  5. The House I Live In
    The mixture of different techniques and varied views results in a rich, multi-faceted look at one of America's most misguided policy initiatives.
  6. In My Mother's Arms
    Throughout, it becomes clear that both the film and its subject are defined by the necessity of multitasking.
  7. Two Years at Sea
    The stillness and silence with which we look upon Jake Williams ranges from curious to unnerving to fascinating.
  8. Simon & the Oaks
    The film is at its best when it lingers on intimacy and the characters' incompetency to manage it.
  9. My Worst Nightmare
    The hilarity of the film creeps up slowly and from every angle, not through the facile immediacy of short-lived laughter.
  10. The Revisionaries
    Scott Thurman captures not only the fear and anti-intellectual resentment and insecurity that govern the dictations of the far right, but also the rampant unchecked egotism.
  11. Any Day Now
    Its most redeeming quality is that it isn't so quick to neuter its queer characters into a package-friendly "gay couple" aesthetic a la Modern Family.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ginger & Rosa
    With Ginger & Rosa, Sally Potter manages to avoid nearly every pratfall of such period pieces, focusing on extreme alienation rather than enlightenment, and wringing a powerful and jaundiced coming-of-age story from the decade's less trod corners.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Citadel
    Citadel is stripped down and no-nonsense, fixating on Tommy's emotional and psychological struggles with an intensity that's harrowing.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A Man Vanishes (1967)
    The earthiest of Japanese New Wave directors, Shohei Imamura goes fascinatingly meta in this 1967 hybrid of investigative tract and ruminative experiment.
  15. Beware of Mr. Baker
    Jay Bulger's seemingly erratic documentary formally channels Ginger Baker's almost defiant refusal to lead a life that adheres to a linear narrative.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Frances Ha
    Noah Baumbach's film feels like too perfect a portrait of quarter-life malady, down to the rushed redemptive endnotes and Greta Gerwig's idealized heroine.
  17. 56 Up
    The series is both a testimonial to the vagaries of chance and an endlessly cyclical study into the implications of being studied.
  18. Black Rock
    Layered conflicts mount as this lean film treks on, and they're not limited to gender politics.
  19. Only the Young
    Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims refuse to use their subjects as test cases for any sort of larger thesis.
  20. Tchoupitoulas
    The overall experience is entirely immersive, thanks not only to the filmmakers' handheld camera, but also to the illusory nature of the staging.
  21. The Loving Story
    Perhaps the strongest aspect of the documentary is that it allows the Lovings to tell their story in their own words.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Barbara
    Most compelling in Christian Petzold's latest is the way the filmmaker adeptly conducts his tides of Cold War paranoia.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Spring Breakers
    One of the effects of Harmony Korine's feverish, hypnotic style is that the whole thing feels like a fantasy—or rather a nightmare perversion of the American dream.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hors Satan (Outside Satan)
    Bruno Dumont's employment of his bucolic French backdrop here attends to Hors Satan's muddying spiritual ambiguity.
  25. Mud
    The film ultimately succeeds thanks to small details, from its deep-fried lingo and the swampy texture of its location photography to its uniformly expert cast.
  26. A Place at the Table
    More difficult to convey are the web of moral and political issues that surround the hunger crisis, and A Place at the Table proves its worth most by how it treats this wider set of problems.
  27. Supporting Characters
    Glides from a mildly off-putting opening across several scenes that waver between sitcom superficiality and sudden, unexpected gusts of feeling, ultimately ending on a note of perfectly judged emotional ambivalence.
  28. Yossi
    The film is at its finest as a catalogue of Yossi's unspoken ache, less so when it begins to flirt with the clichés of the love story.
  29. Nana
    Its meta-cinematic "think piece"-ness is redeemed by the slinky symmetries drawn between Massadian's own auteur-ship and the protagonist's narrative role.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Trance
    The film draws out Danny Boyle's less dazzling commercial side, not to mention his penchant for whirling excess.
  31. Caesar Must Die
    Deceptively modest on nearly all accounts, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Caesar Must Die employs seemingly minor directorial contrivances to ruminate on a unique quarrel.
  32. Muppets Most Wanted
    Freed from the burden of starting anew, the film restores the Muppets' rightful place as stars of their own show.
  33. Night Across the Street
    It's a final film in the specific sense of Raúl Ruiz designing the larger part of it around a metaphorical contemplation of his own, imminent demise.
  34. Porfirio
    Alejandro Landes's Porfirio is an ugly movie to watch, but it's not without purpose.
  35. No
    A singular biopic and a snapshot of a society renewed, No unaffectedly celebrates faith in democracy, and, surprisingly, truth in advertising.
  36. The Jeffrey Dahmer Files
    Teasing out a subversive portrait of a complex and rather subdued monster, The Jeffrey Dahmer Files unfolds with the same meticulousness exemplified by the eponymous serial killer.
  37. Sweetgrass
    Sweetgrass achieves a borderline abstract splendor that's furthered by the directors' avoidance of delving deeply into its human subjects, whose backstories and general circumstances are only alluded to through fly-on-wall scraps.
  38. Simon Killer
    The film has many elements of a thriller, but ultimately Antonio Campos's interest lies much more in profiling, yet never over-determining, his moody protagonist.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Evil Dead
    Raimi's script is riotously deadpan, his compositions undeniably breathtaking and inventive. [6 March 2002]
  40. The East
    It showcases the evolving interests and talents of Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling, but expands them and channels them into a more traditional thriller framework.
  41. Greedy Lying Bastards
    What Craig Scott Rosebraugh's film lacks in originality, it makes up for in comprehensiveness.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Tristana (re-release)
    There are more than a few striking images and intriguing ideas to be extracted from Tristana. [10 Oct. 2012]
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Genius on Hold
    Though overstuffed, his film eschews pop-doc conventions by opting for in-depth analysis over superficiality.
  44. Electrick Children
    Rebecca Thomas's debut feature is a sensible and humane exploration of youthful curiosity.
  45. The Unspeakable Act
    Writer-director Dan Sallitt's fourth feature moves with confident boldness from the incestuous gauntlet its prologue impishly hurls down.
  46. Pavilion
    George Washington this isn't, but there's enough heft here that the comparison can be tastefully made.
  47. The Source Family
    The research and elucidating synthesis on display effectively illuminate the pernicious aura of a lifestyle pursued by the yearning, lost souls of the time.
  48. V/H/S/2
    A welcome contrast to the first film's snuff-y atmosphere and general mean-spiritedness, featuring more humor, fewer hateful characters, and occasional twinges of relatable human emotion.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    108 (Cuchillo de Palo)
    Renate Costa's doc gradually simplifies into an elaborate seesaw between general, journalistic scoopery and unabashedly personal confrontation.
  50. American Hustle
    Formally ostentatious and unrepentantly messy, the film manages to implicitly convey the overdriven, coked-up confusion that many '70s period pieces make painfully overt.
  51. Maniac
    Its audio-visual overload testifies to a group of filmmakers' belief that some films are made to be remade.
  52. Come Out and Play
    Makinov's film expertly crafts a sense of dawning madness that hinges on its villains' unspoken fury at their elders.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A Hijacking
    Tobias Lindholm's hostage-negotiation drama that wields its verité style for maximum tension.
  54. 20 Feet from Stardom
    This joyous documentary leaves us wanting to immediately seek out the incredible, sometimes unfamiliar music we've just heard.
  55. Stranger Things
    Eleanor Burke and Ron Eyal's film is a tasteful, well-orchestrated drama that never reaches beyond its humble means.
  56. Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner
    Perhaps the most valuable insight that the film provides about its subject is that he acts even as he directs.
  57. Finding Dory
    Finding Dory follows its predecessor in being broadly concerned with comforting notions of home and family.
  58. One Direction: This Is Us
    Some of the film's most memorable moments involve Niall and Liam looking down on oceans of screaming devotees in the street, and controlling their cheers like orchestra conductors.
  59. Only God Forgives
    It takes the basic form of the revenge flick and dips it in tar, making for a movie that comes out sticky, nasty, and black.
  60. Paradise: Love
    It often seems more intent on spelling out its awareness of the politics involved than in lingering on the aching human engaged in the libidinal transactions.
  61. This Ain't California
    While the film is deeply romantic and nostalgic, possessing a genuine reverence for youth and rebellion, it's also something of a tragedy.
  62. Far Out Isn't Far Enough: The Tomi Ungerer Story
    Brad Bernstein's documentary proves that Ungerer's legacy is as historically significant as it is artistically.
  63. Shadow Dancer
    James Marsh carries forward the mood and menace of the opening into the balance of the work, perfectly matching his aesthetic strategies to the story's shifting moral terrain.
  64. Prince Avalanche
    The psychological path of these characters is finely marked with signposts, but as Prince Avalanche reaches its destination, you almost wish it would have gotten a little more lost in the woods.
  65. The Hunt
    The film is in part an exceedingly black comedy that parodies proper society's eager, self-righteous naïveté on the subject of its children.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Un Flic (re-release)
    As far as swan songs go, Jean-Pierre Melville's Un Flic is a fascinatingly garbled tune that teems with formal inconsistencies and yet still manages to carry a pained melody.
  67. Furious 7
    The film lays bare that the franchise's most radical asset is also its most conservative: an overriding emphasis on, above all else, the on-screen family.
  68. Fill the Void
    The film unfolds in unhurried dramatic terms that come to take on an almost fatalistic force.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Bidder 70
    Without being didactic, the documentary demonstrates how an ordinary concerned citizen can take a stand when politicians neglect to make decisions for the good of the people and instead serve the interests of big business.
  70. Cutie and the Boxer
    Funny, moving, honest, and occasionally inspiring, but as a portrait of a talent emerging from the shadow of a more public talent, the scale of the shadow is curiously omitted.
  71. Sun Don't Shine
    Amy Seimetz's intoxicating slice of genre revisionism earns its "neo" prefix, envisioning a brightly sinister world where desperation is the new normal.
  72. Passion
    Passion is a serpentine, gorgeously orchestrated gathering of all of De Palma's pet themes and conceits, a symphony of giddy terror where people perpetually hide behind masks, both literal and figurative.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Dead Man's Burden
    It's always a pleasure to encounter genre ambition contained in such a sinewy-shot, emotionally resonant, and gorgeously photographed package.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    What Richard Did
    The film's structure as a character study helps to subtly underscore the flawed justifications of a privileged kid's thought patterns and unchallenged value system.
  75. Nebraska
    In the film, Alexander Payne's overview of America is extraordinarily, multifariously profound.
  76. Out of the Furnace
    What this movie finally boils down to is a deceptively simple tale of two brothers, and of being one's brother's keeper, and of seeking justice on the crudest of fronts.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Nymphomaniac: Volume I
    But whereas female sexuality was borderline vampiric in Antichrist, this time we're in more ambiguous, contextually richer terrain, where desire is complicated not only by love, but also by a deep need for self-determination, and pride.
  78. Three Sisters
    Wang Bing's no-frills style of documentation visually echoes the preadolescent trio's simple yet unforgiving world and its sense of labor as life.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    This Is Martin Bonner
    At its best, with its quiet, ominous pace in the early going and its economical distribution of information throughout, the film is reminiscent of Todd Haynes's Safe.
  80. More Than Honey
    Markus Imhoof's film reveals itself as a curious, audacious mix of personal essay film and nature documentary.
  81. A Band Called Death
    The film is made impetuously watchable and disarmingly emotional by the filmmakers' strong command of docudrama and nonfiction narrative style.
  82. Israel: A Home Movie
    A prismatic meditation on an entire nation, Eliav Lilti's documentary is history as abstraction.
  83. A Field in England
    Ben Wheatley's film is a reckless combination of period piece, war drama, broad comedy, psychedelic fever dream, and occult horror-scape.
  84. The Selfish Giant
    The ear for language is paired with an eye for the landscape, and the film finds beauty even in such a seemingly dreary, economically depressed community.
  85. Venus in Fur
    After years of respectable filmmaking, it's refreshing to witness a reinvigorated Roman Polanski willing to once again delve deep into seedy psychodrama.
  86. Young & Beautiful
    The film's increasingly unnerving story mostly unfolds with minimal flair, intensely focused as it is on its steely and enigmatic protagonist.
  87. Blue Is the Warmest Color
    Abdellatif Kechiche reveals through his sense of composition, and collaboration with his remarkable actresses, a sensitivity to emotional nuance that's striking.
  88. La Camioneta: The Journey of One American School Bus
    The documentary is committed not to some pseudo-factual documentary tradition, but to a more engaging realist poesis.
  89. Call Me Kuchu
    The film provides welcome context for the semi-hysteria that recently took over the U.S. media in regard to Uganda's "Kill the Gays" bill.
  90. Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me
    A rock-doc that mythologizes the tragicomic flame out of power pop's seminal band, and the fan-made afterlife that brought them long-delayed success.
  91. Dirty Wars
    Ably leads us through its extensive investigation, faltering only when the camera lingers on Jeremy Scahill for a touch too long at the expense of his interview subjects.
  92. The Prey
    The Prey doesn't have the obsessive pull of a great thriller, as it's undeniably an impersonal toy, but it's a hell of a toy.
  93. The Rambler
    Sinister, comical, aggravating, and audacious, Calvin Lee Reeder's film is nothing short of an affront.
  94. Blackfish
    The Frankensteinian rebellion of orcas against their corporate captors turns this doc into a sort of showbiz horror film.
  95. How to Make Money Selling Drugs
    The film employs a flashy text-and-graphics aesthetic that immediately brings to mind the satirical undercurrent of a Grand Theft Auto video game.
  96. Touchy Feely
    Lynn Shelton crafts a film of astonishingly sustained mood, tying its beguiling atmosphere to the mental states of her characters.
  97. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
    Temple of Doom doesn't so much pay tribute to the serial adventures of yore as it does embody them. Here, frivolity and evil blithely coexist—and women are a lot more likely to scream than win drinking contests.
  98. Kuichisan
    These myriad impressions never quite add up to anything coherent by the end, but perhaps the incoherence is precisely the point.
  99. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    Tim Burton's direction reminds us of the distinct, peculiar coyness that was always at the heart of his best films.
  100. The Book Thief
    Books themselves become the story's key symbol, representing the past and future, loss and possibility, of a place that's ground zero for some of history's darkest days.
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