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. Honey
    Driven by a no-nonsense ethos, the film avoids sentimentality the same way its main character avoids sentiment.
  2. Guilty of Romance
    Though it begins with the aesthetic and conceptual rigor of Blade Runner, it quickly veers toward the gratuitous outlandishness of a Bruce La Bruce film.
  3. The Great Invisible
    It effectively demonstrates how the systemic cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion was tied as much to society's staggering dependence on fossil fuels as to the oil industry's greed.
  4. Buzzard
    This is a study of a man who's hard to like, harder to dismiss, and impossible to pigeonhole.
  5. The French Minister
    With its broad performances, rapid-fire pacing, and rampant visual and verbal gags, Bernard Tavernier's first out-and-out comedy doesn't try too hard to hide its graphic-novel origins.
  6. The Peanuts Movie
    Failure hovers over the film as much as it did in Schulz's comic strip, infusing even its most ebullient set pieces and designs with a sense of melancholy.
  7. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
    To dismiss it as simply an act of hipster appropriation is to cop out, because appropriation is the film's thematic meat.
  8. Manakamana
    Filmmakers Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez insist that altered spectatorship, particularly patience and duration, is the foundation of cinematic edification.
  9. Watermark
    By keeping explanatory talking-heads interviews to a minimum, the filmmakers put their trust in the audience to draw their own conclusions based on what they present to us.
  10. More Than the Rainbow
    The film's segments move seamlessly from one topic to the next with the unselfconscious ease of a good dinner party.
  11. Ida
    Pawel Pawlikowski shows great empathy toward the idea of illusions as a way of attaining emotional stability in even the most brutal terrain.
  12. Pioneer
    Its greatest asset, and another trait it shares with Mann and Fincher's work, is a careful attention toward the particulars of its milieu in a way that doesn't call attention to those period touches.
  13. Coherence
    The film's impression of personas is less traditionally sinister than representative of its inquiry into identity and what happens when social barriers begin to fall away.
  14. Nas: Time Is Illmatic
    While the trivia value may feel tremendous, only One9's interviews with Nas, his father, Olu Dara, and his brother, Jungle, manage to make the doc legitimately moving--a history lesson in popular culture.
  15. Why Don't You Play in Hell?
    Refusing to mourn anything, displaying a Futurist-style disdain for the past, Sion Sono imagines a world in which static adherence to old ideas leads directly to doom.
  16. R100
    The set pieces follow their own insane, unstoppable logic, with each new twist yielding its own outré surprises.
  17. The M Word
    Like a number of cult directors to emerge in the 1970s, Henry Jaglom values a party atmosphere at the expense of narrative cohesion.
  18. Whitewash
    The film benefits greatly from this bait-and-switch narrative design, as Hoss-Desmarais dials down or otherwise forgoes exposition, backstory, and character development in favor of an ambiguous, almost ethereal dramaturgical approach.
  19. Sol LeWitt
    What first feels like a neurotic avoidance of Sol LeWitt the man instead becomes a kind of mirage of his life, as though he managed to evaporate into his body of work.
  20. The Walk
    In order to make the walk, and in order for it to matter to him, Philippe Petit has to comprehend it as real and impossible. Zemeckis teaches us the same lesson.
  21. Horses of God
    Nabil Ayouch's film allows us see how young suicide bombers--"horses of God," as the man in charge of their mission calls them--might deserve our pity.
  22. The Discoverers
    It pushes itself beyond shrill predictability in its willingness to indict the public and familial histories at its core.
  23. Gebo and the Shadow
    It defines Manoel de Oliveira's late period, during which his movies have continued to shrink in size and scope while remaining thematically expansive.
  24. The Wonders
    Like a rural Fellini, Rohrwacher mixes the mundane with the absurd to create a sometimes fabulous tale that always feels palpably real.
  25. Citizen Koch
    Like their earlier Trouble the Water, Carl Deal and Tia Lessin portray men and women yearning for a simple place in society as they become casualties to the self-involvement of larger forces.
  26. It Follows
    Though visionary, David Robert Mitchell's film abounds in undigested ideas and dubious sexual politics.
  27. Wild Tales
    Each of the six vignettes that make up this unusually energetic anthology pertains to the methods of calculated mass dehumanization that are (barely) hidden beneath the practices of social institutions.
  28. The Blue Room
    The film abounds in guilt and grief, reveling in a general sense of hopelessly broken social connection.
  29. Test
    Adept as both timely character study and epochal drama, Test wonderfully manages fully formed humanism without sentimentality.
  30. Wrinkles
    In its visionary dream and flashback sequences, the film becomes a comment on the rapidly diminished state of traditional animation.
  31. Elena
    This is a film about the invisible things passed down from generation to generation, that nasty inheritance that cages us into patterns and puzzles we try to solve in someone else's name.
  32. Violette
    By focusing on the tumultuous friendship between Violette LeDuc and Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Provost creates not so much a dichotomy of femininity as a funhouse mirror of it.
  33. Master of the Universe
    Marc Bauder's documentary quietly detonates the conservative notion that our largest corporations should be allowed to duke it out in metaphorical no-holds-barred cage matches.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Burning Bush
    The decentralized narrative benefits from the film's original conception as a miniseries, with plenty of time to draw us into the morass that was the communist state.
  35. Jealousy
    Like an astutely aching ballad, the film—aptly scored with sweet, strumming beats by Jean-Louis Aubert—is pleased to ambiguously infer the interior logic of its irresolute characters without pigeonholing their motivations.
  36. The BFG
    The film, full of such quietly inventive visual magic, is perfectly content to simply revel in the stuff dreams are made of.
  37. Selma
    What will make the film essential for future generations isn't mere flashpoint topicality, but the way it aligns an old struggle with a current one.
  38. The Empty Hours
    Aarón Fernández captures one of the most heartening elements of sex: that it doesn't always oblige our rules or expectations.
  39. The Kill Team
    This is a rare War on Terror military exposé, one almost exclusively interested in the hearts and minds of low-ranking soldiers.
  40. A Life in Dirty Movies
    Wiktor Ericsson emphasizes one of the strongest and most distinctive features of Joseph Sarno's aesthetic: his concentration on female pleasure.
  41. A Master Builder
    Jonathan Demme makes loving sport of the trust his actors have clearly placed in him, erecting for them a monument to the joys and terrors of walking an emotional high wire.
  42. Web Junkie
    Without a frame of footage nor a single interview presented from outside the camp, the documentary shows a capitalist nightmare that accords its victims zero wiggle room.
  43. The Notebook
    János Szász's film is a thoroughly provocative WWII screed that almost deliberately goes out of its way to avoid sentimentality or bathos of any sort.
  44. Young Ones
    It avoids the typical trappings of the genre pastiche by utilizing its clear indebtedness to numerous other films as merely a starting point, rather than an end.
  45. What Now? Remind Me
    The repetitive rhythms of Joaquim Pinto's daily routines provide the film with a feeling of serenity that stands in contrast to the man's underlying anxiety.
  46. Kink
    More than just a thorough examination of hardcore pornography, Christina Voros's doc is also a sort of chronicle of the filmmaking process.
  47. Swim Little Fish Swim
    It subtly counteracts the cliché that creative expression can save your life by making its protagonist a hipster Peter Pan whose creative expression is an excuse not to grow up.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Keep On Keepin' On
    Slowly, the powerful message of heart and soul winning out over an impaired body and over-thinking mind develops into the core drama of this otherwise modest doc.
  49. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
    Given that big-studio children’s animation so often feels like it was created by algorithm, it’s refreshing to see a kid’s cartoon like <em>The Last Wish</em> that’s filled with too many ideas rather than too few.
  50. Wetlands
    For its general ludic obsession with all things generally thought of as disgusting, the German film Wetlands is stuck in the anal stage.
  51. Memphis
    The film's music is the city itself as well as a subtle suggestion that Tim Sutton's own digital cinema is just as elusive and intangible as Willis's unwavering sense of dissatisfaction.
  52. Rocks in My Pockets
    This inventive animated feature about depression and familial roots suggests NPR's "The Moth" storytelling series by way of Persepolis, mixing mesmerizing memoir monologue with whimsical animation.
  53. The Nice Guys
    Shane Black's The Nice Guys doesn't want for great exchanges, and even disposable conversations brim with acidic wit.
  54. Far From Men
    The film often suggests a less defiant cover of The Defiant Ones, yet it's a must-see for Viggo Mortensen's characteristically wonderful performance.
  55. Pawn Sacrifice
    It's best appreciated as a tragicomic profile of a man whose extraordinary talent was undermined by the farcical political reality in which he was enmeshed.
  56. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
    It confirms the Roy Andersson universe as one of near-fossilized similitude, in which any effort or movement is disruptive, revealing new cracks in the set illusion of order.
  57. Stop the Pounding Heart
    Roberto Minervini has created a moving portrait of feminism born out of hard work and intuitiveness, but he never belittles or condescends to the faithful.
  58. Art and Craft
    The filmmakers profile the prolific Mark Landis with a non-judgmental straightforwardness that allows the sheer brazenness of his scams to generate both shock and amusement.
  59. Actress
    It convincingly reconciles private passion with public desire by suggesting that, for women in particular, the 21st-century limelight is always on, no matter the setting or venue.
  60. A Most Violent Year
    J.C. Chandor's fondness for situational irony is empowered by the spartan efficiency of his method, and that of most of his performers.
  61. Red Army
    Gabe Polsky's quiet yet welcome achievement is to allow us to see the individual amid the politics, clearly and sympathetically.
  62. Björk: Biophilia Live
    You can't help but be impressed by how much it represents a natural, even defensive evolutionary step on its creator's part.
  63. The Heart Machine
    It showcases a genuine fascination with the mind/body split engendered by Skyping, online dating, and constant app usage through a plot that doesn't fuel itself on received wisdom.
  64. Last Hijack
    It intriguingly invites us to think about the mundane forces that can drive a seemingly ordinary guy like Mohamed to do something so desperate and cruel as piracy.
  65. Waiting for August
    The distinct lack of domestic drama is precisely what makes the doc so gratifying as a portrait of a family averting turmoil in spite of challenging circumstances.
  66. The Way He Looks
    What progressively mounts tension is the film's understanding of a boy's gradually realized homosexuality as being inextricable from the central metaphor of compromised vision.
  67. Bad Turn Worse
    A reminder that crime movies pointedly inspired by other, better genre films can still be enjoyable, if they wear their influences lightly and cleverly connect them to something tangibly human.
  68. Life Partners
    The romantic elements are secondary to what is essentially an astute and cleverly written dissection of a co-dependent friendship being gradually eroded by the incremental ravages of age, rivalry, and rapidly diverging personal arcs.
  69. Sleeping Beauty
    Just as the film’s gorgeous backdrops suggest characters trapped in suspended animation, the many colorful balls of light that frequently circle their heads hauntingly convey the filmmakers’ idea of fate and love locked in a cosmic struggle.
  70. Giuseppe Makes a Movie
    Adam Rifkin's documentary convincingly portrays the sense of community fostered by Giuseppe Andrews's crazed passion.
  71. Moana
    Compared to your average Disney princesses, Moana is neither selfishly rebellious nor simplistically innocent.
  72. Pelican Dreams
    The film is spare, empathic, and deeply introspective, and its imagery, such as a pelican fascinated by its own reflection, is so sublime in its kookiness as to be worthy of Werner Herzog.
  73. Revenge of the Mekons
    What emerges is a portrait of a fully committed band that could never quite make it and of the rock n' roll project as something between a (very serious) hobby and a full-time career.
  74. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
    The film at one point offers the finest sustained act of emotional storytelling to grace a Marvel Studios production.
  75. Hail, Caesar!
    Joel and Ethan Coen's idiosyncrasies elevate the film above the level of a mere creative exercise.
  76. Comet
    Its time-jumping strategy cleverly illuminates the way in which we go over and fixate on isolated incidents in our minds of breakups past.
  77. Black Panther
    Michel B. Jordan plays Erik Killmonger with such moving, occasionally gut-wrenching commitment that it nearly mitigates the goofiness of his moniker and the superficiality of the film in toto.
  78. Virunga
    This is muckraking journalism that moves confidently with the brio of an action thriller.
  79. West
    Christian Schwochow's film is a tense psychological slow burn, putting us in the muddled headspace of its protagonist as she gradually comes unglued.
  80. Thou Wast Mild and Lovely
    This is a confident work that smashingly updates the Southern gothic for contemporary generations.
  81. Zootopia
    The film goes deeper in its allegorizing, tapping into the volatile nature of identity politics.
  82. Food Chains
    Perhaps Sanjay Rawal's most fascinating excursion into agriculture's dark side is the vineyards of Napa Valley, where the practically Eden-like scenery masks a dreary labor model.
  83. Bad Hair
    The narrative works through the many contradictions brewing inside its main character in the wake of his personal actualization without ever feeling like a dramatic checklist.
  84. The Circle
    The film refuses to tease us with suspense, overwhelm us with sentimentality, or defy us with nuance.
  85. Ballet 422
    Jody Lee Lipes shapes the footage into an intimate symphony of poetically shaped bodies that contrast poignantly with uncertain faces.
  86. Remote Area Medical
    Despite the subdued anger and drawn-out suffering on display, the documentary is primarily a work of hope.
  87. Concerning Violence
    Here is a film that isn't afraid to risk didacticism in order to put across its vision of the debilitating physical and psychological effects of colonialism.
  88. Little Feet
    This is a micro-budgeted affair of the heart that's never precious or obnoxious, but tender and moving and occasionally explosive in its intrinsic emotion.
  89. Song of the Sea
    Even as it entertains increasingly far-fetched detours, the film's folkloric narrative offers an ideal vehicle for this pictorial play.
  90. Shaun the Sheep Movie
    It has generous lashings of Aardman Animations' trademark warmth, visual inventiveness, and satisfying Claymation tactility.
  91. Monkey Kingdom
    The cumulative effect is cheerily life-affirming, a bracing infusion of macaque-style joie de vivre.
  92. Little Accidents
    A movingly authentic exploration of a working-class milieu and the psychological and economic trauma that ripples through a town in the wake of a tragic accident.
  93. Human Capital
    Paolo Virzì's Human Capital gives the tired trope of cutting between overlapping stories a welcome shot of adrenaline, using it not just to compare and contrast tangentially related stories, but to show how people caught up in their private dramas can overlook or misinterpret the people around them.
  94. Maidan
    It puts the viewer inside Maidan, allowing them to draw their own conclusions about the ideas and agendas espoused by the movement's leaders and participants.
  95. Songs from the North
    North Korean culture is lensed in part through a South Korean perspective, with the final chapter asking: “Is reunification possible?”
  96. Tip Top
    Instead of finding one consistent tone and sticking to it, Serge Bozon allows the wildly hilarious and the grimly serious to uneasily coexist, exulting in the resultant clash.
  97. The Salt of the Earth
    It evolves into an intimate reverie on family and aesthetics, while remaining sporadically attuned to the reflexive and ethical dimensions of ethnographic discovery.
  98. Appropriate Behavior
    Desiree Akhavan's tale of queer post-breakup funk shows more nuance, and racial dimension, than its cinematic cousins.
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