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. I Wish
    I Wish has a tough time balancing the heartfelt with the saccharine and too often feels slight.
  2. Going Down in LA-LA Land
    Director Casper Andreas does a good job conserving a simultaneous sense of disgust and attraction for the way big-city dreams end up stripping off wannabes from everything but their bodies.
  3. You Hurt My Feelings
    For a film that often veers into potentially absurd territory, You Hurt My Feelings shows a great deal of sensitivity toward its sad-sack characters.
  4. The LEGO Movie
    All told, there's an ageless warmth to The LEGO Movie akin to that of the LEGO brand itself.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Side Effects
    Like Magic Mike, Side Effects is enlivened by Soderbergh's jazzy style and laidback moralism, bringing to mind the work of another connoisseur of genre, Robert Altman.
  6. Sleepwalk with Me
    The funny thing about the movie isn't its failure-to-launch humor, but the weird mess of life that rushes in despite it.
  7. Liberal Arts
    Liberal Arts provides a peek into what makes Josh Radnor tick, and what he cares about outside his mainstream-targeted sitcom.
  8. Indie Game: The Movie
    Makes a compelling case for games as not only clever hand-eye coordination exercises, but also as manifestations of their creators' emotional and philosophical viewpoints.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    OC87: The Obsessive Compulsive, Major Depression, Bipolar, Asperger's Movie
    A tender, painful, and frustrating work of vulnerability, and because of this in some ways deflects critical commentary.
  10. A Cat in Paris
    An animated film with the cozy charm of an advertisement for Starbucks French Roast, A Cat in Paris is all design and no danger.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    U.N. Me
    U.N. Me isn't all sneering, and it certainly makes its points.
  12. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present
    As entertaining as the documentary is, it never really measures up to the fascination and sheer force of personality of its subject.
  13. The Heat
    With the film, Melissa McCarthy definitively cements her status as a legitimate comic talent, leaving her co-star stumbling behind in her wake.
  14. Paul Williams Still Alive
    The film too often undercuts its goals by indulging its director's need for self-affirmation at the expense of the movie's far more compelling central subject.
  15. UFO in Her Eyes
    The serio-comic technique and ping-ponging aesthetics ultimately make for a winning approach.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    China Heavyweight
    Although we never really get to know He or Miao, despite following them around vérité-style, director Yung Chang expertly captures the rays of Western culture bouncing off them.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    V/H/S
    An anthology of found-footage horror shorts that exudes, sometimes extraordinarily, a neophyte's sense of courage and cluelessness.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Pact
    When The Pact descends, finally, from suggestion to explication, the scares regrettably slink away.
  19. Kumaré
    Kumaré has a premise that could've been the launching point for one of Sascha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles's satirical outrages.
  20. Cloud Atlas
    Its ideas are paralleled, its themes twinned, sometimes breathlessly, sometimes fatuously, into what may be described as a 164-minute pop song of seemingly infinite verses, choruses, and bridges. Perhaps expectedly, it soars as often as it thuds.
  21. The Imposter
    The film shrewdly opts not to proffer its own hypothesis about the true reasons behind the Gibson family buying Frédéric Bourdin's story.
  22. Searching for Sugar Man
    Despite crafting a consistently engaging film, the director doesn't present the full scope of Sixto Rodriguez's life.
  23. Funny Face
    The clothing may be couture, but Funny Face’s plot is strictly wash, rinse, repeat.
  24. Walk Away Renee
    It's Jonathan Caouette's insistence in going back to his nightmarish old footage, or the old footage that he purposefully renders nightmarish, that seems more interesting.
  25. It's the Earth Not the Moon
    After 30 minutes or so, Gonçalo Tocha's anthropological proposition slides into dubiousness.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Deconstructing Dad: The Music, Machines and Mystery of Raymond Scott
    The documentary is a work of careful consideration, moral weighing, and deliberateness of craft.
  27. Nitro Circus: The Movie
    While the Nitro Circus's many achievements are impressive, they pale in comparison to those of Knoxville and company's.
  28. The Well Digger's Daughter
    Ultimately comes off as curiously anecdotal, lacking the dramatic dynamism that could give Marcel Pagnol's tale new life.
  29. Wagner's Dream
    The title of Susan Froemke's documentary is both an expression of aspiration and a statement of achievement.
  30. Guardians of the Galaxy
    For every scene that soars into the dizzying heights of the pop sublime, there's another that crashes back down into the mundane troughs of studio-mandated formula.
  31. Abendland
    The documentary discipline can't escape its own inherent intermediateness, or its own penchant for deception.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Big Boys Gone Bananas!*
    The issue remains that this variety of faux-populism seems better suited to the soapbox than the silver screen.
  33. Dreams of a Life
    Dreams of a Life succeeds in making its point about the unkowability of the people in our lives, but there isn't quite enough substance here to fully sustain the film.
  34. Burning Man
    Say what you will about Burning Man, but writer-director Jonathan Teplitsky can't be accused of spoon-feeding his audience.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    We Women Warriors
    Looks and sounds considerably better than nearly every other independent documentary of its kind, forming an argument that's clear and cogent and virtually free of obvious manipulation or pandering.
  36. All Is Lost
    J.C. Chandor creates an austere snapshot of human struggle, ingenuity, and perseverance, one that's predicated on Robert Redford's fantastic performance.
  37. True Wolf
    The documentary veers between repetitive and didactic pronouncements of a call to inaction and more affectionately told stories about Koani's life as an "ambassador wolf" on the elementary school circuit.
  38. Side by Side
    A serviceable primer on the digital-celluloid divide in commercial cinema, if a bit unwieldy in scope and in danger of being made obsolete by the next version of the RED camera.
  39. About Time
    A surprisingly thoughtful romantic comedy that shirks a great deal of reason and consequence in the name of love.
  40. Avengers: Age of Ultron
    The film struggles against the rigid formula that typifies the Marvel universe, but only does so up to a point.
  41. Little White Lies
    The specific narrative handicaps throughout are mostly too banal to warrant exegesis, though the choice of vintage pop tunes for dramatic underscoring is particularly grating.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Neighboring Sounds
    The images, while beautiful, are sentimental, as if Kleber Mendonça Filho is trying to negotiate too much.
  43. Teddy Bear
    From its title to its closing caress, Mads Matthiesen's film skates perilously close to the cliff's edge of mawkish sentiment.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Somewhere Between
    For what often feels like an obligatory "Where Are They Now?" DVD extra, the documentary is surprisingly affecting.
  45. For Ellen
    So Yong Kim's direction remains ruminative, even poetic, in its pacing, its sense of place, and its approach to intimacy, but this is her most unsuitable script.
  46. 3, 2, 1... Frankie Go Boom
    The film never really goes soft, as Jordan Roberts never loses sight of the fact that these toxic nincompoops are authentically bad for one another.
  47. Holy Motors
    Léos Carax's maddening, self-satisfied, though never smug, game of spot-the-reference seems intended only for a particular type of cinephile.
  48. The Loneliest Planet
    Much of the film's final act is given to alienated walking, which too often plays as an abstract study of triangular arrangements in which non-speaking figures move across a barren terrain.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Chasing Ice
    If you need it, the documentary offers a devastating, and often beautifully shot, reality check.
  50. LUV
    As a film that largely works as a subdued twist on the familiar drama about crime and family, LUV needed more intimacy and focus.
  51. Rust and Bone
    It runs a complicated bait and switch on its audience, passing ostensible exploitation fodder through a high-toned prestige filter.
  52. The Day
    Despite being a nasty and skillful action film, The Day goes off the rails in the final stretch.
  53. Ornette: Made in America (1985)
    Shirley Clarke's portraiture eschews cohesive biography and often spirals off into lyrical dissonance.
  54. Stand Up Guys
    Fails to plumb the dramatic depths of its setups, but every now and then the actors pick up the slack, filling in the blanks with three decades's worth of mythic resonance.
  55. Penguins of Madagascar
    It does well to put more focus on delivering a plethora of jokes, imitations, zippy repartee, and sight gags than its plot's familiar machinations.
  56. Trolls
    Trolls is a flashy, pre-fab product, but the animators are given just enough space to create moments of genuine artistry.
  57. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
    If the film sometimes feels too small in comparison to its predecessors, it manages to make the most of its quietest moments.
  58. Radio Unnameable
    While crediting free-form radio pioneer Bob Fass with changing the culture of broadcasting, this documentary remains clear-eyed about the decline of community radio and the New Left.
  59. Knuckleball!
    This chronicle of two athletes throwing baseball's funkiest, least respected pitch is given depth by their stranger-than-fiction underdog status and camaraderie with mentors who've had the same struggles.
  60. Pain & Gain
    An outrageous based-on-real-life tale that's perfectly suited to director Michael Bay's insanely overblown stylistic and thematic temperament.
  61. Dear Mandela
    A devout political documentary that insists that community, dignity, and solidarity are sustaining, but not the baseline by which one should settle.
  62. Fat Kid Rules the World
    People matter in Matthew Lillard's film; genre not so much.
  63. Avé
    The film exudes an elemental, intriguing mysteriousness, a reminder that things remain unseen and in a state of unrest.
  64. The Central Park Five
    Though relentlessly and admirably logical, the movie constantly glosses over the buried human element.
  65. Edge of Tomorrow
    Tom Cruise's participation transmutes, as it always does, everything around him, turning the movie's series of false starts, dead ends, and hard lessons into a working metaphor for his own career.
  66. The Thieves
    A dazzling heist film that can't help but come off as duly influenced by Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's trilogy, South Korea's number one box-office champ of all time is never less than clever.
  67. The Flat
    Accusation is the rhetoric of outrage, and Arnon Goldfinger can't bring himself to experience even conservative anger, regardless of its appropriateness.
  68. Prisoners
    Possibly year's most immaculate-looking drivel, a prismatically shot whodunit abundant in red herrings, but lacking in moral contemplation.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Split: A Deeper Divide
    As an election-season reminder that our democratic system isn't functioning, it serves as a welcome wake-up call
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Brooklyn Castle
    It pays to consider even the small details of society's greatest investment in the future: our future generations.
  71. Sexy Baby
    What the documentary lacks in the way of sophisticated filmmaking it compensates for with an earnest insistence on open dialogue.
  72. Ant-Man
    Half-assed mentions of the Avengers, as well as a few cameo appearances sprinkled both within the feature and in its credits stingers, exude less shame than a crowd-pandering politico.
  73. Sleep Tight
    The states get higher with every breadcrumb Luis Tosar's creep lays down, and the film derives sometimes remarkable corkscrew tension from watching him being backed into a corner.
  74. Orchestra of Exiles
    Its episodic nature poses a narrative challenge that director Josh Aronson's just barely feature-length documentary can't quite surmount.
  75. Dinotasia
    This decision to avoid treating the dinosaurs as surrogate people for easy identification is both the film's boldest move and the source of much of its problems.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Olympus Has Fallen
    The film spends its first act establishing a flimsy emotional groundwork before gleefully taking a sledgehammer to it just seconds into act two.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    North Sea Texas
    While the film succeeds in creating a beautiful setting and portends of things to come from Defurne, it ultimately fails to give life to its main character - and no tale of pent-up teenage frustration should be as subdued and pretty as this.
  78. California Solo
    Robert Carlyle's performance compensates for the film's less successful elements and even makes you wonder if they might be strengths.
  79. Dragon
    Peter Ho-Sun Chan and Deonnie Yen Chan are too resourceful to let things remain dull for long.
  80. Generation P
    The film is incredibly cynical, but the experience of watching it is occasionally joyful in its sense of freedom.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    La Rafle (The Round Up)
    Sentimentality may make the movie's agony more digestible, but its darkness resists any glossing over of what isn't only France's, but Europe's painful legacy.
  82. Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
    Alex Gibney's latest lacks a certain cinematic depth, but that doesn't take away from its admirable reporting.
  83. Price Check
    The script is teeming with informed jargon about the business of supermarket pricing, and with actors like Posey as its vessel, the dialogue rings with an unlikely blend of fascination and farce.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The ABCs of Death
    Tellingly, this horror anthology's finest entries convey how real horror comes in more than shades of red, and how it lives inside us all.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Gatekeepers
    Even when the so-called Gatekeepers offer up damning testimony against their organization, there's no real threat that they'll ever be held accountable for it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Gimme the Loot
    A nose-to-the-ground portrait of two believably aspirational protagonists and their constant hustle to make good on the movie's eponymous demand.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Like Someone in Love
    Plays out as a city-mouse rejoinder to the rustic, open-air daydream of Certified Copy, a snarl of thorny free jazz to that film's graceful aria.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Bad Kids Go to Hell
    The film's unlikely combination of didacticism and sexy teen slaughter signals a booming trend: the Occupy horror flick.
  89. Wagner & Me
    Even when Wagner & Me seems uneven as an art historical study, it's fairly successful as a travelogue.
  90. The Rabbi's Cat
    Despite its flaws, the film is at least a consistent vision, attesting through both its story and animation to the rabbi's right to be different while also striving for human solidarity.
  91. The Girl
    Uses the perils of immigrating to this country without papers as a backdrop for a poor white American woman's bumpy path to enlightenment.
  92. To the Wonder
    Throughout To the Wonder, the new and old are incessantly twinned, blurred into a package that suggests an experimental dance piece.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Aquí y Allá (Here and There)
    It's a confident vision, but its aversion to sentiment has the intended but unfortunate effect of making the characters' disconnects our own.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    My Brooklyn
    A thoughtful piece of documentary journalism that synecdochically uses the controversial redevelopment of the Fulton Street Mall to talk about the process of gentrification.
  95. Welcome to the Machine
    The focus on Weider's fatherly duties and modest personal insights is what provides the film with its moral grounding.
  96. Southwest (Sudoeste)
    The inscrutability of the plot, intriguing at first, is ultimately impenetrable.
  97. Our School
    The filmmakers spend vastly more time chronicling bigoted remarks from Romanians about gypsy life than they do actual gypsy life, so a minor crisis of perspective hangs over Our School.
  98. Tomorrowland
    In Brad Bird's film, the way forward is backward, on a path that stumbles into misplaced nostalgia and dicey humanism.
  99. San Diego Surf
    Here, the glamorous and the infantile cohabitate on a casual level, and frivolity remains the Factory's default mode.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Last Gladiators
    Makes room for tender moments of reflection from a guy who, against impossible odds, still managed some victories, the biggest of which may be that he's still standing.
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