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. 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.
  2. Cheap Thrills
    The film's clearest winner is Pat Healy, whose depiction of a man willing to corrode his entire life to provide for his wife and kid feels true despite the script's silliest moments.
  3. Buster's Mal Heart
    Writer-director Sarah Adina Smith's film confuses narrative gimmickry for the sensitive evocation of an inner life.
  4. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant
    The film bangs the drum loudly on behalf of American exceptionalism.
  5. If the Dancer Dances
    It's less of an insightful backstage documentary than a gushing, sycophantic love letter to the late Merce Cunningham.
  6. Pitch Perfect 2
    Even stronger than its predecessor, which didn't quite go as far in terms of representing these young women in a wider context.
  7. 100 Bloody Acres
    One sees a film called 100 Bloody Acres expecting the requisite allusions to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but an homage to the best scene in Melvin and Howard comes as something of a shock.
  8. Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    After a while, you want to know what line of inquiry the film is pursuing—what greater paths it’s wandered to.
  9. Downton Abbey: A New Era
    A New Era’s acknowledgement that some things must die for new things to be born works to justify the film’s title by quietly linking its themes of entitlement and survival.
  10. Pope Francis - A Man of His Word
    It often plays like a toothless PR video designed to rehabilitate the Catholic Church's reputation in the wake of its global pedophilia scandal.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Fast Company
    The only thing Fast Company says about Cronenberg the person and artist is that the dude really, really likes drag racing. Auteurists should probably look elsewhere. Fans of well-crafted B movies, on the other hand, will be right at home.
  12. Piercing
    If the film is mildly disappointing, it’s because it doesn’t go far enough. It confidently prepares us for a frenzy that never quite materializes.
  13. I Want Your Sex
    The film gets too caught up in concern trolling about the sexual timidity of today’s youth.
  14. Path of Blood
    The film in effect positions young jihadis less as fervid, bloodthirsty psychopaths and more as dumb kids at summer camp.
  15. A Coffee In Berlin
    Jan Ole Gerster seems infatuated with his main character, but to little avail beyond reveling in his aimless despair.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Violeta Went to Heaven
    Suffers from an overtly conventional way of depicting the life events of an anything-but-conventional woman, a lazy flaw further highlighted by its brief moments of visual experimentation.
  17. Atomic Blonde
    The tediously forestalled twists suck away time from what should be the film's focus—its action—and leaves only two scenes worthy of celebration.
  18. I'm Your Woman
    Julia Hart drains the crime film genre of its macho bluster without replacing it with anything.
  19. 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.
  20. Anna Karenina
    The film contains far more passion and a tad more complexity than the dominant and typically more staid model of middlebrow costume drama.
  21. Perfect Strangers (Perfectos Desconocidos)
    Manolo Caro's film uses its characters as rigid markers of cowardice, lust, and entitlement.
  22. Friends with Benefits
    For a film that had once made some pretense toward exposing such dangerously submissive attitudes toward Hollywood romance, Friends with Benefits's conclusion can't help but seem more than a wee bit disingenuous.
  23. Polytechnique
    Though it's as schematic in construction as Incendies, the film doesn't grind along to a ponderous plot; it's unnerving abstraction of its subject matter more daringly relays Villeneuve's view of the human cost of gender warfare.
  24. My Reincarnation
    My Reincarnation has an effective bifurcated structure that testifies to the level of trust Jennifer Fox clearly established with her subjects.
  25. First Winter
    The film's interests are mainly relegated to wallowing in the frigid-starvation-suffering of its protagonists.
  26. That Guy Dick Miller
    A fawning tribute to the cult legend, enriched by a subtle current of sadness that prevents the documentary from turning into a glorified DVD supplement.
  27. Gaga: Five Foot Two
    Far from seeming like a strategic element created to define Lady Gaga's reinvention, the documentary instead feels like a natural outgrowth of it.
  28. 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.
  29. I'm Carolyn Parker
    What keeps the documentary from lapsing entirely into a generic human-interest story superficially peppered with local color is, oddly enough, the slowness with which Parker's goals are achieved.
  30. 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.
  31. The Hunter
    The film refuses to focus on its core story, hedging its bets with forays into family drama, environmental thriller, and corporate intrigue.
  32. The Eyes of My Mother
    Though the film strives to be audacious and galvanizing, it's easily shaken off as an exercise in stunted necrophilia erotica.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Les Miserables
    One would be hard-pressed to describe this, despite the wealth of beauty on display, as anything but an ugly film, shot and cut ineptly.
  34. Your Monster
    Melissa Barrera’s Laura may be full of rage, but the kind of monster she is doesn’t line up with where her rage leads her.
  35. 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.
  36. Knock at the Cabin
    The film takes its time delving into its characters' headspaces, to the point that it becomes less of a thriller than an unorthodox character study, especially as its expertly deployed use of flashback slowly forms the emotional core of the story.
  37. Cyber-Seniors
    The film is too standard-issue in its making to probe beyond the rough outlines of a success story.
  38. Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America
    The film is a debater with some interesting points to make but no overall argument to contain them.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Klitschko
    Smartly, Sebastian Dehnhardt's film eschews hype and goes far beyond mere talk, shows as well as tells, by including fascinatingly instructive slow- mo shots of both men's fights to highlight the differences between the brawny duo, often mistaken for identical twins.
  40. Kiss of the Spider Woman
    For a musical so dedicated to celebrating and critiquing the transformative potential of cinematic fantasy, Bill Condon’s Kiss of the Spider Woman brings relatively little of the kind of overwhelming star power that can truly transport audiences.
  41. Rob the Mob
    For the most part, it's a gas, but the light touch Raymond De Felitta gives the material is at once its saving grace and its tremendous limiter.
  42. Eames: The Architect & The Painter
    Structurally lopsided, the narrative jumps directly into the success of their first molded-plywood chair, and meanders from there into the numerous short films the Eames Studio made for government agencies and IT companies.
  43. Winter Brothers
    If nothing else, the film is a feat of formal conception and craftsmanship.
  44. Rocky Balboa
    Stallone yearns to investigate the loneliness of a man who can’t get over the past, an endeavor which entails unwieldy speeches (delivered by the actor in his patented “yews guys” patois) and reflective shots of the city’s skyline.
  45. Jimmy's Hall
    Ken Loach's staging is so calm and sober that it turns his story into an expertly photographed yet weirdly remote rebellion tale.
  46. The Congress
    The film lacks the manic fly-by-night invention of, say, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, or even the ripe erotic ambiguity of something like Avatar.
  47. Tallulah
    Relevant facts about each character are dutifully punched out, in earnest speeches or actions that are often wildly overdrawn.
  48. Before the Flood
    The documentary's focus on elite solutionism effectively erases the role of popular agitation in formulating social change.
  49. Damsel
    It's well established by now that the mythic Old West was always a trope written and controlled by men, and that there's really no bottom to which men won't stoop when women are a scarce quantity. In its mad rush toward performative allyship, the film exhausts every possible means of conveying those bombshells.
  50. Master Gardener
    For Paul Schrader, even a film called Master Gardener ultimately pivots on a man having to take out the macho trash.
  51. Eden
    The "male gaze" that often despicably and hypocritically surfaces in these kinds of films is pointedly absent throughout.
  52. Weekend of a Champion
    The film is at its most fascinating when Jackie Stewart authoritatively and pedagogically discusses the nuances of his trade.
  53. The Limehouse Golem
    Initially colorful, the script’s lurid and overripe dialogue eventually grinds the film to a halt.
  54. The Ones Below
    Even the film's lapses inform it with a free-associative sense of portent, evoking the stupid things we inexplicably do in our most personal nightmares.
  55. Borg vs. McEnroe
    Even the depiction of how both men waver during the Wimbledon final — of Borg losing his cool while McEnroe avoids succumbing to petulance — fails to tie into the larger portrait of their rivalry.
  56. Israel: A Home Movie
    A prismatic meditation on an entire nation, Eliav Lilti's documentary is history as abstraction.
  57. Unsane
    Even Unsane's most ridiculous moments coast on the sheer energy of Steven Soderbergh's aesthetic gamesmanship.
    • 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.
  59. Blizzard of Souls
    The filmmakers are unafraid of the picturesque, lighting scenes so they resemble old-master canvases.
    • 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.
  61. The Brood
    Undoubtedly [Cronenberg's] best from this period and also the most troubling.
  62. Villains
    Maika Monroe’s engaging performance serves only to highlight how feeble and unconvincing the rest of the film is.
  63. Someone Great
    The film plays like a mixtape of various sensibilities, partly beholden to the self-contained form of the bildungsroman; surely it’s no coincidence that a James Joyce poster hangs in the background of one scene.
  64. Stowaway
    By paring their story down so much, the filmmakers only end up highlighting just how little it contains.
  65. Elemental
    More than some run-of-the-mill social-awareness doc, the film pays as much attention to the personal and emotional strife of its subjects as it does to their activism.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    The Python Hunt
    The at times overbearing aesthetic touch isn’t enough to diminish the film’s saliency.
  67. Triangle of Sadness
    Writer-director Ruben Östlund’s pessimism ultimately leads the film toward a self-negating dead end.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Revenge of the Electric Car
    Revenge of the Electric Car, which details the resurgence of interest in the mass production of the battery car, is sometimes too slick for its own good.
  69. Let Him Go
    Despite a searing performance from Diane Lane, writer-director Thomas Bezucha’s film ultimately self-immolates.
  70. Batkid Begins
    Any hope of meaningful reflection or insight is doused by a steady drip of often redundant and banal observations.
  71. The Cat o' Nine Tails
    Structurally and thematically, Dario Argento’s The Cat O’ Nine Tails is an improvement over The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, even if the film’s non-linear convolutions of plot may purposefully distract. Set against a backdrop of genetic research and espionage, Argento’s formal obsession with allusions to seeing and sightlessness is on fierce display.
  72. World War Z
    The zombies twitch, leap, gnash, and destroy, but the film has all the thrill and surprise of a model U.N. summit.
  73. Maria
    Between Jackie, Spencer, and, now, Maria, Pablo Larraín has thrice committed the cardinal sin of taking a female icon of the 20th century and, in an attempt to hold a mirror up to her multitudes, flattened her into the equivalent of a kitschy postage stamp.
  74. Hello, My Name Is Doris
    Michael Showalter is content to trade They Came Together's mischievous genre deconstructionism for cheap-shot indie quirk.
  75. Love, Cecil
    Lisa Immordino Vreeland's avoidance of a serious analytical bent ends up stifling the documentary.
  76. Bring Them Down
    Bring Them Down uncovers an organic affinity between the genre mainstay of vengeance taking on a life of its own and the force exerted by paternal tradition.
  77. Aurora
    What Puiu seems to be suggesting is that the complexities of human behavior and relationships are beyond the power of the law to comprehend, but are they also beyond the power of the cinema?
  78. Beautiful Something Left Behind
    Katrine Philp’s documentary boldly argues for a clear-eyed frankness in talking to bereaved children about loss.
  79. Split
    Split is personal and outlandish, with questionable themes, riveting plotting, somber storytelling, and elegant construction.
  80. Breaking the Frame
    Director Marielle Nitoslawaska's experimental approach sometimes wanders down uncontextualized paths and obfuscates the subject with filmic affectations.
  81. Mayor Pete
    The film’s approach is completely subsumed by the importance of the Mayor Pete persona as the means and ends of the candidacy.
  82. Echotone
    Director Nathan Christ dithers between fashioning the film as a glossing study of metropolitan personality and a virtual advertisement for the groups included.
  83. Alpha
    It reduces the domestication of wolves to a series of simplistic interactions that don’t exactly convey the difficulties of a wild animal overcoming millennia of instinct.
  84. The Hole in the Ground
    The film gradually becomes something more than a mixtape of horror gimmicks as it homes in on a frightening real-world subtext.
  85. The Crazies
    The Crazies lacks the nightmarish momentum of Romero’s best zombie flicks, but it’s no less astute with its allegorical potshots.
  86. Chef Flynn
    At times, Cameron Yates appears to be too protective of his subjects, which somewhat neuters the drama of the narrative.
  87. The Caine Mutiny
    The Caine Mutiny is not distinctive filmmaking or storytelling, and its idea of ethical debate is relying on familiar archetypes and arguments. It sure is standard, though. It’s like the well-constructed house that’s not meant to be distinctive, but was made to endure.
  88. Faces of Death
    For a film that’s so well versed not only in the genre but in its tendencies to recreate and recycle itself, it’s disappointing to see Faces of Death do so in such slavish fashion.
  89. Laggies
    To Keira Knightley's credit, she's all too willing to undercut her pretty-girl reputation by looking and acting a fool for Lynn Shelton's camera.
  90. By Design
    By forcing us to identify with its largely comatose protagonist, By Design arouses resentment in order to shake us out of torpor.
  91. The Rip
    The film's legible direction and steady escalation of tension makes for an enjoyably retro diversion.
  92. The Devil Wears Prada 2
    Befitting its image-conscious milieu, The Devil Wears Prada 2 has the aspartame fake-sweetness and zero-calorie comfort of its predecessor: It’s charming enough in the moment but you’ll be hungry again half an hour later.
  93. Free Fire
    Ben Wheatley's film reduces the modus operandi of the action movie down to its starkest elements.
  94. Keanu
    Keanu is declawed by design, but it's hard not to wonder what the cat could've dragged in.
  95. Zero Charisma
    It's a pity that it hews to sitcom-like formula rather than using this bank of knowledge and sympathy to create something more original.
  96. Beau Is Afraid
    With Beau Is Afraid, his third and easily most ambitious feature to date, Ari Aster traces, to more cosmic and absurd ends, how tragedy is birthed by, well, birth itself.
  97. A Haunting in Venice
    In the end, any attempts that A Haunting in Venice makes at connecting post-war trauma to Halloween and the ability to commune with the dead are non-committal, and the script doesn’t do enough to communicate why any of that matters.
  98. 12 Hour Shift
    The plot, geared as much for comedy as horror, is wound with efficient build-up, and its revolving-door atmosphere is consistent enough to paper over some iffy acting, baggy dialogue, and more than a few minutes of wasted real estate.
  99. The Matrix Resurrections
    Where the love story was a means-to-an-end afterthought in the first Matrix, it’s now the crux of the tale, and the emotional undercurrents are so intoxicating that it more than makes up for the relative inelegance of the action scenes.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Amigo
    Amigo finds John Sayles rather closer to his worst, alternating gracelessly between fleshing out the characters caught in the middle of international conflict and turning them into dots and arrows in a flowchart of historical relevance.
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