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. Free Men
    For much of its runtime, the film is simply there, decent for the most part, but at no point immersive.
  2. Elles
    The film is ultimately draining because of the way it handles Anne, stranding a potentially dynamic character in two dueling scenarios, both of which are drab and unsurprising.
  3. Jack and Diane
    Scenes of the pair staring longingly into each other's eyes go on for so long that they become devoid of meaning, not unlike the film's alchemical fusion of genres.
  4. Saviors in the Night
    It's all fairly by the numbers, but in Boeken's presentation, the film isn't without its moments of narrative power.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kid-Thing
    Its main character's moral predicament with a woman inside a pit becomes a muddle of confused symbolism and trite psychoanalysis.
  6. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
    This sequel strenuously works to form a total inversion of the first movie's relationship with food.
  7. Bel Ami
    A coherent characterization of Robert Pattinson's striving schemer is nowhere to be found in this pedestrian period piece.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    An Encounter with Simone Weil
    Ultimately, the film doesn't feel like it ever left Julia Haslett's head, leaving us a little cold.
  9. Four Lovers
    This handsome mate-swapping drama never moves beyond the erotic to become incisive about the barriers built into sexual experimentation for committed couples.
  10. The Playroom
    Lacking much in the way of character depth, the film attempts to fill the gap with melodrama.
  11. The Beat Hotel
    Following the faux-opiate flecked suit of docs like One Fast Move or I'm Gone, The Beat Hotel can't quite rise above its obvious desire to appeal to the former demographic in spite of their apparently limited patience for historical exegesis.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Master
    The Master is Paul Thomas Anderson with the edges sanded off, the best bits shorn down to nubs.
  13. The Road
    For a spell, the film gets by on its unpretentious flair for atmosphere, even its disconcerting nonsensicality.
  14. Katy Perry: Part of Me
    This frothy 3D concert doc often plays like a Perry ad campaign, assuring viewers that their "Teenage Dream" diva is a good, fun-loving person, and that, by God, she's doing fine.
  15. In Their Skin
    Winds up turning itself into just a rote thriller about psychos learning that, appearance notwithstanding, every family has dysfunctional problems.
  16. The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
    The movie blasts by for a while as an odd and busy slice of highly watchable garbage.
  17. How to Grow a Band
    The movie is unsurprisingly devoted to peddling up-and-comer Chris Thiele as something daring, something new.
  18. Here
    While everything here is mostly unspoken, and the film itself hints at a broader set of concerns than simply two lost souls meeting on foreign ground, Here too often feels like a jumble of ideas that don't quite cohere.
  19. Oki's Movie
    Hong Sang-soo once again corroborates auteurist theory at the same time that he reveals the potential shortcomings of its practice.
  20. Noah
    Once the money shots of Darren Aronofsky's version recede, it becomes ever more clear that his intention is to tackle the capriciousness of Old Testament logic. And, ultimately, to assent to it.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    96 Minutes
    Director Aimee Lagos seems to be at odds with her own film, like a well-meaning but controlling parent hell-bent on choosing a child's college, major, and fraternity for them.
  22. Citizen Gangster
    Its commentary on our fascination with law-breakers is virtually nonexistent, except to the extent that the film itself revels in the doomed romanticism of its own protagonist.
  23. Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance
    While the documentary offers us a story that needs to be told, it does so in very non-Joffrey ways.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment
    While very informative, it doesn't work as an introduction to kibbutzim because it requires the viewer to have some prior knowledge of the history of Israel.
  25. Last Call at the Oasis
    Both an informative bit of agitprop and an ultra slick and slightly self-satisfied bit of entertainment.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Broken Tower
    It’s tonally flat and a little too impressed with its own elliptical construction. Yet there’s something about Franco’s desire to escape the straitjacket of the biopic’s pat psychologizing and greatest-hits structure that makes his film feel at least honest in its missteps.
  27. 42
    The film elevates the story of Jackie Robinson to that of cornball legend rather than just honoring his legitimately uplifting, heroic saga by telling it straight.
  28. This Is the End
    It's disheartening that, despite some half-hearted overtures toward shifting the comedy paradigm, the filmmakers make little attempt to expand their comedic palette.
  29. Where Do We Go Now?
    Nadine Labaki's film awkwardly hybridizes somber politizized drama with regional humor in the style of "Waking Ned Devine" and "Calendar Girls."
  30. A Bag of Hammers
    Suffers from both an odd, ineffective structure and a low-key tone that jars uncomfortably with the subject matter and makes the film's stakes seem unnecessary low.
  31. The Good Dinosaur
    The main character is a collection of insecurities that have been calculatedly assembled so as to teach children the usual lessons about bravery, loyalty, and self-sufficiency.
  32. Beloved
    Ultimately crammed at a frustrating juncture between period-piece froth and seriously conceived drama, never tipping its hand toward either.
  33. You Are Here
    Some will find the film compelling, but underneath the riddles it's basically a self-important proclamation of "who the hell knows?"
  34. Pitch Perfect
    Jason Moore's film is more or less successful in inverse proportion to the degree that it plays its material by the book.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Crooked Arrows
    Although it adheres to the tried-and-true sports-movie formula of an underdog team striving to overcome their limitations to become winners, Crooked Arrows lacks captivating emotional momentum.
  36. 6 Month Rule
    The film is far too indulgent with its lead character to do more than hint at the ways that one form of male egotism can morph into another.
  37. Richard's Wedding
    In the director's preference for above-it-all contempt over tough-minded empathy, the film ends up seeming little more than an 89-minute hatefest.
  38. Union Square
    Nancy Savoca's film begins in caricature and ends in sentimentality, only briefly hitting the sweet spot in between.
  39. X-Men: Days of Future Past
    It only conveys the awesome strangeness of its characters and their universe when director Brian Singer breaks away from the perpetual build-up of the film's unwieldy plot.
  40. Patagonia Rising
    Director Brian Lilla alternates between talking heads and animated graphics to elucidate first how dams work and, obligatorily, to put a human face on those who would be affected.
  41. The Girl from the Naked Eye
    The Girl from the Naked Eye has heart, which is more than can be said of some other recent genre throwbacks, but it ultimately makes barely a splash.
  42. Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
    Inflammatory talk-show host Morton Downey Jr. sparked, delighted, and quickly faded like a firecracker--not unlike the erratic, quick-fire presentation of his persona in this documentary.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Burning Hot Summer
    The Louis Garrel character's mixture of self-containment and alleged possessiveness over his wife fails to convince, if not to irritate.
  44. About Cherry
    The lack of plausible conflict mars the movie's highly commendable depiction of San Francisco as a the new porn capital.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    It's a Disaster
    The film flirts with big ideas about adult relationships, but fails to locate any gravitas about its characters' existential or psychological crises.
  46. Ordinary Miracles: The Photo League's New York
    Nina Rosenblum's love letter never attains that essence of ambiguity that makes the best nonfiction films live on after the credits fade.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Men on the Bridge
    If director Asli Özge has said something about modern-day Istanbul, she's done it in fairly broad strokes that may be too far apart for the sake of a discernible narrative.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Goats
    Christopher Neil's film is more location-scouted and photographed than directed and acted.
  49. Gypsy
    A Slovakian character study of a boy ambivalently caught between worlds that ultimately squanders its promise.
  50. Ponies
    Never distinguishes itself as engaging cinema apart from the main character's vile charisma and a few dynamic dialogue sequences.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
    Takashi Miike lets his familiar tastelessness get the better of him, relishing the grisly seppuku-by-bamboo in unnecessary detail.
  52. Shut Up and Play the Hits
    James Murphy never says that his music will sound different after LCD Soundsystem disbands, so why fearfully anticipate a change that we don't even know is coming?
  53. The Man with the Iron Fists
    The chop-socky wire-fu scenes are beautifully choreographed, but pretty crudely edited; despite its gourmet neo-grindhouse trappings, the film won't bring the heat like you've never seen before.
  54. Stoker
    The film's weird mix of dollhouse dread and fashion-magazine chic can be fetching, but it's nothing if not vacuous, a series of disjointed, improvisatory riffs that recall the brazen aesthetic overload of Amer.
  55. Jayne Mansfield's Car
    Billy Bob Thornton's ensemble Southern family dramedy fails to subvert its cutesy formula often enough.
  56. Runner Runner
    The ultimately forgettable Runner Runner is, for a gambling film, markedly risk-averse.
  57. The Conjuring
    Though The Conjuring claims to be based on a true story, in truth it's based on every horror film that's come before it.
  58. The Paperboy
    The Paperboy deserves to be seen for its pulpy, well-executed excess, but as a filmmaker, Lee Daniels seems ignorant of how the shocks distract from the story.
  59. Nobody Walks
    The whole thing comes out feeling kind of featureless, beaten flat by its own sense of fairness.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Green Wave
    Unlike Waltz with Bashir, it only seems to be using animation in an effort to make blog diaries by twentysomethings appear cinematic.
  61. This Time
    Documentary director Victor Magnatti is more comfortable with loud and proud, and perhaps a tad suspicious of insinuation and circumspection.
  62. The Matchmaker
    The film ultimately fails to treat history as anything but a string of melodramatic reference points for moody characters haplessly trying to find love.
  63. 2 Guns
    Viewer/character solidarity only holds up for so long, and the film falls hard into twisty, nonsense territory, skipping over its stronger themes in the process.
  64. The Other Dream Team
    Made with considerable reverence, but it doesn't quite manage to tow a tricky tonal line that's required when working with such sensitive and complicated material.
  65. The Revenant
    Since Bart's bloodlust is never matched in tenor by his righteousness, the story remains rife with unfulfilled moral inquiry.
  66. 10 Years
    If nothing else, 10 Years is hip to the fleeting, fundamental joys of revisiting one's youth.
  67. Smashed
    Smashed touches on the awkward perversity that often comes from seemingly pure emotions and intentions, and turns a noticeable, if slightly analytical, eye toward the selfish hurt and narcissistic projections inflicted by the perceived moral hierarchy against recovering addicts.
  68. A Royal Affair
    The film is too tepid in its treatment of its central character and her situation to generate any real emotive charge.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
    Like a stiff Schwarzeneggerian conqueror making good on an "I'll be back," John Hyams returns to one-up the franchise again.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Amour
    This isn't the work of a newly moral or humanistic filmmaker, but another ruse by the same unscrupulous showman whose funny games have been beguiling us for years.
  71. A Late Quartet
    A muted soap opera masquerading as erudite ensemble piece, Yaron Zilberman's A Late Quartet jettisons character plausibility in favor of pop psychology and leaden instrument analogies.
  72. Minions
    It's a buzzkill to enter the world of Minions primed for a tidal wave of gibberish-talking lemmings to tear the roof off, only to see them once again led astray by the ordinariness of human affairs.
  73. Breathing
    Can a film be faulted for being too sympathetic toward its characters, for limning a milieu with extraneous humanism?
  74. The Ambassador
    Bothing is pointedly outlandish in Mads Brügger's latest, a fact that represents its triumphs and burdens.
  75. Head Games
    While Steve James's documentary is persuasive on an informational level, it doesn't do enough to explore the human side of its subject matter.
  76. The To Do List
    Essentially the film aims to trade in the awkwardness of teen sexuality, but too often settles for the gross-out gag instead.
  77. Detropia
    Seems to be looking for answers, but the ones it finds are too close to the surface to be satisfying.
  78. Francine
    In a character study of an ex-con who gives her heart and mind to animals rather than people, Melissa Leo's risky performance is ultimately framed with a disappointing, distanced pity.
  79. Divergent
    The film transcends the déjà vu of its borrowed trappings but ironically sacrifices all momentum in favor of a long series of physical tests.
  80. Hellbound?
    Fitfully engaging, but the documentary turns into a touchy-feely isn't-it-wonderful-we're-all-saved love fest as soon as the universalists begin to dominate the interview segments.
  81. 17 Girls
    At which point does a superficially "nonjudgmental" approach simply seem coy rather than sincerely evenhanded?
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    My Uncle Rafael
    The Americans are clichéd and vapid, and seeing them get knocked around and told to wake up can be validating if you know people as obnoxious and spoiled as them.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Switch
    Switch is possibly the driest and most balanced documentary on the current energy crisis.
  84. Three Stars
    As a sampler course of what it means to court the Michelin honor, Three Stars is enjoyable, but it's simply a collision of details that never entirely converge into a meaningful whole.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Place Beyond the Pines
    The film never reaches a climax because it's always in one, distilling the lives of its characters to their tensest moments.
  86. Here Comes the Devil
    The film is eventually revealed as less interested in subverting or playing off its influences than rigorously retracing them.
  87. Vulgaria
    Pang Ho-cheung can't help but humanize Vulgaria's characters, which is a kiss of death for what's meant to be a farce of escalating obscenity.
  88. Now, Forager
    Boasts an evocative sense of environment and the feel of working with one's hands, but otherwise rummages around in search of substance and subtlety.
  89. The Double Steps
    One can't help but sense that underneath the complicated art-house game-playing of Isaki Lacuesta's The Double Steps resides a theme that's sentimental and old-hat.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Big Picture
    Like its protagonist, the film sells out for the security of convention and complacency.
  91. We're the Millers
    Though the cast partially eschews the family-friendly timidity that the film defers to in the end, this would-be wild thing remains little more than a rowdy endorsement of the status quo.
  92. All Together
    The film is somewhat flimsy, tinged with the impulse to make the elderly characters just the right amount of ridiculous for the benefit of younger viewers.
  93. Sassy Pants
    Sassy Pants has a slightly ludic atmosphere akin to another tale of teen alienation, Dear Lemon Lima, but it unfolds like a fable in which only Bethany doesn't feel like a canned caricature.
  94. Tai Chi Zero
    Essentially a live-action anime, it sweats rivulets of Tarantino-era digital anxiety from all pores--every kick, punch, pan, and zoom exaggerated for maximum impact.
  95. The Bay
    The Bay is Barry Levinson's most engaged and entertaining movie since "Wag the Dog," which isn't to say that he's given up his irksome predilection for a certain bullish type of liberalism.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dangerous Liaisons (2012)
    Despite the abundant surface pleasures the vision of its milieu provides, its lack of insight or engagement makes this adaptation feel, ultimately, like a missed opportunity.
  97. Hitler's Children
    The film drains its subjects of the shame forced on them by Nazi ancestors and yet has difficulty arriving at an effective, constructive thesis.
  98. Gottfried Helnwein and the Dreaming Child
    Much of the documentary plays like a moderately well produced but tediously uncritical making-of feature that could easily have been included on the opera's DVD release.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Back to 1942
    In painting a large-scale tableaux of the Henan disaster, Feng Xiaogang has inevitably been forced to sacrifice the specificity and focus on individual characterization that are generally so important for allowing the viewer a point of entry into such an important piece of history.
  100. Elza (Le bonheur d'Elza)
    Capitalizes on a vibrant tropical location and a cast of capable, but the narrative makes disconcerting leaps from the poignant to the distractingly soap-operatic.
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