Slant Magazine's Scores

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For 7,772 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: 4,346 out of 7772
  2. Mixed: 1,493 out of 7772
  3. Negative: 1,933 out of 7772
7772 movie reviews
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  1. Evidence
    One wishes it had spared us the remedial theorizing on media culture and artistic representation and license and less apologetically acted the part of a straight-up horror film.
  2. A Little Bit of Heaven
    Unsurprisingly for a film detailing terminal disease, this is a largely solemn affair, often verging on morbidity in its elongated deathwatch.
  3. The Offering
    It inspires retrospective gratitude for the empty yet slick craftsmanship of someone like James Wan.
  4. City of Dreams
    The film resembles less a realistic peek into the modern slavery of immigrants in America as it does grist for the torture porn mill.
  5. Cabin Fever
    Travis Zariwny detachedly regards the material as shtick to be waded through with quotation marks.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Love, Wedding, Marriage
    Love, Wedding, Marriage is a movie so shallow and wooden, its actors less models than mannequins, that it resembles a furniture catalogue.
  7. Golf in the Kingdom
    The film, for all its trite lessons, forgets that people mainly play golf because they enjoy it.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 12 Critic Score
    Red Hook Black
    That Red Hook Black, a strained film about two friends struggling with jobs and family in a bleak, thickly spread economic milieu, is adapted from a play is painfully obvious; that it's never able to transcend its staginess makes it unbearable.
  9. 10 Minutes Gone
    Almost every element of the film has been seemingly engineered to be the ne plus ultra of slapdash ineptitude.
  10. Oconomowoc
    Writer-director Andy Gillies's film is extremely self-conscious, but in a fashion that generally serves the material.
  11. Left Behind
    Left Behind is one of those films so deeply, fundamentally terrible that it feels unwittingly high-concept.
    • 11 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Dungeonmaster
    The Dungeonmaster is little more than a fitfully entertaining calling card meant to showcase Empire’s talented in-house special effects artists and stop-motion animators.
  13. Persecuted
    There's no attempt to convince us that the world is being corrupted by people who haven't accepted the Gospel; it merely assumes we agree with that idea.
  14. Some Kind Of Beautiful
    A hodgepodge of horny-old-man clichés writ large, staged as a gleeful affirmation of its male lead's ego and entitlement.
  15. The Victim
    Not much happens in The Victim, but the events that do manage to transpire consistently support a reading of the film as an older man's fantasy of virility.
  16. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
    The Curse of Michael Myers’s supernatural angle is understandably its weakest link, seeing as it was the aspect of the film that test audiences disliked the most.
  17. The Tortured
    Robert Lieberman's Perverted Justice advert spins its wheels with scene after scene impatiently cut like a montage sequence.
  18. Cosmic Sin
    Every story beat is unimaginatively cribbed from better films and every tepid exchange of dialogue is unconvincingly performed.
  19. 3 Geezers!
    The convoluted mockumentary setup indicates that this is all meant to be taken as a meta exercise in Hollywood-insider rib-nudging, although the proceedings rarely rise to the occasion.
  20. The Walking Deceased
    This juvenile horror-comedy spoof is primarily, if unintentionally, a cautionary tale about the perils of allowing brahs to make movies.
  21. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!
    The really frustrating thing about Tomatoes is the toothlessness of its satire.
  22. The Haunting of Sharon Tate
    In a film that features Charles Manson and his disciples, there’s something unsavory about presenting Sharon Tate as one of the crazy ones.
  23. Prince of Swine
    Played as broadly and as crudely as you please (in terms of acting, direction, "edgy" dialogue), Prince of Swine paints a grimly ugly portrait of male sexual violence and female submission.
  24. The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)
    Tom Six has achieved the seemingly impossible: He's made a film even less watchable than "The Human Centipede II."
  25. Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
    The film is an incoherent and aesthetically barren harangue masquerading as a revisionist history lesson.
  26. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
    Imagine parents sitting in the audience with their naughty children (who used their Cabbage Patch dolls as driveway obstructions for their Big Wheel obstacle courses) and feeling ruefully double-crassed.
  27. 10 Rules for Sleeping Around
    For a film so bent on naturalizing the presumably hilarious incongruity of "the sexes," it sure features lots and lots of that site of horror: a naked male body. And for comedic purposes, of course.
  28. Raw Faith
    Peter Wiedensmith's methods aren't as cinematic as they could be, but even this seems to ably mirror Marilyn Sewell's humility.
  29. Le Rayon Vert (1986)
    Those who find Rohmer heroines difficult - that is, demanding because they are three-dimensional, non-formulaic creations with an intricate set of foibles and needs - might even be won over by the depth and poignancy of Delphine, one of its maker's most generously etched characters.
  30. Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)
    The film uses a country-mouse-and-city-mouse template to explore morality, aesthetic sense, urban and rural savvy, and a host of other concerns.
  31. The Optimists
    This autumnal statement compensates for its fixed despair with bracing wit and a willingness to see acceptance of misery as the best of all possible options.
  32. Assassination Games
    For anyone hoping that Jean-Claude Van Damme's self-reflexive turn in Mabrouk El Mechri's postmodern JCVD heralded a new career direction for "The Muscles from Brussels," Assassination Games puts those dreams firmly to rest.
  33. The Tiniest Place
    Going back to the scene of trauma is a familiar Latin American strategy for dealing with its wars and dictatorships through art, but The Tiniest Place takes a disturbingly literal approach to such wound-scratching homecoming.
  34. The Caller
    The way in which the action indulges in long, underlined silences furthers the overriding sense of trying too hard to muster up a suspenseful mood from a conceit better suited to a half-hour television program.
  35. That Girl in Yellow Boots
    The figure of the poor white girl whose sex work is justified by a really noble cause, set of circumstances or sheer charisma, is, of course, not a new cinematic premise.
  36. Sound It Out
    The film mostly works because it doesn't overplay the consequence of its subject.
  37. Glitch in the Grid
    Eric Leiser's hackneyed documentary/stop-motion hybrid Glitch in the Grid presumes social importance by simply referencing the relationship between modern young artists and their inability to express themselves amid a failing U.S. economy.
  38. God's Land
    The movie's understanding of how the group taps into people's deep need to believe ensures that the film remains not only fair-minded, but sensitive to the tortured emotions of its conflicted central characters.
  39. Retreat
    Retreat's wheels are constantly spinning, but they're not always taking us anywhere.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Silver Tongues
    Silver Tongues is the creation of a filmmaker who's not an acute observer, but a trickster, one who values being clever for the sake of being clever.
  41. The First Rasta
    While The First Rasta never goes beyond the surfaces of conventional documentary making of the most average kind, its reticence becomes whimsical every time the elderly interviewees break into song soon after reminiscing.
  42. Daguerreotypes (1976)
    Like many of Agnès Varda's similarly themed explorations, the results are more than they initially seem, casual anthropology with a strongly humanist bent, resulting in a film that's fueled more by compassion than curiosity.
  43. Deep End (1970)
    Deep End is as soaked in pheromones and nervous electricity as Mike, but he's as much a product of the world of desire that surrounds him as one of its participants, and when the end finally comes, there's only a reprise of earlier dream imagery to suggest that there was anything other than a spasmodic, hormonal twitch involved in bringing about its conclusion.
  44. Neon Flesh
    With no slick moves and no brains backing its skuzzy narrative, Neon Flesh is just a proudly tacky film about unconscionably tawdry people.
  45. Toll Booth
    Both as a character study and modern-day parable, Toll Booth sneaks up on you with its subtle use of repeating motifs and audible cues.
  46. Grey Matter
    Director Kivu Ruhorahoza dares to demolish fiction's inherent distance from what might be considered "reality."
  47. Come Back, Africa (1959)
    A solid, affecting artifact of the cruelty of late 1950s South Africa, in which music often makes despair and long-suppressed anger bearable.
  48. Pretty Poison (1968)
    The movie's big joke is that Sue Ann turns out to be the potent, sociopathic one; for once, Perkins is out-psychoed by an honor-roll student who worries she'll be late for hygiene class.
  49. Playback
    Writer-director Michael A. Nickles may momentarily shout out to Peeping Tom via a shot of its DVD, but Playback is merely a voyeurism-tinged horror film of dismal direct-to-video quality.
  50. How to Start a Revolution
    Much of this content, which involves complex social movements in Burma, Iran, and elsewhere, is necessarily abridged, but it's often done so to the point of incoherence, making Gene Sharp's connection to what we're seeing seem contrived.
  51. Heist: Who Stole the American Dream?
    The film provides a crisp, succinct answer to a question that nags most Americans: What the hell happened?
    • tbd Metascore
    • 12 Critic Score
    Patriocracy
    To presume that even an explicitly neutral political position lacks its own subjective ideological bias is nothing more than a delusion, and not a particularly useful one.
  53. The Woods
    It's all very "found footage," Impolex by way of Discovery's The Colony, only with a lot more in the way of familiar consumer products.
  54. Dissolution
    The camera is at its most effective when it seems dumbfounded at what it's indexing.
  55. 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.
  56. Come on Eileen
    Rarely leaves the realm of the obvious and the literal.
  57. Artificial Paradises
    The juxtaposition between the gorgeous natural beauty of a remote beach with the stubborn human need to escape somewhere, no matter what cost, is what really enthralls in the film.
  58. Fear and Desire
    For all its heavy-handed gloom and stylistic unevenness, Fear and Desire has a certain fierceness that's hard to shake.
  59. Kids of Today
    While this uncataloguable and entrancing film gazes back in nostalgia to a time of performance-art priapism when everyone seems to have known Warhol, it also leaves room for a particularly hopeful diagnosis of the present.
  60. Last Will and Embezzlement
    The doc is so obnoxiously simplistic that you find yourself strangely unsympathetic to its objectively inarguable aim to promote greater standards of elder care.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Snow on Tha Bluff
    Questions of authenticity aside, Damon Russell evinces a shrewd understanding of how to juxtapose the handheld camera's finite sightline with the bursts of chaos that suddenly invade it.
  62. 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.
  63. ReGeneration
    Phillip Montgomery's film is ironically as undeveloped and busy as the sensational media it criticizes.
  64. 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.
  65. Meeting Evil
    Chris Fisher so over-directs his material that the action takes on the sheen of a parody or, at least, of a film that doesn't realize its clichés are being exaggerated to the point of absurdity.
  66. The Woman in the Septic Tank
    A lighthearted critique on the fetishized notion of the "non-actor," the ethics (or lack thereof) of the "docudrama," and the packaging of national despair for exportation.
  67. 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.
  68. Knockdown
    The film is a tedious narrative shambles that's almost hilariously unaware of its racism and sexism.
  69. We Won't Grow Old Together (1969)
    A wild, furious, and genuinely unsettling ego is on display in Maurice Pialat's second proper feature.
  70. UFO in Her Eyes
    The serio-comic technique and ping-ponging aesthetics ultimately make for a winning approach.
  71. It's the Earth Not the Moon
    After 30 minutes or so, Gonçalo Tocha's anthropological proposition slides into dubiousness.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbours
    Just as Rirkrit Tiravanija had done in the '90s when he converted New York City galleries into live kitchens, he changes one's relation to a movie theater to a space for meditation.
  73. Drought
    Everado González isn't above capturing some striking landscape shots, seemingly for the shear desolate prettiness of it, but they always double as a reminder of the very real plight facing the subjects.
  74. Max and the Junkmen (1971)
    Regarding Michel Piccoli's Max, Claude Sautet's film resists judgment, neither condoning nor signposting the despicable nature of his choices.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Mark Lombardi: Death-Defying Acts of Art and Conspiracy
    Feels like one of those thin, audio-visual supplements on an artist that you casually view as you browse a gallery show.
  76. Dear Mandela
    A devout political documentary that insists that community, dignity, and solidarity are sustaining, but not the baseline by which one should settle.
  77. Janeane from Des Moines
    The film betrays its own fictions by overloading on cheap worst-case-scenario mythology.
  78. 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.
  79. Avé
    The film exudes an elemental, intriguing mysteriousness, a reminder that things remain unseen and in a state of unrest.
  80. 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.
  81. Girl Walk: All Day
    "You should always be happy." That's a succinct encapsulation of the proudly optimistic spirit animating this joyous film, a worldview which the rest of Girl Walk // All Day illustrates with a combination of thrilling street ballet, exultant music, and unflagging verve.
  82. The Art of Flight 3D
    An aesthetic showcase whose repetitive nature winds up diminishing the excitement of its breathtaking feats of mountainous flight.
  83. The Loving Story
    Perhaps the strongest aspect of the documentary is that it allows the Lovings to tell their story in their own words.
  84. Welcome to the Machine
    The focus on Weider's fatherly duties and modest personal insights is what provides the film with its moral grounding.
  85. Southwest (Sudoeste)
    The inscrutability of the plot, intriguing at first, is ultimately impenetrable.
  86. San Diego Surf
    Here, the glamorous and the infantile cohabitate on a casual level, and frivolity remains the Factory's default mode.
  87. Crazy and Thief
    It's eventually obvious that Cory McAbee mistakenly believes that his characters' resolutely dull adventures speak for themselves.
  88. Code of the West
    The filmmaker's failure of empathy for those who strive to outlaw medicinal marijuana turns the protestors into hissable puritanical bad guys.
  89. The Happy House
    D.W. Young navigates his varying moods with an ease that's particularly impressive for a director making his feature debut, but he never capitalizes on his ability to coax down our guard.
  90. 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.
  91. Alyce Kills
    The film is an ultra-violent parody of unearned self-entitlement, of people who feel tricked into a lifestyle they refuse to challenge for the comforts it still offers.
  92. One Mile Above
    We're never far away from a crude digression demoting an ethereal sense of artistry to hunkered-down artifice.
  93. The Haunting of Helena
    Yet another ghost story that insists there's nothing more chilling than a professional woman charged with raising a child on her own.
  94. Kuichisan
    These myriad impressions never quite add up to anything coherent by the end, but perhaps the incoherence is precisely the point.
  95. Under the Bed
    The film's sense of conviction and psychological nuance never rises above that of the "I Learned It from Watching You" anti-drug PSA.
  96. La Playa D.C.
    The film only feels interesting when it focuses on looking at what the characters aren't doing and listening to what they aren't saying.
  97. Postales (Postcards)
    Throughout the film, writer-director Jash Hyde avoids Paul Haggis's patronizing white liberal attitude toward class warfare.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Dead Man and Being Happy
    At once familiar and enigmatic, Javier Rebollo's The Dead Man and Being Happy feels like a connect-the-dots film with a few lines artfully blurred.
  99. Inuk
    The film can boast of an exotic locale and rare potential, but in Mike Magidson's hands the filmmaking is disappointingly shopworn.
  100. Réquiem NN
    Filmmaker Juan Manuel Echavarría's hands-off approach hinders us from mocking the believers' naïveté.
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