The Associated Press' Scores

  • Movies
For 1,491 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1 point higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Tootsie
Lowest review score: 0 The King's Daughter
Score distribution:
1491 movie reviews
  1. Regardless of your familiarity with Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, “The Piano Lesson” is a worthwhile, captivating and moving watch full of charismatic performers.
  2. What distinguishes this debut feature from Andrew Onwubolu, aka Rapman, is firstly its storytelling structure, making welcome use of the writer-director’s rap talents to serve as a Greek chorus. And secondly its cast, with several vital performances of note, especially from heartbreakingly vulnerable newcomer Stephen Odubola.
  3. Watching The Trip to Greece at a time when such travel is impossible has only heightened the considerable pleasures of these movies (and made the food all the more appetizing). But mostly it’s reinforced the simple delight of sitting table-side with Coogan and Brydon. For all their trivial sparring, they are exceedingly good company.
  4. By burrowing within the brutal propaganda of apartheid, Hermanus, in his intensely expressive, achingly sorrowful fourth film, has captured a mean machinery at work — one that still abides, long after the end of apartheid.
  5. Ultimately, it’s an effectively minimalistic thriller that leaves much room for interpretation and debate, and a good option for anyone looking for something creepy to watch this Halloween without the gore.
  6. Filmmaker Raoul Peck uses George Orwell’s writings to weave together a biographical portrait of the author and a dispiriting picture of power and truth in the modern world in “Orwell: 2+2=5.”
  7. Tenet lacks the elegant mastery of “Dunkirk” or the cosmic soulfulness of “Interstellar,” but it has a darkly grand geometry.
  8. Beneath it all is the story of a child’s love and guilt — and an education and judicial system letting her down — which propels her to bring her parents back from the dead, but that gets a little lost in the gross-out humor, Addams Family-level weirdness and shock-for-shock’s sake visual gags like a demonic teddy bear. For all the lovingly crafted spectacle, Selick’s agonizing, shot-by-shot film, is as overstuffed as that bear.
  9. The thing keeping this together is Holland. He is utterly endearing as a goofy, insecure now-16-year-old hero with a cracked cellphone and who often makes things worse, apologizing along the way.
  10. Assuming it’s true, the film is a poignant and moving coda to a career spent chronicling personal indignities amid broader social ills like poverty and unemployment.
  11. Teen Titans GO! to the Movies is the sort of silly film you and your kids can both enjoy, a slice of pure escapist fare in these divisive days.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Despite the gripping action scenes and a mostly witty, mile-a-minute, off-color script, the movie ultimately fails to produce the emotional tug of other films about journalists in war, particularly Roland Joffe's "The Killing Fields" and Peter Weir's "The Year of Living Dangerously."The script borders on pompous silliness when Boyle launches into a diatribe on American hypocrisy, and unbelievable sentimentality when Salvadoran rebels are shown in heroic poses as Latin American folk songs ring out in the background... Nevertheless, "Salvador" still has the gritty, violent quality shared by other films by Stone: "Midnight Express" and "Scarface." None of these films is easy to watch, but each keeps you glued to the screen.
    • The Associated Press
  12. The emotional payoff takes a while to arrive, but once it does in the last act of this film, you’ll have a hard time forgetting Hopkins’ face.
  13. Whether Moore’s frenetic but absorbing work here — the cinematic equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting, where you throw everything and some of it sticks — pleases or frustrates you, one thing is clear. Moore’s at his best when hitting a subject dear to his heart.
  14. It’s a sort of spiritual companion to Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy, blending horror and thriller elements with absurdist comedy.
  15. It’s a documentary, ultimately, about creativity and a singular mind, one who dreamed up a gaggle of friends for life: Big Bird, Cookie Monster, the Count and, of course, Kermit, stitched from an old coat.
  16. Raiff’s writing and direction keep the action moving crisply, and he knows his world — set not in Dallas but in Livingston, New Jersey — very well.
  17. With tenderness and toughness, Greengrass has made a great film about a terrible act.
  18. You don’t need to know much about basketball or care about Steph Curry to watch this film, though many probably will. But much like the Michael Jordan doc “The Last Dance,” this beautifully constructed (and much more economical) narrative operates on its own terms, with a beautiful score guiding the viewer through his life.
  19. The violence is expertly choreographed, but some of us surely could have done with less bloodshed (there are Tarantino-esque flourishes here, too) and more dialogue to deepen some of the tantalizing relationships Samuel introduces.
  20. Shoot the Moon is Kramer vs. Kramer without the sentiment, a hard view of post-marital strife in Marin County, Calif. [11 Jan 1982]
    • The Associated Press
  21. Pugh never looks quite at ease in the ring in Fighting With My Family, but her performance is so layered with ambition and self-doubt that the film exceeds its familiar framework.
  22. It should surprise no one that a movie marketed with creepy smiling fans at MLB games might not actually have genuine concerns about pain and healing on its mind. But it still makes “Smile” a cynical and shallow piece of work unlikely to put a you-know-what on too many faces.
  23. It takes a little while to get going...The “Borat” sequel will make you laugh and squirm as much as it will send shudders down your spine.
  24. All the assembled parts here, including an especially high-quality cast (even Wendell Pierce!) work together seamlessly in a way that Marvel hasn’t in some time. Most of all, Pugh commands every bit of the movie.
  25. If Eastwood had extended the sensitivity it shows to Jewell to others, it might have been worth something more. Instead, it becomes just what it preaches against: a hatchet job.
  26. Confidently directed by David Bruckner from a clever script written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, The Night House excels in tension building —it is both unpredictable and unnervingly restrained. In other words, you’re rarely at ease for 110 minutes.
  27. American Animals would be a legitimate cautionary tale if it wasn’t invalidated by its own existence.
  28. It’s a story brilliantly adapted and directed by Sam Esmail, showrunner of “Mr. Robot,” who has made Leave the World Behind into a homage of Alfred Hitchcock, complete with the image of a man trying to outrun a crashing plane and using the master’s discordant loud music.
  29. By the end of this film — perhaps not Farhadi’s most piercing work but surely a polished, textured, and very engaging effort — you’ll look at the final two faces on the screen as they sit down to talk, and will likely still be asking yourself: Did everybody know?

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