The Associated Press' Scores

  • Movies
Select another publication »
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:
  1. Positive: 1,074 out of 1491
  2. Mixed: 240 out of 1491
  3. Negative: 177 out of 1491
1491 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. Hit Man
    It’s perfectly enjoyable: a glossy, easy-to-digest Powell showcase that isn’t trying to be anything but fun. But the second coming of the action-comedy-romance, it is not.
  2. Afire
    Fire is in the air this summer, literally, and at the movies. Though the flames in German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s Afire aren’t of the nuclear variety, the smoke from his tension-filled chamber piece about a few young adults at a vacation house near the Baltic Sea certainly gets in your eyes.
  3. Maiden
    Maiden is simply magnificent storytelling and a must-see for all ages and genders.
  4. You Won't Be Alone
    You Won’t Be Alone enchants in its novel perspective and in its sharp-shifting protagonist’s unquenchable curiosity. The witch, once so set in stereotype, has never felt so enthrallingly elastic.
  5. Rye Lane
    How these two 20-somethings actually hook up is the subject of this sweet, down-to-earth, funny and thoughtful rom-com that shows two strangers moving though London and visibly falling in love over a matter of hours.
  6. A Quiet Place
    A Quiet Place may not have the weighty social meaning or piercing comedy of another recent high-profile horror thriller, “Get Out.” But like that movie it is smart, it moves fast, it has a hugely satisfying ending — and it deserves to attract a much broader audience than the usual horror film devotees.
  7. The Teachers' Lounge
    Çatan and co-writer Johannes Duncker, who in fact attended school together, are making the point that even a middle school is a microcosm of society and all its tensions and ills.
  8. C'mon C'mon
    C’mon C’mon doesn’t really go anywhere in particular. It’s a meandering experience, but purposefully so. And it’s the kind of film that makes you want to leave the theater and ask the big, cheesy, sincere questions of strangers, family, anyone really.
  9. Knives Out
    The whodunit turns out not only to still have a few moves left but to be downright acrobatic.
  10. Broadway Danny Rose
    Allen is expert at playing life's victims, but he never was more persuasive. Even when he is striving hopelessly to retain the one client with a chance for stardom, Danny Rose retains a certain dignity. Woody Allen remains the most original and daring comedy artist in films today. [16 Jan 1984]
    • The Associated Press
  11. Challengers
    Challengers is a drama, but a funny and self-aware one. It doesn’t take itself very seriously and has a lot of fun with its characters, all three of which are anti-heroes in a way.
  12. The Holdovers
    Payne, working with a sharp script written by David Hemingston, keeps The Holdovers grounded and real. Even absent your own memories of smoking indoors or handsewn outerwear, this is the kind of thoughtful, precisely constructed movie where you can almost taste the cigarette smoke and feel your fingers numbing through drafty wool mittens.
  13. Sound of Metal
    Marder, who wrote the screenplay with his brother, Abraham Marder, takes far too long to get to his points in a sluggish middle but has crafted a quite lyrical tale of a man trying to find his way when everything he knows is taken away.
  14. Da 5 Bloods
    Absorbing, brash, exhausting, urgent, sometimes brilliant and sometimes unapologetically messy
  15. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
    It’s all so handsomely shot and deliberately staged that you might at times worry that The Last Black Man in San Francisco is leaning more toward picturesque than profound. But when Talbot’s film rises to its rousing and sensitive climax, the fairy tale falls away and something authentically soulful emerges.
  16. Isle of Dogs
    That Anderson can still excitingly tell a new story within the structure of his unique visual language that we’ve gotten to know so well is just a testament to his incandescent genius. We don’t deserve Wes Anderson, but we should be eternally grateful he doesn’t seem to mind.
  17. Navalny
    Navalny is so taut and suspenseful you’d think John le Carré had left behind a secret manuscript that’s only just coming to light now.
  18. Tess
    Tess is as rewarding a film as you'll encounter all season. It has a veracity to its period that matches Tom Jones and a pictorial beauty that is breathtaking. [29 Dec 1980]
    • The Associated Press
  19. The Climb
    Utterly original and utterly excellent, the modern bromance The Climb is a thrilling ride, an unconventional and idiosyncratic American film that acts like a old-school arty European one.
  20. A Hero
    A Hero, in which Farhadi returns to his native Iran after a trip to Spain for 2018′s Everybody Knows, is one of the most labyrinthine moral tales you’re likely to encounter.
  21. The Northman
    The mythic simplicity is part of the point of The Northman, but the movie’s single-minded protagonist and its elemental conflicts verge closer to “Conan the Barbarian” territory than perhaps is ideal. Eggers’ film is only fitfully enchanting and squanders its mean momentum.
  22. Hold Your Fire
    Hold Your Fire... burrows into the real roots of an oft-replayed movie scenario with insight and care.
  23. Mass
    Kranz’s film isn’t perfect. As the conversation ebbs and the four parents stagger out of the room and awkwardly part, the movie, too, struggles with how to walk away. But in this plainly photographed, mournful, restrained movie, the back-and-forth is bracingly sincere.
  24. Weapons
    If “Barbarian” came out of left field three years ago and heralded an exciting new voice in filmmaking, “Weapons” doesn’t disappoint but it doesn’t have the advantage of surprise. It will, at the very least, make you feel a little dread when the clock hits 2:17 a.m.
  25. Everything Everywhere All at Once
    It’s a preposterous and tasteless ode to the messy, nonsensical struggle and bliss of being human.
  26. Close
    Close is a crushing story of grief told with grace by Belgian director Lukas Dhont.
  27. The Dissident
    It should be required viewing for anyone who cares about free speech and democracy.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    The Trip to Bountiful
    The cast is marvelously filled out with John Heard as Ludie and Carlin Glynn as Jessie Mae. As an ensemble, it is as fine a cast as one could want. [6 Jan 1986]
    • The Associated Press
  29. Little Richard: I Am Everything
    Cortés argues that Little Richard created the template for the rock icon and she’s got the receipts, tracing his musical and stylistic influences through everyone from the Beatles to David Bowie, Elton John and Lizzo. If there was a king, he was it.
  30. MLK/FBI
    There is nothing terribly new in the telling, no huge revelations or bombshells. Most of the details — including King’s infidelity and the use of Withers as an FBI informant — have been known for years. But that’s not Pollard’s interest. His canvas is large, stretching back to post-Civil War Jim Crow, exploring how notions of Black sexuality were turned into social weapons and into the way FBI agents were made mythical in popular culture.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »