The Associated Press' Scores

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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 1.2 points 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
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  1. Maestro
    Maestro is a fine portrait of a complicated marriage. But for a man who contained symphonies, that leaves a lot of notes unplayed.
  2. Saltburn
    Make no mistake, the clever writing is here, as is the style, the sleek technique, and some terrific performances (Rosamund Pike is especially delicious in a supporting role). What’s missing, or muddled, is the message — and perhaps even more, the heart.
  3. Wish
    Walt Disney Animation’s Wish is stunning to look at with textured and rich watercolor-inspired animation and easter egg treasures for audiences nostalgic for the classics. But it is also more concept than story: A strained and forgettable attempt to pay homage to the studio’s 100 years.
  4. Fallen Leaves
    Fallen Leaves is the best big-screen romance of the year even though its prospective lovers exchange only a handful of words and, for most of the film, don’t know each other’s names.
  5. Napoleon
    Here is a sweeping historical tapestry — no one does it better today than Scott — with a damning, almost satirical portrait at its center. That mix — Scott’s spectacle and Phoenix’s the-emperor-has-no-clothes performance — makes Napoleon a rivetingly off-kilter experience.
  6. May December
    Scandalous fun and camp are, you imagine, relatively easy with performers like this. But to give it a soul, too? It makes it monumental.
  7. Next Goal Wins
    Next Goal Wins isn’t a tale of “woe” or “woah!” but “meh.”
  8. Dream Scenario
    We walk away from this funny, sad, scary film acutely reminded that if fame has two sides, one of them is pretty darned horrible.
  9. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
    Whether The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is enough to relight those embers remains to be seen, but it is a reminder how good a platform they offered young actors. It’s a ritual worth returning to.
  10. The Killer
    The Killer is a terse, minimalist thriller in the cool, cold-hearted tradition of Jean Pierre Melville’s “Le Samouraï.” But while its methodical and solitary assassin acts and moves like cunning killers we’ve seen before, he blends into a modern background.
  11. The Marvels
    This seems designed to be a minor Marvel – a fun enough, inoffensive, largely forgettable steppingstone — a get-to-know-them brick on a path only Kevin Feige has the blueprints for.
  12. Radical
    While Radical, an audience winner at the Sundance Film Festival, is formulaic in its approach, it gets enough out of it likable cast to earn at least a passing grade.
  13. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
    Nature provides much of the soundtrack to All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, a poised and occasionally transcendent debut from writer-director Raven Jackson.
  14. Rustin
    As wonderful as Domingo is, it’s the astonishing amount of talent in front of and behind the camera that will take your breath away. No matter how small, each performance brings fire and makes the most of a few minutes on camera.
  15. Five Nights at Freddy's
    Caught between PG and R, as well as lost at the crossroads of inadvertent comedy and horror, the PG-13 Five Nights at Freddy’s has to go down as one of the poorest films in any genre this year.
  16. Pain Hustlers
    Ultimately, Pain Hustlers feels like a retreading of the same ground covered in other recent works, bringing nothing especially new to the table and, in splitting the stylistic difference between slick/breezy and poignant/authentic, succeeding fully at neither.
  17. Priscilla
    As a movie, Priscilla is the diametric opposite of Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis.” Where Luhrmann’s film was lurid and careening, Coppola’s is muted and textured. Her film is a kind of fairy tale that turns claustrophobic and cautionary.
  18. The Persian Version
    The rebelliousness of each of the strong women here — mother and daughter — somehow coalesces into understanding. Such moments can be sappy, but here, as with her lovely opening shot, Keshavarz does it well. She sticks the landing.
  19. 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.
  20. Old Dads
    It’s so dated there’s even a mention of Halliburton.
  21. Nyad
    Nyad is balanced between Diana’s admirably insane ambition and Bonnie’s loyal (up to a point) support for her friend. In any case, it’s a reminder, like a pail of cold water, of just how good Foster can be.
  22. The Pigeon Tunnel
    It’s an Errol Morris film, right down to the Philip Glass score. And while the Interrotron and the reenactments might not be the revolutionary storytelling devices they once were, they’re almost comforting at this point and no less effective at creating a mood and an emotional experience around a sharp conversation.
  23. Killers of the Flower Moon
    [Scorsese] has called his work an offering to the Osage, and to other Native peoples. It also feels like an offering to those who love cinema, allowing us to watch a master of the craft continue to force himself, unlikely as it seems, to stretch and learn. May he keep stretching — himself, and us.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
    It is massive, but nothing could exactly recreate the decibel-bursting exhilaration of a live music performance, particularly one at this scale. But in this format, Swift gets as close as possible — and for her, being an exception to the rule is par for the course.
  25. Anatomy of a Fall
    Anatomy of a Fall may not be a film with many concrete answers, ultimately, but the truths it uncovers are irrefutable.
  26. Fair Play
    Fair Play has been hailed for reviving the long-dormant-but-often-missed erotic thriller. While there are bits of that in Domont’s film, Fair Play is neither especially erotic nor much of a thriller. What it is, though, is often gripping battle of the sexes set in a toxic, misogynist corporate world where power and sex are inextricably linked currencies.
  27. The Royal Hotel
    The Royal Hotel shares a vibe with Alex Garland’s sophisticated horror film “Men” — an arty indictment of toxic masculinity that often felt like a lecture. But Green’s film doesn’t feel like that. The final scene will make you cheer, even if the ultimate message is murky.
  28. The Burial
    This story is about two older white men fighting about a contract, sure, but Betts and Wright expand its scope with sensitivity and nuance. Like many good courtroom dramas before it, this case is bigger than just these two guys.
  29. The Exorcist: Believer
    The Exorcist: Believer never manages anything like the deep terror of the original, and the film’s climactic scenes pass by with a lifeless predictability. Been there, exhumed that.
  30. Joan Baez I Am A Noise
    The celebrated folk singer and activist was singing about civil rights, of course. But what we learn in the thoughtful, thorough and sometimes harrowingly intimate Joan Baez: I Am a Noise is that Baez was also seeking to overcome much on a personal scale: anxiety, depression, loneliness and, late in life, troubling repressed memories about her own father.
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