The Dissolve's Scores

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For 1,570 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 37% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 58% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 8.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 Grey Gardens
Lowest review score: 0 Sin City: A Dame To Kill For
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 580 out of 1570
  2. Mixed: 771 out of 1570
  3. Negative: 219 out of 1570
1570 movie reviews
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  1. Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me
    Thanks to remarkable access to her subject, and a refusal to turn away during even the most personal moments, Karasawa has made something deeper: a portrait of Stritch just as the aging process is beginning to punch holes in her concrete dam of a personality.
  2. Avengers: Age of Ultron
    Whedon’s handling of the personal material is what makes Age Of Ultron extraordinary. Remarkably for a film so overstuffed, no character gets neglected.
  3. Love Is Strange
    Neither Molina nor Lithgow are stranger to big performances, but here, they offer studies in restraint, underplaying dramatic moments in ways that make them all the more powerful.
  4. How to Train Your Dragon 2
    The rote hero/villain face-offs are exciting, but the film is in no hurry to fast-forward to them. DeBlois seems to have a real passion for this world, and like Hiccup, he seems much more interested in soaring through the clouds than in fighting on the ground.
  5. The Rover
    While Michôd never satisfactorily develops the central relationship, The Rover is still a showcase for two strong performances.
    • The Dissolve
      • Posted Jun 12, 2014
  6. Bastards
    Denis’ atmospherics, as usual, carry the day.
  7. Leviathan
    Leviathan itself feels like a brave, lonely act of rebellion against the system, deeply pessimistic about the possibility of it ever working in the people’s favor. It advocates for a stiff drink.
  8. The Boxtrolls
    Boxtrolls’ world is fantastically detailed and physical, with every frame crammed with complicated machinery, hand-painted textures and handcrafted props, and a sense of vast and focused attention.
  9. Turbo
    There’s nothing remotely revolutionary about Turbo’s underdog-sports narrative, but that’s okay—it’s one of the sturdiest plots in film for a reason—and the film’s emotional beats are no less potent for being expected, thanks to the ground-level focus on the human-snail relationships that fuel them.
  10. The Nightmare
    With The Nightmare, Ascher abandons the strictures of a conventional documentary to frolic in the terrifying netherworlds of human consciousness. It’s not enough for Ascher, a sufferer himself, to tell his audience about sleep paralysis—they have to feel it, too.
  11. Llyn Foulkes One Man Band
    Foulkes’ long-simmering anger over having not received his due doesn’t endear him to the art-world power brokers best positioned to help him, but it does make him an uncommonly forthcoming, unguarded interview.
  12. The Salt of the Earth
    Showing the best of humanity and the worst of humanity doesn’t mean denying one in favor of the other; taken together, Salgado’s photographs have the scope and perspective of someone who can genuinely say he’s seen it all.
  13. Blue Caprice
    It finds no clear answers, but that suits both the horrific event and this haunting, elusive film.
  14. Sol LeWitt
    Teerink’s reserved, spare form mirrors LeWitt’s work, which gives it tremendous impact.
  15. Sleepaway Camp
    Sleepaway Camp keeps defying every possible expectation of how a slasher movie is supposed to behave. It isn’t really scary or atmospheric, but the implements of death... are exceedingly gruesome and unprecedented.
  16. A Band Called Death
    It’s a soul-stirring tribute to a man whose vision was too bold and revolutionary for his lifetime, or the convention-bound ways of the music industry, but was ultimately too powerful to be denied.
  17. Ninja: Shadow of a Tear
    Shadow makes an urgent, compelling case for the importance of bright, clear, fluid battles. This movie has everything modern blockbuster spectacles lack: precision, grace, intimacy, stakes, and genuine, gritty excitement.
  18. Involuntary
    Beyond theme, however, these stories are united by the agonizing, low-level tension Östlund brings to bear on every scene, which vary in importance, but not in consequences for the characters involved.
  19. The Unknown Known
    The fact that Morris applies the same basic methodology to The Unknown Known that he did to the The Fog Of War makes the contrast between the two men meaningful, and says something profound about Rumsfeld, too.
  20. Ms. 45
    Ferrara blows up the everyday threat of harassment and violence against women into a magnified force.
  21. Gabriel
    Culkin’s terrifically effective performance and Howe’s pitch-perfect writing and directing make Gabriel the kind of insightful, empathetic project that makes cineastes feel good about feeling bad.
  22. Snowpiercer
    Evans is a revelation here, delivering a haunted performance that his previous work has only suggested he had in him. He gives the film a solid center, allowing others in the cast to explore the extreme.
  23. I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story
    I Am Big Bird breezes by a couple of opportunities to dig deeper into thornier subject matter, but those minor oversights don’t hurt the film in any significant way.
  24. Deepsea Challenge 3D
    It’s so high on the thrill of discovery that it might even win over people who can’t stand the guy.
  25. Camille Claudel 1915
    It seems like a departure, but soon turns into a Bruno Dumont film—and one of his most rigorous and powerful at that.
  26. Level Five
    Level Five doesn’t achieve the poetic heights of Sans Soleil, but that might be because its project is more desultory; where the earlier work merely hints at the difficulty of looking at history without a filter, this sister film all but gives up the ghost.
  27. The Seven Five
    Director Tiller Russell doesn’t spin this gripping tale out of cinematic bravado like Scorsese—just extensive interviews with all the people involved, footage of a commission hearing after the fact, and a wealth of stock material on Brooklyn’s East Side. But he paints a vivid picture all the same.
  28. Southern Comfort
    Beyond its genre roots and its deeper meanings, Southern Comfort is a well-honed study of characters and setting.
  29. Rich Hill
    Make no mistake: Rich Hill is a social document, and conclusions can and should be drawn from its beautiful, empathetic portrait of life on the fringes. But Tragos and Palermo content themselves with shining a light and leaving it at that.
  30. National Gallery
    The ultimate value of the famed filmmaker’s latest documentary—a subject National Gallery turns into a reflexive concern—is not that Wiseman makes it possible for a broader audience to see these priceless works of art, but that the scope of his project invites all audiences to look at them through an illuminating new lens.
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