The Film Verdict's Scores

  • Movies
For 264 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Fatherland
Lowest review score: 15 Expend4bles
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 25 out of 264
264 movie reviews
  1. Oceans Are the Real Continents is an ode to a wounded, wondrous country that still bleeds and loses its young to emigration.
  2. Ferrari emerges as that rarest of films: the complex, complicated biopic. Like his subject, Mann appreciates beauty and power while never forgetting that beauty can wither and power can destroy; within that matrix of messy contradictions, he creates haunting drama.
  3. It’s no easy thing to mine humor out of historical tragedy, but El Conde finds a zone that allows for rueful chuckles over humanity’s cruelty without ever being glib about Chile’s dark past.
  4. The Equalizer 3 is a remarkably stylish entry in the series, elevating a barebones story with Washington’s gravitas and Richardson’s uncanny cinematography. All things being equal(ized), it’s a relatively satisfying thriller.
  5. Seligman and Sennott, reteaming after Shiva Baby, clearly know the beats and tropes of the teen comedy while taking every opportunity to subvert the formula. Bottoms always opts for the weirdest choices and least expected outcomes.
  6. Blue Beetle is so singularly fresh and fun that Jaime Reyes and his family deserve to be front and center of whatever comes next.
  7. Gran Turismo is a piece of salesmanship that never stops selling — the movie constantly reminds us how much the real races resemble the accurate simulation of the game, and even the Sony Walkman gets a fair amount of screen time — but the vroom-vroom of it all delivers enough adrenaline and character-building to make this a solidly entertaining piece of late-summer cinema.
  8. Whether the eventual people-eating of the film’s final act merits enduring the turgid early portions of Meg 2: The Trench is, of course, a matter of opinion, but viewers might be well advised to wait until they can see the movie in a medium that involves a fast-forward button.
  9. This new Haunted Mansion feels like a real movie (even if it’s rarely a good one) instead of a chaotic cavalcade of bad jokes and whatever the cinematographic equivalent of “shrill” is. (If nothing else, we can say this is the best haunted house remake Owen Wilson has ever been in.)
  10. With all of its quick cuts and time-hopping, Oppenheimer behaves like a film that’s worried that it won’t have the space to fit everything it wants to say and do into three hours. Then it exhausts its welcome in the service of reiterating points. Then it delivers lectures in case you missed the earlier rounds. It knows how to blow up the world, but it doesn’t know when to quit.
  11. Gerwig and Baumbach come out on the side of the power of the imagination but never discount the criticisms of this iconic American object. What the film does best, perhaps, is to understand and explain why people make up worlds, be they real systems of oppression or imaginary playsets.
  12. As a piece of investigative journalism it feels a little too fuzzy, but as an imaginative exercise in non-fiction cinema, it is consistently interesting and often hauntingly beautiful.
  13. Glossy and gripping, Czech director Robert Hloz’s ambitious and impressively polished debut feature boasts high-calibre production design and a dense, twist-heavy, techno-dystopian plot that feels at times like an extended episode of the cult Netflix series Black Mirror.
  14. For casually curious viewers, Scream of My Blood is a fast-moving, well-crafted primer on the band, light on background detail but generally compelling.
  15. A little more narrative rigour and psychological depth would have been welcome here. Messy lives do not always require messy films. That said, Tomasz Naumiuk’s whirling, kinetic camerawork has a freewheeling rock’n’roll energy that suits the material.
  16. There are decades of unresolved tensions simmering away between mother and daughter in Keeping Mum, which make this Karlovy Vary world premiere almost uncomfortably voyeuristic and a little too self-indulgent in places.
  17. As a piece of drama, Citizen Saint is opaque and cryptic, leaving many loose ends unresolved. Even so, it is never boring, holding our attention with outlandish plot twists and strong performances. But its key strength is as an exquisite visual artwork, largely thanks to Krum Rodriguez’s gorgeous high-resolution monochrome cinematography, which makes every shot an Old Master tableaux of fine-grained detail and chiaroscuro shadow.
  18. The film comes alive when Mamacruz joins a sex therapy workshop. We are introduced to a delicious assortment of older women who bring joy and laughter into her life, along with a moving dose of heartbreak.
  19. Centered around Padilla’s three-hour “confession” in front of his fellow writers at the guild’s headquarters, the documentary distills the most dramatic moments and contextualizes them for present-day viewers, ending the film with recent images of artists protesting in the streets of Havana.
  20. This director knows she is working with an issue that impacts women and their families everywhere and that’s how she puts the film together; it is personal and political.
  21. Today’s cinema is always looking for newer and cruder ways to show violence. Everardo González has chosen to direct A Wolfpack Called Ernesto without showing a drop of blood, nor a dead body, nor a scream, and yet it’s a brutal and shocking documentary.
  22. Unlike any of the director’s previous works, there is no physical violence or even talk about it. Huezo seems to have grown tired of such harshness and she wants to explore a more nonviolent life. Fortunately, both in war and in peace, she has an excellent eye for portraying everyday life and the sensibility to get up close, without making regular people look like actors.
  23. Indian director Sreemoyee Singh's moving documentary transcends its overly relaxed editing and sometimes dispersive focus.
  24. Preciado finds a way to deliver his message while entertaining his audience.
  25. Álvaro Gago´s first feature is the moving and humorous portrait of a hardworking yet almost powerless woman, in which the myth of matriarchy in Galicia is debunked.
  26. Even if Philippe Garrell repeats himself at times, he still has a lot to say. Even some new ways to say it.
  27. Expectations were rewarded with an intimate film and impeccable direction.
  28. For Anderson fans, Asteroid City will be a pure guiltless pleasure, a full sensory immersion in his dazzling Day-Glo Pop Art toybox. For agnostics, this is still one of the director’s finer efforts, low on the childlike whimsy and forced eccentricity that mars his minor works.
  29. Perfect Days turns out to be a surprisingly charming, haunting, moving work with deliberate echoes of Japanese cinema legend Yasujiro Ozu.
  30. Most strikingly, for a murder thriller, Killers of the Flower Moon is fatally lacking in dread or suspense.

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