The Hollywood Reporter's Scores

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For 12,897 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 2.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Lowest review score: 0 Dirty Love
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6,604 out of 12897
  2. Mixed: 5,128 out of 12897
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 12897
12897 movie reviews
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  1. My Country, My Country
    While My Country, My Country is hardly an exhaustive depiction of its subject, it provides much in the way of material and perspectives previously unexposed.
  2. She Said
    The film — based on their book of the same title — is sensible, dutiful and, thanks to key performances, more engaging than the average newsroom procedural.
  3. Creep
    Knowing and funny without straining to be clever, the found-footage-style pic works better than the Duplass Brothers' 2008 Baghead, with which it has some elements in common.
  4. Merry Little Batman
    Geared very much to younger audiences, it’s fast-paced to the point of freneticism. But it boasts an arresting visual style, its animation heavily indebted to the satirical drawings of Ronald Searle.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    These are rich, aging men in a young man's game, and the discrepancy between image and reality, captured by the filmmakers, makes for engrossing material.
  6. Source Code
    The movie boils down to one character, acting under enormous pressures of space and time, racing to solve a mystery. In this case, that may be good enough.
  7. Sweet Dreams
    The results aren’t always convincing, with the film’s mannered acting and heightened aesthetics keeping the viewer at arm’s length from any real emotion. But the director also displays a fine sense of craft and a deep understanding of the skewed European attitudes of the period.
  8. Beast
    British thriller Beast takes a fistful of tired old tropes — like a hunt for a serial killer, and the ‘ol Joe Eszterhas-style is-he-or-isn’t-he-a-baddie tease — and manages to fashion something fresh, fierce and quite striking from them.
  9. Little Woods
    Less relentlessly bleak than Winter's Bone, which along with Frozen River is an obvious inspiration here, the life-on-the-margins drama makes a fine, tense vehicle for Tessa Thompson, who in the last few years has stood out in a variety of genres.
  10. Joe
    Where it really works is in Cage's bone-deep characterization of a man at war with himself.
  11. Jay Myself
    A fascinating look at an artist's life.
  12. Utama
    Utama is very much a pessimistic film, never shying away from the realities faced by those who still inhabit the highlands of Bolivia. And yet it’s also convincingly, and sometimes movingly, optimistic.
  13. Under Fire: Journalists in Combat
    Martyn Burke's documentary hauntingly dissects the rise of media mortality in the war zone and the mental disorders that follow.
  14. After Parkland
    The film succeeds as an astutely constructed, sensitive piece of journalism that becomes a moving account of dealing with grief and irreparable loss.
  15. Albert Brooks: Defending My Life
    All of the friends and acolytes singing Brooks’ praises are great, but it’s possible that Defending My Life would have been more satisfying had it just been Brooks, Reiner and some fantastic clips. As it is, the doc might leave you yearning for additional depth.
  16. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
    The humor is broad, the satirical targets many, the overall effect mixed.
  17. Older Than Ireland
    Though never managing to surprise us much, this brisk encounter with the living past has moments of charm and the occasional fresh perspective.
  18. The Song of Sparrows
    Low-key, realistic performances from a mostly nonpro cast keep the story running smoothly. His face visibly stressed-out and hardened from loneliness as he detaches himself from family and friends, Naji gives the film a strong center.
  19. Tehran Taboo
    While its frank approach is refreshing, there is a sense of too much.
  20. Decade of Fire
    Irizarry sees locals who survived these challenges acquiring new layers of toughness and pride, increasingly ready to fight for their communities.
  21. The Crime Is Mine
    The Crime Is Mine has a borderline-cartoonish buoyancy. If it’s not as funny as it wants to be, that’s because most of the characters are given a single note to play. But they do it with irresistible gusto.
  22. La faute à Fidel!
    Documentary filmmaker Julie Gavras has made a successful transition into narratives with the remarkably assured, thoroughly delightful Blame It on Fidel.
  23. Thor: Ragnarok
    The relatively laidback angle on all the murderous spree-ing gives Chris Hemsworth a chance to find the comic groove beneath the title character's beefcake godliness. He does it expertly, and the self-mocking humor is all the more welcome given Thor's essential blandness.
  24. Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
    Where Going to Mars undoubtedly succeeds is in spotlighting the poet’s blazing personality, her unwavering confidence and her commitment to community without ever sacrificing herself.
  25. Narco Cultura
    Passably absorbing to start, Shaul Schwarz’s examination of the issues surrounding Mexican and immigrant musicians who glorify drug lords and their exploits gradually bogs down in repetition and narrative inertia.
  26. Teacher's Pet
    For all the work that went into the whimsical creatures and painterly palette, the voice actors more or less steal the show.
  27. Bird
    Thanks to the director’s magisterial knack with actors (especially non-professionals such as terrific adolescent discovery Nykiya Adams, who, as the protagonist, is in nearly every frame of the film), the result is quite entrancing.
  28. Beats
    An infectiously enjoyable slice of knockabout nostalgia that wears its Trainspotting heritage proudly on its rough-edged tartan sleeve.
  29. The Restless
    Lafosse administers the tension like a seasoned anesthetist who knows exactly what dose to deliver, keeping us on the edge of our seats but never resorting to cheap tricks or unlikely twists. It’s stressful and harrowing because it all feels so real.
  30. La Sapienza
    Talky and cerebral, this theatrical drama juxtaposes space and light and explores ghosts from the past and love in the present.
  31. Wild Indian
    Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.'s feature debut represents indie cinema at its most stark and elemental.
  32. Lemon Tree
    The cast is uniformly fine, but Abbass and Lipaz-Michael shine as two women who bond in the fear that the best of their lives is over and neither of them is happy with what the future holds.
  33. Queen & Slim
    A less muddled, less self-conscious Queen & Slim could have been an indelible waking dream. Instead, it's hit-and-miss. But Waithe and Matsoukas are on to something, and it's the undercurrents rather than the filmmakers' more obvious exertions that hit the mark.
  34. U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha
    Brilliantly sung by an extremely talented lyric theater company in Cape Town called Dimpho Di Kopane. Whether this all works will be a matter of opinion -- mine is that it does not -- but the experiment is fascinating.
  35. Breach
    In this film, everything comes down to the acting. Chris Cooper, one of our finest screen actors, gets inside the mysterious traitor. Ryan Phillippe has just the right gung-ho determination tempered with a touch of naivete as O'Neill. Meanwhile, Laura Linney nails the role of a career agent.
  36. Among the Believers
    Among the Believers is a step toward understanding how such a man can be entrusted with such a large percentage of a nation's children.
  37. Japanese Story
    This offbeat take on "The African Queen" stumbles on a couple of awkward transitions, but generally succeeds on the merits of Collette's unerring ability to carry the viewer along her constantly changing emotional landscape.
  38. Novitiate
    This arresting work, starring Margaret Qualley, Julianne Nicholson and Melissa Leo as well as a celestial choir of up-and-coming young female actors, mesmerizes as it probes a uniquely female-dominated milieu where passions — both religious, sexual and a combination of the two — run hot under those starched, lily-white coifs and black habits.
  39. (T)error
    The filmmakers' access is remarkable, and they eventually compound the film's novelty in an exciting way (spoilers below). But claims that this film opens our eyes to unknown practices are exaggerated.
  40. All This Panic
    The result is a composite portrait of girlhood, refracted — not especially rich in groundbreaking insight, but often shimmering with feeling.
  41. From Afar
    Deliberately detached in its observational style, yet as probing, subtle and affecting as any psychological drama could wish to be, this is an elliptical film that trusts its audience enough to peel away exposition and unnecessary dialogue, uncovering rich layers of ambiguity.
  42. Roxanne
    Light and likable, with hearts unabashedly all over its sleeves, Roxanne is a winning romantic comedy whose appeal should cross age barriers and backgrounds — giving it an across-the-board promise.
  43. Tangerines
    The film turns out to be highly effective, thanks to the skills of the actors and director Zaza Urushadze.
  44. The Surrogate
    This clear-eyed ethical drama is propelled by a performance of stunning psychological insight and raw feeling from Jasmine Batchelor. But the film is rendered even more affecting by the careful consideration it gives to the impact of her character's fluctuating decision-making, both on the people directly involved and those on the fringes.
  45. On the Rocks
    On the Rocks is very much a father-daughter two-hander — tender and personal, dryly funny and played to perfection by Jones and Murray. Its effortless touch shows the accomplished, genre-hopping Coppola continuing to expand her range.
  46. Red Road
    You might call the film "Rear Window Times 100."
  47. Final Destination: Bloodlines
    Final Destination Bloodlines gives its audiences exactly what they expect. Namely, a series of ingeniously designed, diabolical Rube Goldberg-style fatalities that are mostly so within the realm of possibility that you’ll find yourself crossing the street very carefully after you leave the theater.
  48. Palm Trees and Power Lines
    With its stark portrayal of abuse, Palm Trees and Power Lines won’t be for everyone. But the director’s assured approach to a thorny topic, the way she needles at assumptions about grooming and the care with which she treats Lea’s story will linger with me for a long while.
  49. 4 Days in France
    Four Days in France is certainly not a character- or narrative-driven drama, an impression reinforced by understated acting of the cast. What the film does offer is gorgeous shots of the French countryside and an idea of how different gay men navigate present-day life in France, especially away from large urban centers.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Into the Wild
    Penn opts for epic proportions and clutters his narrative with gimmicks. For the most part, it works. What's missing is the perspective and insight that would illuminated the inner dimensions of a driven young man who is preachy and downright irritating.
  51. Dossier 137
    Made with the same laser-cut precision as his previous work, but with a greater emphasis on procedure than before, Moll’s new thriller puts the viewer in an uneasy place — between law and order, good cop and bad cop, protester and rioter — raising questions for which there are no easy answers.
  52. Miss Juneteenth
    Imbued with a lovely sense of place and community, this is a low-key film, leisurely perhaps to a fault and dramatically a tad too mellow, though observed with a keen eye for the small details of ordinary lives that elevates the material.
  53. Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
    As Catherine Bainbridge and Alfonso Maiorana’s astoundingly rich and resonant music documentary makes abundantly clear, American popular music – and the history of rock and roll itself – wouldn’t be the same without the contributions of Native American performers.
  54. The Party
    A charming little tragicomedy which flirts with savage social satire but never fully embraces it.
  55. A Scanner Darkly
    Audiences will have to seek out their own peculiar diversions in order to last the whole course of this demi-dud.
  56. The Great Man
    With an acute style marked by lengthy tracking shots and crisp natural cinematography from Laurent Desmet (Shall We Kiss?), Leonor manages to convey emotions through purely visual terms.
  57. Olympic Pride, American Prejudice
    Draper constructs a concisely assembled editorial package that covers the essential historical backstory of the 1936 Games while building drama during the competition and establishing a consistently affecting emotional arc throughout.
  58. The House of the Devil
    This is the perfect illustration of the banality of most scare movies.
  59. The Iron Claw
    As Kevin recalls in voiceover, Fritz instilled a belief in his sons that if they were the toughest, the fastest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt them. The dismantling of that belief in the face of all-too-human physical and psychological vulnerability is ultimately what makes the uneven but heartfelt film affecting.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Red Cliff
    A prelude that provides the beams and columns for the narrative framework, but with a few decisive and spot-on action spectacles, it sufficiently kindles expectations for the climactic clash in Part 2.
  61. Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed
    Rather than seeming dated, Chisholm's moxie and commitment is a refreshing antidote to the opportunism and cynicism that rules the political roost today.
  62. Keep the Change
    Keep the Change acknowledges that people with disabilities can sometimes be largely responsible for the biggest problems they face, just like the rest of us — and it doesn't need to be Pollyannaish to believe those problems are solvable.
  63. Yannick
    The film, which is just over an hour long, dishes out some smart twists and a few good laughs, as well as a decent level of suspense. But like many of Dupieux’s movies, it’s also a strong concept in search of something more.
  64. The Tale of King Crab
    The Tale of King Crab strains mightily for a poetic quality that it never quite achieves.
  65. Rust and Bone
    Absorbing if somewhat predictable in its dramatic trajectory, Jacques Audiard's follow-up to his powerhouse prison yarn "A Prophet" benefits from unvarnished, forthright performances from Marion Cotillard and Bullhead hunk Matthias Schoenaerts, as well as from the utterly convincing representation of the former's paraplegic state.
  66. Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America
    Despite its moving conversations, Who We Are never transcends its lecture format.
  67. Woodstock 99: Peace Love and Rage
    I have problems with some of the ways Price tells his story and some of the access he was able to get, but his documentary is more thoughtful than it necessarily needed to be.
  68. The Rape of Recy Taylor
    With lucidity and deep feeling, Nancy Buirski's documentary maps an ugly trail of injustice and then widens its lens to pay tribute to the women of color whose refusal to be silent helped drive the evolution of the Civil Rights movement.
  69. Eye in the Sky
    This picture satisfies fully on entertainment terms without cheapening its real-world concerns.
  70. Kiki
    An uplifting sense emerges of the resilience through community of youth who are marginalized, abandoned, isolated, bullied or sexually exploited.
  71. Frantz
    The way in which Ozon again uses mirror images, which reveal the similarities between the French and the Germans just after the war, or the way Fanny and Anna come to possibly mirror each other again suggest that a master storyteller is at work.
  72. Val
    The helmers don’t aim to be comprehensive. They achieve something better: a film that’s agile and alive — fitting for a portrait of a man who is driven to make art, however he can.
  73. The Fight
    Steinberg, Kriegman and Despres get the balance right between the legal heroes and their collaborators, the marginalized groups they are fighting to protect.
  74. Robin's Wish
    Robin's Wish proves both emotionally harrowing and cathartic.
  75. Wordplay
    While puzzles are not most peoples' lives, they are truly an essential part. Wordplay goes up/down and across on the varied reasons why more than 50 million Americans do a crossword puzzle every week.
  76. This Is Not a Movie
    A no-nonsense, soft-spoken chronicler of conflict, especially from the point of view of the victims, Fisk is the centerpiece of a film that can sometimes feel more laudatory than necessary, but provides a comprehensive portrait of a man who has become essential reading.
  77. Cheech and Chong's Last Movie
    Their low-key chemistry and obvious affection for each other despite their past issues are still very much on display, delivering a nostalgic kick that you don’t even have to be high to enjoy.
  78. Like Father, Like Son
    A lovely film that makes little emotional connection.
  79. Most Beautiful Island
    There's much to admire about Most Beautiful Island, with its highly original spin on the immigrant survival story and its compelling protagonist, whose fate remains raw, urgent and real even as she's pulled into outré movie-ish weirdness. Despite some missteps, there are enough strengths to mark this as a promising debut.
  80. Filmworker
    The film honors the hard-working, often unacknowledged craftsmen in the film industry and stirs provocative questions about the fine line between legitimate devotion to an artist and dangerous hero worship.
  81. The Silence of Others
    There is no big redemptive payoff here, just a few small victories and hopeful pointers to the future. The struggle continues. But this is still a very necessary story, delivered with rigor and conviction.
  82. Mystify: Michael Hutchence
    A tender portrait of the man's highs and lows that sheds new light on the broken years that directly preceded his suicide at 37.
  83. Fair Play
    If there’s a significant flaw to this confident and compelling debut feature, it’s that it’s sleazy enough to be fun beyond its serious-minded overturning of antiquated gender dynamics, but not quite trashy enough to be truly juicy.
  84. Colewell
    Although the movie acknowledges the economic threats to many Americans, it succeeds best not as a social drama but as a rich character piece, emblazoned by Allen, who relishes her rare leading role.
  85. Queen of Katwe
    Even with director Mira Nair’s typically vivid sense of place and the charismatic central performances by David Oyelowo, Lupita Nyong’o and a striking newcomer, the film hits every note of plucky positivity so squarely on the head that it leaves little room for audience involvement.
  86. Werewolf
    McKenzie deserves credit for revealing such a troubling facet of her homeland, and even if the shallow focus — both literal and figurative — of her movie can be frustrating at times, she bravely never turns away.
  87. Pop Aye
    Loneliness, alienation, the ache of nostalgia and the everyday absurdity of life infuse every encounter in the unconventional road trip.
  88. Time
    More accessible than some of the filmmaker's more extreme work.
  89. A Field in England
    A Field in England is a rich, strange, hauntingly intense work from a highly original writer-director team.
  90. I'm Not There.
    The star of the show is undoubtedly Blanchett, who has great fun playing Dylan as a showboat who quite knowingly goes about creating his reputation for rebellious independence.
  91. Inside Out 2
    It’s the balance of basic psychology with abstract concepts and inspired observational comedy that makes this a uniquely captivating coming-of-age tale.
  92. The Proposition
    A fascinating, mythological western.
  93. The Bourne Supremacy
    Like its various post-Cold War European locations, the film remains chilly and distant. Every time you feel like you're finally grabbing hold of something involving, the picture once again spins frustratingly out of reach.
  94. Bayou Maharajah
    A textbook case in which personal eccentricities and addictions collide with musical brilliance, the story of New Orleans pianist James Booker is so colorful it's hard to believe nobody has made a biopic yet
  95. Crystal Swan
    Despite its relatively unusual setting, Crystal Swan is a largely conventional fish-out-of-water story at heart. But it is elevated above the routine by its excellent cast, especially Nassibulina, and plenty of visual flair.
  96. Hill of Freedom
    Clocking in at just over an hour, Hill of Freedom is Hong Sang-soo's shortest feature film to date. And it's his most lightweight, as well, with the Korean auteur merely reshuffling his tried-and-trusted play on non-linear structure, camera movements and characterizations without offering anything decidedly new
  97. The Fall Guy
    Leitch strikes a balance of showmanship and mechanics. He teaches audiences to appreciate the number of people it takes to pull off a car crash or a human torch stunt. The action sequences in The Fall Guy vary, but each one offers a level of gripping precision.
  98. Creed III
    In the spirit of its predecessors, Creed III gears audiences up for a fight of the century: The battle between Adonis and Damian is billed as one between an underdog and a man with nothing to lose. But the implications of those categories are murky and unsettling.
  99. Wicked
    Grande and Erivo give Stephen Schwartz’s songs — comedy numbers, introspective ballads, power anthems — effortless spontaneity. They help us buy into the intrinsic musical conceit that these characters are bursting into song to express feelings too large for spoken words, not just mouthing lyrics and trilling melodies that someone spent weeks cleaning up in a studio.
  100. The Lavender Scare
    Running a brisk 75 minutes, this is one of those rare documentaries that feels too short. Some of its stories could have been more fleshed out, greater historical context could have been provided, and its use of such musical selections as Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are a-Changin'" and Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" are beyond cliche. But these are small quibbles about a film that should be essential viewing in these times when intolerance is on the rise.
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