The Irish Times' Scores

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For 1,136 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Son of Saul
Lowest review score: 20 The Turning
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 641 out of 1136
  2. Mixed: 469 out of 1136
  3. Negative: 26 out of 1136
1136 movie reviews
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  1. Husbands
    Husbands longueurs and wobbly shots of improvised tangents never congeal into anything as satisfying as Cassavetes s The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Gloria or A Woman Under the Influence. But, in contrast with director s mean-spirited inheritors, the film does own that husbands even rubbish ones are people too. [28 Sep 2012, p.13]
    • The Irish Times
  2. The Return
    At its best The Return recalls Pier Paolo Pasolini’s sublime, pared-back Medea, even if the gritty realism of Uberto Pasolini (no relation) does leave one yearning for the magic of that earlier film and the source material.
  3. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    The film is good enough to deserve the sequels towards which it there gestures.
  4. Elio
    Elio is a half-formed thing. The basic story beats suggest that subplots and jokes have gone missing. Even the buddy comedy between Elio and Glordon is curiously marginalised. The candy-coloured character designs will please younger viewers, but the all-ages pleasures of peak Pixar are in short supply.
  5. Pepe
    Fans of the playful meandering of the Romanian auteur Radu Jude will likely enjoy the haphazard storytelling and epic travelling shots.
  6. Steve
    For all the bustle, flow and noise, there is little here we haven’t seen before.
  7. The Way Back
    Affleck has made no secret of his struggles with alcohol and has talked about the catharsis he experienced shooting Finding the Way Back. It’s a career-best performance, one that marries hulking physicality and internalised demons, as Jack battles grief and addiction.
  8. I Care a Lot
    The final act descends into chaotic silliness, but watching Dinklage and Pike attempting to out-villain one another is never dull. Deborah Newhall’s costumes would look intimidatingly power-hungry on a clothes hanger, let alone Ms Pike. And there’s a terrifying subject lurking under the dark humour.
  9. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
    Anne Robbins’s costumes are dazzling. The production designer Donal Woods makes a dull country-fair storyline look magical. But for all the nostalgic gibberish about passing the baton, this latest instalment stalls and curdles.
  10. Starve Acre
    A worthy contender in a British revival characterised by eerie cult classics as Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England, Lee Haven Jones’s The Feast and Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men.
  11. The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants
    The visual gags are fresh, the jokes are funny, the world-building is disarmingly buoyant, and the musical cues, from Holiday in Cambodia to Carmina Burana, are playful.
  12. Last Night in Soho
    There is both too much and too little going on. It passes the time busily, but leaves us lost in copious allusion and unfinished narrative.
  13. Paddington In Peru
    Fine lessons about good manners and decency are wrapped up in fun and fur.
  14. The End We Start From
    By focusing on human-sized and domestic drama, The End We Start From can’t match the escalating jeopardy and horrific narrative punch of such similarly themed, bigger-budgeted fare as The Road or I Am Legend.
  15. Mr. Malcolm's List
    Mr Malcolm’s List plays like Jane Austen fan-fiction, which isn’t the worst subgenre in the world, even if nobody could ever confuse the plot with that of Lady Susan, let alone Pride and Prejudice.
  16. Shoshana
    A trinity of exceptional performances from Booth, Mellor and Starshenbaum work to convey a moral knot as exceptional circumstances and extremism become normalised.
  17. Swan Song
    Inspired by a real-life Sandusky, Ohio legend, writer-director Todd Stephens crafts an impeccable odyssey that ponders love, loss, and attitudinal changes.
  18. Caught Stealing
    Like all the director’s films, it never allows a boring shot when an unusual one is possible. It has compelling momentum. It features charismatic actors. What a shame it is so tonally chaotic.
  19. Men
    Alex Garland’s folk horror takes the broadest of swipes at various colours of toxic masculinity without opening up many new lines of investigation.
  20. Dangerous Animals
    Sean Byrne’s third feature is neither as gripping as The Loved Ones, his prom-night horror, nor as intriguing as The Devil’s Candy, his supernatural heavy-metal thriller, but it rattles along as effective B-movie gore.
  21. Twisters
    Twisters feels no need to offer footnotes and variation on its predecessor. It’s a big fat summer movie in its own right. And that’s something these days.
  22. Oh, Canada
    It lacks the wild provocations of Schrader’s scalding recent trilogy, but Oh, Canada pokes and probes in quieter, sneakier ways.
  23. El Topo
    Alejandro Jodorowsky’s movie has a strange, magical aura for cineastes.
  24. The Black Phone
    Hawke and Thames respectively give two big performances to enact a compelling cat-and-mouse game, in a film wherein even the supporting characters are richly drawn.
  25. Eddington
    Full of sound and fury, signifying something. If only we knew what that was.
  26. The End
    If any recent release has the potential to become a cult classic it is this melodic warning from beneath the earth.
  27. The First Omen
    It hardly needs to be said that, as it goes on – and it does go on – the film loses coherence and slips into rampaging chaos. But, coming a year or so after that catastrophic Exorcist sequel, The First Omen feels a lot better than it needed to be. That may have to do.
  28. The Phantom of the Open
    The film does feel a little thin in its later stages, but the inventive performances – Rylance’s in particular – keep the film aloft throughout. No bogie. Comfortably a birdie. Not quite an eagle.
  29. The Smashing Machine
    Blunt works hard to flesh out an underwritten role, but Safdie seems more interested in Kerr’s silences than his partner’s complaints. The relationship is too ill-defined to land an emotional punch.
  30. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    Coming after the exhaustingly overstuffed Superman, First Steps rattles along with a refreshing clarity of purpose.
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