The Playlist's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 4,842 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.6 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Days of Being Wild (re-release)
Lowest review score: 0 Oh, Ramona!
Score distribution:
4842 movie reviews
  1. Heady, bold statements about humankind are both the film’s best aspect and its chief flaw: There are just so many of them.
  2. Look, America certainly needs relief, support, escape, and laughter, yes, but good god, ‘Barb & Star’ is not it.
  3. Writer/director Kate Tsang cleverly straddles childhood fantasy with the baser impulses of adolescence, drawing an angsty portrait of teenage girlhood in transition. But even as a movie geared towards young adults, Marvelous and the Black Hole feels innocent to a fault.
  4. In a vacuum, Langley’s true story is quite remarkable, but sadly, the elements don’t truly come together in this somewhat by-the-numbers film.
  5. Forbes’ script simply cannot make the things she lived through alive for us in anything but the most glib, shallow and contrived way.
  6. Miles Ahead is well-intentioned and ambitious, but ultimately uneven, as it cannot redefine the structures its so desperately wants to break down.
  7. It's not the most complex WWII movie you'll see, but there's no denying the blunt intensity of Fury, and even if it doesn't sustain, Ayer commits to staring straight into hellish eye of war and bringing audiences along to witness every gruesome detail.
  8. For all the tepid pacing and uneven storytelling, though, Collins and co. do a great job of making To The Bone a watchable film. They are, by turns, charming and heartbreaking — even when they aren’t given much to do by the script.
  9. In an oversaturated market for pandemic-themed films, Coma is a delirious marvel of a reminder that, in the right hands, there is no such thing as an unfeasible subject.
  10. While the kids are pretty fantastic overall, it’s the collaboration between Brill and Bonilla that takes Heller’s screenplay to another level.
  11. Jessica Chastain is a great actress, but with Miss Sloane, she also proves that she’s a great movie star.
  12. Come To Daddy is definitely not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. ... Provocative and ballsy ... [the film] doesn’t give a shit if you like it and perhaps even dares some audiences to sit through it unfettered. Ultimately, it knows that those who stay are on its weirdo wavelength and are in for something insanely entertaining.
  13. It’s well crafted and compelling at times thanks mostly to the casts’ efforts, but there is an emptiness that permeates through the film as if a significant piece of Wilde’s demise is missing.
  14. Size may not matter in this diminutive story, but the film's slight, disposable quality hardly qualifies it as an essential tale to astonish.
  15. It's rare to see any blockbuster in any genre make decisions informed and driven by character, rather than by the more superficial requirements of blockbuster entertainment, but the rewards in that regard are plentiful in Mockingjay.
  16. Moore has made his best film in over a decade, and one that clarifies exactly what his strengths are.
  17. Orley’s direction is fine, and the picture is well made for a low budget indie, but Davidson is all you’ll really remember when you leave the theater. And for many, that’ll be enough.
  18. In digging up what seems to be his own personal history, Honoré doesn’t trust the audience fully to fill in those silences.
  19. Sentimentality, earnestness, and the ability to tap into naked vulnerability—normally [Gunn's] great qualities—get the best of him, turning ‘Vol 3’ into a largely maudlin, overwrought, overstuffed, and melodramatic mess that only works in fits and starts.
  20. Crown Heights works best when the political and the personal merge with the insidious nature of corruption and systemic cultural, societal and economic oppression.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The First Step engages without patronizing and tries to provide a balanced portrait of Jones and his causes.
  21. If Us Kids had shed its extra weight and fine-tuned its focus, the nonfiction feature might have bloomed into a decade-defining documentary.
  22. A somewhat cool robot does not make a movie. ... The eventual twists aren’t that surprising and don’t really make sense in the context of even the film’s most basic world building.
  23. This bloated documentary will not create any new fans of Led Zeppelin because MacMahon caters exclusively to the group’s superfans.
  24. Even though it’s far from perfect, “Danny Says” is recommended to fans of punk and rock history.
  25. Formulaic, and at times a bit Sundance-by-numbers, it's still hard to deny that the charms of St. Vincent work even if you clearly can see the narrative machinery moving.
  26. A drama crafted with precision, and feeling, West of Sunshine succeeds admirably with its modest ambitions, as the filmmaker puts himself on the horizon as one to watch.
  27. Cliff Walkers quickly drops us into this winter wonderland, all whites, grays, and blacks, and delivers some of the most mesmerizing landscapes you’ll see all year. But for a film about undercover operatives, it lacks thrills, and it doesn’t give us any characters we can latch onto.
  28. The Villainess confounds its audience on two levels: firstly, how the filmmakers pulled off the elaborate set pieces and secondly, leaving them to wonder what the hell is going on in the plot.
  29. Despite a script that’s as obvious as a treasure map, Low Tide works because of its leads. The four actors have never been better.
  30. Salvatore Totino's crisp 3D photography and Kormakur's way with a clear, fluid, thrilling action sequence show off the mountain in immensely impressive ways. But the humans involved get short shrift.
  31. There are enough subplots to fill every room in the estate, but none of these stories are fleshed out.
  32. Supermensch is a strong first outing from Myers that plays like that one round of drinks that gets everyone telling stories at the end of a boozy night.
  33. Frustratingly uneven, Kelly & Cal is too glib and prosaic to truly be insightful or impacting.
  34. Young Bodies Heal Quickly is a haunting film, mostly because the title remains forever in doubt.
  35. A handsome production and ambitious in scale, the impact of The Traitor is muted by the familiarity of its well-worn tropes.
  36. Even if not exploited for all its nuance, Mescal’s affinity for conveying tumultuous emotions, plus his chiseled physique here, serves Scott’s tale well, and successfully introduces the Irish actor into the realm of major Hollywood productions.
  37. Yes, Naishuller is an inventive action shooter, and if highly-tuned, keyed-up action orchestration is your game, Nobody will light you up, no doubt. However, if you’d love to see the intriguing ideas—that the movie itself proposes upfront—about fatherhood, guardianship, violence, contempt, and neglect, at least semi-threaded throughout the action story, you’ve come to the wrong movie.
  38. Gibney never quite finds Fela, and the quest isn’t always remarkable either, but such is the spirited brio of the seminal subject that some of his dynamic essence still shines through.
  39. Greenland isn’t some self-insistently timely movie and it probably isn’t the movie we “need” right now. But it’s the movie we have, and its honest to goodness but unintended genre resonance makes it easy to embrace.
  40. So much does not connect here and so much is designed to discomfit that there is unexpected resonance when Alverson lays aside the scabrousness and puts down oddball drollery to remind us that inside every lonely young man, there’s a shivering kid waiting to be picked up and brought in from the snow.
  41. A deceptively dense piece of work filled with moments that articulate the complexity of the human condition.
  42. Dazzling in form and a chase film at its heart, Ready Player One is exhilarating, but it also can’t sit still. Fitting to the content perhaps, the movie still arguably suffers from troublesome A.D.D. with its hyper fast cutting and its tendency to wander narratively.
  43. With an enjoyable atmosphere, solid performances from Hawke, Travolta, Farmiga, and one gifted canine, In A Valley of Violence ends up a solid entry in a genre gradually fading from mainstream cinema.
  44. Appropriately frosty and aloof, The Lodge is a meditative plumbing of the darkest parts of the human psyche, our vulnerabilities, and self-doubts and it’s these personal fears that resonate loudly.
  45. What little shock of the new the film can provide us with comes from the honeyed cinematography by Vittorio Storaro which uses silhouettes, graphic compositions and glowing closeups in an often genuinely breathtaking manner. But it also comes from the performances.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Felt at times like a long-winded dirty joke – meandering, incoherently provocative, self-indulgent without being fun enough to make up for it.
  46. An above average, carnage-driven Korean crime drama.
  47. Abbasi manages to thread the lines between tabloid fodder and veiled endorsement with great skill.
  48. It’s a strange and odd, film, alternatively admirable and gripping, and also flat and one-dimensional.
  49. Heavens, that masterful first half of filmmaking. That quiet, subtle love affair. That charismatic pairing between Mescal and O’Connor, which, for a moment, feels like a cinematic romance for the ages. Oh, I’ll pay a ticket just to experience that again, absolutely. But just that. Just that.
  50. A loving and in fact overly adulatory genre film which is not so much a take on the revenge Western as a deeply faithful recreation of it, at times so faithful as to veer dangerously close to pastiche.
  51. A scattered, occasionally galvanizing, call to arms, To The End paints in broad strokes. Yet, when it lands, which it often does when focused on the sheer doggedness of its protagonists, Lears’ film replicates the simultaneous enthusiasm and indignation that propels these activists to continue working.
  52. The kind of brainy, absorbing, all-out thrilling cinema that’s in dangerously short supply these days.
  53. Admirable and charming, yet uninspired and un-engaging, Anna and the Apocalypse doesn’t use its genre mash-up to subvert the respective clichés but more so brings the baggage of coming-of-age movie and zombie movie tropes with it.
  54. Mr. Nobody is simply a failure.
  55. Belgica is just like its characters, unwilling to shake a fascination with superficial pleasures to dive into any significant interactions.
  56. Handsomely shot, evocatively designed, solidly cast and terribly daft, it also presents your friendly neighborhood reviewer with something of a challenge. With what seems like almost premeditated skill, it saves its worst instincts for the backend of its convoluted and barely credible narrative, a good arm-and-a-half’s-length beyond the impassible “spoiler wall.”
  57. As imitative as Edward’s movie can be, it’s an undeniably impressive piece of work. Its concept and plot are easily identifiable, but the grand sci-fi dimension works well with a personal tale of love, heartache, parenthood, surrogate children, and consideration of humanity for all things living, breathing, or connecting data points with something that may even resemble a soul.
  58. Niccol’s film takes a somber, nuanced and compelling look at the War on Terror as it is waged by U.S. drone pilots, right up until a final five minutes that, in a shower of pat resolutions and conclusions, delivers something of a surgical strike on the its credibility.
  59. Haphazard and on the edge of half-hearted, the documentary always feels like a sketch rather than a finished design.
  60. Letting such a film slip into the melodramatic could have been very easy. But Garaño and Goenaga tactfully navigate the delicacies of death and the difficulties (and guilt) of life with a quiet poise that make for a film that is as enriching as it is disheartening.
  61. Throughout, in an approach that gets close to the workers, activists, and more who help the staff at Hot And Crusty, Blotnick and Lears excellently merge the personal and political, but in a manner that never feels like it's proselytizing.
  62. They All Laughed is certainly not a perfect film, but its homespun quality, palpable camaraderie, and playfully loose performances make for a movie that’s easy to harbor deep affection for nonetheless.
  63. Herzog’s latest is one of his weakest. Part of the problem, shockingly, is in the filmmaking; there are basic, unfortunate amateur missteps throughout.
  64. For every scene that doesn’t work there is another that’s spellbinding. It’s gutsy and provocative and, frankly, that’s a compliment you can’t give many independent films these days.
  65. What makes The Guilty good is the way it tacitly communicates so much about the character without ever having to speak his issues out loud.
  66. It’s hard not to smile as Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget wraps things up, even if said smile comes unexpectedly; admittedly, this is the sort of surprising delight that serves to both remind an audience why the original remains such a gem while acting as a worthy successor.
  67. There’s much to like about his work here. Just skip the canapes.
  68. Far from the home-run laughs of “The Apartment” and “Some Like it Hot,” Irma La Douce is still a fun if G-rated tour of the seedy Parisian underbelly, but coming in overlong at close to 2 1/2 hours, would have benefited from some tighter editing.
  69. At its best, it’s a moody, scary, post-Peckinpah meditation on masculinity — and an all too rare opportunity to see Mr. Wright fronting a feature.
  70. For all the strong performances and able filmmaking, My Cousin Rachel never quite coheres.
  71. Ozon wants to have it both ways with Young & Beautiful, using a young woman's risk-filled sexual awakening as an illustration of coming-of-age, while also demanding a realism from a situation that he keeps far from being rationalized and justified.
  72. Foster is so good you’re often rooting for Stoll to succeed more than Nyad. And sometimes a performance like that is all you need for a feel-good story like this one.
  73. If there is any saving grace to “Horses,” beyond Luc Montpellier‘s often painterly cinematography and Jeriana San Juan‘s superb costume design, is its commitment to chronicling this era of hidden queer love.
  74. You can certainly respect Sharpe for taking a big swing in this regard, but he can’t bring the proceedings back to earth when the audience needs some sort of emotional investment. This also ends up hampering Cumberbatch, who is giving one of the most committed performances of his life, but only to find it buried under all of the film’s extracurricular aspects.
  75. What’s most disturbing is Jackson’s pedestrian direction has resulted in a film that barely recognizes how powerful this is in contemporary society.
  76. The film is luckily powered by a powerful trio of performances at its core, and a unique, unpredictable structure that constantly reframes the action in a compelling way.
  77. Unlike most movies that use the current economic crisis as a dramatic backdrop, Healy's character is vibrant enough that the audience can make an easy connection and go through the journey with him.
  78. In Buster’s Mal Heart, many of the intriguing thematic ideas in the first half of the picture, are left adrift in favor of trying to keep the audience on its toes.
  79. The Covenant is so self-assured in its noble filmmaking values and beliefs. It makes a knowing nod between two men— and the heroically punishing sacrifices they risked for one another— one of the most moving moments on screen this year.
  80. Perhaps due to its rote, by-the-numbers story, all of the original film’s less tangible, hard-to-bottle qualities are absent: its delightfulness, its playfulness, and its natural charisma.
  81. Through Brown and especially Hall’s fully committed performances, scenes like this and “bless your heart,” which move in both potent and profound ways, gives the ropiness of Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. enough depth to pray for the arrival of Ebo’s next feature.
  82. Despite its pedigree, “Downton Abbey” remains the fanciest of soaps — the kind that Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey use — but it’s still a soap. There’s drama and dalliances, and it would all seem so silly if it weren’t for its setting, cast, and budget. Some plot elements are so ludicrous that they earn giggles, but Fellowes makes it so purely enjoyable that it’s hard to complain too much.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    It’s pretty banal, but in the anything-but-banal catalogue of Cronenberg films, that gives it its own weird, sincere charm.
  83. In the end Piercing seems more interested in aesthetic playfulness than getting the most out of these characters. Playing towards comedy helps some of the more freaky scenes go down, but that’s not a substitute for substance.
  84. What’s fresh and compelling are Wilde and Hoffman. They are so stellar together that the film’s multiple endings work because they are front and center in them. In the end, almost despite Araki’s efforts, they make having “Sex” worth it
  85. A Coffee in Berlin is watchable and far from dumb, but the film embodies Niko's lack of clarity to the point where it hurts the picture.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    When even momentary flourishes of action this good remind us how poorly filmed and choreographed most modern action films are, it is hard not to recommend Atomic Blonde on that basis alone.
  86. Both fascinatingly theatrical and thrillingly cinematic, a picture that's lingered on our minds more than we expected.
  87. California Schemin’ is an impressive calling card that suggests McAvoy shouldn’t make this project a one-time wonder.
  88. "Well Groomed" is not revolutionary cinema by any means, but it certainly is enjoyable; and sometimes, an adorable documentary about competitive creative dog grooming is exactly what you need.
  89. Even the most egregious issues of the film are quickly forgiven when Marks and Liberto are on the screen. Prepare to be delighted by their interactions and relationship, transporting you back to the times you would needlessly drive long distances on impromptu adventures just to spend time with your best friend.
  90. “Five Foot Two” is mostly about a woman pushing forward with her career in pain, and we’re talking chronic literal pain.
  91. I'm Carolyn Parker isn't so much a movie title, as a "Spartacus"-like shout that, if we all embraced, would make us a better people and country.
  92. In Between Dying is a powerful parable of spiritual awakening.
  93. It’s intense as hell, and a supreme example of how the morally repugnant can be made to look weirdly beautiful.
  94. While 'Les Mis' ends terrifically, it cannot make up for the largely uneven experience that comes before it. There is no doubt an abundance of passion and commitment in Les Miserables but when the musical isn't connecting emotionally -- which is at least half the time -- it's a lot of blustering sound and fury that could either use a dialogue break or an edit.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Although some of the emotional and familial nuances are omitted here, as is any attempt to recontextualize the group and its legacy in hip-hop today, the movie has a bounce and a buzz the entire time, as though the frenetic surplus energy of the ’90s had finally found a place to go.
  95. There’s certainly necessarily nothing off with Diane Von Furstenberg: Woman In Charge in terms of its craft, its breezy structure, its slick pace, etc. It’s a handsomely made documentary, but it always borders on fawning puff pieces, letting us into the life of the fashion mogul but still making you feel like it’s a surface portrait meant to resell something vintage, like a classic dress everyone already knows and admires.

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