The Playlist's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 4,844 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 1.7 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:
4844 movie reviews
  1. Though blessed with a strong lead performance by Pettersen, “Disco” is quick to knock the empty spectacle that undoubtedly accounts for significant portions of contemporary Christianity without entertaining the notion that, for some, faith does hold real value in their lives. It’s not particularly challenging to make a punching bag out of any organized religion, but it takes a far more clever piece of filmmaking to acknowledge its shortcomings and benefits while still maintaining a critical tone. Unfortunately, Disco isn’t that picture.
  2. Likable, heartfelt and sweet in all the right places, Stoller and co-director Doug Sweetland have put together a charming surprise that’s as joyful and friendly as it is funny and well-meaning.
  3. Director Ari Sandel, working with a script by Josh A. Cagan, doesn't have the deftness to really convey how Bianca's personality turns conventional wisdom into her own unique, attractive qualities.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Ritchie manages a promising first act. But at the whim of the action movie formula, and ostensibly nothing else, priorities shift as the story carries forward. When we’re asked later on to attend to escalating stakes and a dimming tone, we’re simply left wondering what happened to all the fun.
  4. Ullmann’s version of Miss Julie exists in a special cinematic category; it’s toxic, it’s hypnotic, and passionately translates Strindberg’s genius instinct for enlightening the multi-layered psychological spectrums of human desire for lust and power. It’s unforgettable in every sense of the word.
  5. The marketing engine of Minions is undeniably powerful. This is something craftily designed to sell toys and theme park tickets and special cans of Tic-tacs. But it’s not a movie. It’s an eyesore.
  6. With no plot to speak of, a baggy tangent across Europe in the mid-section, and no forward momentum, War Machine soon descends into the quicksand of its own design and never recovers. From there it’s an enervating slog of two hours that invites sleep.
  7. The Fence presents a theatrical style that paralyzes the film into a tense but frustrating checkmate for much of its running time.
  8. As uneven as the psychodrama can be at times, one thing is clear, Ross is a major talent worth watching. He’s got an eye, a strong p.o.v., and the movie has many perceptive observations about the self-destructive perils of possessiveness, ownership, and holding on too tight.
  9. When it comes to capturing some of the gonzo, amoral, substance-fueled verve that Welsh’s novels can display, Filth can take the silver medal with its head held relatively high.
  10. Return to Space is a bit too neatly packaged and overly idealistic about what SpaceX might mean for space travel. By turning their focus up to the stars, the filmmakers, unfortunately, ignore the myriad issues that private space travel creates on earth.
  11. It’s the same primitive family-friendly fare that made the original a box-office sensation.
  12. Fast X is what it is, and that is an absurdly fun popcorn movie. That is nothing to be ashamed of. If you’re down with that, that’s great. If not, why are you here?
  13. Maleficent desperately tries to create a character whose motivation you will understand and empathize with. But the screenplay and direction are such a tangled, thorny patch of conflicting ideas that it's hard to tell what that motivation is supposed to be.
  14. Rejoice action fans, Frank Grillo is here to save the action genre, and Boss Level proves that he has the goods to perhaps do just that.
  15. There’s a more rewarding film in here had The Boys From County Hell pushed the humor a bit further, and pitched the scares a touch higher.
  16. The Pale Blue Eye works best when Cooper lets it be a two-hander between Landor and Poe. Iron sharpens iron as the two men push themselves down fruitful paths of deductive reasoning. The game of twisted allegiances, false partnerships, and premature resolutions makes for a wicked mystery that continues unfolding in riveting ways.
  17. For filmmaker and actor, even on those occasions when Manglehorn’s risks do not pay off, we have to credit the courage and confidence it took to attempt them; but more often than not they pay dividends and the result gently dazzles.
  18. Well-intentioned and intimate, Alex Of Venice has its heart in the right place; its pains and struggles might be small stakes and personal, but they’re very genuine, relatable and universal. There’s a lot to admire, which is why the movie’s uneven grasp of narrative fundamentals is so frustrating.
  19. The film ultimately feels like little more than hired hand work from Wright. What he lacks in compositional vision, he tries to make up for in clever casting (Colman Domingo, William H. Macy, and Lee Pace all deliver their best), as well as some simple gags. But like the people in Ben Richards’ fictional dystopia discover, amusing ourselves to death can only go so far. “The Running Man” settles for being good when, if the topline talent had leaned into their fortes, it could have been truly great.
  20. Winter's detail oriented approach does at least give the best recounting of Napster you're going to get, even if it's a biased one. And while some contrasting opinions would've been appreciated, Downloaded is still worth a click.
  21. There are elements of “The Yellow Birds” that should equate to a unique cinematic experience. Unfortunately, like Bartle’s return home, you leave the theater somewhat dazed, confused and thinking of what went wrong.
  22. Joy
    Playing like a slightly more reflective B-side to the director's greatest hits, his style in this film isn’t for the more cerebral audiences. But for the viewer who relates to family dysfunction, its maddening contradictions and its mercurial tenor, Joy can be painfully funny, engaging and full of relatable heartache.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 16 Critic Score
    Apparently a filler movie taken while Hitch was under contract, this is entirely phoned in and almost completely devoid of any of those inspired flourishes that can make even the least of his pictures worth the watching.
  23. A lack of pace and illuminating insight are what keep Concussion from lasting resonance, its flaws threatening to dull the issue for drama in a way that the NFL could only appreciate.
  24. The hedonism on display is very much of a piece with “Trash Humpers” and “Spring Breakers,” but in a surprising change of pace for Korine, the film is more at ease with itself, and more emotional than either of those two provocative efforts.
  25. Caddo Lake is an, at times, hypnotic ride. Taut with tension, it has audiences constantly searching for answers in the emotional wreckage of these characters’ lives.
  26. There's a great movie somewhere inside Touchy Feely desperately trying to swim to the surface, but its obscurity also comes with an inarticulateness that robs it of its potential.
  27. While there's no doubt that Shepard's film is frequently laugh-out-loud funny and impressively, wittily written, with a finely tuned ear for the perfect bit of foul language, it stumbles slightly on the story side.
  28. There’s great craft, impressive creature design, a lugubrious, eventually-soaring score by Max Richter, an excellent Paul Dano nailing the childlike tenor of his inquisitive creature, and low-key Adam Sandler sitting in the pocket, enjoying the chill ease of never overdoing it.
  29. Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed isn’t a takedown piece (at least not of Bob), but it isn’t precious about its eponymous subject, either, blending genuine admiration with a healthy dose of introspection that only deepens a viewer’s admiration of the painter.
  30. While there’s drugs and sex and drinking and dancing, for sure, if one looks at I’m So Excited as a metaphor for the ills of society today and how we react to it, it becomes a much more poignant and biting satire of the state of our world, and how we as a people decide to react to it.
  31. Portman wants to articulate something beyond the ordinary, and while she hasn’t found it in this picture, perhaps there are lessons here to be learned before she mounts her next effort.
  32. It's exactly the oddball and crooked tale you'd want and expect from a Cronenberg with all the gratuitous blood, pus, bone and multiple closeups of needles piercing skin you could ask for. Dad would be proud.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The story as a whole, doesn’t quite click.
  33. Goyer and Nolan have crafted in Man of Steel a taut, exploratory vision, and Snyder's later inheritance of the material indeed proves his best work since “Dawn of the Dead.”
  34. Embers attempts to be a complicated dissection of a possible world not too far ahead of us, but it lacks the imagination to make us soar along with its vision.
  35. By sex line standards, For a Good Time, Call... clearly succeeds –- it starts off slow, includes plenty of dirty talk, then gives us the happy ending we came for –- but our needs are a little bit greater when it comes to good films.
  36. Even if it does shy away from harsher truths, Branciforte’s inaugural feature is a joy to watch.
  37. By the time the film reaches its final twist, it almost acts as a punchline to a two-plus-hour joke about the inanity of spycraft. It’s a reveal so harebrained it doesn’t so much make you question the film that comes before it as it does Jung-jae’s logic and reasoning.
  38. Fennell leans into excess not as provocation, but as emotional truth, letting obsession swell until it becomes the only language the film speaks. The feeling cuts here not as poetry, but as pressure—barbed wire wrapped tight around a heartbeat. In all its wildness, Fennell seals the film with an embrace and a bruise, then lands the kiss like a sudden dagger to the ribs.
  39. Like so many characters in this glum, shaggy ramble of a film, Campos gets lost in the woods. Most directors in his position fall victim to overreaching, as ideas overlap and confuse and weaken one another. He makes no such error, instead spreading a humbler film’s sum total of content across an unwieldy canvas.
  40. Too long by at least a half hour, and both dull and repetitive as it goes on, Cloud Atlas reaches for envelope-pushing storytelling but never delivers on its promise.
  41. The narrative may hit all the markers, but its transparent attempts to wring emotion fail to move.
  42. There’s not much here for anyone over 10 to focus on, aside from how strange it is that the puppy Clifford looks so much more fake than the giant one.
  43. That feeling of utter disposability pervades throughout the film, underlining the missteps of Gervasi by aiming for breezy entertainment while forgetting to pause and inject some genuine emotion in there as well.
  44. Feeling stilted and steeped in uninspired biopic tropes, Kelly’s film never comes close to an inventiveness worthy of JT’s imaginative, outrageous story.
  45. What makes I Love You, Daddy at times frustrating but ultimately enthralling is that the whole picture feels like an exploration — and one where not even C.K. knew where he was going when he started shooting.
  46. Largely harmless and tame, but also shallow and uninvolving.
  47. Old
    Old is so playful that even the finale has an extra nature to it; it gives you way more than you thought you were going to get 90 minutes previous.
  48. The charisma from the leads and the ridiculousness of the story do mask a lot of the shortcomings.
  49. The action scenes and kills are bloody, and the performances and muscles are big. After Amazon’s “Reacher,” consider “Motor City” another showcase for the above-the-title billed Alan Ritchson as a credible, cinematic leading man.
  50. The film is never as savage as the first-act anarchy suggests it might be, and its best ideas are subsumed into familiar thriller concepts. Good craftsmanship elevates the result above workaday thriller territory, but ultimately Money Monster never rages in the “mad as hell” mode that’s always kept just out of reach
  51. It takes a huge leap of faith to go along for the ride, but Boyle’s impassioned, viscerally paced, and well-directed movie is so heartfelt, even the biggest pessimist will likely begrudgingly warm to it, flaws, and off-key notes and all.
  52. Ambulance is absolutely ridiculous, and undeniably entertaining.
  53. Forgetting the Girl ends up building towards a massive revelation, one that suddenly gives up the ghost and allows the film to define itself as one specific genre. Not romance or thriller or comedy, mind you, but that type of indie that plays peek-a-boo with its topics for long enough before springing something that allows the final twenty minutes to be occupied by bargain-basement pop psychology.
  54. Without the captivating veneer of fiction, Stone’s “JFK Revisted: Through The Looking Glass” comes off as a much more rhetorically dishonest work. And without the brio of Stone’s highbrow-Sam Fuller imperial-phase filmmaking chops, it’s merely a wan appendix.
  55. What you take away from Wendy, however, is that Zeitlin’s talent to soar cinematically remains intact. He can transport you to a fantastical world without the benefit of massive CG effects or a massive set on a gigantic soundstage.
  56. Dinklage remains one of the finest actors around, and Lewis is undoubtedly more than capable of something better, with evidence seen here as she disappears within Bill, but all that holds “The Thicket” together does barely enough to qualify all that unfolds as just another movie.
  57. Admittedly heartbreaking and moving in its final moments, Hellion just can’t quite convince or coalesce its ideas of struggle, pain and fury in a meaningful or new way.
  58. Jackie & Ryan is supposedly all about learning how to git where ya gotta go, but none of the characters start or end in particularly interesting places.
  59. There’s nothing about 2 Guns that doesn’t feel prefab, like someone poured a packet of Insta-Movie into a glass of water.
  60. It’s worth the price of admission just to see Hardy’s Reggie performance, which is up among his best work. Still, the story could have perhaps used a more inspired hand at the helm.
  61. About Time, inadvertently, reveals itself to be About Men, and how they devise lies in order to create the illusion that all women supposedly want to see.
  62. That love and suspicion can coexist is the most profound unspoken truth in “Ingeborg Bachmann,” and Von Trotta’s biggest strength here is drawing out that paradox in the relationships between men and women, whether they are artists or not.
  63. It may not be a complete return to form for the once-revered auteur, but as an unexpectedly chilling horror concoction defined by skillful scares, it’s a significant step in the right direction.
  64. I’m not yet convinced it works, but my goodness, am I thrilled it exists.
  65. This visually clumsy and gauche, but spectacular, movie knows what it wants to be when it grows up for better or worse.
  66. Arkansas is, for long stretches, laid back. Despite its cartoonish performances, the tone is defiantly low key, with little of the vigor you expect from something inspired by Tarantino.
  67. Too transitory and too undemanding to be termed a mindfuck, for Reality minditch seems about right, and it's one you even occasionally get the pleasure of scratching.
  68. Meant to appear as some kind of tribute to the victims and families of the Kursk, Vinterberg’s poorly strategized film barely justifies its existence.
  69. A genre exercise such as this needs invention, and while Wyatt trots out a slick stamp on proceedings with a game cast, his version never works up steam enough to render the effort worthwhile.
  70. A noir-ish melodrama so oversaturated with dourness that it borders on parody.
  71. It has taken so long for a feature-length The Flash to finally hit theaters, and he’s too late. Barry is barely the lead character of his own movie.
  72. Yes, it’s funny and charming and sometimes deeply amusing. But at the same time it lacks any kind of emotional resonance.
  73. Spirited is one of those movies with numerous creative choices that feel inspired, not just by the holiday spirit in the lyrics but the desire to pull off a good show. When Spirited has so many of its ornate pieces in sync, it can be a joyous cinematic treat like very few others of past or present.
  74. Honoré's made better films, and he'll make better films again; the most damning thing you can say about this one isn't that it feels like Honore doing a third-rate imitation of Francois Ozon ("Potiche," "8 Women"), but rather that it often feels like Honoré doing a third-rate imitation of himself.
  75. A repetitive, uninspired, and ultimately braindead sequel.
  76. It's Middle America vs. big bad corporate America, and while the (not so) "bad guy" predictably finds salvation in salt-of-the-earth people, Promised Land often leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
  77. Though it's impressive in many technical and surface ways, The Croods lets us down on the essentials of character and story, and no amount of late-stage father/daughter bonding or vertiginous 3D cliffside tumbling can make up for that.
  78. The bad news, for anyone over the age of eight, is that it’s at its best disposable, and at its worst really, really annoying.
  79. Barker takes his initially enthralling documentary and dilutes the story with this new feature, creating melodramatic lightness without an affectingly heavy touch due to the tepid tone and wheezing tempo. In short, it snoozes.
  80. The film works when Barraza and Brake are allowed to go all-in but comes up just short of being called a winner when it takes itself a bit too seriously.
  81. Levitas’ unusually even-handed approach works to balance the film’s inspirational true story with its tragic real-world context, by refusing to overstate Smith’s personal heroics, while sensitively outlining the everyday heroism of the ordinary men and women most grievously affected.
  82. Butcher’s Crossing is a gorgeous travelog. It’s also a warning about what happens when people fail to tread lightly in the natural world, both as a consequence of nature and themselves.
  83. There is an interesting film buried in Zoom, and it’s one to seek out if you’re a fan of more daring visual choices in film. It’s just a shame that the script couldn’t have matched the direction and visuals in its intriguing approach to world building.
  84. Taken as a bone-dry satirical comedy, this would be a cruelly glib treatment of material sensitive enough to merit a trigger warning in bright yellow prior to the opening credits. But this agonizing tour through private agony deserves to be taken more seriously than that.
  85. Old-school western fans won’t find a lot of originality here, but if you’re looking for a well-executed, straight genre exercise, give it a shot.
  86. Wildcat should provide interest to audiences that have read and enjoyed O’Connor’s work and might even spur new readers to seek her stories out.
  87. Uneven pacing and an anemic plot hamstring the film, which has a couple of interesting ideas yet precious few about how to convey them to its audience.
  88. Ninjago is mildly entertaining, and kids should find it pleasurable enough, but it’s missing that special spark, the kind of joyful flicker that compels children to ask for the movie on DVD at Christmas
  89. In Ryan Murphy’s film adaptation for Netflix, the show’s flaws seem accentuated, with its spectacle too mismanaged to distract that The Prom’s brand of sincerity isn’t necessarily tailored for the screen, or at least not in this form.
  90. Without a marriage of inspired storytelling, straight up regurgitation doesn’t elevate new tech. Also, thinking about could and should, one needs to consider good taste, but that’s clearly not driving any of the decisions here.
  91. Meandering ... The film somehow lacks the structural cogency necessary to support a compelling narrative, while also encompassing enough discernible plot conventions to reveal a screenwriter’s meddling.
  92. At it’s best, Tusk is outlandishly unforgettable.
  93. It’s all fun and games and one big, great joke as we watch the cantankerous Jean-Luc dismiss his admirers and spit on contemporary cinema, but it’s hard to praise Redoubtable as a great film once its final act comes around
  94. Heisserer is able to keep the thrills coming while maintaining an emotional tether to the character and the situation. While occasionally the movie veers into the realm of implausible melodrama, it's a well-modulated affair and knows exactly when to pull itself back from the brink.
  95. It's quite difficult to hate 5 Flights Up as much as a project this pointless and trite deserves, because of the attractive playing of the central pair. Keaton and Freeman share absolutely zero sexual chemistry, but watching them twinkle at each other and ruefully indulge each other's tiny mood swings is an experience so aggressively engineered for adorability it becomes hypnotic.
  96. Well intentioned and commendable, Tim Blake Nelson’s film does not put his dialogue or writing strengths into question. But movies have to convince us on myriad levels, and this can be tough enough as it is.
  97. Those impatient with Malick’s cyclical fixations will easily find themselves worn out by Song To Song especially in the enervating third act that essentially repeats the entire movie and its theme exhaustingly.

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