The Playlist's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 4,876 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:
4876 movie reviews
  1. Even if Story Ave occasionally dips into a well-worn narrative, it nevertheless features two powerful performances and acts as a showcase for its first-time director.
  2. Tamahori successfully brings a sense of scale and scope to “The Convert” He displays an eye for wide-screen compositions, and the film is frequently visually stunning.
  3. 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.
  4. The actors are game, but their connection is more cutesy than romantic.
  5. No One Will Save You is a very bizarrely unremarkable, abnormally lifeless movie, seemingly starting right out of the gate in the second act and then trying to reverse engineer the audience’s sympathy—and everything else— for the unknowable protagonist.
  6. In the end, Widow Clicquot is a drama about turning heartbreak and tragedy into something brighter, richer, and spilling over into good fortune. And it’s tastefully made too.
  7. It’s only when you realize that this is indeed an aimless feature film where any symbolism or real-life commentary isn’t going to make much of a mark. That and the fact that this fearless director sees this oddly flat, though congenial, project as a comedy quickly all fall into a narrative hopelessly lost in a sea of tedium.
  8. The narrative proceedings provide sufficient interest for the duration, making it easy to recommend this film.
  9. What’s most remarkable about His Three Daughters aren’t the performances. As you’d suspect, Coon, Moss, and Lyonne complement each other perfectly (although we should note this is without question the best work of Lyonne’s career). It’s the fact that Jacobs and cinematographer Sam Levy have crafted a drama that takes place almost entirely in one enclosed space and somehow avoided the dreaded claustrophobic aesthetic that makes one feel like they are watching a filmed play.
  10. Even when it tries to swing for the fences as some commentary on what motivates hate speech, it may not always work, but Macdonald does the best with what he’s been given, and that’s enough to warrant a look, at least.
  11. Tarsem’s direction throbs with moral rigor and righteous anger previously not evident in his work.
  12. If the audience can look past the maudlin conception, certain insights are definitely to be had from this flawed portrait of an autistic child and his family’s attempts to give him a good life.
  13. Even with the real-life nature of the narrative, this is decidedly a minor tale with minimal stakes.
  14. 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.
  15. The end result is often so insightful and entertaining that it makes you immediately wonder what subject matter Jefferson will tackle next.
  16. The aspiration itself—what seems to be the clear desire to elevate a conventional murder drama to something greater—feels unmistakably tangible. And ambitious attempts are often intriguing even if they don’t always land.
  17. It’s inoffensive, possibly even heartwarming, and an undeniably terrific story in terms of adversarial triumph, and as history looks back on “A Million Miles Away” as much as it remembers the real Hernández, unlike the man himself, the movie will likely find itself forgotten.
  18. For what it is, the film is immaculately directed and staged with the quiet competence of a superlative filmmaker.
  19. This may feel like familiar territory to another U.K.-set disaster film, “Children of Men,” or the recent mini-series “Station Eleven,” but Bellow has crafted something singular here. And you won’t forget it.
  20. Unlike its subject, Radical Wolfe would rather be liked than start something.
  21. The whiff of play-acting hangs over the entire enterprise as even director David Yates seems entirely unsuited to the material, and the whole project seems misconceived and half-baked from top to bottom.
  22. What is certain is that there’s at least something here everyone should find appealing, even if the film that houses these special moments isn’t quite there.
  23. It’s like listening to a joke, hearing an intriguing set-up, and waiting for a punchline that never comes. You’re just left wondering what’s the point?
  24. Thankfully, the film has Jamie Foxx on the bench in a truly funny and passionate turn as legendary lawyer Willie E. Gary.
  25. Though Keaton conveys the deterioration of Knox’s psychology with diligence as an actor, trying and failing to hide his glances of searching confusion, his narrow facilities as a director can’t keep pace with his performance.
  26. Holland has made a righteous, masterful work, arguably her best since “Europa Europa,” but it’s not for the faint of heart or those inclined to turn a blind eye to suffering. And again, that’s the point.
  27. Will success spoil Taika Waititi? The answer implied by “Next Goal Wins” isn’t encouraging for the future of an original comic voice still audible but slowly fading into the chorus.
  28. To say Farber’s screenplay is plot-heavy is an understatement.
  29. What is truly, and thrillingly, new here is Morris’s thematic interest. The deeper he goes into the rabbit hole with Cornwall, the more his true subject becomes apparent, as the picture becomes a penetrating investigation of the idea that great artists freely use fiction to work through the very real pain of their own lives—even in work that’s not explicitly or even transparently autobiographical.
  30. When was the last time someone who has so mastered the stage – Baker is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, mind you – crafted a directorial feature debut of such artistic confidence? A film that feels a million miles from the confines of a sterile theatrical setting. A movie that is creatively propelled more by a filmmaker’s eye than the words composed by a screenwriter.

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