The Playlist's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 4,828 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 1.8 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:
4828 movie reviews
  1. A bloodless, musty museum piece stuffed with stars but dull as toast.
  2. It may be bloated, but Moonfall always feels like it’s moving at a somewhat brisk pace. And the filmmaker’s greatest talent is collaborating with visual effects teams to craft images that somehow get seared in your brain.
  3. All in all, Summering is a very nice movie – sweet, affectionate, nostalgic, harmless – so it’s tempting to give it a pass. But “nice” and “compelling,” sadly, are not the same thing.
  4. Admittedly, Utama is a simple story, but one that packs an emotional punch without endless exposition or symbolism.
  5. In a film steeped in loss and grief, Leonor Will Never Die, as the title implies, is ultimately a beautiful, life-affirming celebration of the power of film and art to heal. Yes, even ‘80s action films.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    If Sen were to better connect Nadeem and Saud’s faith and civic identities with the kites and other animals’ desperate fight for balance in an urbanized nature, All That Breathes would be an excellent documentary.
  6. While its structure is a little lopsided (the beginning portion plays like a doc about Choy) and the tone tends to sway somewhat harshly between justifiably acidic and politically enlightening, “The Exiles” is an essential look at “philosophical homelessness” and an expert example of documentary cinema as a truth-telling device.
  7. Resurrection is emotionally searing, wildly unhinged and maybe even a little batshit crazy. However, as anchored by its two fiercely committed and convincing lead performances (Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth), a menacingly disquieting tone, and a frightening ambiguity about a disintegrating mental state, Resurrection is a deeply distressing and compelling drama that will shock and shake you to your core.
  8. "Nanny" feels less like a misfire than a missed opportunity. Those early scenes are so tightly wound and so beautifully played that by the time Jusu trots out the blood and knives and bathtubs, I wasn’t even sure what movie I was watching anymore.
  9. Depriving “Nothing Compares” of any mention of O’Connor’s more recent life irreparably wounds the film. Had Ferguson bothered to cast aside her rose-tinted gaze, the documentary might have, akin to O’Connor’s rebellious spirit, broken the mold of what’s expected from cinematic works of biographical nonfiction.
  10. You get a sense of Poehler’s energy in the fast pace and comic timing of film, which moves at a good, precise clip. There’s a lot of material to cover here, some of it overly familiar, but Poehler does it with pizzaz.
  11. Fearsome and fearless at the same time, Palm Trees and Power Lines practically dares viewers to watch what’s happening on screen without flinching.
  12. The pleasures of Hotel Transylvania: Transformania are both visual and script-based, as they revolve around the writers’ ability to come up with more fish-out-of-water material.
  13. Stolevski aims for a life-affirming treatise on the poetics of human existence but strains to be more than a pretty copy of his well-known influences.
  14. Monroe does a lot to sustain what tension there is during the more perfunctory moments, delivering a seemingly effortless performance as a dejected young woman who approaches both her confusing new circumstances and the mystery that occupies her thoughts with calm and pragmatic patience, as well as curiosity.
  15. Speak No Evil might not be a thrill-a-minute film, but it’s effective in a way that many horror movies just aren’t anymore. Watching it evokes the feeling of inching closer and closer to the end of a cliff; at any moment, you feel like you might still escape the situation until you eventually reach the point of no return.
  16. Their latest fusion of science fiction, character drama, dark comedy, and overwhelming paranoia, Something in the Dirt, feels like their most personal film – and not just because they wear so many hats, directing and writing and producing and editing and starring.
  17. Diallo has crafted an incisive, intelligent, and stridently political horror film that is distinctly all her own. The terror at the heart of this film reverberates far beyond the myths of this academic institution. Master excavates the very roots of our country’s foundation and dares us to face the haunted ground on which it is built.
  18. 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.
  19. Hatching, a smartly constructed fright machine, not only introduces a new and exciting voice to the horror landscape but cracks its way through the brain like a beak through a shell.
  20. Deserted by a workplace and landscape whose wintry indignation is reciprocated in kind, Newton carries the film with intrepid resolve, turning in an amenable performance that’s inflamed in its downcast nature, while earning wholly justified sympathy.
  21. There are definitely some logical gaps in Ford’s screenplay and perhaps the consequences could be slightly more dangerous (intriguingly, guns barely appear throughout the proceedings), but as a filmmaker, he displays a keen awareness of racking up the tension when necessary and not overdoing it when it’s not.
  22. Although AM I OK? follows a well-worn formula, it finds transcendence in Johnson and Mizuno’s authentic, intertwined performances and Pomerantz’s deeply personal, heartwarming screenplay.
  23. Linden offers a fascinating premise, but her visual language doesn’t catch the eye, and the potential excitement to be mined from translating Blaxploitation motifs for modern-day audiences is missing. “Alice” could’ve been so much more, but instead, it comes off like a lost opportunity.
  24. It’s a twisty tale of secrets, cliches, and Lifetime characters that could only come out this month–it’s impossible to imagine this coming out in December, that’s for sure.
  25. The most groundbreaking thing that Hyde and Brand pull off with “Leo Grande” isn’t merely an honest depiction of female sexuality — although that alone would have been enough to make their film a triumph. Rather, the duo goes further and observes an aging woman while she studiously unlearns her long-held beliefs and constraints.
  26. In the end, it’s a stellar turn from Sharp that dots the I’s and crosses the t’s when the tear ducts begin to flow. And you realize how marvelously constructed the whole endeavor is.
  27. Both Stearns and Gillan commit to the detached tenor. Still, it’s often more distant and isolating than it is funny, therefore leading to a movie that feels misjudged and far too remote, even for those well-versed and conversant in this weirdly lopsided style.
  28. When the film works, it’s often because Banks confidently carries so much of it on her own shoulders.
  29. Dunham has not lost her habit of exploring taboo and shocking scenarios. But just like this new film’s fluid, low key visual style and bright, poppy production design, the coming-of-age story it presents feels so organically conceived that what would surely be completely unacceptable in another context appears to obey the film’s own perverse set of rules with warmth and a refreshing lack of judgment.

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