The Seattle Times' Scores

  • Movies
For 1,951 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Gladiator
Lowest review score: 0 It's Pat: The Movie
Score distribution:
1951 movie reviews
  1. What really lingers after The Sheep Detectives is its tone: earnest, uncomplicated sweetness, rooted in the love that we — whether human or sheep — have for those with whom we share our lives, and a gentle acceptance of loss as part of that love.
  2. Like the shadows dancing on their home, the film is overwhelmingly beautiful and agonizingly incomplete, a refraction of a refraction of a time that has now long since passed. It’s a work of rich layers that offers something new each time you watch.
  3. The Devil Wears Prada 2 gives us a lot to look at, and Hathaway and Blunt in particular are a pleasure (they have a scene together, late in the film, that’s almost worth the ticket price right there), but it’s flat Champagne: maybe worth drinking in a pinch, but unsatisfying.
  4. It’s faithful to the book without being overly devout, asking a multitude of deeper, more probing questions while reflecting on the same unsettling and existentialist ones that the book did. By the time it closes with its unexpectedly mournful yet gently searing final frames, reinterpreting and expanding on the enduring source material one final time, it names all that Camus did not.
  5. The irony and meaninglessness of the violence rankles, especially when Ulysses is presented as such a nice guy who is prone to de-escalation and community care in his day-to-day work.
  6. Yes, this is a standard rom-com, in all the best of ways — both playing with the genre’s well-trodden tropes, and letting us enjoy how much fun they can be.
  7. It makes for an entertaining watch in which the attention to detail in every technical element helps smooth over the scattered and superficial story’s many residual shortcomings.
  8. The film doesn’t have much to say about its central questions, and its ending feels inevitable but also unearned.
  9. The prime attraction of this movie, and its predecessor, is that it envelopes the audience in the Mario world. Every square inch of the screen, from top to bottom, corner to corner, is packed with images derived from the game. Easter eggs abound. Watching it is akin being inside the 2007 Super Mario Galaxy game itself. Which is why it needs to be seen on the big screen. Seeing it on a phone or a laptop wouldn’t do it justice.
  10. Both Weaving and Newton do great horror-comedy work, by turns beleaguered and enraged, and share some genuinely sweet, funny moments as they repair their relationship.
  11. Tow
    Byrne, a recent Oscar nominee for “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” holds it together.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    By the time the film turns into this unusual buddy adventure, it is an absolute joy, the pair putting their big brains to the task at hand and playfully ribbing each other as they go.
  12. In channeling his creative resources toward the sound of “Undertone,” Tuason conjures a lot out of a simple concept — a girl in a house. The marriage of this sound design to thoughtful, carefully placed camera movements makes for a horror film that’s a suspenseful slow burn.
  13. What keeps Hoppers from drifting into Pollyanna-ish sensibility is its charming spikiness, and embrace of the weird, wacky and witty as it unfurls a high-tech action thriller about a strange, if brief, merging of the human and animal worlds.
  14. More coming-of-age than love story, “Pillion” finds joy in Colin’s journey of learning who he truly is. His road there is a little bumpy — like riding on the back of a motorcycle — and it may be a path less traveled, but it’s a worthwhile one all the same.
  15. Powell’s charm, along with some fun rich-person interiors (there’s a library near the end that gives a stellar performance), does a lot to get “How to Make a Killing” to the finish line. But you may well lose interest, as I did, before the murder countdown concludes; this one feels more like a rough draft than a truly well-thought-out movie.
  16. This Wuthering Heights is a mess, but an occasionally irresistible one.
  17. The Moment works best when examining the creative tensions between people with different agendas, the small passive-aggressive tensions and second-guessing generating the ripples of conflict. But perhaps Zamiri felt those stakes were too small.
  18. Critically, the film’s many revelations aren’t neat and tidy, but they are revealing in all the ways that matter.
  19. A Private Life is a murder mystery only on its surface; at its heart, it’s an exploration of a lonely woman’s extremely active mind, and an unexpectedly moving story of becoming more present in one’s real life, rather than one’s imaginary one.
  20. Raimi can’t resist letting things get wildly over the top at times (there’s a lot of blood and vomit in this movie), but ultimately Send Help is a fascinating study of what happens when a power dynamic suddenly shifts — and when a skilled and charismatic actor is given space to try something entirely new.
  21. Representationally, Clika is an important and worthy film. Cinematically, it unfortunately can’t find the beat.
  22. Shouting and struggling, poor Pratt vainly tries to give his character dimension and some sense of sympathy. So genial and engaging in the Guardians of the Galaxy series, Pratt flails grouchily and ineffectively in Mercy.
  23. It doesn’t hold a candle to the game, but there’s enough here to warrant another visit to this tragic little town.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    DaCosta takes some big stylistic swings — particularly with the soundtrack — that sometimes makes you feel as if you’re watching a comedy rather than a horror film. It’s a welcome, offbeat balm to the more intense moments sprinkled throughout and reflects the movie’s more pondering approach to a story that questions who the real monsters are.
  24. Greenland 2: Migration offers up a proudly, even defiantly, optimistic view of what comes after disaster, which can serve for the viewer as either cathartic fictional balm, or Pollyanna-ish fantasy — pick your poison.
  25. The film may have begun with a joke on one man, but with the cutthroat world we’re increasingly building for ourselves, it may soon be on all of us.
  26. There are moments now and then that register, particularly early in the movie when we meet the regulars on the musical-impersonator circuit.
  27. There’s actually quite a bit to enjoy here, not least of which is Black and Rudd’s funny chemistry, some amusing sight gags involving that enormous CGI snake (who has a diva’s sense of timing), the term “snake funeral” and a rather sweet message about following your dreams. It’s all very, very silly.
  28. Josh is flying solo this time, but Marty Supreme shows he’s capable of achieving a greatness that’s all his own. While brief plot elements weigh the film down, Safide defies gravity even as Marty cannot.

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