Time Out's Scores

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For 6,373 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Pain and Glory
Lowest review score: 0 Surf Nazis Must Die
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,476 out of 6373
  2. Mixed: 3,422 out of 6373
  3. Negative: 475 out of 6373
6373 movie reviews
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  1. Goon
    Despite being as pathetically penile-obsessed as any postmillennial comedy, Goon prevails where other sports-film farces fail thanks to Scott's winning, unwinking performance; Liev Schreiber's spot-on turn as a wizened, clock-punching rink assassin; and a pucked-up love of a bloody game.
  2. Intruders
    Fresnadillo, working with screenwriters Nicolás Casariego and Jaime Marques, might be angling for the same YA fantasy as "Pan's Labyrinth," but they've forgotten about that film's violent underpinnings, a mistake that leaches their movie of suspense.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Turn Me On, Dammit!
    There's plenty here to recommend; so what if its explicitness and femcentric sexuality turn off some prudish viewers, dammit!
  4. Bully
    This antibullying advocacy group could not be more well-intentioned or needed, but suddenly, the sneaking suspicion that you've merely been watching an extended PSA for the grassroots organization starts to take hold.
  5. Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone
    There's just enough uncut truth and soul in Fishbone's story to keep die-hard Boneheads skankin' to the beat, even if it's just for nostalgia's sake.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Trouble with Bliss
    Hall's puppy-dog charisma holds up under the strain, but it isn't nearly enough to keep this messy midlife-crisis dramedy afloat. A little of this Bliss goes a long way.
  7. The Raid: Redemption
    There are moments when The Raid: Redemption doesn't feel like an action movie so much as pure action itself, delivered in strong, undiluted doses and with the sort of creative one-upmanship capable of rejuvenating a stale, seen-it-all genre.
  8. Musical Chairs
    In many ways, this effervescent drama from Susan Seidelman (Desperately Seeking Susan) upends conventions, even when it sticks to a familiar narrative path.
  9. 4:44 Last Day on Earth
    Let's not make 4:44 Last Day on Earth sound cooler than it is. Compared with Lars von Trier's histrionically doomed "Melancholia," the film lacks any serious attempt to grapple with mortality.
  10. The Deep Blue Sea
    It's the stuff of melodrama, heightened by Davies's pitch-perfect use of pop songs, like a sad "You Belong to Me," slurred by a misty crowd in a bar.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Brake
    Primarily a TV director, Torres lacks the chops to delineate Dorff's claustrophobic quarters, and the actor spends most of the movie confusing tough-guy stoicism with simple inertness, despite the occasional Jack Bauer–style yell.
  12. All In: The Poker Movie
    The opinions assembled are impressive: everyone from "Rounders'" Matt Damon to former senator Al D'Amato, a poker defender. But where's the voice of reason? It's card playing, not a dependable income.
  13. The Hunger Games
    If the movie had a lead actress more delicate or malleable than the strong-cheeked Lawrence-a Natalie Portman, say-it would tip over into sexy-girl-killer celebration; the same goes for Harrelson's salty mentor, who is never too supportive or paternal. Both performers lean into the economies of survival, certain of the savagery that lies ahead, and come up with sharp work.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Seeking Justice
    Once upon a time, the star would have added both gravity and a manic edge to this wronged everyman. At this juncture, Cage is less believable as an average Joe than he is as, say, a cursed trick rider with a flaming skull for a head.
  15. Natural Selection
    This writer-director still has some evolving to do.
  16. The Kid with a Bike
    Those Dardenne brothers…still making great movies with second-nature ease.
  17. Gerhard Richter - Painting
    You will see the man toiling and revising - killing off half-good ideas, struggling for clarity - and it's a routine well worth demystifying.
  18. Free Men
    Consider the movie a testament to Rahim's screen presence. If nothing else, Free Men proves that the can't-take-your-eyes-off-him charisma the Franco-Algerian actor displayed in Jacques Audiard's "A Prophet" was no fluke.
  19. Detachment
    The movie is one big scream, clichéd and hardly credible as an oblique call to civility.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Delicacy
    It's a rebound-romance movie that's simplistic but sweet, an uncomplicated cinematic bonbon. It'll only take a few quick bites, however, before you'll be ready to move on to something meatier.
  21. Casa de mi Padre
    The oddest thing about the movie - and perhaps the asset that will tip it over into the plus column for you - is that it's a bona fide scuzz-Western.
  22. Jeff Who Lives at Home
    As is, this semi-improvised feature comes off as a willfully vague exercise that, like its dimwit protagonist, presumes that profundity and enlightenment will emerge from the morass eventually. Er, maybe - or maybe not. Kinda like "Signs;" only much, much worse.
  23. 21 Jump Street
    The longer this "Abbott and Costello's Lethal Weapon" goes on, the more the fun dissipates - until a queasily violent climax, which, naturally, fully embraces genre stereotypes rather than dismantling them.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Thousand Words
    Before this star vehicle devolves into a soggy New Age sermon, Murphy's manic pantomiming offers a few faint flickers of the mad comic genius from 1987's "Raw".
  25. John Carter
    Aside from a few inspired vistas and alien life-forms (the Road Runner–fast red planet dog Woola is sure to sell a bazillion action figures), John Carter is as deadly dull as its basso-voiced, beefcake slab of a star, Taylor Kitsch.
  26. Dissolution
    Only Dissolution's divine climax feels truly poetic. Having the stamina to not break down on the journey to that moment is half the battle.
  27. Sound of Noise
    The backbeat anarchy is fun while it lasts, but without a persuasive purpose, it's all just noise in the end.
  28. Shakespeare High
    Unless you really dig "Glee"-level displays of high-school drama geekery, you and your date may want to quickly exeunt.
  29. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
    Only Kristin Scott Thomas channeling "In the Loop's" Malcolm Tucker offers a spark; the rest is simply hokum designed to land overly sentimental suckers hook, line and sinker.
  30. Silent House
    Even this terrifically talented performer can't sell a Shyama-lana-ding-dong of a third-act twist that will make more eyes than heads roll.
  31. Jiro Dreams of Sushi
    A dream, indeed. Sure to delight foodies and cinephiles alike.
  32. Friends with Kids
    The movie's multitasking creator seems to have bitten off more then she can chew. Her friends should have advised "baby steps."
  33. The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
    Losier has made a quietly revolutionary work that treats a pair of people on the fringes with the decency all humans deserve.
  34. Footnote
    Cedar's idiosyncratically brilliant script also has a moral question at its heart: Is lying to spare someone's feelings ever justified? Surely the Talmud has a thing or two to say about that.
  35. Children of Paradise (1945)
    Carné's film has never looked more lush.
  36. Attenberg
    Attenberg shares with the Oscar-nominated "Dogtooth" a weakness for overgrown innocence and deadpan perversity.
  37. Project X
    Deeply irresponsible, this a film that will give parents seizures-and Roger Corman a big old smile.
  38. Dr. Seuss' The Lorax
    Unfortunately, a new problem rears its head: It seems no young audience member can be trusted to enjoy a thoughtful story without a heroic, borderline-obnoxious surrogate (here, he's voiced by Zac Efron) zooming around on a scooter, bonking villainous heads and saving the day.
  39. Where Are You Taking Me?
    The only time a subject directly addresses Takesue, it's with a doozy of a query: "Why are you taking my story to USA, New York?" The answer is as complex as the film itself, and as simple as deciding to not look away.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie
    Fans will love the funny and subversive moments; anyone who didn't "get" them premakeover may simply feel like they've been sitting in a "brown bath" for 93 minutes. Don't ask.
  41. This Is Not a Film
    Sure it is - and a great one at that.
  42. The Snowtown Murders
    Cigarettes are sucked hungrily by all involved, old and young, in the trashscape of this depressing Australian crime film - a movie that heaps so much dank atmosphere on its suburbanites, you can't help but sigh with relief when events turn to serial killing (finally?).
  43. The Salt of Life
    Unfortunately, he's retained his previous work's touristy mondo italiano! vibe, all whimsical tunes and postcard scenery, while piling on enough ogling shots of nubile young women to make Hugh Hefner feel uncomfortable.
  44. Let the Bullets Fly
    It's best to just let the silly-to-spectacular set pieces fly by you and-tastes permitting-enjoy the Karo Syrupped ridiculousness on display.
  45. Last Days Here
    A middling entry in the growing genre of tragic, never-quite-made-it rocker docs, this doesn't have a bona fide genius at its core (The Devil and Daniel Johnston), nor a compelling clash of Spinal Tap–ready egos (Anvil! The Story of Anvil).
  46. Boy
    Boy needn't be pop-culturally fluent to be relatable; believable human characterizations would have sufficed.
  47. Black Butterflies
    Carice van Houten (Black Book) is superb as the emotionally unstable Jonker - all manically beaming highs and depressively gloomy lows, a tempestuous force of nature in a movie that too often plays it blandly polite.
  48. Being Flynn
    Sadly, most of the film's dull edges have to do with De Niro, who is clearly in rest-on-his-laurels mode; at his worst, he approaches radioactive, Robin Williams levels of bathos, as when Jonathan - roaring like a bush-league Lear - is banned from the shelter for bad behavior.
  49. Act of Valor
    Like all advertisements, this scripted movie is a perfect fantasy: expertly coordinated, simplistic (the bad guys like yachts and bikini girls while our heroes have loving families) and more than a little scary.
  50. Good Deeds
    Much cut-rate melodrama ensues, none of it particularly painful to watch, until a ridiculously redemptive finale negates almost all of the preceding dramatic tension and resurrects a cloying Richard Marx chestnut to boot.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Gone
    The one cop (Bentley) who buys Jill's story looks like the most likely suspect (or at least the most likely red herring) - and then he vanishes for the entire third act to, supposedly, make his mother some soup. Wait, what?
  52. Wanderlust
    None of the hilarity is enough to keep Wanderlust from feeling like a late-night comedy-show sketch stretched to feature length. But why look a giggle-prone gift horse in the mouth?
  53. The Fairy
    Deadpan clownishness is The Fairy's raison d'être and its superior mode; when the lovey-doveyness turns cloying and the atrophied message-mongering creeps in, you wish the threesome knew when to keep their traps shut.
  54. Hipsters
    Hipsters is also a musical (in an intentionally naive "Absolute Beginners" vein), and while everything looks glinty and gorgeous, the story's political edge is dulled by excessive levity.
  55. The Forgiveness of Blood
    No matter how sincere, Marston's effort also suffers from the lack of a burning lead as he had in Maria's Catalina Sandino Moreno. Fierce acting is a virtue you don't have to travel the world to find - or to lose sight of.
  56. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
    Alas, unlike the duo's Crank films - also about a hero on the verge of explosion - Spirit of Vengeance lacks a solid gimmick to unify their transgressive gambits.
  57. On the Ice
    More than a moral dilemma is needed to make up for the uneven performances, slack pacing and wonky dialogue, and while MacLean certainly has a keen eye, the rest of his storytelling facilities haven't quite caught up with it yet.
  58. Cirkus Columbia
    The tongue is in cheek and the tone is ironic and bleak, at least until the should-we-stay-or-should-we-go climax punctures the mood. Still, welcome back, Danis.
  59. Undefeated
    Moments like these turn the documentary Undefeated into a far greater thing than a real-life "The Blind Side" - it's diving deeply into knotty matters of patience and parenting, along with plenty of unfixables as well.
  60. Thin Ice
    When a movie is this predicated on aping the Coen brothers (effectively, it should be added, in fits and starts), surprise won't be its strong suit.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Secret World of Arrietty
    It's hardly the first movie to deal with thimble-size protagonists, but it's one of few animated fairy tales to genuinely transport the audience into their world and, in the process, let us see our own with fresh awe and respect.
  62. This Means War
    Charmless and histrionic, this mean-spirited movie takes place in the toyscape of McG (Charlie's Angels), a monomonikered director who makes Michael Bay seem thoughtful.
  63. Putin's Kiss
    Lise Birk Pedersen's documentary offers some compelling peeks into Russia's bureaucratic skulduggery, but her attempt to frame the situation through a young convert's coming of age never really coheres. Innocence was lost; so, apparently, was much of the insightful commentary.
  64. Michael
    Brace yourself and go see it.
  65. The Forgotten Space
    For the most part, The Forgotten Space treats its subjects and settings as exploitable commodities in service to a lot of facile rise-working-man! muckraking. The ism trumps all.
  66. Bullhead
    Every time the narrative's underworld schnooks and low-level lowlifes edge their way out of the periphery, a sense of snorting impatience takes over. This is Jacky's story, and when he's grabbing Bullhead by the horns, you don't want him to let go.
  67. Hell and Back Again
    Watching the formerly spry Harris struggle to maintain a normal life (he's frequently glassy-eyed and jacked on painkillers) emphasizes the underappreciated sacrifices our men and women in uniform make in the name of vaguely defined ideals.
  68. Mammuth
    They've given their star one rotten peach of a role, and Depardieu makes the most of it. Because of him, such surreal Gallic scuzziness has rarely seemed so sweetly tender.
  69. The Swell Season
    The movie looks beautiful, its sublime b&w cinematography signaling a fading dream. And there are touching moments here that you rarely see in docs about professional musicians or celebrities in general.
  70. The Vow
    Credit the appealingly paired McAdams and Tatum for making this Valentine's-month hokum watchable.
  71. Chronicle
    First-time director Josh Trank, working from a taut script by Max "Son of John" Landis, indulges in some wild, witty spectacle, but he's equally adept with the tale's grimmer elements, especially when the introverted Andrew unleashes his inner Magneto and uses the city of Seattle as his tear-it-apart emotional playground.
  72. Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission
    Dreams like Garriott's shouldn't be available only to the highest bidder. If you end up taking the kid in your life to go see it, urge them to start saving their allowance.
  73. Safe House
    Good actors like Vera Farmiga and Brendan Gleeson show up to bust balls and bark expository dialogue with check-in-the-bank-yet? proficiency. Add in a couple of dully pro forma narrative twists to keep you awake in between shots of distractingly exotic South African scenery, and you've got a first-quarter Hollywood release par excellence. Meaning not.
  74. Journey 2: The Mysterious Island
    Even "Bwana Devil" showed less crassness in its attempts to wow, however, and the more this cardboard blockbuster piles on the cut-rate F/X, the less anyone - the cast, the filmmaker, you - can muster up the energy to care.
  75. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
    Armed with archival footage and wrenching interviews, filmmaker Chad Freidrichs revisits one of our nation's darkest hours - and emerges with a scrupulous, revelatory consideration of the varied factors that turned a worthy plan into a horrific, state-sanctioned nightmare for a generation of working-class African-Americans.
  76. The Turin Horse
    Even on its own limited, rigorous aesthetic grounds, there are far superior movies (including all of Tarr's own work). It's a sad way for the 56-year-old to go out, almost a caricature of his funereal mood and of art cinema in general.
  77. Return
    Return is almost too underdramatized to seem like a piece of today's zoomy entertainment, but its anxieties-the bare cupboards, the vague sense of purposelessness-are at the heart of the American experience for many. It's what indie filmmaking ought to be.
  78. The Miners' Hymns
    Miners' is tiresome and scattershot.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Big Miracle
    You'd have to possess a heart colder than the Northern tundra not to care about these poor animals working their flukes off to jerk audience tears, but emotional manipulation or not, this is still a movie about people standing around a hole waiting for something to happen.
  80. Chico & Rita
    The boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl-and-turns-heartbreak-into-great-art plot is as hoary as they come, but Mariscal's eye-popping artwork and the evocation of a bygone musical era (Charlie Parker at the Village Vanguard, Tito Puente at the Palladium) are delirious.
  81. Crazy Horse
    You doubt Wiseman's sense of pacing. Still, he must have had a good time shooting.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Windfall
    Given the film's inability to posit any significant objections - or, for that matter, alternatives - to the turbines, it all feels like so much petty sniping against progress.
  83. The Woman in Black
    The mostly dialogue-free middle section is a scare-film master class - and when a becalmed smile does finally cross his lips, it's in the most giddily mordant of circumstances. As Arthur embraces the darkness, so does the darkness embrace us.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Splinters
    While marred somewhat by the griminess of its HD imagery, Splinters nonetheless successfully integrates the sport and an attendant subculture in a way that manages to enhance both, leading to a climactic competition that actually makes you feel something important is at stake.
  85. Pretty Poison (1968)
    Once the story takes a murderous turn, things quickly fall apart. Too many perfunctory side characters, such as Dennis's clueless parole officer, dilute any sense of tension; the bargain-basement visuals-all overlit interiors and unmotivated zooms-never rise above the luridly cheap; and hoo-boy, those final scenes.
  86. W.E.
    Riseborough's acting offers total commitment in the face of lunacy, but it's a shame she's flapping around in an egotistical film with such a terribly warped sense of purpose.
  87. Perfect Sense
    Filmed with the somber pretentiousness of a "Babel," the movie never quite converts its premise into something grander (never mind believable). Meanwhile, the world starts to riot, yet their bed is warm. Will love save the day? Unfortunately for us, our sense of smell remains intact.
  88. Kill List
    There's still tremendous vitality here, and Wheatley's avoidance of yet another Guy Ritchie gabfest is a pleasure in itself.
  89. The Innkeepers
    West holds your interest with material that should feel like a rip-off of The Shining. If this is mere placeholding until something more ambitious comes along for the rising director, it'll do.
  90. Carol Channing: Larger Than Life
    There's not much beyond all the fawning, but the effusively talented Channing more than deserves the gush.
  91. One for the Money
    Flirty bickering is rampant but, courtesy of Heigl's inert performance, there's no heat or humor to the proceedings, just an avalanche of grating big-hair-and-bad-accent New Joisey caricatures.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Come Back, Africa (1959)
    Come Back, Africa is a work of amazing grace - and a forgotten treasure.
  93. After Fall, Winter
    While it may make the City of Light look beautiful, ultimately, this insufferable indie auteur's navel-gazer is just another faux-kinky vanity project in which its creator's neuroses are placed on an undeserved pedestal.
  94. Declaration of War
    Parenting relies on stamina as much as compassion, and Donzelli has, against all odds, crafted a genuinely moving ode to both the tenacity of filial love under extreme circumstances and the toll it extracts. Consider this a coup.
  95. The Grey
    Moment to moment, the film is gripping and beautiful to behold (props to cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi for the mesmerizingly grainy, achromatic visuals). But caveat emptor to those expecting a hinterlands gloss on "Taken" with rapacious curs in place of nefarious Albanians.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Man on a Ledge
    Trusting an action drone like Worthington to anchor the human drama is a fatal mistake. With him perched on that narrow slab of concrete, it's only a matter of time before the film plummets.
  97. How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?
    A better movie would have explored Foster's way-of-the-future objectives with more beyond-the-hype insight and less Zen-master bullshit.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Underworld: Awakening
    Also missing: the series' reliable camp heavies, Bill Nighy and Michael Sheen, and most of the so-called Lycans who, their appearance in a few respectable action sequences notwithstanding, are now nearly extinct. So is this franchise.
  99. A Man Escaped (1956)
    Blessed with a weeklong run at the end of Film Forum's bliss-inducing Robert Bresson retrospective, the French filmmaker's 1956 tale of steel bars and iron wills boils a true-story prison break down to its bare necessities.
  100. The Front Line
    A huge hit in its native country, Hun Jang's epic doesn't lack for spectacle or incident: In addition to its war-what-is-it-good-for? moralizing, it also piles on bloody battle scenes, subplots involving a sniper and a supply chest, and a nihilistic last-minute twist. What you don't get is the sense that this pumped-up combat-fatigue chronicle is pandering-or, for that matter, particularly original.
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