Time's Scores

For 2,973 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Paterson
Lowest review score: 0 Life Itself
Score distribution:
2973 movie reviews
  1. Dunkirk is extraordinary not just because it’s ambitious and beautifully executed, but because Nolan, who both wrote and directed it, has put so much care into its emotional details—and has asked so much of, and trusted, his actors.
  2. Lowery can't always keep the movie from drifting through the mists of pretension, and the tremulous, too-precious score, by Daniel Hart, is sometimes intrusive. Still, the picture's visual imagery--the cinematographer is Andrew Droz Palermo--is so restlessly poetic that it's hard to turn away.
  3. The movie around him is sometimes glancingly light. Other times it works way too aggressively at being entertainment, rather than just breathing. But Holland, as both Parker and Spidey, is always fun to watch: His bumbling uncertainty and his boyish eagerness make him believable not just as a crime fighter but as a kid.
  4. It’s not going to change the summer-blockbuster landscape single-handedly, but at least it comes by its thrills honestly: This is a spectacle that trusts us to think.
  5. The plot, though, is only the lid of this Pandora's toy chest. Inside, the alert viewer will find humor, imagination and a little Oriental mysticism.
  6. Wright has orchestrated every swerve and near smashup—and one glorious foot chase—with precision, a rarity in action filmmaking these days.
  7. The Big Sick succeeds in doing so many things that romantic comedies — to the extent that they’re even made anymore — have failed to do for years.
  8. Really, as "Hangover"-style dumb entertainments go, it’s certainly good enough. Which isn’t to say it’s anything close to what what women want.
  9. Director Brett Haley, who co-wrote the script with Marc Basch, brings enough understated sympathy to Lee's character to make the picture work--it throws off a gentle, sweet-spirited energy.
  10. The story's aims are noble, but it works too hard at scoring its points to succeed as either entertainment or lacerating social commentary. The picture needed to bite harder and deeper.
  11. Gadot is simply marvelous. Physically, she’s bold and commanding. But there’s a sweetness about her too, as if she and Jenkins understand intuitively that Wonder Woman can’t just be blandly awesome. She's got to be able to feel wonder too.
  12. Examples of absurdly misguided thinking--on the part of the U.S. military and the government--stack up quickly, and Michôd tracks it all with a sly wink.
  13. Wonderstruck embraces so many shimmery, evanescent ideas, it’s a marvel that any one picture—let alone one you can take your kids to—can hold them.
  14. Sandler is terrific here, even if you’re not sure you can stomach another man-child shuffling around in rumpled shorts.
  15. It does show us, in threads deftly woven, how circumstances can push hard against people, making everyday living a battle.
  16. Though it borrows some of the gauzy mood of The Virgin Suicides, it’s essentially unlike any other Sofia Coppola film, a serene, supple picture that hits more than a few notes of despair.
  17. Okja takes the worst impulses of Walt Disney, Wes Anderson, Tim Burton and Michael Moore and rolls them into one movie.
  18. Alien: Covenant is reasonably entertaining. But it slips off course after that opening section, and the problem is caused by the very creatures we presumably came to see.
  19. It's all more wearying than fun. Except for Law, whose courtly sangfroid can elevate even the dumbest roles.
  20. A wry, openhearted, vaguely outré romantic comedy, albeit a bittersweet one.
  21. The story condescends to Mae, and, by extension, to smart, ambitious millennials everywhere — I’m not a millennial, but I felt offended on their behalf.
  22. In striving to surprise us every minute with its seen-it-all irony, Guardians Vol. 2 is actually the surprise-spoiler of all time—our every “Wow!” or “Haha!” has been scripted in advance.
  23. The best sequences are those incorporating vintage footage from the 1970s-era Chez Panisse, where Tower, as a young, rakish beauty — quite clearly gay, but also pansexual in the dashing way people were allowed to be in those days — was the crown prince of the kitchen.
  24. Pictures with the grand sweep and dreamy energy of The Lost City of Z don’t come along every year—they barely come along at all. This is itself a message in a bottle, a missive from a lost city of movies.
  25. Not all of Hill’s movies are great, and The Assignment certainly isn’t. Maybe, in the strictest terms, it isn’t even any good. But even a mediocre Walter Hill film has more style and energy — and a finer sense of the sweet spot between joy and despair — than ninety percent of the action thrillers that get made today.
  26. But deeply earnest pictures aren't always great ones, and this movie's plot mechanics sometimes grind it down. The actors, at least, keep it breathing.
  27. The genius of Ghost in the Shell is that you don’t have to care about cyborg-anything to enjoy it. In fact, you’ll probably enjoy it more that way.
  28. CHIPS is just tiresomely stupid.
  29. This is an effective and unsettling piece of filmmaking, partly because Gyllenhaal has one of the most sympathetic faces in movies today--it's haunted and haunting.
  30. T2 squeaks by on the charm of its actors, all of whom still look pretty damn good -- especially McGregor, who remains a charismatic wag.

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