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For 404 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 46% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Driveways
Lowest review score: 10 Geostorm
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 261 out of 404
  2. Mixed: 120 out of 404
  3. Negative: 23 out of 404
404 movie reviews
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  1. The Boys in the Band
    Whereas Crowley left no one off the hook in his scathing play, creating a purposely painful experience, this remake seems to lack the same purpose of frightening accountability. The flourishes that made the original work so risky and raw feel more like polished, glimmering performance in the adaptation.
  2. The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future
    The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future is mysterious and elegiac, a tale of warning about a collapsing ecosystem and about deep family wounds.
  3. Rocketman
    It’s absolutely exploding with energy because Elton John is its pulse. It stumbles a few times — as has its subject — but on the whole, it’s a consistently good performance from start to finish, a movie rooted in a real story that nonetheless doesn’t keep itself too tethered to the ground.
  4. It
    Muschietti’s largely faithful adaptation of King’s story relies not on nostalgia for its emotional underpinnings, but rather a keen sense of the present moment in all its deep tensions and ugliness.
  5. I Am Greta
    What might be best about I Am Greta is a related theme woven throughout the film. She speaks to the camera frequently, frankly, and without embarrassment about her experience of having Asperger syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder she refreshingly sees as a positive rather than a negative.
  6. Blockers
    For the most part, it works. Blockers isn’t groundbreaking or particularly memorable. As comedies go, it’s pretty standard fare. But its characters and performances keep it light on its feet, even when the writing gets clunky.
  7. The Trip to Greece
    Taken together, the movies are a meditation on middle age and mortality, on how our irrevocable life choices, even when they’re the right ones, will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
  8. Leto
    While the movie finds its setting in a particular moment in Leningrad, it also feels very universal — a movie about being young and disaffected and passionate and in love, and watching all that change as you grow older. Summer, after all, never lasts forever.
  9. Tenet
    There’s a chilliness to Tenet that I haven’t felt in his previous work. The stakes, presumably, couldn’t be higher — both onscreen and offscreen — but after watching the movie, I don’t understand why I was meant to care. As an intellectual exercise, Tenet is very interesting, if not entirely successful. As a movie, I’m not so sure.
  10. Spider-Man: Far from Home
    Throw in the earnest sweetness of Peter and MJ’s growing friendship, and Far From Home leaves us on as strong of a high as the low that its first act takes us to. That warm and fuzzy feeling makes it impossible not to think of how great a movie Far From Home could’ve been had it not tripped over its own feet in setting the stage, or unspooled itself from that tangled-up beginning.
  11. Tell Me Who I Am
    Ultimately, the film is not just a wild and nearly unbelievable story; it’s a rumination on the lasting effects of sexual abuse, the complicated question of “good” lies, and the moral quandary that comes along with withholding painful information.
  12. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
    Its kid-friendly, free-for-all spirit rides atop an undercurrent of pointed commentary about the state of the superhero industry (and the entertainment industry more broadly) that will give those parental guides something to hold on to amid the candy-colored cacophony. Or they could just surrender and enjoy the butt jokes. They’re pretty good butt jokes!
  13. Fahrenheit 11/9
    Moore still suffers from bouts of self-aggrandizement and snide generalization. But they feel jarringly out of place, and in a good way. That’s because, for a great deal of the film, Moore cedes the floor to people whose voices are not as easily heard, or who have had to fight to have a voice at all.
  14. Happiest Season
    It’s a cute movie with a lot of heart. It’s just that this heart was retrofitted from other movies’ tropes and is, as such, an awkward fit. For the next lesbian Christmas movie (please let there be a next one), it would be great to build a story about queer holiday celebrations from the ground up.
  15. Early Man
    A quintessentially Aardman-esque stew of slapstick, homage, and wordplay so wry it barely (but always) misses being groan-worthy, Early Man is a gentle and modest reflection on how we have, from the very beginning, always needed to treat one another with kindness in order to survive.
  16. Richard Jewell
    If we learn anything from the story in Richard Jewell, it’s that truth is truth, whether or not it fits your pet narrative. So either the movie fails at understanding its own message, or it flat-out lies. What a disappointing way to undermine your own valid point, in a movie that’s otherwise well-acted and competently filmed.
  17. Leave the World Behind
    Esmail, who earned his chops as the showrunner of Mr. Robot, excels at drawing out his characters’ paranoia.
  18. Thank You for Your Service
    Thank You for Your Service is moving and unflinchingly honest — and its release comes at a time when its central theme feels depressingly relevant.
  19. Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press
    In Trump’s America, most people watching Netflix already have their minds made up about journalists — they may trust them, or they may think they’re the scum of the earth. Nobody Speak is a stirring argument that could sway some of the undecided viewers.
  20. Avengers: Infinity War
    Infinity War boasts the most breathtaking, audacious moment in superhero movie history, one that rocketed through my brain and tore apart everything I thought I knew about the past 10 years of Marvel moviemaking. For the first time in a while, I can’t wait to see what happens next.
  21. No Time to Die
    No Time to Die exists to wrap up lots of plot lines — it feels, like 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, like the end of a cycle, a grand epic about sacrifice and the future of mankind. But it also gives us a Bond with more emotion and maybe even humanity than many of his predecessors seemed to possess.
  22. Just Mercy
    The film is smartly designed to deliver its message into as many hearts as possible.
  23. Black Widow
    Even if Black Widow is years late and can feel retroactive in parts, Nat’s own (very good) movie asserts the character’s legacy in the MCU and what she meant to the franchise as a whole.
  24. Dick Tracy
    It's nowhere near the best movie of its type, but it's a frequently audacious, stunningly beautiful ride through a four-color universe.
  25. Concrete Cowboy
    Despite its flaws, the film works because it’s not, in the end, contrived.
  26. Avatar: The Way of Water
    Its plot is hacky; it’s got some really clunky characters; the dialogue is, at times, unthinkably stupid. (“The way of water connects all things” is the kind of line that sounds profound until you really think about it.) But this new Avatar filled an awe-shaped void in my heart, and for that, I thank James Cameron.
  27. Brigsby Bear
    Brigsby Bear is about how the things we love help us find where we belong.
  28. The Little Stranger
    It’s a slow-burn horror film, one that has all the sudden scares and moments of pristine fear present in any good movie of its ilk. But in the hands of Lenny Abrahamson (Room), The Little Stranger is elevated by measured pacing that also makes the larger house-based metaphor clear — and the result is both elegiac and frightening.
  29. The Great Hack
    The Great Hack isn’t revealing much that hasn’t been reported elsewhere, but it’s powerful in the ways it does so.
  30. The Final Year
    The greatest thing about The Final Year, and the part that needs repeating over and over in our abrasive, attention-seeking political age, is that no matter what your method for bettering the world is, the real work is usually done quietly, in ways that defy pomp and fanfare.
  31. Wonder
    While the movie’s premise feels prone to the maudlin, it’s ultimately quite poignant; Wonder is a family-oriented tale in which people make mistakes in the way they treat one another, but learn and grow in a way that doesn’t feel condescending to the film’s younger audience.
  32. Mulan
    For all its screenplay’s threadbare talk about the importance of cultivating deep understanding, Mulan stays superficial and perfunctory. It gets down to business — and little else.
  33. Bumblebee
    So in not sacrificing that human element, Bumblebee is a nostalgic delight that taps into not just the 1980s but youth in general.
  34. Users
    Directed by Natalia Almada and scored by the Kronos Quartet, the film feels a little symphonic, a mesmerizing exploration of how technology is transforming the ways we relate to the natural world.
  35. Wonka
    It’s a worthy bit of holiday entertainment, the kind of movie that hits just right in these winter months. It’s sweet but not too treacly, not quite as perfect as Paddington 2 (what is?) but it does the trick.
  36. The Reagan Show
    By letting the past speak for itself, The Reagan Show stays both sober and light on its feet.
  37. Marshall
    Casting the movie as Marshall’s story — and then skimping on Marshall himself, one of the most interesting figures in US history — winds up skewing the film in ways that end up inadvertently denigrating the subject.
  38. Thirteen Lives
    By the end of the story, the film’s aims are clear: to show what an absolute miracle the rescue was, and to honor the extraordinary cooperation and selflessness of those who came to help. Yes, that’s inspirational. But it also quietly counters a Hollywood history besotted with lone rangers and mavericks. Everyone matters.
  39. Becoming
    It’s not a puff piece, but it also doesn’t contain any big revelations.
  40. Deadpool 2
    A superhero movie so tightly made and brilliantly entertaining that even Deadpool himself would have trouble finding fault with it.
  41. The Way Back
    Movies like this one are just looking for an audience with whom they’ll resonate. And the seriousness of The Way Back — its unwillingness to take the easy road, and Affleck’s total commitment to letting his personal rawness inform performed pain — should ensure those audiences find what they’re looking for.
  42. Mary Poppins Returns
    It’s focused on pleasing fans of the original without taking any risks. It’s a pleasant, diverting, modestly ambitious film, fun for the whole family. But it leaves much to be desired, too.
  43. American Made
    It’s not that American Made doesn’t have anything to say; it’s just that whatever it has to say has been said better somewhere else. It’s not bad; it’s not good, either. It’s just shallow.
  44. Alien: Covenant
    Alien: Covenant would probably be a better movie if it had calmed down and narrowed its scope. And yet you have to respect Scott’s ambition, even if you don’t like his movie.
  45. Men
    Men is the most visceral and organic dive into the curse of human nature that [Garland's] made yet. But it’s like each of his movies, filling in the question of what it means to be human — and to keep living on this planet — stroke by stroke.
  46. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    To be sure, The Lego Movie 2 is a lot of fun. If you loved the first movie or just need something to see in theaters, it won’t disappoint. It neatly subverts a bunch of the issues the first movie had, particularly when it came to how that movie portrayed its women characters. But it also loses a little something in terms of expectations versus reality.
  47. Frozen II
    Frozen 2 is still a plenty enjoyable film, even if it lacks its predecessor’s subversive spark. But for me, watching generative and derivative nostalgia spar within it prompted a different sense of the familiar: bleakness about the future of mouse-eared entertainment.
  48. Captain Marvel
    I was hoping for something higher, further, faster, and more.
  49. The Other Lamb
    Chilly, precisely designed scenes make for a sharp juxtaposition with images of blood, violence, and birth. And the feeling that something very wrong is going on here is inscribed into every exacting, unnerving shot.
  50. Suspiria
    By its enigmatic end, Suspiria is troubling and grim and yet strangely mirthful, having opened wounds without much interest in closing them. This is not a film you untangle; it’s a movie you feel. That will drive some mad. For others, it will feel something like ecstasy.
  51. Ready or Not
    Ready or Not takes its name from a game, an amusement for children, but it has something to say about some very grown-up concerns. And it’s both fun and deadly serious.
  52. Downsizing
    The overstuffed Downsizing doesn’t totally work, but when it does, it’s fascinating.
  53. Vivarium
    Though it verges on the overstuffed at times, Vivarium is dirty, sinister, hair-raising, and thoroughly entertaining — and completely worth a watch if you’re feeling a little, well, trapped.
  54. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
    When I say that Guardians Vol. 3 is the best Marvel film since Endgame, however, I mean it as a genuine compliment: The movie is great and not just the best house on a bad block.
  55. Ready Player One
    Ready Player One is set in a dystopian future. But it seems to have no idea how dystopian it really is.
  56. Native Son
    Though it has some problems as a film — some of which are part and parcel of translating a book to the screen — Native Son still packs a punch, one that connects directly with the gut.
  57. Pope Francis - A Man of His Word
    Pope Francis — A Man of His Word isn’t likely to convert any of Francis’s critics, but it might just convince the indifferent that he has something to say to our world.
  58. Atomic Blonde
    Director David Leitch is a little too nonchalant about the gigantic pile of corpses his heroine leaves in her wake. But damned if it doesn’t look cool as hell. And sometimes in life...all you want is something that looks super awesome, regardless of whether it makes any sense. Atomic Blonde manages that trick in spades.
  59. Borg vs. McEnroe
    Even when he’s in a mediocre movie (and he often is), LaBeouf is a magnetic onscreen presence. There’s a naturalism and complexity to his McEnroe that keeps him from being turned into a caricature. It’s hard not to want more of him.
  60. Someone Great
    A hopeful break-up film, with three leads who sparkle together.
  61. Alpha
    Alpha is definitely sentimental, even pandering at times. But its unexpected setting, images, set pieces, and even language balance out the sentimentality with a strangely raw and cinematically adventurous aesthetic that’s uncommon for a film of its sort.
  62. Thanksgiving
    Roth (Hostel) always loves a good gorefest, and this one is no different — but he tends to hover just around the edges of social satire, which in this case seems to leave him unsure how seriously to take his own film.
  63. Solo: A Star Wars Story
    The result is a bland heist movie in space that does nothing unexpected and never justifies its existence.
  64. American Dharma
    Morris’s film is less a takedown of its subject, and more a Rorschach test for its viewers. What you’ll see is precisely what you’re primed to see — and that, not Bannon’s ideas themselves, is the point.
  65. Beautiful Boy
    Beautiful Boy is a beautifully made and complex rendering of a father and son’s relationship that ends with too little hope to fit into people’s “inspirational movie” box. But at its best, it’s a strong rendering of both that horror and the frayed rays of hope that sometimes break through. It’s not easy to watch, but it is, in its own way, still beautiful.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Not Okay
    Not Okay is not the first film to satirize the age of influencers, but it is easily the most unsettling.
  67. The King
    Mostly, The King is about the corrupting influences of power, and the idea that war, perhaps especially Renaissance war, is an inhuman, brutal experience. And it is damned if it’s going to let you get off your couch with any ideas to the contrary. No, The King will thump its themes into your head, whatever it goddamned takes.
  68. Apostle
    It’s not exactly for the faint of heart, and its wild zinging from plot point to plot point can get tiring. But if you’re on the hunt for a frightening and original horror movie, it’s a stellar choice.
  69. The Hero
    Unfortunately, the thinness of The Hero gives Elliott little to work with, and he’s already a subtle actor, with a mustache and hound dog visage that tends to obscure facial expressions anyhow.
  70. Babylon
    Weeks after I saw it, I cannot quite decide if Babylon is a good film. But I’m entranced, and moved, and frustrated, and transported — which is what Hollywood has built its business on accomplishing from the very beginning.
  71. Sorry/Not Sorry
    What it does do, though, is remind us that bad men get away with bad things in part because we’re conditioned, over and over, to see them as normal and funny, permutations of “locker room talk” and “just making a joke.”
  72. Vice
    Even if McKay thinks he’s making a fictionalized Fahrenheit 9/11, he’s accidentally succeeded in making a movie about our split consciousness.
  73. Ocean's 8
    Ocean’s 8, at its most endearing, is a slick, glamorous romp that makes you yearn for three more hours with its impossibly charismatic crew.
  74. Onward
    It’s better than most of the entertainment aimed at children that studios churn out these days.
  75. This Is Me…Now: A Love Story
    If anything, This Is Me… Now is a confirmation of the singer/actress’s elite showmanship and her ability to bounce back as a cultural figure and chronic divorcée. It’s exactly the sort of galaxy-brained project one makes when one has nothing to prove and $20 million to spend — and one is high on love.
  76. Sicario: Day of the Soldado
    It’s inexcusable for a movie that tries to say daring and surprising things about a very urgent matter of cultural and political importance to be so thuddingly predictable in so many places.
  77. Kingsman: The Secret Service
    It's a lot of fun. But there's also something very bizarre about Kingsman. Namely, its politics are incredibly strange, wildly vacillating between a kind of egalitarian progressivism and the equivalent of shrugging wildly and saying, "Who cares! The status quo is fine!"
  78. The Pod Generation
    The Pod Generation foregrounds Rachel and Alvy’s relationship, exploring how technologies change our most intimate connections and raising questions from a world not so unlike our own.
  79. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
    It’s frustrating, though, to see a movie so tight and entertaining in its action and so gangly in exposition. The result is a rambunctious female-driven revenge thriller, filled with tentpole moments of crackling verve that is knit together by flimsy exposition and voiceovers.
  80. The Man Who Invented Christmas
    “What my more curmudgeonly colleague misses,” said the ghost with a smile, “is this film’s potential for great camp enjoyment, especially thanks to its bevy of perfectly fine performances."
  81. Lightyear
    Lightyear itself is a sweet musing on the value of friendship, an origin story that gives the titular character a sense of purpose, and a zippy ride through an often-gorgeous cosmic world.
  82. Good Boys
    One of Good Boys’ smartest insights into that period of life is that everyone is developing into their teenaged selves, but at very different speeds.
  83. Sierra Burgess Is a Loser
    Sierra Burgess is a paint-by-numbers teen movie whose admirable sincerity fails to make up for the clumsiness of its craftsmanship, and whose compelling teen girl friendship is marred by the creepiness of its love story.
  84. Wonder Woman 1984
    Large adult sad boys who want to take over the world and launch it into an apocalypse is something we’ve seen before (see: Loki in Avengers, Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Luther and Doomsday in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Steppenwolf in Justice League). This formulaic story is something fit for the other guys. The more time spent on it, the less time WW1984 spends being wondrous.
  85. Bad Times at the El Royale
    Part metaphorical (which it jokes about halfway through), part homage to old Hollywood, part whodunit, and part social commentary on an America reeling from mid-century chaos, it’s overstuffed but still feels controlled.
  86. Under the Silver Lake
    Under the Silver Lake isn’t an homage so much as a remix of classic Hollywood tropes, which positions itself and its contemporary hipster characters less as the continuation of history than the end of it.
  87. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    With Hobbs & Shaw, the quirky “James Bond as a fun Disney movie” formula that brought this franchise its legions of fans finally begins to feel tired.
  88. House of Gucci
    House of Gucci is probably the funniest comedy and dopiest tragedy of the year. Everyone chomps on the scenery.
  89. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
    The result is sublimely ridiculous, or perhaps ridiculously sublime: the very definition of frothy summer entertainment, moderately (if unevenly) well-directed by Ol Parker, that works best if you just suspend your need for it all to make sense.
  90. Hidden Blade
    Yibo’s performance seals Hidden Blade’s status as an unexpected pleasure. Once finally assembled, its cinematic intricacies yield infinite rewards.
  91. Outlaw King
    Outlaw King is plenty entertaining, with a hint of humanity in Robert and Elizabeth’s courtship.
  92. Godzilla vs. Kong
    What Godzilla vs. Kong lacks in narrative logic, it makes up in visual fun, even imagination. And that’s all too lacking in an industry dominated by movies that sacrifice imagery for story beats.
  93. The Lovebirds
    Rae and Nanjiani are terrific comedians whose wisecracks and antics are thoroughly entertaining, so even if you know what the ending of The Lovebirds will be, it’s great fun watching them get there.
  94. On the Basis of Sex
    There’s nothing flashy or innovative about On the Basis of Sex. It’s the very definition of a workmanlike film. But it’s a satisfying watch nonetheless, and a smart one too — just like its subject.
  95. Cars 3
    Like all Pixar movies, Cars 3 is gorgeous...but like most of the studio’s 2010s output, its storytelling is perhaps too complicated to really register. The movie is constantly trying to outmaneuver itself, leading to a film that’s pleasant but not much more.
  96. Joker
    Joker is a well-made movie, with a killer performance from Joaquin Phoenix, who seems born to play the role. But there’s nothing “bonkers” about it. It has nothing to say about the Joker himself or what he represents, or even about the world in which his brand of evil exists. Go ahead and crack open the movie. It’s hollow to the core.
  97. The Little Mermaid
    Somehow, in this fantasy of mermaids and magical spells and a world compelled by curiosity, there’s a frustratingly fastidious commitment to terrestrial dreariness. And it’s not a world I’m longing to be a part of, not even for two hours.
  98. Cruella
    It’s a lot of fun, even when it’s kind of a mess.
  99. It: Chapter Two
    The ultimate problem with this remake. King’s novel argues that evil is cyclical and that we never really outgrow our childhood fears because our childhood fears never really end. But It: Chapter Two muddles this message. It tries to convince us, not very effectively, that the evil in Derry can be fully defeated. But it also wants us to know that the real evil in Derry is Derry itself and that Derry is every small American town.
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