Wall Street Journal's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 3,961 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 44% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 54% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Les Misérables
Lowest review score: 0 The Limits of Control
Score distribution:
3961 movie reviews
  1. Even a day later, contemplating this willfully nauseating work carries much the same sensation as having ingested a plate of bad clams.
  2. Amrum is a stirring example of how childhood reminiscence can stand for so much more.
  3. It takes a series of self-reflexive turns that are overelaborate in their conception and slightly inert in their execution, rendering the movie’s poignancy more theoretical than fully felt.
  4. “The Logo” is directed by “Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris, who is too much of a presence in his own movie. It’s his first documentary. It may be the first one he’s seen. Documentarians usually hide themselves unless they have something to add, which he doesn’t.
  5. While Ms. Gillespie can’t solve the mystery of why exactly her subject did what he did, she has created a novel kind of crime film, one aided in no small way by what seems to be the complete flight recording from Russell’s mad act. And a group of loved ones willing to listen to it.
  6. The film loses its edge as it proceeds, turning into something more generic, less credible, and overly explicit in its statement of themes.
  7. The movie isn’t above using its star like a pin-up model. It isn’t above much, in fact, and it’s certainly below the level of the breezy rom-coms that Hollywood used to churn out with ease.
  8. The Christophers is zingy fun. Whichever world Mr. Soderbergh decides to visit, he invariably makes the trip worthwhile.
  9. Some movies are toxically misconceived, and “The Drama” is among them. It wants to be wicked and outrageous but it’s really just dismal and depressing.
  10. For those who half-remember the novella from school (as I did) and didn’t especially enjoy it (as I didn’t), Mr. Ozon both honors his material and reinvigorates it.
  11. Ms. Zenovich possesses the interviewer’s most valuable skill, knowing when to shut up.
  12. There’s nothing wrong with making movies for 5-year-olds. But, as directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and written by Matthew Fogel, “Galaxy” seems very much like a movie made by 5-year-olds.
  13. An English-language debut by Russian director Kirill Sokolov, who also co-wrote its script, They Will Kill You is tongue-in-cheek but not witty, reveling in its excesses without bringing anything fresh to the party.
  14. As a love story, Fantasy Life isn’t particularly original, but the low-key way Mr. Shear realizes some familiar situations is warm and human, with comic aspects and sad ones kept in an appealing balance.
  15. The film may not propose a solution to any of our maladies, but it’s a bitterly convincing diagnosis.
  16. “1000 Women” is briskly entertaining and wildly informative as a clip show, insightful in its academic analysis, and the structure of the film enables a tidy organization of an often messy bunch of films.
  17. Straightforward storytelling was never the strong suit of the show, which relied very much on Mr. Murphy’s charisma and that of his co-stars, notably Sophie Rundle, who plays sister Ada Shelby. The future always looked grim in Peaky Blinders, but the fate of the show, which apparently has two Murphy-less years to go in a planned sequel, is beyond uncertain.
  18. Why an Oscar-winning screenwriter would make a film that makes so little attempt to dig into its central character is baffling. That an Oscar-nominated director with a celebrated eye for the ethereal, strange world of girl-women living in beautiful boxes could make a film as workaday as this one is frustrating.
  19. The movie has an elegant, almost symmetrical narrative economy. It’s at once orderly and disorienting, as though following a plan drawn by M.C. Escher.
  20. Combining the best aspects of “Interstellar” and “The Martian,” but more satisfying in the end than either, this 2 1/2-hour epic Christian allegory recreates the same mix as the best Steven Spielberg fantasies—wonder, adventure, humor, warmth and pathos, all infused with a child’s sensibility.
  21. An experience that’s like being slowly asphyxiated by puffy clouds of baby powder.
  22. The movie generates a pleasing fog of suspense as it makes the audience pay attention to each new audio cue. Seeing the movie in a hushed theater is ideal; viewing it at home would almost certainly bring in distractions that would dilute the experience.
  23. The lean, athletic Mr. Herzog, 83 years old, seems as spry and eager as ever, and his global enthusiasm remains a force of nature in itself. Ghost Elephants takes its place as yet another of the director’s essential forays into the wild and unknown.
  24. If there’s a single witty idea in the entire two-hour slog, I missed it.
  25. Ms. Buckley quickly becomes the centerpiece of the movie, or rather its central headache. Her overacting meets Ms. Gyllenhaal’s over-filmmaking like the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic.
  26. Pixar, which is notable for its emotionally rich soul and its irresistible fancy, this time comes up with almost none of the former and very little of the latter.
  27. While essentially a disaster film, the visually alarming and nerve-racking “Fukushima” is also a cross-cultural psychodrama, about an industry, and perhaps a society, having a meltdown all its own.
  28. In a deliberately raggedy film, we find a raggedy man.
  29. Like Sun Ra’s music, the motion picture is deliberately fractured, the virtues to be found in the departures from the expected, the familiar, the comfortable.
  30. The legacy of the Emerson String Quartet includes dozens of recordings, and it’s probably in those that the deepest lessons lie. For anyone curious to meet the musicians who made them, Four Rational People is a decent introduction.

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