A.O. Scott Movie Reviews & Previews

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A.O. Scott

Agrees with the Tomatometer 76% of the time.

Publications:: At the Movies , New York Times
Critics' Group:: New York Film Critics Circle

Total Reviews:: 1814

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 1814

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
3/5	83%	Venus And Serena (2013)	" Think of this movie as a greatest-hits package, with some good stuff to show but nothing very new to say." — New York Times Posted May 9, 2013
3.5/5	44%	The Great Gatsby (2013)	" The result is less a conventional movie adaptation than a splashy, trashy opera, a wayward, lavishly theatrical celebration of the emotional and material extravagance that Fitzgerald surveyed with fascinated ambivalence." — New York Times Posted May 9, 2013
5/5	83%	Something in the Air (2013)	" Mr. Assayas's method is observant and immersive. His camera moves among young bodies like an invisible friend, and his somewhat messy narrative is propelled by fidelity to feeling rather than by the machinery of plot." — New York Times Posted May 2, 2013
5/5	83%	What Maisie Knew (2013)	" "What Maisie Knew" lays waste to the comforting dogma that children are naturally resilient, and that our casual, unthinking cruelty to them can be answered by guilty and belated displays of affection." — New York Times Posted May 2, 2013
—	100%	Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia) (Strangers) (The Lonely Woman) (1954)	— New York Times Posted May 2, 2013
4/5	90%	Voyage in Italy (1992)	" Some of us will never tire of those soirees, with their black-tied gloom and elegant suffering, and will therefore relish the beauty and melancholy of this voyage, along with its touristic snapshots and heart-tugging Neapolitan songs." — New York Times Posted Apr 30, 2013
3.5/5	62%	Paradise: Love (2013)	" A tour de force of meticulous cruelty, a comic melodrama that elicits laughter and empathy and then replaces those responses with squirming discomfort." — New York Times Posted Apr 25, 2013
3.5/5	98%	Mud (2013)	" Mr. Nichols's voice is a distinctive and welcome presence in American film." — New York Times Posted Apr 25, 2013
2.5/5	46%	Pain & Gain (2013)	" It all leaves you pondering whether you have just seen a monumentally stupid movie or a brilliant movie about the nature and consequences of stupidity." — New York Times Posted Apr 25, 2013
3.5/5	90%	Ain't In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm (2013)	" An affectionate tribute and a gift for fans who grew fond of his company on records or at concerts and who would like a little bit more." — New York Times Posted Apr 18, 2013
2.5/5	88%	In the House (2013)	" The dexterity of the actors and their director is not quite enough, and as "In the House" accelerates, it also starts to sputter, piling on incidents and revelations that cause its web of implications to unravel." — New York Times Posted Apr 18, 2013
3/5	77%	42 (2013)	" Though not accurate in every particular, the movie mostly succeeds in respecting the facts of history and the personality of its hero, and in reminding audiences why he mattered." — New York Times Posted Apr 11, 2013
2.5/5	42%	To The Wonder (2013)	" [Malick's] insistence on finding a cinematic idiom that connects beauty to ultimate truth is noble and sincere. But the fine intentions of "To the Wonder" pave a road to puzzlement, not awe." — New York Times Posted Apr 11, 2013
4/5	96%	Blancanieves (2013)	" "Blancanieves" deftly blends cinematic antiquarianism, period atmosphere and primal emotions." — New York Times Posted Mar 28, 2013
3/5	81%	The Place Beyond The Pines (2013)	" If, in the end, the film can't quite sustain its epic vision, it does, along the way, achieve the density and momentum of a good novel." — New York Times Posted Mar 28, 2013
3/5	93%	The Sapphires (2013)	" A solid, stirring song sung with more sincerity than polish." — New York Times Posted Mar 21, 2013
1/5	48%	Olympus Has Fallen (2013)	" Sadly, Mr. Butler lacks the wit and the range to convey anything other than grouchy belligerence, and the script, by Creighton Rothenberger and Katrin Benedikt, seems intent on squandering opportunities to be clever or interesting." — New York Times Posted Mar 21, 2013
4/5	91%	Gimme The Loot (2013)	" Sofia is intense and unsmiling, while Malcolm is a charming, goofy chatterbox, and they make a vivid impression, even without spray paint." — New York Times Posted Mar 21, 2013
3/5	43%	Admission (2013)	" [Fey and Rudd] are fun to watch, though not as much fun as they might have been in a riskier, crazier movie." — New York Times Posted Mar 21, 2013
3.5/5	81%	From Up On Poppy Hill (2013)	" Its visual magic lies in painterly compositions of foliage, clouds, architecture and water, and its emotional impact comes from the way everyday life is washed in the colors of memory." — New York Times Posted Mar 14, 2013
4/5	79%	Ginger & Rosa (2013)	" Ms. Englert is as adept at blurring Rosa's feelings as Ms. Fanning is at clarifying Ginger's. Between them they illuminate an intimate, volatile cosmos." — New York Times Posted Mar 14, 2013
4/5	67%	Philip Roth: Unmasked (2013)	" He is, for 90 minutes, marvelous company - expansive, funny, generous and candid." — New York Times Posted Mar 12, 2013
4/5	87%	The Silence (2013)	" [Mr. Odar uses] graceful wide-screen compositions and haunting sound design to create a compelling mood of menace, anxiety and sorrow. " — New York Times Posted Mar 7, 2013
5/5	90%	Beyond The Hills (2013)	" "Beyond the Hills" is a tough and engrossing work of realism, set in rural Romania in the dead of winter, but it also has some of the shadowy magic of an ancient folk tale." — New York Times Posted Mar 7, 2013
4/5	66%	The We and the I (2013)	" "The We and the I" neither scolds nor sentimentalizes its young characters. Instead the film invites viewers, of whatever age, to immerse themselves in the chaos, glee and heartache of a long ride home on the last day of school." — New York Times Posted Mar 7, 2013
3/5	67%	Stoker (2013)	" It may be Mr. Park's reputation that induces a state of queasy anticipation in the early scenes of "Stoker." But it is also, unquestionably, his craft." — New York Times Posted Feb 28, 2013
3/5	75%	Leviathan (2013)	" [It] offers not information but immersion: 90 minutes of wind, water, grinding machinery and piscine agony." — New York Times Posted Feb 28, 2013
3.5/5	86%	Welcome To Pine Hill (2013)	" [It] relies on understatement and indirection to arrive at a powerful and resonant meaning." — New York Times Posted Feb 28, 2013
2/5	15%	A Good Day To Die Hard (2013)	" Everything that made the first "Die Hard" memorable -- the nuances of character, the political subtext, the cowboy wit -- has been dumbed down or scrubbed away entirely." — New York Times Posted Feb 13, 2013
4/5	92%	Night Across the Street (2013)	" Raúl Ruiz's elegiac, enigmatic and mischievous final film." — New York Times Posted Feb 7, 2013
5/5	85%	Side Effects (2013)	" While the plot may be predictable (and more than a little preposterous) in retrospect, Mr. Soderbergh handles it brilliantly, serving notice once again that he is a crackerjack genre technician." — New York Times Posted Feb 7, 2013
3/5	60%	John Dies at the End (2013)	" It zigs, zags and trips over its own feet and on its own home-brewed hallucinogens. It's a ridiculous, preposterous, sometimes maddening experience, but also kind of a blast. " — New York Times Posted Jan 31, 2013
3/5	89%	Koch (2013)	" New York may be a safer, cleaner and less argumentative place than it was in the 1980s, but he remains as contentious, as mischievous and at times as inflammatory as ever." — New York Times Posted Jan 31, 2013
4/5	22%	The Taste of Money (2013)	" Both bitter and delicious." — New York Times Posted Jan 24, 2013
3/5	40%	Parker (2013)	" If "Parker" is, in the end, business as usual, it is also a pretty good deal." — New York Times Posted Jan 24, 2013
4/5	85%	The Pirogue (2013)	" A remarkably cleareyed, quietly ambitious film ..." — New York Times Posted Jan 22, 2013
—	93%	Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011)	— New York Times Posted Jan 22, 2013
—	——	Strip Mahjong: Battle Royale (2012)	— New York Times Posted Jan 22, 2013
2.5/5	76%	Hors Satan (2013)	" Despite its pictorial intensity and the extremity of some of its scenes, the film proceeds in a mood of detachment, turning the suffering physical beings under its scrutiny into abstractions." — New York Times Posted Jan 17, 2013
3/5	36%	LUV (2013)	" It does not entirely succeed, but at its best "Luv" shows the kind of heart and intelligence that is always welcome - and often missing - in American movies." — New York Times Posted Jan 17, 2013
2.5/5	79%	Quartet (2013)	" A sincere but sloppy piece of work." — New York Times Posted Jan 10, 2013
2/5	32%	Gangster Squad (2013)	" "Gangster Squad" would have been more fun as an animated feature, with fanciful animals in the principal roles." — New York Times Posted Jan 10, 2013
2.5/5	51%	Promised Land (2013)	" "Promised Land" feels divided against itself, not quite sure how to reconcile its polemical intentions with its storytelling impulses, and thus finally unable to fulfill its own promise." — New York Times Posted Dec 27, 2012
2.5/5	87%	Tabu (2012)	" Its artfulness seems like an alibi, an excuse for keeping the ugliness of history out of the picture." — New York Times Posted Dec 26, 2012
5/5	88%	Django Unchained (2012)	" It is digressive, jokey, giddily brutal and ferociously profane. But it is also a troubling and important movie about slavery and racism." — New York Times Posted Dec 25, 2012
2.5/5	81%	The Impossible (2012)	" There is a troubling complacency and a lack of compassion in "The Impossible," which is less an examination of mass destruction than the tale of a spoiled holiday." — New York Times Posted Dec 20, 2012
3/5	47%	Cirque Du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D (2012)	" Even if the film is no substitute for the real thing, it is at least an effective advertisement." — New York Times Posted Dec 20, 2012
3.5/5	52%	This is 40 (2012)	" There are a lot of loose ends and a few forced conclusions. But, then again, the acceptance of imperfection is Mr. Apatow's theme, so a degree of sloppiness is to be expected. That's life." — New York Times Posted Dec 20, 2012
1.5/5	61%	Jack Reacher (2012)	" The self-confident, supercompetent Reacher is a character Mr. Cruise could play in his sleep, which is pretty much what he does." — New York Times Posted Dec 20, 2012

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