Eric Kohn, indieWIRE
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For 344 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 79% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 19% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 17.3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Eric Kohn's Scores

  • Movies
Average review score: 76
Highest review score:
Stories We Tell
Critic Score 100
Lowest review score:
Lovelace
Critic Score 25
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 294 out of 344
  2. Mixed: 42 out of 344
  3. Negative: 8 out of 344
344 movie reviews
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    • Metascore: 73
    • Eric Kohn 91
    The Raid: Redemption
    American action movies are almost entirely defined by cutaways, blaring music cues and grunts. The Raid: Redemption, a hyper-energetic Indonesian martial arts movie, delivers an effective rebuke to that meek norm. Bones break, blood flows and swift, excessively complicated fight choreography puts virtually everything released in North America since "The Bourne Ultimatum" to instant shame.
    • Metascore: 73
    • Eric Kohn 83
    I'm Glad My Mother Is Alive
    The first half of I'm Glad My Mother's Alive effectively inhabits a child's mind in a manner that recalls Maurice Pialat's marvelous 1968 debut "The Naked Childhood."
    • Metascore: 73
    • Eric Kohn 83
    The Forgiveness of Blood
    The Forgiveness of Blood examines the barriers of ritual and the passage from youth to adulthood in Albanian society with the perceptive detail of a grand literary feat. At the same time, it retains the simplicity of a parable.
    • Metascore: 73
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
    Gibney's narrative drags to some extent when the focus widens to explore the Vatican's overall policy for covering up sex scandals, but he successfully demonstrates the systematic failure of a system designed work flawlessly on the basis of spirituality that never existed in the first place.
    • Metascore: 73
    • Eric Kohn 91
    Attenberg
    With its persistent inventiveness and a lack of unearned sentimentality, the movie provides an antidote to a lot of lazily produced dramas about death, American or otherwise.
    • Metascore: 73
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Fruitvale Station
    Fruitvale is largely sustained by Jordan's career-making performance and the way Coogler uses it to analyze his subject...It's a fascinating investigation into the contrast between media perception and intimate truths.
    • Metascore: 73
    • Eric Kohn 91
    Pieta
    Kim's movies are generally grim, disturbing affairs, but "Pieta" leaves much to the imagination in favor of its unsettling implications.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Magic Mike
    Magic Mike casts a seriously entertaining spell.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Shut Up and Play the Hits
    If you've never heard of LCD Soundsystem or cared much for the group's work, Shut Up and Play the Hits still manages to explore the prospects of fame and contemporary rock music's lasting relevance.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 91
    Lovers of Hate
    Never indulging in outright scare tactics or loose improvisation, the movie primarily works like an awkward narrative that plays with perspective.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Bellflower
    Despite its meandering plot, Bellflower presents its doom-laden vision as an astonishingly distinctive state of mind, arguing that the end of one self-made world always marks the start of a new one.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Super 8
    Creepy implications keep Super 8 engaging, but the cast makes it click.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Wreck-It Ralph
    Beneath the pixelated gags, the stakes are relatively familiar. However, much of the humor in Wreck-It Ralph riffs on the nostalgia associated with real games.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Post Mortem
    Post Mortem portrays the specter of dictatorship through the lens of one man's private hell.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 91
    Your Sister's Sister
    Duplass' feisty energy is matched by DeWitt's constant smarminess, while Blunt's shy, fragile behavior balances off the forceful personalities surrounding her.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 91
    Terri
    Jacobs, working from a script by Patrick de Witt, takes a conventional coming-of-age story and does it proud, enlivening the plot with an almost experimental portrait of alienation and despair.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Rapt
    Progressing with a coldly observational pace, Rapt often strains its drawn-out structure, creating a lethargic experience despite essentially taking the form of a Bressonian suspense-thriller.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Eric Kohn 83
    The Double Hour
    At its core, The Double Hour is a classic noir story of deception.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
    Despite its predictably cheery vibe, Being Elmo implies a certain darkness lingering beneath the surface of Clash's life.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Eric Kohn 83
    A Screaming Man
    At its core, A Screaming Man emphasizes the strength of family bonds. It's a sad, moving portrait that has nothing to do with its chaotic setting.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Eric Kohn 83
    One Lucky Elephant
    Unlike recent activist documentaries about animal cruelty like "The Cove," Leeman's narrative doesn't feature any real villains. Balding's bond with Flora leaves him in a perpetual state of uncertainty about which possible new home for his elephant would provide the safest habitat.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Mozart's Sister
    For everything that Mozart's Sister imagines, it leaves much more up to imagination.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Black Death
    Black Death embraces its horror roots with ample bloodshed, at which point the silly costumes and anachronistic dialogue no longer seem so absurd.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Sleepwalk with Me
    Sleepwalk With Me calls to mind Judd Apatow's "Funny People" for its focus on the eccentric, obsessive nature of the wannabe comic's mind.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Teddy Bear
    A gigantic physique hides the fragile man beneath and Matthiesen ably follows the journey of that persona as it tunnels through mounds of muscle to reach the surface. In essence, the lion finds his courage.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Like Crazy
    In Sundance terms, Like Crazy qualifies as this year's "Blue Valentine," but it's more observational about the details of a doomed relationship than relentlessly bleak like the aforementioned Derek Cianfrance movie.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Eric Kohn 91
    Dragonslayer
    The measured vérité style of Frederick Wiseman meets the visual polish of Terrence Malick in Dragonslayer, a fascinating slice of crude Americana from first-time director Tristan Patterson. However, it stands alone with an infectious hard rock attitude.
    • Metascore: 70
    • Eric Kohn 91
    Rampart
    Rampart is co-written by crime writer James Ellroy as a messy, disorienting noir, and shot by cinematographer Bobby Bukowski with an unsettling degree of realism.
    • Metascore: 70
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Chicken with Plums
    While visually scrumptious, the movie struggles to reach a greater profundity that it never quite obtains, but its childlike emulation of a grand tragedy is indelibly precious.
    • Metascore: 70
    • Eric Kohn 83
    Cedar Rapids
    Helms plays angelic insurance agent Tim Lippe with gentle nobility and hilarious naivete.
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