Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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For 561 reviews, this critic has graded:
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60% higher than the average critic
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4% same as the average critic
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36% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.4 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Joe Williams' Scores
- Movies
| Average review score: | 67 |
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| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
25
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 418 out of 561
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Mixed: 101 out of 561
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Negative: 42 out of 561
561
movie reviews
- By critic score
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Joe Williams 88
It's a well-earned curtain call for some of the most beloved characters in one of the best-sustained feats of recent cinema. -
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Joe Williams 88
What makes it special is Eastwood's ability to artfully and concisely tell a story, and Morgan Freeman's wonderfully understated turn as South African President Nelson Mandela. -
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Joe Williams 88
As they build up steam, two powerful actors keep us wondering whether this train is bound for war or peace. -
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Joe Williams 88
Although it's sly and sardonic, Police, Adjective is as rigorous as a tea ceremony -- or a Stalinist re-education camp. -
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Joe Williams 88
Ajami is neither a puzzle nor a polemic. It's an admirably even-handed portrait of life in an occupied ghetto that is bounded by checkpoints. Everyone we meet is a more or less honorably motivated victim of circumstance. That the circumstances were inscribed centuries ago makes Ajami a tragedy of biblical proportions. -
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Joe Williams 88
Vincere, which translates as the battle cry "Win!" is like invisible ink on the ledger of war, a secret record of love and loss. -
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Joe Williams 88
Maybe I enjoyed the similarly themed Kick-Ass because it took me back to that innocent time. Or maybe it's because this is the most brazenly funny bloodbath unleashed on the public since "Pulp Fiction." -
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Joe Williams 88
For a public that's been bullied by the tastemakers, the mystery is a gift. Once we exit this fun house, the only giant left to obey is ourselves. -
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Joe Williams 88
An evolutionary leap forward, a visually exquisite film that doesn't ignore the truths of pollution and predatory survival. -
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Joe Williams 88
Although it alludes to romantic conventions, with overt references to Hollywood history and an overemphatic jazz soundtrack, Wild Grass is neither poignant nor zany. It's an exercise in artifice, not unlike David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" set in the City of Lights. I'm sure the French have a word for it, but je ne sais quoi it is. -
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Joe Williams 88
There's a running joke that this epic of also-ran heroism is set in eternally modest Toronto; but its real locale is an alternate universe without parents or the unhip. -
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Joe Williams 88
Whether true or a hoax, I'm Still Here represents real risk-taking that I can only applaud. -
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Joe Williams 88
It's a wholly successful sequel - audacious, entertaining and bracingly pertinent. -
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Joe Williams 88
May be too sterile and stylized to elicit real tears, but it's got brains and heart to spare. -
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Joe Williams 88
Nowhere Boy is too astutely written and directed to go to predictably melodramatic extremes. -
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Joe Williams 88
For a nation at war with its own values, Fair Game is a compelling, pertinent and scrupulously true political thriller in the honorable tradition of "All the President's Men."- Posted Nov 19, 2010
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Joe Williams 88
Hogancamp's alliance with director Jeff Malmberg in this artful and poignant film marks a victory in the war against the self.- Posted Dec 17, 2010
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Joe Williams 88
True Grit is just a couple bloody gunfights removed from an old-fashioned Disney yarn. Yet it's still unmistakably a Coen brothers movie, from the stray weirdness of a bearskin-clad dentist to the bulls-eye delights of the dialogue.- Posted Dec 21, 2010
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Joe Williams 88
The King's Speech is the epitome of prestige cinema, an impeccably crafted and emotionally compelling drama that deserves the many laurels it surely will receive.- Posted Dec 24, 2010
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Joe Williams 88
It's true that the movie is both emotionally violent and sexually explicit. Yet these scenes from a marriage are crafted with such attention to detail and overarching honesty that Blue Valentine touches the heart.- Posted Jan 14, 2011
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Joe Williams 88
A distinctly European exercise in observational nuance and tonal restraint in which Coppola stretches static images to the breaking point.- Posted Jan 14, 2011
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Joe Williams 88
The Illusionist has surprises up its sleeve that are unusually nuanced for an animated movie.- Posted Jan 28, 2011
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- Posted Feb 3, 2011
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Joe Williams 88
You might expect a cartoon about a man and his dog to be strictly for kids, but My Dog Tulip, based on a memoir by J.R. Ackerley, has a psychological richness and anatomical explicitness that is very grown-up.- Posted Feb 3, 2011
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Joe Williams 88
To ensure customer loyalty, Hollywood should promote more movies about workaday life in the provinces, but until there's a new wave of midcoast comedies, Cedar Rapids is the big kahuna.- Posted Feb 18, 2011
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Joe Williams 88
Rango is iconic like a spaghetti Western, smart like a '70s conspiracy thriller and lively like a Coen brothers comedy.- Posted Mar 4, 2011
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Joe Williams 88
Builds beautifully from a farcical premise that requires a suspension of disbelief to a musical climax that washes away our cynicism in a wave of honest tears.- Posted Apr 22, 2011
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Joe Williams 88
Imagine an opulent movie palace that was 30,000 years old, with posters preserved on the curving walls and the bones of the Stone Age patrons peacefully sleeping in the fairy dust. That's essentially what archeologists found in a French canyon in 1994 and what Werner Herzog brings back to life in the extraordinary documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams.- Posted May 6, 2011
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