Carlos Aguilar
Select another critic »For 159 reviews, this critic has graded:
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62% higher than the average critic
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8% same as the average critic
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30% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.4 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Carlos Aguilar's Scores
- Movies
- TV
Score distribution:
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Positive: 106 out of 159
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Mixed: 35 out of 159
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Negative: 18 out of 159
159
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Carlos Aguilar
To see him wrestle with his own past, the pressure of a whole country’s dreams, and the relief of making them come true, is occasionally riveting, but it’s also what makes Pelé all the more a missed opportunity for a sharper portrait.- RogerEbert.com
- Posted Feb 23, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
Though curiously charming, Jumbo behaves like love at first sight that doesn’t think about the consequences of the ardent now or the larger, long-term picture.- RogerEbert.com
- Posted Feb 19, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
A trenchant conversation piece from a promising new director, Test Pattern provides ample room for one’s biases and privilege to shape our interpretation of what’s on screen.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Feb 17, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
Chaotically arranged, like a feverish dance between mind-altering nightmares and pieces of reality, this ambitious mixed-media thesis operates under idiosyncratic rules to provoke a feeling of subconscious entrapment.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Feb 15, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
If pitted against other entertainment aimed at young viewers with much less panache, “Earwig and the Witch” wins, at least in conceptual adventurousness. Even if far from being top-tier Ghibli, it’s not without its fantastical pleasures.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Feb 11, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
Dynamic in a Hollywood-friendly manner, the film has a deliberately broad tone, but by no means does that detract from its thematic acumen.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Feb 11, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
Once Wang gets into the murky waters of the hoaxers here, one wishes she could dig deeper and examine the evolution of those fringe factions at length. That unfortunately doesn’t happen — likely given how much ground there is to cover with this story — yet her hard-hitting doc, both explores complex ideological battles and maps how a humanitarian calamity morphed into a political one in both countries.- TheWrap
- Posted Feb 4, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
Mostly compelling but unfocused, Wild Indian dips its narrative feet in a slew of themes, all worthwhile, and doesn’t commit to any of them as its guiding star in the murky sky of its ambition. As the filmmaker tries to bind all of the moving parts, the whole turns scattered-brained and structurally disjointed.- The Playlist
- Posted Feb 3, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
For all the technique that she demonstrates in Passing, it’s the way Hall mines praiseworthy turns from her cast that will earn her the most acclaim. Mannered in varying degrees, the actresses’ performances strike a delicate balance of emotional nuance and period-specific affectations.- TheWrap
- Posted Feb 1, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
Magnetic with righteous fury, Kaluuya plays Hampton with steel-plated conviction that has no time for half-measures. The gifted actor maintains a strict demeanor in scenes speaking truth to the people but a more calibrated mien in the ones exhibiting Hampton’s diplomatic skills, like a meeting with the Crowns, a fellow revolutionary group.- TheWrap
- Posted Feb 1, 2021
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- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Feb 1, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
To watch Cryptozoo is to open a Disneyland-size kingdom of ideas that never cease to astound.- The Playlist
- Posted Jan 30, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
For Mwangi, Softie serves as testament of the domesticity he’s been absent from to satisfy the demands of his thankless vocation. But for the rest of us, it stands as a portrait of the kind of selfless, unifying and much-needed patriotism, from both Mwangi and Njeri, that could enact improvement if more subscribed to it wholeheartedly.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Jan 30, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
To its mild detriment, Beginning stays on a cerebral plane even at its most ravaging and emotionally intense. But in its muted havoc lies a potent intellectual laceration.- RogerEbert.com
- Posted Jan 29, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
A goosebumps-inducing affair, The Night is at its most effectively unsettling when the focus is to evoke fear as opposed to when it physically shows what’s haunting the characters trapped in their respective secret tragedies. Their unseen demons spook harder.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Jan 29, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
A vibrant and transfixing revelation, You Will Die at 20 is as novel a vision as we may see this year. From its meaningful ideas on the here and the hereafter, its lesson for Muzamil is that after perishing a rebirth may follow.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Jan 22, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
While the film loses some of its mesmerizing potency in the climax and subsequent wrap-up, it's still a beautiful and acute rendering of what could be if some of the most implausible lies we tell ourselves were in fact true.- RogerEbert.com
- Posted Jan 22, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
Some movies wound us so profoundly that once darkness has consumed their final frame we are incapable of shaking off the heartache. That’s the power of Identifying Features, which is as painfully intimate as it is unsparing in its indictment of a country ravaged by a corrosive, entrenched evil.- The A.V. Club
- Posted Jan 20, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
Imperfect as it is, this often-intuitive piece with a strong observational eye personifies the notion of the calm before the storm.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Jan 20, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
Rather than speaking to the moment coherently, the movie communicates its message in loud fits of dull screaming.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Jan 15, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
My Little Sister is frank and poignant. With a distinctive angle and the rawness of the cast’s first-rate performances, Chuat and Reymond elevate a premise that could have, in other hands, veered into the realm of the uninspired.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Jan 13, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
As long as the very idea that Black lives matter remains controversial, so long as our institutions refuse to reckon with the reality that they’re protecting not an ideal but whiteness itself, a cure to the country’s worst social malaise will remain out of reach. MLK/FBI is a perceptive reminder that this uphill struggle is ongoing and nothing new.- The A.V. Club
- Posted Jan 12, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
Dreibergs excels with his measured but immersive set pieces—like one that unravels in a snowy landscape at night, best exemplifying his directorial brawn.- RogerEbert.com
- Posted Jan 8, 2021
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- Carlos Aguilar
With enough enjoyable originality to differentiate it from the numerous takes on the super men and wonder women that so heavily populate film and TV these days, We Can Be Heroes flies Rodriguez back to one of his main areas of interest.- RogerEbert.com
- Posted Dec 25, 2020
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- Carlos Aguilar
Sweeping and flawlessly produced, Ashe’s epic works as an inherently refreshing entry in the canon of a genre designed to make us sigh with knowing elation or tear up in misery thinking about our own bygone rendezvous.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Dec 23, 2020
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- Carlos Aguilar
The riveting and superbly acted Iranian drama, based on a real variety show, poses a moral crucible born out of a theocratic system that disfavors women amid the heightened tension of the on-camera spectacle.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Dec 10, 2020
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- Carlos Aguilar
A first-time performer without formal training, Betancourt is a true revelation and the most accomplished player in an impressive ensemble of nonactors.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Dec 7, 2020
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- Carlos Aguilar
Ordinary but sufficiently effective in its execution, the film’s most resonant segments are those where the upstanding son reflects on his torn family and a rotten system in which paroling alleged offenders even after so much time is seen as an affront to the toxic institutional loyalty to police.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Dec 7, 2020
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- Carlos Aguilar
All My Life is too passionless to earn even a begrudged sniffle. It’s all paint-by-numbers, from the requisite “screaming inside a car” shot expressing a character’s frustrations to the store-bought spontaneity of a couple jumping into a fountain fully clothed.- The A.V. Club
- Posted Dec 3, 2020
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- Carlos Aguilar
Mayor doesn’t feature an impassioned speech detailing the Palestinian people’s ardent plight for freedom because it doesn’t need one. Watching the confrontation in near real time, with lives on the line—a testimony to Hadid’s utmost commitment and hands-on leadership—conveys a forthright message.- RogerEbert.com
- Posted Dec 2, 2020
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