Wendy Ide

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Screen Daily, The Observer (UK)
For 348 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Wendy Ide's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Barry Lyndon
Lowest review score: 20 The Kitchen
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 191 out of 348
  2. Mixed: 146 out of 348
  3. Negative: 11 out of 348
348 movie reviews
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Wendy Ide
    Take Me Somewhere Nice
    There’s an oddball intrigue and a dry absurdist humour to this journey which largely transcends the uneven pacing
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    Lucky Grandma
    This gentle comedy trades heavily on Tsai Chin’s deliciously abrasive central performance, but stumbles when it comes to the execution of the action sequences
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Alice
    This Paris-set debut feature from Australian director Josephine Mackerras negotiates morally complex territory and the minefield of society’s double standards with an admirably light step.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Diana Kennedy: Nothing Fancy
    Crisply British and deliciously no-nonsense, Kennedy is a wonderfully bracing character for Elizabeth Carroll’s deft documentary.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    Ema
    The film is all about the chase: it’s an aggressive seduction that teases with bold visual statements, with flesh and flame throwers. But does it satisfy? Not on any deep emotional level, certainly.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Why Don't You Just Die!
    It won’t be for everyone, certainly, but if social distancing has you not just climbing the walls but contemplating punching a hole in them, this might just be the perfect cathartic lockdown movie.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Wendy Ide
    Four Kids and It
    This should amuse the younger members of the family, but it's unlikely to offer much more to parents than a couple of hours' respite.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    The Perfect Candidate
    Like Maryam’s approach to local politics, the film is well-meaning but occasionally naive.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Wendy Ide
    System Crasher
    Most essential is the central performance: Zengel’s oscillating wild joys and storming furies are painful to watch. A moment when she howls for her mother (always tantalisingly out of reach) brought me to tears.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    The Photograph
    LaKeith Stanfield and Issa Rae light up a beautiful-looking movie that weaves together love stories from the past and present.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    Escape from Pretoria
    A pacy screenplay, co-written by director Francis Annan and adapted from a book by Jenkin, rarely flags, but it’s the nervy camera, hugging the characters at hip height, the better to scrutinise each locked barrier to freedom, that most successfully builds the tension.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
    Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’s generous documentary is a fitting tribute to the late, great author.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    Onward
    The emotional impact is true and clean. The fractious bond between the brothers and their aching anger at the loss of a parent are evoked with exquisite sorrow and clarity.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Wendy Ide
    Siberia
    Despite Willem Dafoe bringing gnarled gravitas to a screenplay which pinballs between oblique portent and grotesque shock tactics, this is an incoherent indulgence.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Wendy Ide
    Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
    Meditative and meandering, this handsomely shot but unfocused picture might present something of a challenge to all but the most dedicated students of Chinese cultural history.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    The Woman Who Ran
    Although perhaps on the enigmatic end of the Hong spectrum, The Woman Who Ran touches rewardingly on themes such as relationship dynamics and gender roles. The delicacy of the predominantly female-driven storytelling is unassuming but beguiling. And Hong goes so far as to skewer his own tendency to indulge monologuing windbag male characters in previous films.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Wendy Ide
    Mogul Mowgli
    While the picture doesn’t quite maintain its vigorous energy through to the very end, it is still a satisfyingly knotty exploration of the bi-cultural experience.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Wendy Ide
    Minyan
    The film might not be doing anything revolutionary with the gay coming of age story, but it is heartfelt and honest. And at times, unexpectedly hot.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Wendy Ide
    The Intruder
    The second film from Natalia Meta is a slippery thing to pin down. Like the ragged mental state of its main character, it unravels as it goes on. But it is also never less than stridently entertaining, in part thanks to a brittle central performance from Erica Rivas.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Midnight Family
    Captured by a camera that frequently rattles against the sides of the hurtling ambulance, the Ochoas’ night-time escapades are electrifying and urgent, doused in strobing emergency lights and powered by adrenaline.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    The Call of the Wild
    It should please family audiences; it’s a handsomely mounted, stirring adventure. It’s just a little bit declawed.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    Greed
    As rambunctiously entertaining as it is crude.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Wendy Ide
    Like a Boss
    Director Miguel Arteta, who brought a bracingly transgressive tartness to indie comedies Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl, delivers sloppily paced hack work here, while Tiffany Haddish and Rose Byrne, two fine comic actresses, are shackled to a screenplay so crassly tone-deaf, it makes you want to chisel off your own ears.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    Funny Face
    Tim Sutton’s idiosyncratic outsider romance contains moments of haunting oddness, but has a tendency to stab home its points and issues rather emphatically.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Wendy Ide
    My Salinger Year
    The transporting power of art is a difficult thing to capture in cinema at the best of times, and this film struggles to do so, leaning heavily on a score which signposts the emotional content of each scene a little too emphatically.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Plus One
    Erskine, with her earthy chuckle and precision-tooled comic timing, is the real discovery here. She’s a smutty, sniggering joy in the role and I can’t wait to see what she does next.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Wendy Ide
    Underwater
    The murky cinematography further hinders a picture that looks as though it was shot through raw sewage.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Wendy Ide
    Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
    It’s the movie equivalent of a fairground ride with all the bolts loosened and the safety booklet blazed long ago when someone ran out of Rizlas.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    Possessor
    Possessor is ultra stylish and uber violent, but, despite a top tier cast, it’s not always entirely clear what is going on and who is in control of the finger on the trigger.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Wendy Ide
    The Grudge
    The cluttered parallel story structure – the fates of several different individuals over a period of two years are woven together – results in a series of mini-scares rather than a gradual build to a big one. And since we already know the fate of most of them, all the diseased yellow lighting and oppressive sound design in the world can’t engineer much tension.
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