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The Best Keanu Reeves Movies, Ranked By Critics’ Scores

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The Best Keanu Reeves Movies, Ranked By Critics’ Scores

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From The Matrix to the John Wick film franchise, these films starring Keanu Reeves garnered the highest combined Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores.

Key Facts

Reeves, 58, made his film debut in Youngblood (1986) and established himself as a leading man with roles in films like Point Break (1991) and Speed (1994).

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He became well known for his leading role in The Matrix (1999), which media outlets have considered one of the best science fiction films of all time.

His latest film is John Wick: Chapter 4, the fourth installment in the John Wick action film series, which has grossed more than $406 million globally since its March 2023 release.

Keanu Reeves’ Top 10 Films

1. Toy Story 4 (2019): 97% Rotten Tomatoes, 84% Metacritic

The fourth installment in the Toy Story animated film series, Reeves voices Duke Caboom, a daredevil toy who can’t actually do the stunts advertised in toy commercials. Toy Story 4 follows the toys as they go on a road trip with their owner Bonnie and newly introduced character Forky. The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.

2. Parenthood (1989): 92% Rotten Tomatoes, 82% Metacritic

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Also starring Steve Martin, Mary Steenbergen and Dianne West, Parenthood follows three siblings as they raise their children and inspired two series adaptations on NBC.

3. Speed (1994): 95% Rotten Tomatoes, 78% Metacritic

Reeves stars as a Los Angeles police officer who must save passengers on a bus armed with a bomb that will explode if it goes less than 50 miles per hour. A sequel was released to negative reviews three years later, though Reeves did not reprise his role.

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4. John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023): 94% Rotten Tomatoes, 78% Metacritic

The fourth film in the John Wick series, Reeves stars as the titular character, a professional hitman, who seeks to defeat The High Table, the authority of the underworld. The film was a box office hit and has grossed more than $406 worldwide.

5. Much Ado About Nothing (1993): 90% Rotten Tomatoes, 80% Metacritic

A romantic comedy based on the Shakespeare play of the same name, Much Ado About Nothing stars Reeves as Don John, the evil brother of Denzel Washington’s Don Pedro. Directed by Kenneth Branagh, the film also stars Branagh alongside Emma Thompson, Robert Sean Leonard and Kate Beckinsale.

6. Dangerous Liaisons (1988): 94% Rotten Tomatoes, 74% Metacritic

Reeves stars in period drama Dangerous Liaisons as Le Chevalier Raphael Danceny, one of several victims of the schemes of aristocrats Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont (John Malkovich). The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won three: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design and Best Production Design.

7. (tie) John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017): 89% Rotten Tomatoes, 75% Metacritic

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The second John Wick film follows Reeves as the title character on a mission in Rome. The film made twice as much as the original at the box office, grossing $174 million worldwide.

7. (tie) John Wick (2014): 86% Rotten Tomatoes, 68% Metacritic

The first John Wick film stars Reeves as a famed hitman who is forced out of retirement to seek revenge on the men who kill his puppy, a gift from his deceased wife. The film exceeded expectations at the box office, which were low due to a string of commercial flops for Reeves, grossing $86 million worldwide.

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9. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019): 89% Rotten Tomatoes, 73% Metacritic

In the third John Wick installment, the title character is on the run from other hitmen after a bounty is placed on his head for murder. The film grossed $328 million worldwide.

10. (tie) River’s Edge (1987): 88% Rotten Tomatoes, 73% Metacritic

Reeves stars as one of several teenagers in Northern California grappling with whether or not to inform police about their friend’s murder of his girlfriend. The film is partially inspired by the 1981 murder of Marcy Renee Conrad, in which witnesses of the body did not notify police for several days.

10. (tie) The Matrix (1999): 88% Rotten Tomatoes, 73% Metacritic

A classic sci-fi film about humanity being trapped in “the Matrix,” a simulated reality, The Matrix stars Reeves as hacker Neo who joins a rebellion to free humankind. The film won four Academy Awards and inspired a film series, also starring Reeves, though subsequent Matrix films were more poorly received than the original.

What Is Keanu Reeves’ Biggest Film?

Reeves’ highest-grossing film at the global box office is Toy Story 4 (2019), which grossed $1.07 billion. His biggest film as a leading actor is The Matrix Reloaded (2003), which grossed $741 million globally.

Key Background

The Rotten Tomatoes critics score, known as the Tomatometer, is the percentage of critics who have given the film a positive review. A movie with at least 60% positive reviews is given a fresh tomato, while those with a score of less than 60% are given a splat. Metacritic calculates a weighted average of critics’ reviews, assigning different weights to each critic and publication depending on importance or quality. Scores are displayed in green, yellow or red—indicating favorable, mixed or unfavorable reviews—and films with a score of at least 81% are designated as “must-see.” Both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic track user ratings and allow users to write reviews, though these are displayed separately from critics’ scores.

Further Reading

All Keanu Reeves Movies Ranked (Rotten Tomatoes)

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‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ Blazes Past $400M Global Box Office (Deadline)

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Movie Reviews

The Last Republican movie review (2024) | Roger Ebert

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The Last Republican movie review (2024) | Roger Ebert

The documentary “The Last Republican” follows the final months in office of Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who represented two districts in Illinois over the span of 12 years. Kinzinger was one of a handful of Republicans who stood against President Donald Trump, refusing to support him in 2016, then going after him more straightforwardly after Trump lost the election of 2020 and tried to overturn the results by inciting a mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, causing multiple deaths. Unlike other Republicans, including then-Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, Kinzinger never walked back or even softened his position on Trump’s role in Jan. 6 in order to help position Trump for re-election and stay close to the party’s power center. Kinzinger instead made his opposition to Trump the defining part of his identity.

He started a podcast titled “Country First Conversations”” and a political action committee to fund anti-Trump candidates and later supported President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris for president and spoke at the Democratic convention. After voting against Trump’s first impeachment, Kinzinger voted for his second impeachment and later said he regretted not voting for the first one.

He also became one of 35 Republicans to support the formation of a committee to investigate the attacks on the Capitol and served on the committee himself. There’s grimly funny segment showing House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, announcing that Kinzinger was going to serve on the Jan. 6 committee before actually asking him, and a snippet of McCarthy casually referring to Kinzinger and another Trump critic, Wyoming Republican senator Liz Cheney, as “Pelosi Republicans.” When Cheney lost her primary in Wyoming to her former advisor Harriet Hageman—who briefly opposed Trump, then supported him again—Kinzinger accused conservative pastors of “failing their congregations” by encouraging support for Trump. He is now a CNN commentator.

The title telegraphs the point-of-view of the movie’s director, Steve Pink (“Gross Pointe Blank”). Pink is progressive who disagrees with most of what Kinzinger stands for politically (the movie opens with Kinzinger baiting Pink by calling him a “communist”). Pink positions Kinzinger as one of the last true or real Republicans, primarily because Kinzinger consistently advocated for the rule of law where Trump was concerned and, in Kinzinger’s words, put “country over party.”

This is, of course, a questionable framing, good for branding and sparking arguments on podcasts but not much else. There are plenty other examples of Republicans positioning themselves above the law at various points in the last 50 years, and it’s not as if Democrats have a spotless record in that regard either. In any given era of American history, the “true” Republicans are whichever ones define the identity of the party, and at this particular juncture, it’s not people like Kinzinger.

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“The Last Republican” also mostly elides Kinzinger’s positions on various issues, seemingly to make him more palatable here as a Capra-esque hero who is exclusively defined by standing up to corruption, and against a politician that the filmmaker also opposes. (Kinzinger had a much more progressive record on anti-discrimination legislation than most Republicans, but still voted with Trump 90% of the time, blamed China for spreading COVID, and voted in 2017 to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act.)

This is not to say that Kinzinger’s opposition to Trump isn’t evidence of integrity and a willingness to sacrifice power for principle. That’s plainly the case, and it’s driven home in a scene where Kinzinger and his wife Sofia Boza-Holman sit on a couch in their house cradling their newborn son while watching the House vote to censure Kinzinger and Cheney for serving on the Jan. 6 committee. But there’s a more nuanced movie that could’ve been made covering the same period in Kinzinger’s life, one that took fuller measure of the ancient proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”—though, to be fair, the very end of the movie humorously acknowledges what strange allies Pink and Kinzinger are, at least as far as this project is concerned.

The movie also gives a strong sense of Kinzinger as a person walking against the winds of change and dealing with tendencies in the American character that elude party definitions. “Everybody’s self-centered,” he tells Pink. “That’s the fight now of my next part of life, fighting against that cynicism.”

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Wicked movie review: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande waltz into our hearts in this gravity-defying extravaganza 

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Wicked movie review: Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande waltz into our hearts in this gravity-defying extravaganza 

Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande in a scene from the film ‘Wicked’
| Photo Credit: UNIVERSAL PICTURES

She did not eat grass as a child nor is she seasick, insists the green-skinned Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) in Wicked, the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical which in turn was inspired by Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, ‘Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West’.

After Maleficent, which looked at the Sleeping Beauty story from the antagonist’s point of view, here is another revisionist look at the famous wicked witch from the other side of L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’.

For those who came in late (like in all those Phantom comics), director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) provides a précis of events where Dorothy liquefied the Wicked Witch of the West and went home to Kansas down the Yellow Brick Road with her dog Toto, The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man and The Scarecrow. As the people of Oz celebrate the death of the Wicked Witch, the Good Witch, Glinda (Ariana Grande), joins in.

When one of the good people of Oz asks her about the Wicked Witch, Glinda admits to knowing her and it is time for a flashback. Elphaba was the daughter of the Governor of Munchkinland, Thropp (Andy Nyman). The colour of her skin, thanks to her naughty mum (Courtney-Mae Briggs), meant Elphaba was always rejected and made fun of by those around her.

Wicked 

Director: Jon M. Chu

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Cast: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Jonathan Bailey, Peter Dinklage, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum

Runtime: 160 minutes

Storyline: The story of how a misunderstood little green girl became the all-powerful Wicked Witch of the West

She feels responsible for her paraplegic younger sister, Nessarose’s (Marissa Bode) condition too. When she comes with her father to drop Nessarose at the stately Shiz University in Oz, her father insists she stay to see Nessarose is properly settled in. The Dean of Sorcery, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), sees Elphaba’s power and proposes to teach her to control her magic. Glinda or Galinda as she is known then, is pretty, pink and popular. While she wants to study sorcery under Madame Morrible, she is not prepared to have Elphaba as a roommate as suggested by Morrible.

Despite the initial hiccups, the two very different girls become friends, bonding over a wild party at the Ozdust Ballroom. Elphaba is sensitive to the undercurrents at Oz including the fact that animals are being excluded and losing their voice as the history professor, a goat named Doctor Dillamond (Peter Dinklage) reveals. The campus is in a tizzy when the handsome and determinedly shallow Winkie prince, Fiyero Tigelaar (Jonathan Bailey) joins Shiz. Though Elphaba dreams of meeting and impressing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum), so that she can ask him to change her skin colour when she finally does meet him, that is not what she asks for.

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Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande in a scene from the film ‘Wicked’

Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande in a scene from the film ‘Wicked’
| Photo Credit:
GILES KEYTE

Wicked works wonderfully well on so many levels. It is a study of what makes people do the things they do, or think the way they do. It is a look at what is considered normal and what creates a villain, all the while celebrating the joys and tears of being different.

Wicked is a musical, with gloriously choreographed songs and an action film with breathtaking stunts. The sets, physical and CGI, are eye-popping, especially the library with its books (rare and medium rare as Glinda helpfully points out) stacked in gigantic wheels — wish Fiyero did not step on books though. The girls’ room, the Ozdust Ballroom, the Emerald City, the weird and wonderful train that takes Glinda and Elphaba to Emerald City, and many more, are all glorious sonnets to the imagination.

Erivo and Grande own their roles, singing, dancing and dueling with gusto while Bailey is delightful as the callow, charming Prince. Yeoh is grandly inscrutable and there is special joy in watching Goldblum do a jig. The 160 minutes of Wicked slip by in a Technicolor flash and the fact that there is Part II, coming out in 2025 puts a jolly song in one’s heart.

Wicked is currently running in theatres

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Movie Reviews

Mechanic Rocky Movie Review – Gulte

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Mechanic Rocky Movie Review – Gulte

2.5/5


2 Hr 36 Mins   |   Action, Drama   |   22-11-2024


Cast – Vishwak Sen, Meenakshi Chaudhary, Shraddha Srinath, Sunil, Naresh, Harsha Vardhan, Hyper Aadi, Harsha Chemudu & others.

Director – Ravi Teja Mullapudi

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Producer – Ram Talluri

Banner – SRT Entertainments

Music – Jakes Bejoy

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After delivering a successful film, Gaami & not so successful film, Gangs of Godavari this year already, Vishwak Sen came up with his third film of the year, Mechanic Rocky, an action comedy film under the direction of debutant, Raviteja Mullapudi. Meenakshi Chaudhary & Shraddha Srinath did the female lead roles and Jakes Bejoy who scored a hit recently with Saripodhaa Sanivaaram, scored the music for the film. It’s a crucial film for producer Ram Talluri who delivered a disaster with Matka last Friday. Did Vishwak Sen score a hit with Mechanic Rocky? Did the debutant director deliver a memorable film? Did Ram Talluri get a sigh of relief? Let’s figure it out with a detailed analysis.

What is it about?

Nagumomu Rakesh Aka Mechanic Rocky (Vishwak Sen) works as a mechanic and driving teacher at his father’s (Naresh) garage. Ranki Reddy (Sunil), a real estate settlement goon agrees to grab Rocky’s lake-view garage and hand it over to a businessman for ₹25 lakhs. Rocky makes a deal with Ranki Reddy for ₹50 lakhs and asks him to give him ten days to adjust the money. While Rocky & Ranki Reddy making the deal, he gets a call from Maya (Shraddha Srinath) who says Rocky’s father has a two-crore insurance policy in his name and Rocky will now get the two crore as his father passed away. Will Rocky get the two crore money? Who is Maya? What is her connection with Priya (Meenakshi Chaudhary)? Forms the rest of the story.

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Performances:

Vishwak Sen as Rocky Aka Nagumomu Rakesh did a decent job with his performance but he looked odd as a student during the college episode in the first half. The film has two female leads and both of them have good character arcs.

Meenakshi Chaudhary as Priya who takes responsibility for her family after her father and brother passes away, did perform well. Shraddha Srinath got a meaty role as Maya and utilised it so well. It is safe to say that she is the best performer in the film out of all the other actors. Senior actor Naresh’s comedy worked to an extent. Sunil, Harsha Chemudu and Hyper Aadi were wasted in insignificant roles. Harsha Vardhan and Raghu Ram Ambadapudi (MTV Roadies Creator) are just decent.

Technicalities:

Jakes Bejoy’s background score is a mixed bag. It was good at a few parts and was out of sync at a few parts. His songs are forgettable. The film has a total of five songs and none of them worked. The cinematography by Manoj Reddy Katasani is adequate. There’s nothing much to talk about his work. Anwar Ali’s editing should have been much better. He should have edited at least fifteen to twenty minutes of the film, especially in the first half. SRT Entertainment’s production values are decent. Debutant director, Raviteja Mullapudi should have avoided adding unnecessary commercial elements to a plot that has a very good potential to become a good thriller.

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Thumbs Up:

Core Plot of The Film
Two Twists In The Second Half

Thumbs Down:

Routine Template-Driven Screenplay In The First Half
Boring Songs
Poorly Written Dialogues
Unnecessary Action Episodes
Climax

Analysis:

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‘Your phone number won a lottery’, ‘You have received a parcel from abroad, ‘Click on the link to check your CBIL/Credit score’, etc., almost all of us must have got calls or E-Mails or messages from fraudsters who say one of the aforementioned things to loot money from us. As mentioned in the movie, around twenty-thousand such crimes are happening in India every day.

The debutant director, Raviteja Mullapudi took a very relatable point of crime happening by targeting middle-class people in India, as the core plot and he added a couple of good twists to the plot that worked well. But, in an attempt to include commercial elements, he lost the plot completely in the first half. The first half of the film tests your patience with a routine template-driven screenplay with three songs, two fights, a beaten-to-death hero & villain track and a romantic track. Everything in the first half looks forced and dragged forever.

Even in the second half, when the core plot is unfolding interestingly, he included a celebration song between Vishwak Sen & Meenakshi Chaudhary that comes across as a speed breaker to the proceedings. After a good sixty minutes in the second half, the director chose to end the movie very routinely with an action sequence and poorly written ‘punch’ dialogues that are uttered by the hero.

The core plot of the film should have been worked as a proper thriller film with a crisp runtime and tight screenplay but the director’s attempt to make it an ‘Action & Romantic & Comedy & Thriller’ film worked against it. Just like most of Vishwak Sen’s films, Mechanic Rocky also has a lot of curse words throughout the film.

Overall, the core plot of Mechanic Rocky has a lot of potential but the overall feel of the film is spoiled by unnecessary commercial elements and runtime. Given the potential of the core plot, Mechanic Rocky will end up remaining as a missed opportunity.

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Mechanic Rocky – Lost In Commercialization

Rating – 2.5/5

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