Overall, I appreciate what this film does in showcasing a more serious Chris Rock. I think it's his best film to date.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2017

Top Five gives us a glimpse of [Rock's] comic genius. Just a tad.

| Mar 21, 2017

He finds a cinematic approximation of his act: free-flowing, unpredictable, personal, spiced up with pop cultural references, political shout-outs, and a decidedly hip-hop energy, and above all else, funny as hell.

| Jun 7, 2016

Top Five is hardly in the same class as Stardust Memories but it is still manifestly cinema, rather than filmed comedy, and the gags are often visually sophisticated.

| May 14, 2015

Beneath the meta-fiction and the lulz lies a genuinely warm romance in the style of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 10, 2015

Rock's crass reliance on misogynist hooker gags and hot-sauce-up-the-ass homophobia routines means that an Adam Sandler cameo hardly seems out of place.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 10, 2015

The film's trump card is its rigorous honesty.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 7, 2015

Chris Rock approaches directing with the same fizzing energy that he brings to his stand-up comedy.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 7, 2015

Rock is working some stuff out through a loudhailer, essentially, but the film's snap and energy make it well worth bending an ear.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 7, 2015

Rock is no actor, but he rides a wave of funny, self-aware and outrageous situations, and this is always watchable.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 7, 2015

Top of the pack and Chris Rock's best movie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 4, 2015

It doesn't always work, there are plenty of scenes you wish were better, but it's out there.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 13, 2015

Chris Rock's Top Five is very funny -- no surprise there -- but it's also unexpectedly romantic.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 5, 2015

As a director, Chris Rock makes a fine stand-up comic.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 5, 2015

Multi-hyphenate Chris Rock kills in the hilarious account of a stand-up comic turned movie star that wants to be taken seriously.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 18, 2014

As a writer, Rock sets up one volatile situation after another, no sweat, and as a director, he captures his performers at their most explosively spontaneous.

| Dec 17, 2014

It doesn't always hit its mark, but even its misses feel personal and unself-conscious - a genuine reflection of Chris Rock, auteur.

| Dec 12, 2014

Like Rock's best stand-up shows, Top Five mixes the sweet with the salty, the naughty with the remarkably kind. It celebrates the darkly hilarious with the light of whip-smart observations.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 12, 2014

For an ostensibly soul-deep movie like this to work, we need more than smirks and scowls.

| Original Score: C+ | Dec 12, 2014

Top Five finds Rock in an elevated form, at 49. Things change, sometimes for the better.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 12, 2014