For 61 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 24% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 73% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 8.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Mark Keizer's Scores

  • Movies
Average review score: 51
Highest review score:
Critic Score 80
Lowest review score:
Critic Score 20
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 61
  2. Negative: 8 out of 61
61 movie reviews
    • Metascore: 88
    • Mark Keizer 70
    Just when we thought there were no new twists to the story of the Warsaw Ghetto comes this documentary: focused, sorrowful and revelatory.
    • Metascore: 81
    • Mark Keizer 50
    It's not much, but adult audiences starved for mature entertainment should be counted on to investigate this flawed, if admittedly heartfelt, work.
    • Metascore: 77
    • Mark Keizer 60
    A true crime tale with added layers of intrigue and atmosphere.
    • Metascore: 76
    • Mark Keizer 60
    The blistering tunes and unique animation compensate for the rather unconvincing central love story that works best as a Forrest Gump-ian device to highlight some legendary real-life musicians.
    • Metascore: 74
    • Mark Keizer 70
    Blend of sardonic humor and bitter poetry.
    • Metascore: 74
    • Mark Keizer 80
    In Darkness takes its place among the many great European films to tackle the subject. Plenty of quality-seeking adult moviegoers will be lured to the arthouse and thoroughly moved.
    • Metascore: 74
    • Mark Keizer 50
    Those unfamiliar with the Duplass' previous movies won't realize what's missing; they'll just enjoy the earthy angst, edgy laughs and off-kilter casting of Jonah Hill.
    • Metascore: 74
    • Mark Keizer 60
    Fans of the 66-year-old guitar god (which is to say the only people who'll see this homespun gem) will revel in Young's winsome cruise down Memory Lane.
    • Metascore: 73
    • Mark Keizer 60
    The key selling point is Bayona's ten-minute reenactment of the tidal wave and its carnage, which is brutal, visceral and without peer. His visual mastery is almost enough to make up for The Impossible's conventional final hour and the empty feeling of trying to find the point of this whole exercise.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Mark Keizer 80
    It's a stirring mix of sports and human drama that exudes an almost earthy sense of genuineness.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Mark Keizer 70
    Alcoholic movie characters run the gamut from lovable millionaire (Arthur) to Skid Row bum (Henry Chinaski from Barfly) to all-out, suicidal depressive (Ben from Leaving Las Vegas). As written and performed, Winstead's Kate triangulates between all these approaches and finds a sincerity that plays to the intellect, not to the rafters.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Mark Keizer 60
    The movie is really best enjoyed as a fun little addendum to a profanity-laden chapter in New Media history.
    • Metascore: 70
    • Mark Keizer 60
    To say the movie is understated is an understatement, yet it’s justified.
    • Metascore: 66
    • Mark Keizer 60
    With the nation’s unemployment rate hovering around 10% and home foreclosure numbers stubbornly high, Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s haunting documentary of multigenerational troubles is either a case of great timing or, possibly, the worst timing ever.
    • Metascore: 64
    • Mark Keizer 60
    The film’s warmth and heart comes from introducing us to someone born to do exactly what she’s doing.
    • Metascore: 64
    • Mark Keizer 60
    It's a well structured, sometimes riveting piece of information gathering that proves once again that Corrie's death was unnecessary and that closure has remained intriguingly, maddeningly, sadly elusive.
    • Metascore: 64
    • Mark Keizer 70
    Killing Them Softly tries hard - and succeeds - to be a film of the now with its political parallels right in front of us. Yet it's also an invisible companion to the dirty business at hand - and it is a business.
    • Metascore: 64
    • Mark Keizer 70
    More than just a jocular account of a musical comedy revue, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop is a snapshot of a unique man's psyche at a very peculiar moment.
    • Metascore: 64
    • Mark Keizer 60
    For the most part, Olliver and Orshoski are smart enough to allow Lemmy's unique personality to come to them, as opposed to pushing a case for it.
    • Metascore: 63
    • Mark Keizer 70
    For fans, this is exactly how the story of Jean Valjean's transformation from thief to saint should be delivered: smothered in bombast.
    • Metascore: 63
    • Mark Keizer 40
    One of Hot Tub Time Machine’s only genuinely nifty moves is getting John Cusack, Dobler himself, to topline the film.
    • Metascore: 61
    • Mark Keizer 40
    RED
    No one is expected to take any of this seriously, so Schwentke keeps things light: light on big laughs, light on unique action set pieces and light on any sense that these game but retired spies are too old for this crap.
    • Metascore: 59
    • Mark Keizer 60
    Watching even the most tossed-off gag is worth whatever shortcomings Make Believe has, including its lack of real drama.
    • Metascore: 59
    • Mark Keizer 60
    Where Rubber veers off the road is that for all its giggly moments and meta-whatever, it's never quite funny enough or scary enough.
    • Metascore: 58
    • Mark Keizer 60
    Having spent multiple summers in Kashmir as a child, he (Tapa) knows what the average Kashmiri wants and the difficulties they encounter trying to get it. It's what makes Zero Bridge a winning example of modesty in front of the camera and intelligence behind it.
    • Metascore: 56
    • Mark Keizer 50
    The original Jonathan Ames novel from 1998 is a rich, funny and unusual work. The movie opts for the funny and unusual, leaving us with characters ill-equipped to rise above their shtick or engage our sympathy.
    • Metascore: 55
    • Mark Keizer 60
    The movie version has the exciting and challenging parts down but the moral awakening it so strenuously wants us to experience remains beyond its reach.
    • Metascore: 55
    • Mark Keizer 60
    Hugh Hefner has earned the gift of a fawning, non-confrontational greatest hits package and that's exactly what he's received, even if it's not what we necessarily wanted. As such, this will only preach to the converted (and maybe the perverted) and is best suited to DVD or cable.
    • Metascore: 55
    • Mark Keizer 70
    In his densely constructed and pretty damn brilliant film The Juche Idea, Finn takes aim at North Korean president Kim Jong-il's theories on cinema and how its ultimate purpose is to advance political ideology and party loyalty.
    • Metascore: 55
    • Mark Keizer 60
    Boote's strong film will make you look at the floating plastic bag from American Beauty in a new, wholly suspicious way.
    • Metascore: 55
    • Mark Keizer 60
    Viewers will find its emotional arc obvious and familiar, although the summoning of those emotions is where the movie derives its power.
    • Metascore: 54
    • Mark Keizer 50
    Scott excels in maintaining a low, persistent hum of eroticism whose purpose is not titillation or camp.
    • Metascore: tbd
    • Mark Keizer 50
    Appearances by Toni Collette and Whale Rider’s Keisha Castle-Hughes should draw a few curious parents to what is, most of the time, a quirky and quite enjoyable coming of age saga.
    • Metascore: 53
    • Mark Keizer 50
    The problem is that once you get past the barriers that Jewish players dramatically overcame between the early 20th century and post World War II, the rest is precipitously less interesting.
    • Metascore: 53
    • Mark Keizer 50
    Sitting through The Winning Season you marvel at how it obsessively duplicates all such films that came before but still consistently thwarts your impulse to dismiss it out of hand.
    • Metascore: 52
    • Mark Keizer 50
    The movie was written and directed by Oscar winner Paul Haggis (Crash) and when stripped to its logline, it's pretty ridiculous.
    • Metascore: 52
    • Mark Keizer 40
    Brotherhood moves fast, but it can't outrun its superficiality.
    • Metascore: 50
    • Mark Keizer 40
    A charmingly hardened Carla Gugino reprises her role as the titular porn star, still pregnant and now coping with retirement.
    • Metascore: 50
    • Mark Keizer 50
    This depraved charmer offers enough to admire and a specialized hipster crowd will enjoy it, if to a mutedly positive effect.
    • Metascore: 49
    • Mark Keizer 50
    There is so much wrong with the political system at this point that gerrymandering, in which politicians shamelessly redraw electoral boundaries to rig the outcome of elections, seems almost quaint.
    • Metascore: 49
    • Mark Keizer 40
    The new film could have benefited from even a moment of genuine reflection. Being a mechanic seems like a thinking man's occupation. The Mechanic, though, barely has a thought in its head.
    • Metascore: 48
    • Mark Keizer 30
    The movie is a bit of a departure for the mumblecore pioneer, one that does not play to his strengths.
    • Metascore: 48
    • Mark Keizer 50
    Pierce delivers everything the role requires except serious menace, while the less-seasoned Crawford improves as his handsome face bares more of the evening's scars.
    • Metascore: 47
    • Mark Keizer 60
    The resulting distillation is brisk, light and engaging with none of the cheap shots that usually accompany any discussion of ventriloquism. If anything, Goffman is too gentle, refusing to pursue his charges into their darker corners.
    • Metascore: 46
    • Mark Keizer 50
    The hijinx get deflating, yet the tension and genuine sense of investigation keep you involved.
    • Metascore: 46
    • Mark Keizer 40
    Even Reese Witherspoon, whose adorable scrunch-face projects the romantic travails of lovelorn women everywhere, looks unsure of herself.
    • Metascore: 45
    • Mark Keizer 40
    Stone embarrasses himself by backing the wrong horse and then making a weak case for him.
    • Metascore: 44
    • Mark Keizer 60
    At 74 tough and tragic minutes, though, Kimjongilia is not destined for monetary glory. The waiting arms of public television are the more likely destination.
    • Metascore: 42
    • Mark Keizer 40
    It's only sporadically amusing and it's certainly not original.
    • Metascore: 41
    • Mark Keizer 40
    So it's apropos that Forby's biggest misstep is his thin and careful script that can't carry us away on the same winds of fate that would put a sovereign republic's future in the hands of such a young woman.
    • Metascore: 37
    • Mark Keizer 40
    It becomes a parade of interpersonal conflict and miserable circumstances that adds up to nothing less than angst-porn.
    • Metascore: 36
    • Mark Keizer 50
    Neeson’s austere, meticulous turn is the best reason to see After.Life. He’s cinema’s most soft-spoken, high-toned boogeyman since Anthony Hopkins opened his first can of fava beans.
    • Metascore: 35
    • Mark Keizer 30
    Robert Young's Eichmann feels the burden of history so heavily that it's effectively smothered by it.
    • Metascore: 34
    • Mark Keizer 50
    A classic case of being too much of a not-very-good thing.
    • Metascore: 33
    • Mark Keizer 30
    Conceptualized and re-conceptualized, written and re-written, shot and re-shot, cut and re-cut, the final product is the world's longest short film.
    • Metascore: 33
    • Mark Keizer 20
    Inside the dreadful action comedy Cat Run, there are about three terrible action comedies struggling to get out.
    • Metascore: 33
    • Mark Keizer 40
    Nobody here brings their A-game, denying us the pleasure of what Adams and director Anand Tucker could create together.
    • Metascore: 32
    • Mark Keizer 20
    The Undefeated says less about Sarah Palin than about the political and cultural environment that made her big screen beatification possible.
    • Metascore: 24
    • Mark Keizer 20
    Burzynski may have credibility in the eyes of some, but the movie about him has no credibility, so no one will be receptive to its message.
    • Metascore: 22
    • Mark Keizer 20
    If "Midnight Run" and "His Girl Friday" had an unwanted, mutant baby, it would be The Bounty Hunter, a romantic comedy where the jokes sputter and die immediately after exiting the character’s mouths.