Rex Reed, New York Observer
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For 335 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 0% same as the average critic
  • 52% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Rex Reed's Scores

  • Movies
Average review score: 55
Highest review score:
The Conspirator
Critic Score 100
Lowest review score:
Life During Wartime
Critic Score 0
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 160 out of 335
  2. Mixed: 86 out of 335
  3. Negative: 89 out of 335
335 movie reviews
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    • Metascore: 85
    • Rex Reed 50
    The Tree of Life
    Content to make movies for himself (Malick) that nobody else wants to see as long as he can find someone to foot the bill, he's also an iconoclast searching for significance. So am I, but not 138 minutes worth. Anyone seeking symmetry in this cinematic taffy pull risks emerging from it with a pretzel for a brain.
    • Metascore: 50
    • Rex Reed 50
    Vanishing on 7th Street
    The actors work hard to convey terror-especially Mr. Christensen, who proved he could act when he played disgraced journalist Stephen Glass in the marvelous, underrated "Shattered Glass"-but the panic that overtakes the characters never quite grips the audience.
    • Metascore: 50
    • Rex Reed 50
    Cowboys & Aliens
    Cowboys & Aliens is one of the silliest movies ever made, but so many otherwise serious people have attached their names to it that, as Arthur Miller wrote in Death of a Salesman, attention must be paid.
    • Metascore: 72
    • Rex Reed 50
    Super 8
    The best thing about Super 8, by far, are the kids, all perfectly cast. The script does a much better job making them believable and real than the adults...The rest of the movie steals shamelessly from...
    • Metascore: 59
    • Rex Reed 50
    Limitless
    Directed with a pulsating fervor by Neil Burger, Limitless is absurd but entertaining action-adventure escapism. Bradley Cooper is versatile and virile, and a valiant leading man.
    • Metascore: 56
    • Rex Reed 50
    The Rum Diary
    Johnny Depp is dismally miscast as the alter ego of the rebellious author with the "screw you" attitude.
    • Metascore: 76
    • Rex Reed 50
    A Dangerous Method
    I can't imagine what attracted these two megahunks to such a bore.
    • Metascore: 70
    • Rex Reed 50
    The Skin I Live In
    Surreal but disappointingly drab, it's still not the best Almodovar in years. Despite the usual Almodovar plot twists, kinky sex and themes of sexual identity reversal, gender bending and mad desire, the cult auteur has gone off the tracks and lost his compass.
    • Metascore: 53
    • Rex Reed 50
    The Big Year
    I wish all the agony in The Big Year was leading up to something fascinating in the end, but the most inviting thing in the movie was the exit door.
    • Metascore: 40
    • Rex Reed 50
    Butter
    The film was shot in Louisiana, which looks nothing like Iowa. Nobody along the way seems to have a care in the world about cholesterol. And it's the first movie in history that makes Hugh Jackman look repulsive.
    • Metascore: 57
    • Rex Reed 50
    Albert Nobbs
    A middling attempt to peek through a lace curtain for a glimpse of the other Upstairs/Downstairs staff members only leads to too many distracting social functions that fail to relieve the film's otherwise solemn pacing.
    • Metascore: 65
    • Rex Reed 50
    Everything Must Go
    Everything Must Go is the one for the Gipper-the movie in which he steps out of character for his own sake and works hard to lose Will Ferrell. The results are mixed, but I admire the guy for making an effort.
    • Metascore: 54
    • Rex Reed 50
    Cracks
    May not appeal to every taste, but it marks an arresting feature debut for Jordan Scott, a director who is well worth watching.
    • Metascore: 41
    • Rex Reed 50
    Battleship
    Battleship is dopey, preposterous and unintentionally hilarious in all the wrong places, but as directed by Peter Berg, it is also energetic, fast-moving and bracing.
    • Metascore: 49
    • Rex Reed 50
    Henry's Crime
    The movie is not great, but the star is not bad. This, in some quarters, is high praise indeed.
    • Metascore: 51
    • Rex Reed 50
    Meet Monica Velour
    It's definitely worth seeing for Ms. Cattrall. This gal can really act.
    • Metascore: 44
    • Rex Reed 50
    Sympathy for Delicious
    An odd, confusing, ugly and mostly indigestible movie about religious hysteria and rock 'n' roll-two subjects I find about as interesting as opening a tattoo parlor. I wish I liked the movie half as much as I like the actor.
    • Metascore: 54
    • Rex Reed 50
    A Little Help
    A benign slice of life about suburban angst on Long Island. It's not much, but thanks to the noble efforts of a very good cast, I've seen worse.
    • Metascore: 34
    • Rex Reed 50
    The Ledge
    It eventually fails, not because of its philosophical ideas, but because it introduces so many of them at the same time that even a viewer with a score pad can't keep up.
    • Metascore: 41
    • Rex Reed 50
    Lucky
    The film is awkward, the situations tenuous and underdeveloped, the pacing torturous as a slow drip from a leaking faucet, and the narrative just plods along, with the body count rising for no clear reason.
    • Metascore: 57
    • Rex Reed 50
    Forks Over Knives
    I'm sure there is much to be learned from Forks Over Knives (the title means fruits and veggies can be forked, but anything you cut with a knife is lethal), but what does it have to do with real life?
    • Metascore: 37
    • Rex Reed 50
    Dirty Girl
    Dirty Girl is a bad movie with no insights that is broadly drawn and genuinely plagued by filthy dialogue. You don't laugh. You just wince, and wonder how the whole thing ever got financed.
    • Metascore: 62
    • Rex Reed 50
    The Woman in Black
    Boring and sedentary, not to mention only occasionally coherent, this creaking-door mystery is not much of a vehicle to display young Mr. Radcliffe's range and charm.
    • Metascore: 50
    • Rex Reed 50
    The Guilt Trip
    It is to her everlasting credit that a famously exasperating perfectionist like Barbra Streisand could survive a limp noodle like The Guilt Trip.
    • Metascore: 34
    • Rex Reed 50
    Safe Haven
    This one blends the scented candles of a daytime soap with the tamer aspects of a middling thriller. Some folks will bring Kleenex. Others will need NoDoz.
    • Metascore: 63
    • Rex Reed 50
    Love Crime
    The two-handed duet at the center of Love Crime radiates, but the parade of easily parodied men who stomp in and out of their corporate offices just seem like script rejects from "Mad Men."
    • Metascore: 54
    • Rex Reed 50
    The Iron Lady
    Let it be said that Ms. Streep is galvanizing, even as the film slogs through too much information and not nearly enough illumination.
    • Metascore: 59
    • Rex Reed 50
    J. Edgar
    I expected more from a movie about the most feared man in America for half a century. Whatever else you think about him, in retrospect, he had balls of brass - an essential quality replaced in J. Edgar by dull indifference.
    • Metascore: 71
    • Rex Reed 50
    Young Adult
    It's a fatiguing, low-key character study that drags along annoyingly and pleads for patience, but stick with it and you'll find the engrossing centerpiece performance by Ms. Theron a captivating reward that is well worth the effort.
    • Metascore: 55
    • Rex Reed 50
    Gun Hill Road
    Gun Hill Road is worth seeing for the acting. The great character actress Miriam Colon makes a brief but memorable appearance as the strong matriarch of the household, and Ms. Santana, a true transgendered teen who has never acted before, is especially wrenching.
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