Ron Wells, Film Threat
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For 115 reviews, this critic has graded:
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55% higher than the average critic
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1% same as the average critic
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44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.6 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Ron Wells' Scores
- Movies
| Average review score: | 60 |
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| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
10
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 56 out of 115
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Mixed: 40 out of 115
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Negative: 19 out of 115
115
movie reviews
- By critic score
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Ron Wells 100
I've already seen at least 20 documentaries this year. They've left me amused, sad, informed, bored, pissed-off, whatever. I'm willing to bet, though, that I don't see another this year as richly entertaining or as cathartic as The Kid Stays in the Picture. Is it really that good? You better believe it. -
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Ron Wells 100
Take the safety off of the comedy Magnum called Happiness and put the barrel in your mouth. You'll laugh your ass off as it takes off the back of your head...It could be the best film of the year. At the very least, I'll never forget it. -
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Ron Wells 100
Does for psychedelics what "Boogie Nights" does for cocaine; displaying in graphical detail the ultimate failure of drugs as an escape route. -
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Ron Wells 100
One warning however: James Caan's shoulder hair, when seen on this size screen, may frighten children considerably (you'll at least want to discuss it openly after the show, answering any questions your kids may have in an honest and direct manner). -
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Ron Wells 90
I thought I might have seen everything I needed to see about neo-Nazi skinheads in "Romper Stomper" and "American History X". Not only was I in for a surprise, but newcomer Ryan Gosling gives every bit as stunning a performance as did Russell Crowe and Ed Norton in those two films, and then some. -
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Ron Wells 90
This is not light-hearted entertainment. Be prepared to think. Uncle Dave will take you someplace new. -
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Ron Wells 90
I'll just say to anyone lamenting the state of American cinema since the 1970s, if you're curious where the next generation of auteurs is coming from, look in the art houses and look in The Matrix. -
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Ron Wells 90
The best thing the filmmakers did was to pull a cast out of the stage productions. Importantly, the actors convey a sense of history and comfort with each other. -
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Ron Wells 80
The portrait drawn by this film is of a man loved and/or respected by nearly all that have known him. -
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Ron Wells 80
The final result becomes a search not for a knight in shining armor, but one of acceptance for one's own identity. -
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Ron Wells 80
After half a century, does the story hold up? Eh, pretty much. In the end, the story doesn't really matter that much as this is really a vehicle for the amazing visuals. -
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Ron Wells 80
As always, Don Cheadle is fantastic, but the film belongs to Joseph Gordon-Levitt. -
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Ron Wells 80
This is a story about purgatory, though it goes by the name Camp Pendleton. -
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Ron Wells 80
They should have produced this in 3D for IMAX as Metropolis is the kind of work destined to blow the minds of stoners everywhere. -
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Ron Wells 80
Thornton's Jacob initially comes across as the love child of Elmer Fudd and Butthead, but ends up as the best role he's ever had. -
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Ron Wells 80
Garofalo is amazing, as always, and the film is almost about her as much as the leads. The recreation of the casts' high school years is wickedly funny and dead on. -
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Ron Wells 80
Lee gives us cross-section of characters, almost none of whom escape the summer unchanged. -
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Ron Wells 80
Gallo transcends the medium in a manner I only associate with David Lynch. It's brilliantly spooky. -
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Ron Wells 80
Waters brilliantly skewers the pretensions of the New York art world and culture, and uses real people from that world in the process. -
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Ron Wells 80
I've never been a fan, but in the space of a couple hours the Woodster gives both an explanation AND the finger to ALL of his critics. This is mean-spirited fun, just the way we like it! -
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Ron Wells 80
I saw this movie in a room full of San Francisco movie critics, and I haven't heard that much laughter since, well, the piano duet in "Island of Dr. Moreau" (which you must admit, was pretty funny.) -
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Ron Wells 80
Of all the teen films released this year, this one is, by far, the best. -
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Ron Wells 80
It seems as if all of the new animation competition has lit a fire under Disney's collective ass and they have something to prove again. -
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Ron Wells 80
Lock is filled with great writing, great acting, colorful characters, and a tight story. I actually like this film more than "Pulp Fiction". -
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Ron Wells 80
Scorcese has made one of his best and most personal films...Kundun is also mercifully free of white teachers or saviors, such as, oh, say, Brad Pitt? -
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Ron Wells 80
Probably the best comment I could give it is that after sitting through the first two and 1/2 hours, I would have happily sat through another five. How long am I going to have to wait for that DVD Box Set? -
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Ron Wells 80
I don't know if this movie could have been made with anyone but Chow Yun-Fat. As Chen, he finally is allowed to display the nervous energy and Eastern rhythms we associate with his Hong Kong work. -
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Ron Wells 80
What could have been the most boring, unwatchable crawl-up-your-own-asshole picture instead becomes a gripping, searing portrait of a lost soul trying to find her way through life. Stephanie Bennett is amazing. -
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Ron Wells 80
Some of the acting may not be the best and many of the points aren't made with a soft touch, but damn, I can't think of another film about addiction with a more accurate view from the inside. -
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Ron Wells 70
Not too far below the gloss you can still feel director Denis Villeneuve's beating heart and the fondness he has for his characters. Because he does, you and I can too. -
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Ron Wells 70
More "Heat" than "Eraserhead". It's all good. Just don't be disappointed if it's not what you were expecting. Try to enjoy this for what it is. -
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Ron Wells 70
Best of all, Robert Downey Jr., as Rick's seedy private eye provides a little comic relief at his own expense. -
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Ron Wells 70
Not a film that will change your life. It instead proves that shooting your movie with cheap technology doesn't mean it can't be fun or entertaining. In the end, that's enough. -
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Ron Wells 70
While we do get a bit of gore, the movie is really about this wacky bunch of people jumping on each other's nerves, kind of a zany hero's journey. -
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Ron Wells 70
It looks like Williamson threw five old scripts in the air and Rodriguez shot the first 90 pages he picked up. I'd like a little more meat on my burger because all I can taste is the cheese. -
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Ron Wells 70
The film is not without its problems, some inherent to Wilde's original play. -
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Ron Wells 70
Jackson gives an amazing, nuanced performance as he teeters on the edge of paranoia. Spacey gives a great, toned-down show as I guy who's in over his head trying to find out what the hell is going on. -
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Ron Wells 70
This movie best exploits the strengths of the show as well, such as the chemistry among the cast. -
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Ron Wells 70
If distinctly uneven CGI, minimal originality and overly convenient plot devices turn you off, this may not be your film. -
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Ron Wells 70
It's a harsh lesson, but this movie is more than able to grab and hold your attention for it. I just wouldn't bring a date. -
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Ron Wells 70
World Traveler did seem completely aimless for the first third. However, once I comprehended where Freundlich was going with this, I began to really enjoy where the film was taking me. -
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Ron Wells 70
At least the 20 people who saw it with me -- found it hysterically funny. On the other hand, they all seemed pretty stoned. -
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Ron Wells 70
Rips out at least one dimension to reduce everything to archetypal good guys and bad guys, or bad guy and worse guys. -
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Ron Wells 70
Quentin actually made a REAL movie, with believable characters and performances, rather than just repositories for clever dialog. -
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Ron Wells 70
OK, the premise may be a little hard to take, but there's plenty of good writing here, anyway. -
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Ron Wells 70
Unfolding and sounding like a novel, Hartley's ensemble of lower-class losers clash and repel in a startlingly, unpreachy lesson about the importance and danger of influences. -
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Ron Wells 70
There's some darn poignant stuff going on here.... The problem is that the audience will try to connect everything to the explicit Eden analogy, and not everything will. The director wins points for enticing you to figure it out, though, and I did enjoy it. -
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Ron Wells 60
Sometimes the movie can't decide whether to tug REALLY HARD at the heart strings, or make you laugh at the zany oil riggers. -
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Ron Wells 60
This should have been a black comic masterpiece. The cast is certainly up to the task, even in the small roles. -
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Ron Wells 60
It's too bad with all of the poker action there wasn't enough time to establish the relationships between characters. -
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Ron Wells 60
Hey, it's not "Gone With the Wind" or even "Nightmare on Elm Street", so don't expect a masterpiece. You get a little nudity, a lot of gore, Seth Green doing his ironic commentary thing, and an easy way to kill a couple of hours. -
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Ron Wells 60
At least the studio hired enough likable scene-stealing actors and comedians to carry the bloated carcass of this film over the course of two hours. -
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Ron Wells 60
What was needed was either a Stanley Kubrick, or, well, the Farrelly Brothers. Instead we get warmed over Spike Jonze. Still, a little watered down Spike Jonze has to be entertaining some of the time, so this isn't a total loss. -
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Ron Wells 60
Now the big question: Does this whole thing actually work? Some of the time. -
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Ron Wells 60
If this is the direction Williams is headed in his career, fantastic. For auteur Romanek, it was at least a good first try. -
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Ron Wells 60
Hey, I'm not saying it's bad. It's kind of entertaining, what I can recall of it after two days. It's, uh, okay. Just okay, though. -
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Ron Wells 60
The problem is, the main conspiracy of the show is so vast, you have to walk around it a couple of times before you can see what it is. -
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Ron Wells 60
Much of the animation is stunning and all of the vocal performances are good to great. It's just much of the passion seems to be in not stepping on anyone's beliefs or interpretations, instead of in telling the story in the most compelling way possible. -
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Ron Wells 60
David Schwimmer, our whiny friend, is used to good effect as Heche's boyfriend. -
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Ron Wells 60
You know, each and every person reading this right now will shell out their six bucks ($9-$14 in L.A./New York) to see this film no matter what I say. Hell, I feel ambivalent about it and I'm still going to pay to see it again. -
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Ron Wells 60
This is a big, silly film. Is it full of explosions and one-liners? Of course. Is it entertaining? Of course. -
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Ron Wells 60
Only promised a few good fights, a lot of chuckles, and an easy way to kill a couple of hours. In today's Hollywood that's hard enough to deliver. -
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Ron Wells 60
Unfortunately, the script is a light romantic comedy and unwilling to go the extra distance to really make it stick. -
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Ron Wells 60
The stunts are great but they make sense and don't blow the sense of reality of the whole movie. -
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Ron Wells 60
With basically a single set and a limited cast, the producers get the most of their limited budget, particular with a couple of spectacular death scenes. -
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Ron Wells 50
If you like Chan's Hong Kong films, you'll like this. Much of the "dramatic" work and dialogue are horrible but the stunt work here is actually superior to many of Chan's films. -
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Ron Wells 50
It's ironic that a film exploring the mysteries of how people succeed and fail to connect with each other then fails to really connect with its audience. -
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Ron Wells 50
Hot Damn! A full-on gory (relatively) unpretensious horror movie!... Far better than it has any right to be. -
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Ron Wells 50
Individual parts are actually quite funny, and the music, the most marketable element, is quite good. It's just that most of us cringe at photos of ourselves taken while we're really loaded. Too often, Hey, Happy! feels as if that embarrassment was taken to the next level. -
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Ron Wells 50
It is not quite as stupid as it looks. I'm not saying it ISN'T dumb, though, just not as bad as I think even the studio thought. -
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Ron Wells 50
The movie doesn't stink. The performances are good, potentially great, especially Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates. -
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Ron Wells 50
If you were expecting a small art film, you know you're in trouble when the first thing you see is Jim Carrey. -
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Ron Wells 50
The strong parts are the rip-offs of "The Conversation." The worst part is the lack of understandable character motivations. -
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Ron Wells 50
Don't get your expectations up, but "LW4" is a decent enough date film. -
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Ron Wells 50
It comes off as an amalgam of everything that was cool in 1996, when we first saw the trailer. -
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Ron Wells 40
Oh, boy. This is not unlike watching one of the movies Jerry Lewis made after that concentration camp/clown epic nearly destroyed his career and his mind. -
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Ron Wells 40
Despite some brief nudity and much swearing, the whole endeavor feels like some sort of half-assed Christian "Adventures in Faith" story I might have endured in Sunday school. -
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Ron Wells 40
BRILLIANT and WITTY. Those are two words that will not be used to described this film. -
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Ron Wells 40
Over all, the short stories never gel together or create a unified whole. -
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Ron Wells 40
The biggest thing wrong with this mess is its whole attitude. The film tries to condemn all these shocking things, but if you're not shocked, just wait a couple of minutes and they'll try again. -
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Ron Wells 40
In the end, the whole shebang comes off like a bunch of snotty, rich white kids screwing each other and screwing each other over. -
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Ron Wells 40
The fourth best virtual reality film of 1999. The best is "The Matrix". The second best is "eXistenZ". The third best, well, there's got to be something better than this. -
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Ron Wells 40
This movie wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. It's still not that good though. -
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Ron Wells 30
If you've got the opportunity to have someone as talented and game for anything as Swinton, you really owe it to her to give her a real movie to be in. -
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Ron Wells 30
Aside from all the known material on public record the filmmakers chose not to use, Howard isn't even capable of believably bringing this off. -
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Ron Wells 30
If you love KISS, you'll probably see this movie anyway. If you don't, there's no point. -
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Ron Wells 30
It lacks humor. Unlike "Scream", this film is more of a horror-drama, with everybody taking themselves way too seriously. -
