Steve Simels, TV Guide
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For 113 reviews, this critic has graded:
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38% higher than the average critic
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1% same as the average critic
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61% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 13 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Steve Simels' Scores
- Movies
| Average review score: | 46 |
|---|---|
| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
90
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
20
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 113
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Mixed: 73 out of 113
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Negative: 25 out of 113
113
movie reviews
- By critic score
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Steve Simels 90
Stunningly cinematic and audacious on every level, writer/director Tim Robbins's look at the collision of the Depression-era art world and politics may well be a masterpiece. -
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Steve Simels 80
This is one of the most infectiously joyous celebrations of musicmaking ever committed to film. See it and be ennobled. -
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Steve Simels 70
A moving, gorgeously filmed look at one of the Civil War's more obscure chapters, the quasi-official combat that divided friends along the Missouri-Kansas border. -
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Steve Simels 70
Meanwhile Baldwin (bulked up a la DeNiro and playing totally against type), is a revelation, funny and touching. -
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Steve Simels 70
It's especially nice that all the songs on the soundtrack are heard in their entirety, even if the accompanying video footage is sometimes drawn from performances of different vintage. -
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Steve Simels 70
A very sweet, very funny coming-of-age story, featuring Kiss as the Great White Whale of adolescence. -
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Steve Simels 70
A delightful surprise, a tightly written, savvy slapstick comedy with genuine heart. -
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Steve Simels 70
A genuinely heartbreaking, romantic film based on a true story; frankly, if it doesn't make you cry, we don't want to know you. -
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Steve Simels 70
One of the sharpest and emotionally resonant romantic comedies in what seems like years. -
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Steve Simels 70
An occasionally surreal meditation on coping with loss, and a love story with a dark side the size of Montana. -
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Steve Simels 60
Not only one of the most spectacular cartoons ever made, but also a reasonably adult piece of sci-fi. -
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Steve Simels 60
Cudworth's script gives the characters more depth than is the genre norm, and the ensemble acting is terrific. -
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Steve Simels 60
One conclusion is inescapable. You have really seen something you don't see every day. -
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Steve Simels 60
A charming, technically sensational version of E.B. White's children's classic. -
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Steve Simels 60
The acting is similarly accomplished across the board, though it must be noted that Currie nearly walks off with the film: He's the funniest preppie seducer since Tim Matheson in "Animal House" (1978). -
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Steve Simels 60
As a director, La Salle manages to sustain a mood of looming menace almost throughout, and as an actor he gets the film's best joke: When his Satan fills out his hospital admission form, he gives his social security number as 666. -
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Steve Simels 60
The cast is aces, and Peter Morgan's screenplay is both very sharp on male sexual politics and crammed with enough comic twists and turns to keep you interested. -
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Steve Simels 60
But there's a vaguely self-congratulatory tone to the screenplay that's a bit off-putting. -
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Steve Simels 60
Has an interesting look, several sensational performances (notably from Kyle MacLachlan and Liev Schreiber) and in general works far better than it has any right to. -
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Steve Simels 50
You have to have a certain affection for any movie in which a stressed-out Mother Nature announces ominously, "Don't mess with me -- I'm pre-El Niño." -
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Steve Simels 50
Comic Tommy Davidson, in particular, is hilarious as gangsta rapper Puff Smokey Smoke, who falls for Juwanna and then, in a twist lifted directly from the queen of all drag farces, 1959's "Some Like It Hot," decides he still loves her after she's exposed as Jamal. After all, nobody's perfect. -
