Helen O'Hara

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Empire, The Telegraph, Time Out
For 148 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 42% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Helen O'Hara's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Avengers: Infinity War
Lowest review score: 20 The Emoji Movie
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 55 out of 148
  2. Mixed: 91 out of 148
  3. Negative: 2 out of 148
148 movie reviews
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    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Helen O'Hara
    In the Heights
    Like a shot of summer holiday straight to the arm, this will have you shimmying out of the cinema and hugging all your neighbours. It’s joyful.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey
    It’s silly and a little too slow, but the characters are enormously charming and the design is overwhelmingly sumptuous. It should give viewers, especially children, a welcome hit of Christmas magic.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    The Secret Garden
    The film doesn’t quite trust the magic of the garden, adding visual dazzle and, sometimes, artificiality, but when the film relies on the kids and their relationship it still finds the book’s magic.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Helen O'Hara
    The Trial of the Chicago 7
    A fiery condemnation of the police state and government overreach, this is both timely and timeless. Sorkin and a superb cast make legal proceedings compelling, and then show that the law is an ass.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Helen O'Hara
    Calm with Horses (The Shadow of Violence)
    Lots of elements of the story feel familiar, but they play out in unusual and unpredictable ways here. We’ve seen the heavy-with-a-heart character before, but Jarvis gives Arm real pathos, even at his most violent.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Helen O'Hara
    Hamilton
    Entertaining, energetic and unfailingly smart, this is theatre at the highest level, performed by a cast without a weak link. You can’t say no to this.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Helen O'Hara
    Artemis Fowl
    An overqualified adult cast and some fun moments can’t entirely compensate for a defanged protagonist and too-static plot. This fantasy desperately needed a little more magic.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    The Lovebirds
    The plot is insubstantial in the extreme, but Rae and Nanjiani are so cool, and their loose, free-flowing improv so winning, that you probably won’t care.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    It looks gorgeous and offers strong performances from Driver and Ridley in particular, but ultimately the saga ends with neither a bang nor a whimper but something inbetween.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Helen O'Hara
    Little Women
    Not just for women of whatever size. Warm but never wishy-washy, cosy without being cutesy, this is a superb adaptation of the source and further evidence that Gerwig is the real deal.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    Brittany Runs A Marathon
    An uneven but essentially likeable story about the joys of setting yourself improbable goals and the tribes you can find as a result, with a strong, committed performance from Bell at its heart.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Helen O'Hara
    Terminator: Dark Fate
    Easily the third-best Terminator film, which is more of a compliment than it sounds. It’s great to have Hamilton back in this role, but she’s ably matched by Reyes and Davis.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
    An improvement on the first film, in the end, and an encouraging rallying cry against fear and intolerance, but it’s still far too busy and baroque to match its leading lady’s elegance.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Helen O'Hara
    The Aeronauts
    We know that this cast can produce magic together, and that this director can inject pace into unlikely topics. It’s just this one that seems to have feet of clay.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Helen O'Hara
    Honeyland
    Stunningly beautiful and quietly powerful, this is a portrait of a vanishing way of life and of a determined woman who’s just trying to make her way in the world.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    Downton Abbey
    Gentle, unchallenging drama for people who already know they like it, this is a nostalgic and rosy depiction of an England that was, surely, never so innocent.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Helen O'Hara
    Stuber
    It’s uneven and doesn’t quite hit the right balance between yuks and yuck, but the charisma of the two stars – particularly Nanjiani – carries it along. A shame to waste Uwais on such a limited role, though.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    The Lion King
    The great circle of life has thrown up a gorgeous, star-studded story, but trading feeling for realism means that we lose something of the original film’s excellence.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 90 Helen O'Hara
    Yesterday
    A glowing tribute to The Beatles and their music, this is both a toe-tapping pleasure to watch and a smart, occasionally scathing look at how we get things wrong.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Helen O'Hara
    Avengers: Endgame
    A victory lap that moonwalks through the best part of the MCU back catalogue and emphasises emotion as much as action, this is an intensely satisfying piece of blockbuster filmmaking.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    What Men Want
    The storytelling is a little loose, but as a workplace comedy with a side-line in romance, this earns its laughs thanks to the immensely game Henson and a stellar supporting cast.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Helen O'Hara
    Captain Marvel
    As a Nick Fury buddy comedy, it’s fun. As a feminist fable it’s essential. This takes a while to really get going, but when Carol Danvers takes off she is unstoppable.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    The Aftermath
    The bones of the story have been played a million times, but a talented and committed cast make this swoonsome rather than samey.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    On the Basis of Sex
    It’s not a hugely innovative biopic, covering just a short period of Bader Ginsburg’s extraordinary career, but this is still a vastly inspiring account of the fight for equality.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    All Is True
    A quiet and meditative portrait of the artist as a retiree, this lacks incident or high stakes but has an elegiac feeling of regret and reckoning that fits its subject’s twilight years.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Helen O'Hara
    If Beale Street Could Talk
    A sort of Romeo And Juliet with systemic racism replacing the family feud, this is romantic and infuriating, hopeful and despairing. A sensory, desperately emotional experience for lovers and fighters alike.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Helen O'Hara
    Colette
    All the affairs and scandals that a French literary genius could wish for, with the bonus of a modern heroine and a story that acknowledges the diversity that has always been with us.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Helen O'Hara
    Free Solo
    This is daring, dangerous and dizzying stuff, the story of a one man simultaneously in competition and cooperation with nature. Meet Tom Cruise’s hero, probably.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    Aquaman
    This is an Aquaman film that needs lots more Aquaman and vastly less bombast. It’s visually wild and recklessly inventive, but the cast deserve better than to be cast adrift in a tempest of CGI.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Helen O'Hara
    Mortal Engines
    It rips a few too many pages from familiar playbooks, but when it indulges in its own weirdness this film casts off those heavy caterpillar tracks and soars.
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