Jesse Hassenger

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For 548 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jesse Hassenger's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 58
Highest review score: 91 American Honey
Lowest review score: 12 Asking for It
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 53 out of 548
548 movie reviews
    • 52 Metascore
    • 41 Jesse Hassenger
    Kandahar gets the straight face right, but seems woefully convinced that it’s a serious drama, right down to the wailing-woman soundtrack that so many Hollywood and Hollywood-adjacent movies about the Middle East bust out to show they’re down with the anguish.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 34 Jesse Hassenger
    This live-action co-production between Sony and a Japanese animation studio begins with the colorful bounce of Paul W.S. Anderson directing a cosmic X-Men knockoff, and quickly runs out of gas in a way that resembles the worst of Sony’s Screen Gems genre arm.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 59 Jesse Hassenger
    Lopez indulges a different form of movie-star vanity than simply making herself over as an unstoppable woman of action. The movie pretends to conceal her mothering sensitivity, but it’s actually flaunting the same maudlin old-man sentimentality that drives so many Liam Neeson vehicles, minus the genuine anguish Neeson can usually summon on cue.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Jesse Hassenger
    Blended with its 2000s plot points are the expedience, blunt dialogue and noirish venetian-blind shadows of a mid-to-lower-tier 1940s genre picture – with Affleck affecting a ragged, lummox-y dignity in the lead. If this doesn’t sound actually good, well, Hypnotic is a modest picture; that’s part of its appeal, if applicable.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 39 Jesse Hassenger
    In its broadest outlines, Book Club: The Next Chapter is a harmless, mildly farcical travelogue for fans of the central actresses, as well as those casually interested in briefly recognizing Andy Garcia, Don Johnson and Craig T. Nelson.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 26 Jesse Hassenger
    It misses the painful performance of everyday life, or less Hallmark-friendly emotions, like anger or numbness.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 53 Jesse Hassenger
    Ghosted is a little breezier and less blatantly synthetic than the plastic Red Notice or the smirky Gray Man, but put together these failed attempts at action-packed romance still feel like a psy-op for the superhero industrial complex: With star vehicles like these, maybe movie stars will have to stay in capes forever.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 48 Jesse Hassenger
    There are plenty of little chuckles throughout, but the movie doesn’t incorporate seemingly throwaway gags into its narrative like an expertly timed Harold-style improv. More often, it feels like the Broken Lizard boys are trying to salvage what works and re-use as much of it as possible.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 55 Jesse Hassenger
    Ritchie’s film is less infatuated with displays of All-American bodily sacrifice than movies like Lone Survivor and 13 Hours, but it still keys into a kind of performative, manly anguish.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 22 Jesse Hassenger
    Even in Kristin’s quietest, most contemplative moments, Collette can’t stop bugging her eyes or yanking down her mouth – which, to be fair, is a natural reaction to being repeatedly poisoned over the course of 101 endless minutes.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 58 Jesse Hassenger
    Really, this is a diverting kiddie movie that struggles most visibly when attempting to graft some kind of moral sensibility onto a story that – spoiler alert? – gets resolved by the good guys hitting the bad guys really hard.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 51 Jesse Hassenger
    A Good Person winds up with the ambition of a novel, but little of the richness.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 65 Jesse Hassenger
    As they often do, Tomlin and Fonda make their material look sharper than it really is.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 71 Jesse Hassenger
    Where 2022’s Scream showed how the series could keep adapting and changing to fit new cinematic trends, this one hints at how unsustainable franchise maintenance can feel over the long term, even for a series that’s enjoying its deserved resurgence in creativity and popularity.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 74 Jesse Hassenger
    Even when Creed III treads familiar ground, this series feels like the ideal outlet for the on-screen persona Jordan is building: a resilient man who needs to better understand the power he’s fought so hard for.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 71 Jesse Hassenger
    Antebi sets his own tone and masters it. The movie has the rush and the desperation of a fresh start.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Jesse Hassenger
    It’s a piercing portrayal of culturally specific nerd rage in Tomine’s comics; on film, it’s a little talky, and could’ve used more Ghost World-style moments of caricature, like that savaging of Crazy Rich Asians at the opening. But while Shortcomings doesn’t turn Ben into a misanthropic hero or excuse his often-terrible behavior, it does stick to the ethos he espouses early in the picture: This is a movie full of people who are flawed, and real.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 57 Jesse Hassenger
    Rather than containing relatable multitudes in a compact story ready-made for online sharing, a bigger-screen Cat Person turns paper-thin.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 68 Jesse Hassenger
    The film’s other performances aren’t as engaging as Seydoux and young Martins, which means One Fine Morning itself sometimes feels like it’s muddling through with Sandra’s same weariness, too faithfully reproducing the repetitions of real life.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 61 Jesse Hassenger
    It is remarkable that his three-hour Wandering Earth prequel is simultaneously stranger and more emotionally grounded than the earlier film. Yet even at this length, even with eye-popping moments and believable characters, some crucial humanity feels missing.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Jesse Hassenger
    JUNG_E has plenty of spare parts, and occasionally janky green-screen effects. But both the robots and humans it assembles move with unexpected grace.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 58 Jesse Hassenger
    It’s a movie about a toxic relationship that digs into the harrowing psychological details of mental and verbal abuse without exploiting it. It’s also a single-minded PSA picture — indie portraiture with hardly any identifying details filled in.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Jesse Hassenger
    By the end, the movie feels less like a canny reflection of true-crime fascination than a weak imitation of it — screen life, reduced to mere pixels.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Jesse Hassenger
    By laying off the action-movie gas pedal, Plane makes Butler, performing in his native Scottish accent, more warmly likable than he’s been in years.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Jesse Hassenger
    At times, the movie feels like it’s having fun in spite of itself. So it’s perfect, in a way, that Edgar Allan Poe keeps turning up to jolt his own story back to life.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 61 Jesse Hassenger
    The movie isn’t quite evocative enough to work as effective minimalism. It averages out a stripped-down Smith and the more florid filmmaking touches to land squarely in the middle of the road.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Jesse Hassenger
    This film isn’t a particularly astute portrayal of war, but it does ably depict sacrifice — something ultimately missing from the movie-star restoration of Top Gun: Maverick. Comparing the two movies isn’t especially fair, but it’s still worth noting that this smaller production is doing more with less.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 68 Jesse Hassenger
    Roar Uthaug is not a director who seems destined for greater, grander epics, and that’s one of his best qualities. He makes polished B-movies without the delusions of A-list grandeur.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    Violent Night isn’t a great action movie, or even a very good one, but George Costanza’s old assessment of Home Alone rings true: “The old man got to me!”
    • 42 Metascore
    • 49 Jesse Hassenger
    It’s not especially fair to criticize the movie that could have been made, rather than the one that was actually made. But even on its chosen terms of a family dramedy, People feels lopsided.

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