Jesse Hassenger

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The A.V. Club
For 279 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jesse Hassenger's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 56
Highest review score: 91 Sleeping with Other People
Lowest review score: 16 Mother's Day
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 89 out of 279
  2. Mixed: 157 out of 279
  3. Negative: 33 out of 279
279 movie reviews
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 58 Jesse Hassenger
    Love, Gilda
    The emotional impact is ultimately surprisingly muted; she dies too soon, and the movie ends. Then again, it’s hard to blame anyone for assuming that consistent access to Radner’s voice, in moments both public and candid, would be enough. She radiates such joy, all these years later, that it nearly is.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Jesse Hassenger
    Kin
    It’s a simple idea, to take this working-class family and introduce what amounts to a high-tech ray gun, but the hook is so effective that it buys Kin a fair amount of time before the story turns from scrappy to stupid.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Jesse Hassenger
    Searching
    As a thriller, Searching is both ruthlessly absorbing in the moment and relatively disposable as soon as it ends, sliding itself gracefully into the desktop recycling bin.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    Alpha
    Alpha has been sold, to some degree, as a family-friendly film, and while it’s too violent and perhaps too heavily subtitled for young kids (or, for that matter, some adults, who may notice how superfluous much of the dialogue is), it’s easy to picture some 10-year-olds taking to its exciting, cornball charms.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 42 Jesse Hassenger
    Slender Man
    In a movie this flat-out dull, even a tasteful lack of direct exploitation feels like a failure of nerve.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 33 Jesse Hassenger
    Dog Days
    If Dog Days were a little weirder, it would just be a smug anti-comedy takedown of a late-period Garry Marshall picture, like "They Came Together" with its biggest laughs edited out.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 42 Jesse Hassenger
    Like Father
    Perversely, it’s only after Like Father is in the clear from its potentially ridiculous set-up that it really starts to trade in phony sitcom-movie bullshit.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Jesse Hassenger
    The Miseducation of Cameron Post
    It’s telling that the filmmaker captures one of Gallagher’s best moments in a long and relatively uneventful take situated at a breakfast table; this movie may wander, but Akhavan’s attention to perfect little moments is unwavering.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Jesse Hassenger
    Puzzle
    It’s hard to fault Puzzle for going in a more rigorous, serious-minded direction... until it trudges in that direction with such repetition. Turtletaub and his screenwriters lay the borderline-anachronistic details of their heroine’s oppressive life on so thick that the movie starts to sag.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 83 Jesse Hassenger
    Blindspotting
    Diggs, Casal, and Estrada are all walking on a high wire here, requiring a balance so delicate that it may not be visible to some of the audience until they have to decide for themselves whether Blindspotting’s leap-of-faith climax works.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
    It’s pleasantly baffling to discover that not only is Hotel Transylvania 3 easily the best film of the series, but it also feels more at home thematically on a cruise ship than its predecessors did at a haunted Transylvanian castle.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Jesse Hassenger
    Sorry to Bother You
    Sorry To Bother You is often wildly funny, and if its broad arc is familiar stuff about a down-on-his-luck everyman experiencing success but at what cost, at least the plot specifics are unpredictable by dint of Riley’s imagination.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 33 Jesse Hassenger
    Boundaries
    It’s supposed to be evocative, but in many scenes the characters just look dim and overly backlit, to the point of obscuring the actors’ expressiveness. There might be another metaphor in there somewhere.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
    There is visual wit in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and some invention, too.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 58 Jesse Hassenger
    Action Point
    Although its resolution is admirably non-fantastical, Action Point is ultimately more interested in telling a story about a pretty nice dad who becomes a somewhat nicer dad.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    Adrift
    Given the sweetly dull-witted relationship at its center, Adrift threatens to bog itself down with the endless intercutting back and forth in time. But the movie has a little more up its sleeves, narratively speaking, than first appears, and Kormákur converges the two timelines effectively.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Jesse Hassenger
    Solo: A Star Wars Story
    Perhaps because Lando was less explored than Han in the original films, Glover manages the tricky task of both paying homage to role originator Billy Dee Williams while adding his own spin to the character. Like Ehrenreich, his version goes comic without tipping into outright spoofery.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 58 Jesse Hassenger
    Life of the Party
    The movie portrays Deanna’s rediscovery of a pre-mom life, and how she squares that freedom with her identity as a loving mother, with a lot of warmth, and its refusal to gin up tired conflicts or mawkish lessons is admirable. That does, however, leave Life Of The Party without much comic momentum.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 91 Jesse Hassenger
    Tully
    Though Davis makes Tully convincing both as a human being and as a mysterious godsend, it’s Theron whose work is absolutely vital to Tully’s success.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 75 Jesse Hassenger
    The Week Of
    Smigel may not want to take up permanent residence in the Happy Madison offices, but he raises his old friend’s game considerably.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 42 Jesse Hassenger
    Traffik
    Trying to figure it out makes Traffik weirdly compelling, but nowhere near good.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 42 Jesse Hassenger
    Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero
    Though little about the technical skill of Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero brings to mind Spielberg, it’s hard not to think of "War Horse."
    • 44 Metascore
    • 42 Jesse Hassenger
    The Miracle Season
    It is not unusual for an underdog sports picture to be predictable. But The Miracle Season seems downright preordained, and not just in its arc. The movie is constitutionally incapable of surprise even on a moment-to-moment level.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Jesse Hassenger
    Blockers
    The comedy Blockers, which is not written, produced, or directed by Apatow but feels descended from some of his work, sets for itself a more ambitious challenge, daring itself to give each member of its ensemble a coming-of-age arc, and to pull off two different high-concept comedies at once in the process.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 83 Jesse Hassenger
    Gemini
    As visually appealing as much of Gemini is, it wouldn’t work nearly so well without Lola Kirke playing Jill.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Jesse Hassenger
    Sherlock Gnomes
    Most of the movie’s star power has been harnessed without much obvious reason, right down to the movie’s seeming origins as a delivery system for the Elton John catalog.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 25 Jesse Hassenger
    I Can Only Imagine
    This is an interesting idea, executed with a reductive, tin-eared understanding of what constitutes art to go along with a faith-based movie’s reductive, tin-eared understanding of what constitutes entertainment.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    A Wrinkle in Time
    Only Reid and Pine feel like they’re playing fully imagined characters, and DuVernay wrestles with how to make the overstuffed material both contemporary and timeless.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 58 Jesse Hassenger
    Love, Simon
    Love, Simon is touching as a gesture. As entertainment, it’s nothing Degrassi hasn’t done better.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 58 Jesse Hassenger
    Every Day
    There are any number of metaphorical applications for A’s condition, some implied more strongly than others, including trans struggles, gender fluidity...teenage desire to fit in, even accidental catfishing.... Every Day is sweet and sincere enough to remain open to these interpretations, but too gentle to assert itself into anything of real consequence.
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