Kerry Lengel

Select another critic »
Arizona Republic
For 176 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 61% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 37% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Kerry Lengel's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Too Late to Die Young
Lowest review score: 20 Peterloo
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 86 out of 176
  2. Mixed: 86 out of 176
  3. Negative: 4 out of 176
176 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 32 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Cats
    I guess I was charmed in spite of myself. I’m reminded of a quote from Alexander Pope I had to memorize as a kid, which gave me fair warning about the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber and “Cats”: “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien / as to be hated needs but to be seen; / Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, / We first endure, then pity, then embrace.” Did I tear up a little? Maybe. Do I ever need to see “Cats” again? Nah, I’m good.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Kerry Lengel
    Cyrano, My Love
    While the actors certainly have charm, the farcical plot is so formulaic that the comic fizz often feels forced.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Jumanji: The Next Level
    Outdoing all of the headliners, at least when it comes to capturing voices and body language, is a new character inside the game played by Awkwafina of “Crazy Rich Asians.” It’s subtle, but there’s something more authentic about her version of the shtick. She’s just more in the moment — or maybe less desperate for a laugh.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Waves
    Waves is definitely not a film for everyone, but it has hidden depths that will reward the patient.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Kerry Lengel
    Honey Boy
    For me, it doesn’t really matter if LaBeouf is letting himself off the hook, or if Honey Boy is the ultimate vanity project of a pampered narcissist. What matters is that he has plunged into the maelstrom of his own memories and emerged with a real work of art — something that feels real, feels true, even though we all know it isn’t.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Motherless Brooklyn
    Even if the big thematic statements are less than subtle, the story is solid and thought-provoking, and the performances are just stylized enough to match the intensity of Norton’s deep-dive performance.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
    With “Maleficent’s” feminist message suffering a relapse, the sequel looks more like generic film fantasy than a fresh take on an old story. The cuddly creatures and razzle-dazzle action are enough to make two hours disappear, but it’s only Jolie’s bat-winged charisma that will rattle on in your memory.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Joker
    The Joker’s superpower is his resentment, his narcissism, and Phoenix cultivates these methodically in his performance, slowly transmuting the character’s awkward fragility into a kind of raging charisma — aided and abetted, of course, by all the tricks of art direction, sound design and editing that a journeyman filmmaker has at his disposal.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Downton Abbey
    Through all the skillfully juggled subplots, the overarching conflict has always been the family’s quest to keep hold of Downton Abbey — and thus preserve their role as the heart of the community, envied and adored by all — while also keeping up with the march of modernity.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Don't Let Go
    The plot is ingeniously engineered, but the narrative is like a low-res image. It gets the idea across, but without the kind of details that make it memorable.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    After the Wedding
    There’s a lot to be admired here, and After the Wedding certainly gives you a lot to think about. It just doesn’t quite make you feel all the feels.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Kerry Lengel
    Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    There’s a fine line between homage and rip-off, between a clever mashup and a messy pileup of tired tropes. But, much like a rainbow, where that line appears is in the eye of the beholder.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Kerry Lengel
    The Reports on Sarah and Saleem
    The power dynamics between two peoples locked in “asymmetrical conflict” — not to mention two sets of gender codes — set the stage for Alayan’s thriller. In storytelling terms, they are the rules by which the tightly wound plot unspools. But the film’s great strength, in addition to the usual quality-control things, is its care to humanize, not demonize, the characters who are playing by those rules.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Kerry Lengel
    Too Late to Die Young
    In Too Late to Die Young, Chilean writer-director Dominga Sotomayor excavates details from her own memory to unlock a hidden bonus level of starkly original cinematic beauty. This spare coming-of-age story is a slow-burning stunner, despite hardly having a plot at all.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Spider-Man: Far from Home
    “Far From Home” ends up being one of the more entertaining and satisfying installments in Marvel’s never-ending story cycle, thanks to a tautly constructed narrative that packs in plenty of fan service without getting overly complicated.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Annabelle Comes Home
    An ever-changing obstacle course does sustain its own kind of tension, but it’s not like there’s a real puzzle to solve, nor any arc to the plot. The movie is just a succession of scary stuff happening, haunted-ride-style.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Shaft
    In the end, this may be a case of a pop-culture icon being dragged down by the weight of trying remain relevant past its prime. It’s not woke, but you can’t call it racist. Maybe racist-ish. Misogynistic-ish. Entertaining-ish.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Pavarotti
    Maybe Pavarotti would be even more compelling if Howard had delved deeper into the contradictions and controversies. But the director does achieve the first goal on entertainment: Always leave them wanting more.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Ma
    Ma is one loony little horror film, and Octavia Spencer has a grand old time being the craziest thing in it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    The Sun Is Also a Star
    Under the perfectly paced direction of Ry Russo-Young (“Before I Fall”), Shahidi and Melton develop an easy chemistry on the way toward a satisfying denouement that’s neither tear-jerking tragedy nor fairy-tale wish fulfillment.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Trial by Fire
    Even though Trial by Fire is less than a masterpiece, it still came as a gut punch that forced me to examine my own complicated feelings on the issue. In short, it taught me something, and that was a surprise.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Avengers: Endgame
    For fans, counting up how many superheroes can emerge from the clown car of one three-hour movie is half the fun. For casual moviegoers — say, those who might skip minor installments such as “Ant-Man and the Wasp” — it accounts for half the exhaustion, a bit of world-building fatigue to go along with the sensory overload of a fantasy realm that seems stuck in perpetual apocalypse.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Kerry Lengel
    Peterloo
    It doesn’t take long to suspect you are witnessing an epic fail of Alexander proportions — a visionary filmmaker pouring years of craft and ambition, not to mention millions of dollars and the talents of dozens of gung-ho actors, down the drain of a misconceived “statement.”
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    The Public
    [Estevez] still hasn't progressed beyond the film-school basics, but somehow he managed to recruit an all-star cast of (presumably) like-minded activists for The Public.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Shazam!
    Like Tom Hanks in Big, Levy does a great job of capturing — or parodying — the giddiness of a kid flexing his adult muscles (literally and figuratively). The two-hour-plus running time breezes by in a well-paced adventure that mines familiar comic-book tropes for laughs.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    The Heiresses
    The title implies a sort of old-world glamour, but the proverbial gilded cage is looking a bit dilapidated in The Heiresses, a subtle but intense character study from Paraguayan director Marcelo Martinessi.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    The Highwaymen
    Directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks), it’s a well-crafted procedural, but it’s also a whole lot of familiar tropes put together in familiar ways.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Triple Frontier
    It’s a movie that maybe tries to do too much, but it does enough of it well to keep you glued to the screen.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    The Sower
    The great strength of The Sower is that it doesn’t try to do too much. It zooms in on its microcosm with a tender urgency that offers a glimpse of complex humanity without reducing the story to some sort of pithy takeaway.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
    One kudo to this lazy effort: The climax does have a real end-of-a-trilogy feel, making further sequels less likely. Silver linings, folks.
prev
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »