Robert Abele
Select another critic »For 1,301 reviews, this critic has graded:
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42% higher than the average critic
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7% same as the average critic
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51% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.8 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Robert Abele's Scores
- Movies
- TV
Average review score: | 58 | |
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Highest review score: | President | |
Lowest review score: | Detention of the Dead |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 620 out of 1301
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Mixed: 425 out of 1301
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Negative: 256 out of 1301
1301
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Robert Abele
Lest you think this is all a bit much for one family to endure, Rasoulof’s storytelling acumen is firmly in the realm of propulsive, detail-driven ethical thriller built on its character’s actions, rather than mere punching-bag melodrama. And it goes somewhere, most importantly, with its ideas, leaving you after its final, devastating image with something to think about instead of simply abandoned with your rage or pity.- TheWrap
- Posted Jun 17, 2022
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- Robert Abele
Even as the low-key mockumentary Brian and Charles impressively scales down a sci-fi concept to fable size, it neither does much to maintain its oddness nor finds that right mix of comedy and pathos to have much impact.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Jun 16, 2022
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- Robert Abele
It’s so talky and un-visual that despite it taking place in multiple locations, including the California coastline, it feels like a play barely opened up for the cameras.- TheWrap
- Posted Jun 10, 2022
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- Robert Abele
The result, as directed by the promising Jeremiah Zagar (“We The Animals”), is an agreeable combination drill of humor, hurt, on-court action and redemptive uplift that’s closer to simply being a solidly inspiring sports movie than anything notably representative of the Sandler oeuvre.- TheWrap
- Posted Jun 2, 2022
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- Robert Abele
You may see Flitcroft as a figure of ridicule or a hoax icon sticking it to gatekeepers or the ultimate aspiring amateur. The movie, however, shrewdly relishes all identities in its mix of the humor inherent in his prankish folly and the sentimentality of a pie-in-the-sky dream.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Jun 2, 2022
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- Robert Abele
What’s best about A Chiara is its totality of naturalism and subjectivity — how it humanely complicates a teenager’s newfound self-possession, so that we admire her quest for clarity and reckoning about her family, while worrying how it will affect the decision she makes about her future.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted May 26, 2022
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- Robert Abele
When rock star wattage is the focus, “Like a Rolling Stone” doesn’t distinguish itself, but when Kai finds those ties in Fong-Torres’ life between the son who dreamed and the man who accomplished, the movie is like airplay for an album deep cut: what was always there getting some well-deserved attention.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted May 20, 2022
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- Robert Abele
“Jazz Fest” isn’t without flavor and rhythm, but what’s lacking is the thickness.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted May 12, 2022
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- Robert Abele
Vogt, with his second feature, has crafted a disturbing and original heart-pounder all his own, uncommonly attuned to the perspective of unsocialized prepubescents: how their feelings work, what their minds process, and why their worst moments may bring catharsis to them, but can look terrifyingly wrong to us.- TheWrap
- Posted May 12, 2022
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- Robert Abele
Garland’s active engagement with his themes, moods, and show-stopping ick is still something to be reckoned with in today’s climate of fear in the film industry regarding original stories.- TheWrap
- Posted May 9, 2022
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- Robert Abele
What transpires is an exquisitely controlled yet diverting blend of pre-mourning and in-the-moment pleasures, a tonal blend of miraculous balance for a first-time filmmaker, even one with Panahi’s one-of-a-kind training.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted May 5, 2022
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- Robert Abele
There are times when The Tale of King Crab seems like it could have been made in the silent era, so dedicated are Rigo de Righi and Zoppis to the simple, dramatic power of what they choose to show us. Their characters search for love, justice and gold while the filmmakers make clear what they treasure: ageless tales like these.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Apr 29, 2022
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- Robert Abele
If the goal is to relay what a miasma of suspicion and despair the water crisis created, “Flint” certainly suggests that, if regrettably by being its own well-intentioned if messy, unilluminating chronicle.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Apr 29, 2022
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- Robert Abele
While it may have started as a spellbinding evening of theater, what Raim’s unfussy, handsomely mounted documentary reinforces is that film is its own spiritually transporting medium, with its own risks and rewards, and its own ability to turn the enjoyment of art into — what else? — tradition!- TheWrap
- Posted Apr 29, 2022
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- Robert Abele
Like any craftily layered confection, what at first presents itself as colorfully whipped reveals itself to be a more tangy, lasting bite.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Apr 29, 2022
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- Robert Abele
There’s something oddly appealing in witnessing this dutiful, besieged parent make do with nothing to offer but himself, wherever that takes him.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Apr 21, 2022
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- Robert Abele
As convolutedly scripted by Ma Yingli, and pushed around by the restless camerawork, it’s primarily a spotty fusion of spy-story contrivances and diffuse themes of truth and artifice, although the playground is plenty evocative.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Apr 21, 2022
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- Robert Abele
While her résumé of fantastical roles makes her seemingly right for this kind of part, Gillan is directed into a pair of off-puttingly stiff performances, more skit-appropriate than feature-rich.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Apr 14, 2022
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- Robert Abele
Juxtaposing nature’s comforting placidity and an urban mélange in which freedom is always in flux, “Wood and Water” breathes with unforced majesty about what’s sad and beautiful in moments of great change — story, mood and near-documentary-like observation are in a wonderful harmony here.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Apr 13, 2022
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- Robert Abele
For the diehards and the curious, it should hold some intrigue, because in its exploration of pop longevity and band dynamics, it’s more a cousin of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster . . . than the typically image-conscious, preserve-the-legacy music doc.- TheWrap
- Posted Apr 8, 2022
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- Robert Abele
The film is a relatively smooth blend of optimism for a rejuvenated emphasis on human exploration in the beyond, and branded content promoting a controversial businessman.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Apr 7, 2022
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- Robert Abele
Like a lush ballad that’s somehow both off-key and in total harmony, it’s unlike anything else out there, and certainly more interesting in its swings and misses than a lot of the machine-stamped celebrity biopics littering the movie landscape these days.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Apr 7, 2022
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- Robert Abele
It’s a bit of an irony for ¡Viva Maestro! that Braun’s having to fit unexpected events and thorny issues of arts and politics, into what was surely intended to be a straightforwardly image-burnishing biodoc, has ultimately created a better in-the-moment movie.- TheWrap
- Posted Apr 5, 2022
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- Robert Abele
In its imaginative depiction of how marginalized souls view home — especially youth, for whom belonging and the future can be fraught concepts — Gagarine bears witness to not only a historic building, but the hearts of people, which is what brings a place alive, anyway.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Mar 31, 2022
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- Robert Abele
It’s with a gut-wrenching helplessness that we watch the ingredients assemble for what has become our seemingly most preventable modern scourge — someone far gone, armed with what’s all too available.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Mar 30, 2022
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- Robert Abele
It’s an unhurried reverie that’s sometimes as wonderfully sustained as a fermata but also occasionally stifling due to filmmaker Eva Husson’s dedication to that tonal approach above all else.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Mar 24, 2022
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- Robert Abele
It’s a globe-trotting look at the worldwide response to COVID-19, with an emphasis on the unprecedented effort to get a safe, effective vaccine quickly into billions of people.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Mar 24, 2022
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- Robert Abele
Even if you’ve been longing for a more grounded, gritty car-chase movie since the “Fast” franchise left physics behind ages ago, Bay’s addiction to confusion and pointlessness as operating visual/narrative principles keeps even this shoulda-been auto-pocalypse from being in any way pleasurable.- TheWrap
- Posted Mar 24, 2022
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- Robert Abele
The movie’s secret sauce is humanity through action, what Watts’ Pam in all her heart, knowledge, grit, solitude, caring, irritation, and worry shows us when she’s in her element: what losing and finding looks like in real time.- TheWrap
- Posted Mar 22, 2022
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- Robert Abele
It’s a nice story of master and protégé, and in many scenes the bond between the irrepressible, humorous Guy and the quiet, observant Sullivan seems genuine.- Los Angeles Times
- Posted Mar 17, 2022
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