Robert Abele

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L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, TheWrap
For 1,301 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 7% same as the average critic
  • 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
Highest review score: 100 President
Lowest review score: 0 Detention of the Dead
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 620 out of 1301
  2. Mixed: 425 out of 1301
  3. Negative: 256 out of 1301
1301 movie reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Abele
    A Man of Integrity
    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.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Brian and Charles
    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.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Robert Abele
    I'm Charlie Walker
    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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Robert Abele
    Hustle
    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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    The Phantom of the Open
    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.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Abele
    A Chiara
    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.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres
    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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story
    “Jazz Fest” isn’t without flavor and rhythm, but what’s lacking is the thickness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 85 Robert Abele
    The Innocents
    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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Men
    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.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Robert Abele
    Hit the Road
    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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    The Tale of King Crab
    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.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Robert Abele
    FLINT: Who Can You Trust?
    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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 68 Robert Abele
    Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen
    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!
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    Anaïs in Love
    Like any craftily layered confection, what at first presents itself as colorfully whipped reveals itself to be a more tangy, lasting bite.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    Father
    There’s something oddly appealing in witnessing this dutiful, besieged parent make do with nothing to offer but himself, wherever that takes him.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Saturday Fiction
    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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Dual
    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.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Abele
    Wood and Water
    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.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 57 Robert Abele
    a-ha: the Movie
    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.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    Return to Space
    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.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    Aline
    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.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 64 Robert Abele
    ¡Viva Maestro!
    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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Robert Abele
    Gagarine
    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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Robert Abele
    Nitram
    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.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Mothering Sunday
    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.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Robert Abele
    How to Survive a Pandemic
    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.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 30 Robert Abele
    Ambulance
    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.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Infinite Storm
    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.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    The Torch
    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.
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