Ben Kenigsberg Movie Reviews & Previews

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Ben Kenigsberg

Agrees with the Tomatometer 72% of the time.

Publications:: East Hampton Independent , L.A. Weekly , Time Out , Time Out Chicago , Time Out New York , Village Voice

Total Reviews:: 515

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Showing 1 - 50 of 515

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Rating	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
C-	85%	Sightseers (2013)	" The film proceeds with a lazy, sketch-like feel that makes more sense after considering that these characters began on stage; the material was reconceived as a movie after a TV pilot failed to ignite." — AV Club Posted May 9, 2013
C+	42%	The Great Gatsby (2013)	" A half-reverent, half-travestying adaptation that's campy but not a betrayal, offering a lively take on a familiar work while sacrificing such niceties as structure, character, and nuance." — AV Club Posted May 9, 2013
C	74%	Love Is All You Need (2013)	" As movies have taught us before (and no doubt will again), a little Mediterranean sunshine and a few plucks of soundtrack mandolin go a long way toward healing heartache." — AV Club Posted May 2, 2013
C+	67%	The Iceman (2013)	" Alternating scenes of the psycho-as-family-man with an increasingly grisly and desperate series of hits, it makes for a surprisingly monotonous sit for a movie that also features a killer named Mr. Freezy." — AV Club Posted May 2, 2013
3/5	42%	To The Wonder (2013)	" Once the shock of seeing a Sonic Drive-In in a Malick film wears off, the movie leaves little to ponder beyond the sketchily drawn romance drama at its core." — Time Out Chicago Posted Apr 19, 2013
3/5	9%	The Host (2013)	" Niccol helps The Host survive as a sci-fi movie even as he's saddled with the Twilight author's source material." — Time Out New York Posted Mar 26, 2013
5/5	66%	Spring Breakers (2013)	" Not just a step forward. It's a vision: a fever dream of sun-dappled debauchery that doubles as a thriller-satire on the allure of excess." — Time Out Chicago Posted Mar 21, 2013
4/5	93%	Barbara (2012)	" Petzold renders Communist oppression in a provocatively muted manner." — Time Out Chicago Posted Mar 10, 2013
1/5	70%	Somebody Up There Likes Me (2013)	" There's talent here, but the goal seems to be proving that everyone involved is too cool to make an actual movie." — Time Out Chicago Posted Mar 10, 2013
5/5	94%	Journal d'un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest) (1951)	" Diary is less a movie about the necessity of faith than what it means to be cut down in the midst of youthful idealism and intransigence, before life offers wisdom." — Time Out Chicago Posted Mar 5, 2013
2/5	52%	Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)	" Taking a healthy swig from Lord of the Rings' cup, this high-concept "Jack and the Beanstalk" dresses up traditionalism in expensive nothingness." — Time Out Chicago Posted Mar 1, 2013
	94%	The King's Speech (2010)	" With a backdrop this large, The King's Speech can't help but seem monosyllabic." — Time Out Chicago Posted Feb 16, 2013
4/5	85%	Side Effects (2013)	" Makes for an intriguing if dispassionate fit." — Time Out Chicago Posted Feb 9, 2013
2/5	4%	Movie 43 (2013)	" Neither the Kentucky-fried turkey its unceremonious release suggests nor the kind of daring film maudit that seems destined to be reassessed decades hence." — Time Out Chicago Posted Jan 25, 2013
5/5	93%	Zero Dark Thirty (2013)	" The decade-spanning Zero Dark Thirty comes freighted with a historical weight it bears amazingly well." — Time Out Chicago Posted Jan 9, 2013
4/5	96%	Argo (2012)	" After Gone Baby Gone, The Town and now this directorial-best, Affleck is establishing himself as a major craftsman." — Time Out Chicago Posted Jan 8, 2013
5/5	99%	This Is Not a Film (2012)	" One mourns the tragic circumstances that caused it to be made, but the result is a sleight of hand to rank alongside Orson Welles's F for Fake." — Time Out Chicago Posted Jan 7, 2013
2/5	51%	Promised Land (2013)	" The film is way too earnest to inspire much anger. Some messages are better delivered with a flamethrower." — Time Out Chicago Posted Dec 27, 2012
3/5	88%	Django Unchained (2012)	" As retreads go, Django Unchained is as much a comedown from its predecessor as Lars von Trier's Manderlay was from Dogville." — Time Out Chicago Posted Dec 25, 2012
3/5	61%	Jack Reacher (2012)	" Jack Reacher includes sufficient eccentricities to keep it enjoyably strange." — Time Out Chicago Posted Dec 25, 2012
2/5	70%	Les Misérables (2012)	" Jackman's Valjean can't quite sing on key. / And Crowe's Javert deserves Razzies." — Time Out Chicago Posted Dec 25, 2012
2/5	38%	The Guilt Trip (2012)	" One might be tempted to write off The Guilt Trip as overly familiar, but Barbra Streisand volunteering for a one-hour steak-eating challenge is almost certainly a screen first." — Time Out Chicago Posted Dec 25, 2012
5/5	85%	Un Conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale) (2008)	" The movie teems with the excitement of unwrapping a present, even as it deals more seriously with the intractability of blood ties." — Time Out Chicago Posted Dec 4, 2012
1/5	12%	Alex Cross (2012)	" [Perry] has rarely been less convincing than when locking and loading from his home arsenal or dangling from a decaying Detroit edifice." — Time Out Posted Nov 27, 2012
2/5	13%	Red Dawn (2012)	" Bradley delivers some cleanly cut action and some grimy, modest mise-en-scene, though neither compensates for the goofiness of the plot, which dates from a less globalized planet." — Time Out Chicago Posted Nov 20, 2012
2/5	48%	The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (2012)	" The catering-ad backdrops, pouty nonperformances and cheap-looking effects still dominate. " — Time Out Chicago Posted Nov 15, 2012
4/5	92%	Silver Linings Playbook (2012)	" Anyone seeking proof that a movie can transcend its subject should look to Silver Linings Playbook." — Time Out Chicago Posted Nov 15, 2012
5/5	86%	The Master (2012)	" A dense, baffling, thoroughly original epic that seems to divide viewers on the simple question of what it's supposed to be about. " — Time Out Chicago Posted Nov 15, 2012
	50%	Vamps (2012)	" A satire with much of the wit of her [Heckerling's] 1995 Clueless." — Time Out Chicago Posted Nov 9, 2012
	92%	Skyfall (2012)	" What Mendes delivers is a mixed blessing: a Bond film so self-serious it condescends to the frivolities it pretends to honor." — Time Out Chicago Posted Nov 9, 2012
	89%	Lincoln (2012)	" Like Kushner's Angels in America, Lincoln is less a literal history than a work that uses a historical moment to meditate on grand themes." — Time Out Chicago Posted Nov 9, 2012
2/5	49%	The Man With the Iron Fists (2012)	" As befits a Tarantino-endorsed production, the anachronisms, one-liners and clashing acting styles are ostensibly part of the fun, but both the martial arts and the slightly dull narrative patchwork are too choppily edited to gain much of a foothold." — Time Out New York Posted Nov 6, 2012
5/5	91%	Eraserhead (1977)	" By now, the most interesting thing about Lynch's cult-classic debut may be the evidence it offers of how fully his sensibility was formed." — Time Out Chicago Posted Oct 8, 2012
3/5	81%	Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare (2012)	" Health care is a difficult subject to make compelling onscreen -- much less in a nonpartisan manner -- which makes Escape Fire a documentary with major breakout potential." — Time Out Chicago Posted Oct 4, 2012
3/5	88%	Head Games (2012)	" You'll feel like you need a helmet in the theater." — Time Out Chicago Posted Sep 28, 2012
	95%	Side by Side (2012)	" Always accessible, the doc lays out pros and cons of each medium." — Time Out Chicago Posted Sep 5, 2012
3/5	21%	That's My Boy (2012)	" The basic joke keeps on giving and the sweetness of the parent-child bonding scenes plays well." — Time Out Posted Sep 5, 2012
1/5	4%	The Apparition (2012)	" The movie loses goodwill early on by killing an adorable dog, resulting in a lack of an identification point, since the canine has better intuition than the humans." — Time Out New York Posted Aug 24, 2012
3/5	70%	American Teen (2008)	" The presence of a film crew may have encouraged drama." — Time Out Chicago Posted Aug 23, 2012
	34%	The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012)	" So creepy and anti-magical it calls into question the pathology that created it." — Time Out Chicago Posted Aug 14, 2012
	64%	Kumaré (2012)	" The film's notion that the ruse here was okay because it ultimately helped people seems like a specious rationalization." — Time Out Chicago Posted Aug 11, 2012
	74%	Hope Springs (2012)	" Springs insists on maintaining just enough comedy to keep the project commercial, which essentially means reducing two protagonists with a long-shared history to caricatures." — Time Out Chicago Posted Aug 11, 2012
	96%	Searching for Sugar Man (2012)	" Ultimately an ode to Rodriguez's artistic modesty and the power of his music-a rousing crowd-pleaser that asks you to save questions for another film." — Time Out Chicago Posted Aug 11, 2012
	95%	The Queen of Versailles (2012)	" Surely more topical (and essential) now than when it was conceived, The Queen of Versailles plays like a Christopher Guest parody of the financial crisis." — Time Out Chicago Posted Aug 2, 2012
	87%	The Dark Knight Rises (2012)	" After a wobbly start, The Dark Knight Rises ascends in grand fashion, offering a respite from the digital murk and rote name-checking of the season's other comic-book movies." — Time Out Chicago Posted Jul 18, 2012
2/5	60%	300 (2007)	" Wallowing in the same adolescent nihilism as his Sin City, this adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel suffers from a similar lack of momentum." — Time Out Chicago Posted Jul 9, 2012
3/5	76%	Kick-Ass (2010)	" Kick-Ass gains significant momentum in its second half, once it abandons the arch origin-story material and starts staking a claim as a straight-up action flick." — Time Out Chicago Posted Jul 9, 2012
3/5	21%	That's My Boy (2012)	" Depending on your POV, it's either the ne plus ultra of Hollywood calculation or a comedy simply intent on pushing its crassness to the point of surrealism." — Time Out Chicago Posted Jun 14, 2012
	45%	On the Road (2012)	" This is On the Road as experienced by someone who exhibits no personality, a story of self-discovery in which there's no self to discover. " — Time Out Chicago Posted May 23, 2012

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