Stephen Holden

Stephen Holden

Agrees with the Tomatometer 77% of the time.

Publications:
New York Times
Critics' Group:
New York Film Critics Circle
Total Reviews:
2632

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 2632
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Rating T-Meter Title | Year Add Date
1/5 0% Generation Um... (2013) " What does it add up to? Um ... I have no idea and don't really care." — New York Times
Posted May 2, 2013
2.5/5 74% Love Is All You Need (2013) " Despite the gorgeous sights and rollicking sounds of sunny Italy, a Scandinavian heaviness hangs over the film, with a screenplay by Ms. Bier's frequent collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen, based on a story they developed." — New York Times
Posted May 2, 2013
5/5 67% The Iceman (2013) " Michael Shannon's mesmerizing portrayal of Richard Kuklinski, a notorious contract killer, has the paradoxical quality, peculiar to many great screen performances, of being unreadable and transparent." — New York Times
Posted May 2, 2013
2/5 18% 1st Night (2013) " A pallid gloss of a work that teems with deception, disguise and mistaken identity, not to mention humor." — New York Times
Posted May 2, 2013
2/5 24% Arthur Newman (2013) " The film equivalent of a dysfunctional computer sloppily assembled from discarded parts of other machines." — New York Times
Posted Apr 25, 2013
0/5 8% The Big Wedding (2013) " The screenplay is chopped up into smutty sound bites constructed around the notion that casual obscenity delivered by respected actors of a certain age is hilarious. But it's just embarrassing." — New York Times
Posted Apr 25, 2013
3.5/5 56% At Any Price (2013) " If "At Any Price" overstates its points, they are still worth making. And the hot-wired performances by Mr. Quaid and Mr. Efron drive them home in a movie that sticks to your ribs and stays in your head." — New York Times
Posted Apr 24, 2013
2/5 —— Love Sick Love (2013) " "Love Sick Love" deteriorates into a series of pranks that are not funny enough to register as comedy or brutal enough to qualify as horror." — New York Times
Posted Apr 18, 2013
3.5/5 87% Herman's House (2013) " Although this documentary has a powerful political subtext, it is best described as a conceptual art piece about confinement, attached to a dual biography of the artist and the prisoner." — New York Times
Posted Apr 18, 2013
2.5/5 64% Antiviral (2013) " Eventually the clammy spell of this handsomely designed but solemnly paced movie begins to wear off, and you long for a little action or at least some fresh air." — New York Times
Posted Apr 11, 2013
3/5 89% The Angels' Share (2013) " Watching it is like receiving a hard slap in the face from someone who expects you to laugh it off, even though the sting lingers." — New York Times
Posted Apr 11, 2013
5/5 68% Disconnect (2013) " The film ominously conveys a world of too much information but too little communication, where people have become slaves to glowing hand-held devices that were designed to make life easier but have made it busier and more complicated." — New York Times
Posted Apr 11, 2013
2.5/5 54% The Company You Keep (2013) " This earnest, well-intentioned movie elicits frustration that its story had to be packaged as a conventional, not very suspenseful fugitive thriller with a bogus Hollywood ending." — New York Times
Posted Apr 4, 2013
3.5/5 77% AndrĂ© Gregory: Before and After Dinner (2013) " As Mr. Gregory demonstrated in "My Dinner With AndrĂ©," he is a spellbinding raconteur who exudes the same sorcererlike aura that he emanates while directing Ibsen." — New York Times
Posted Apr 3, 2013
2/5 40% Mental (2013) " "Mental" wildly overplays the kookiness and quirk." — New York Times
Posted Mar 28, 2013
5/5 81% Renoir (2013) " The movie, like its subject, refuses to stir up unnecessary melodrama." — New York Times
Posted Mar 28, 2013
2/5 20% Gobots - Battle of the Rock Lords () " True to Saturday-morning cartoon tradition, 'GoBots' is a jerky, semi coherent series of chases, laser-gun battles and explosions, with an allegorical plot about how no one can handle too much power." — New York Times
Posted Mar 26, 2013
2/5 65% Starbuck (2013) " "Starbuck" is up to its eyeballs in mush. You may want to regurgitate." — New York Times
Posted Mar 21, 2013
3/5 56% Hunky Dory (2013) " At various moments this endearing but sudsy movie, which spills all over the place, evokes "High School Musical," "Glee" and "Billy Elliot."" — New York Times
Posted Mar 21, 2013
1/5 —— GoBots: War of the Rock Lords (1986) " A jerky, semi coherent series of chases, laser-gun battles and explosions, with an allegorical plot about how no one can handle too much power." — New York Times
Posted Mar 20, 2013
3/5 80% Eden (2013) " [An] excruciating vision of under-age women conscripted into sexual slavery by a criminal enterprise from which there is seemingly no escape." — New York Times
Posted Mar 19, 2013
2/5 29% Upside Down (2013) " The novelty of the idea, which suggests a less elegant offshoot of M. C. Escher drawings, quickly wears thin. The production design is too busy, and the film's desaturated palette is forbiddingly austere." — New York Times
Posted Mar 14, 2013
2/5 38% The Incredible Burt Wonderstone (2013) " "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" can't transcend the fundamental problem built into movies and television shows about magic. It isn't really magic if you're watching it second hand." — New York Times
Posted Mar 14, 2013
2/5 10% If I Were You (2012) " Buried in the bloat of Joan Carr-Wiggin's interminable "If I Were You" are the seeds of what might have been a lean, snappy farce about duplicitous, adulterous games." — New York Times
Posted Mar 14, 2013
3/5 85% Electrick Children (2013) " "Electrick Children" is well acted and refreshingly nonjudgmental, but its narrative continuity is tenuous at best." — New York Times
Posted Mar 7, 2013
2/5 31% Emperor (2013) " Mr. Jones's performance is the only spark within this otherwise dull, well-mannered exercise." — New York Times
Posted Mar 7, 2013
3/5 30% Gut Renovation (2013) " Su Friedrich's cranky, sarcastic documentary polemic about the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood ..." — New York Times
Posted Mar 5, 2013
5/5 96% War Witch (2013) " The movie is committed to revealing the world through Komona's eyes, and you never feel a taint of voyeurism or condescension. It stays true to her." — New York Times
Posted Feb 28, 2013
3.5/5 13% Molly's Theory Of Relativity (2013) " "Molly's Theory of Relativity" shows how our parents live inside us, and how our relationships with them continue to evolve even after they're gone." — New York Times
Posted Feb 28, 2013
3.5/5 92% Future Weather (2013) " [A] tiny, beautifully acted movie ..." — New York Times
Posted Feb 28, 2013
2.5/5 58% Snitch (2013) " Mr. Johnson's screen presence, however charismatic, is out of sync with the rest of the movie." — New York Times
Posted Feb 21, 2013
1/5 13% Safe Haven (2013) " The climactic inferno, which explodes whatever credibility the movie built up, is immediately followed by a cheap, out-of-the-blue supernatural twist. The equivalent of a forged signature, it attests to the movie's essential falsity." — New York Times
Posted Feb 13, 2013
2/5 16% A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (2013) " At best it is a mildly diverting goof with a charmless lead performance. Its underlying misogyny leaves a sour taste." — New York Times
Posted Feb 7, 2013
4/5 92% Lore (2013) " The film sustains an air of overarching mystery in which the viewer, like the title character, is in the position of a sheltered child plunked into an alien environment and required to fend for herself without a map or compass." — New York Times
Posted Feb 7, 2013
4/5 52% The Playroom (2013) " "The Playroom" captures the malaise of mid-'70s suburbia with a merciless accuracy not seen since Ang Lee's 1997 film, "The Ice Storm."" — New York Times
Posted Feb 7, 2013
1.5/5 4% Movie 43 (2013) " Once you're attuned to the movie's desperation to shock, you begin to have that jaded, ho-hum feeling." — New York Times
Posted Jan 25, 2013
1/5 28% Knife Fight (2013) " Whether playing it sleazy or noble, Mr. Lowe brings little emotional weight to his role." — New York Times
Posted Jan 24, 2013
3/5 86% Supporting Characters (2013) " This well-acted film captures a generational and occupational sliver of New York life that rings true." — New York Times
Posted Jan 24, 2013
4/5 88% Yossi (2013) " "Yossi" tells the beautifully acted but overly sentimental story of a man's emotional rebirth in a more sexually liberated era. It is also a pointed portrayal of the revolution in social attitudes inside the most liberal and secularized of Israeli cities." — New York Times
Posted Jan 24, 2013
3/5 83% Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation (2013) " The film's pleasures are the same ones offered by a sprawling, lavishly illustrated magazine spread." — New York Times
Posted Jan 17, 2013
2/5 17% Brief Reunion (2013) " The juicy dramatic possibilities of buried secrets and lies and cybertrickery are left unexplored. The movie's shade of noir is a dull gray." — New York Times
Posted Jan 17, 2013
4/5 —— Sudoeste (Southwest) () " It leads you to consider the breadth of eternity, the limits of human consciousness and the possibility of reincarnation." — New York Times
Posted Jan 16, 2013
2/5 24% Struck by Lightning (2013) " Except for Ms. Janney's monstrous mother and an Alzheimer's-afflicted grandmother (Polly Bergen), "Struck by Lightning" gives its characters no dimension." — New York Times
Posted Jan 10, 2013
4/5 56% Fairhaven (2013) " [A] beautifully acted, directed and edited little slice of New England life ..." — New York Times
Posted Jan 10, 2013
2/5 19% The Baytown Outlaws (2013) " If it has the right spit-in-your-face attitude, it has neither the stamina nor the wit to go the distance, although it makes it about two-thirds of the way." — New York Times
Posted Jan 10, 2013
3.5/5 95% West of Memphis (2012) " The film is inspiring because it has a semi-happy ending attached to a love story." — New York Times
Posted Dec 25, 2012
5/5 69% Not Fade Away (2012) " By focusing on musicians who are talented but finally not good or persistent enough to succeed in the big time, "Not Fade Away" offers a poignant, alternative, antiheroic history of the big beat." — New York Times
Posted Dec 20, 2012
2/5 45% On the Road (2012) " It all seems - dare I say it? - of little consequence." — New York Times
Posted Dec 20, 2012
2.5/5 38% The Guilt Trip (2012) " The chief pleasures of this mild-mannered dud lie in watching two resourceful comic actors go through their paces like the pros they are." — New York Times
Posted Dec 18, 2012
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