Kyle Smith
Kyle Smith's reviews (from any publication) always count toward the Tomatometer
because this critic is a Tomatometer-approved critic.
| Publications: | New York Post, National Review, KyleSmithOnline.com |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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| 17% | The Dark Tower (2017) |
Flourishes that may work fine when they're confined to the page seem laughable on-screen, and the visual effects are uniformly unconvincing.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Aug 4, 2017
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| 76% | An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power (2017) |
Viewers who watch with a curious mind rather than a hushed awe for His Goreness might have a few questions.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 27, 2017
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| 93% | Dunkirk (2017) |
As magnificently well crafted as Dunkirk is, it is a film destined to be respected more than it is loved, and given Nolan's record -- I credit him with five great movies -- I call this a highly honorable achievement that nonetheless slightly disappoints.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 20, 2017
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| 93% | War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) |
It's fitting that a movie that features both crossbows and laser-guided rifles, tanks as well as horseback riding feels classic and contemporary at the same time.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2017
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| 92% | Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) |
With its sunny warmth and its hilarious script by Watts and five other writers, Spider-Man: Homecoming is breezy fun, one of the most enjoyable superhero epics yet.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 6, 2017
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| 78% | The Reagan Show (2017) |
Consisting entirely of archival footage from the Reagan era and before, the remainder of The Reagan Show is an exercise in snark that seems aimed at Baby Boomers still pining for Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 29, 2017
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| 98% | The Big Sick (2017) |
There are some sweet early scenes establishing the characters' rapport... but Gordon and Nanjiani are so enamored of the standup-comedy world that it takes nearly 40 minutes for an actual conflict to be brought up.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 22, 2017
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| 16% | The Mummy (2017) |
The director, Alex Kurtzman, jolly well keeps things moving, so that even when nothing in the film made much sense, I was reasonably caught up in the ridiculousness.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2017
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| 92% | Wonder Woman (2017) |
Wonder Woman is a top-notch blockbuster, fun and fast and carrying quite a lot of the thematic heft that characterizes the dramatic ambition of the better DC Comics movies as against the more light-hearted Marvel efforts.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 31, 2017
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| 19% | Baywatch (2017) |
The film's big lesson, which Brody learns at great length, is that there is no I in team. True enough, but in Baywatch, there is contained a question: Y Watch?‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 25, 2017
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| 71% | The Commune (Kollektivet) (2017) |
Does The Commune amount to shooting fish in a barrel? I don't think so. It isn't just a rebuke to shaggy Seventies ideals of shared living and free love.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 19, 2017
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| 28% | King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (2017) |
Legend of the Sword, then, is the first adequately rousing Arthurian epic since 1981's Excalibur, which remains the most satisfying treatment the Good King A. has received onscreen, if you don't count Monty Python and the Holy Grail.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 11, 2017
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| 92% | Get Me Roger Stone (2017) |
Amusing if also dispiriting film.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 8, 2017
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| 95% | Last Days in Vietnam (2014) |
It's a brilliant, harrowing, emotionally potent documentary by a director with unimpeachable liberal credentials - a Kennedy, no less.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 4, 2017
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| 82% | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) |
I suppose there's a kind of genius in Gunn's ability to remember what made him laugh in fourth grade, but if your sense of what's funny hasn't grown a tad more sophisticated since you were in primary school, then...‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 3, 2017
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| 84% | Deepwater Horizon (2016) |
Deepwater Horizon is an overwhelming success, the best film of the year so far.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Apr 13, 2017
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| 87% | The Lost City of Z (2017) |
This strange update on Joseph Conrad is in essence an epic of virtue-signaling.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Apr 13, 2017
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| 51% | The Boss Baby (2017) |
The plot is so senseless it could have been written up by bleary, sleep-deprived parents. It's all just a pretext for a pitiful one-joke movie.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Mar 30, 2017
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| 70% | American Anarchist (2017) |
Unnerving ...‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Mar 23, 2017
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| 43% | Song to Song (2017) |
The passion! The anguish! "Can't you see I hurt?" Malick cries out from the darkness. It's hard not to reply, "Can't you see you suck?"‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2017
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| 1.5/4 | 53% | The Belko Experiment (2017) |
For all its promise to be a wry commentary on the savagery of office politics, "The Belko Experiment" is more like an experiment in how many cracked-open skulls can be crammed into one movie.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2017
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| 2/4 | 78% | T2 Trainspotting (2017) |
"T2" is utterly bereft of ideas about aging, taking responsibility or the virtues of a life more ordinary.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2017
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| 2/4 | 76% | Kong: Skull Island (2017) |
The monster battles have enough wow to keep the movie rolling along, but the connective tissue is so thin that it scarcely matters who lives and who gets stomped, eaten, blown up, ripped to shreds or impaled.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Mar 7, 2017
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| 1/4 | 23% | Table 19 (2017) |
This comedy about the random losers stuck together at a wedding reception actually, uncannily, creates an experience as dull, awkward and excruciating as the thing it mocks.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Mar 2, 2017
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| 3.5/4 | 93% | Logan (2017) |
The superhero category has gotten more boring as it's gotten more popular, but "Logan" suggests an escape from escapism, a restoration of the human element in blockbusters, a stripped-down return to the feel of 1970s Clint Eastwood pictures.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2017
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| 3/4 | 99% | Get Out (2017) |
"Get Out" is scary enough, but it comes with some bonus nutritional value.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Feb 22, 2017
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| 2/4 | 35% | The Great Wall (2017) |
It may be a second-rate "Lord of the Rings," but at least it doesn't overstay its welcome.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2017
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| 3/4 | 42% | A Cure For Wellness (2017) |
So rich is Verbinski's imagery that it's transfixing to wander through his fortress of the macabre.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2017
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| 3/4 | 90% | The Lego Batman Movie (2017) |
The movie slams the comedy pedal to the floor, racing through so many visual and verbal gags that it begs to be watched more than once.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2017
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| 2/4 | 83% | A United Kingdom (2017) |
As its lead characters take a stance against prejudice, they're so noble and symbolically important that they're also two-dimensional and boring.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2017
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| 2/4 | 89% | John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) |
The first "John Wick" was taut and nasty, a potent slug of B-movie. This one is so enamored of its own extravagance that, on more than one occasion, I was reminded of "Zoolander 2."‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2017
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| 1/4 | 10% | Fifty Shades Darker (2017) |
There must be 50 films I'd rather cover. "Fifty Shades" will make you dumber.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2017
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| 2/4 | 43% | Gold (2017) |
"Gold" is designed less to tell a coherent story than it is to set up McConaughey for an Oscar nomination.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Jan 26, 2017
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| 3.5/4 | 84% | The Founder (2017) |
This is a thrilling, dynamic, often very funny movie full of fascinating granular detail - a great American story about a great American business.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Jan 18, 2017
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| 1/4 | 18% | Assassin's Creed (2016) |
Perhaps all of this will be thrilling for fans who've played it. The rest of us, I imagine, may come out of this film invigorated with a creed of our own: Avoid movies based on video games.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 20, 2016
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| 3/4 | 73% | Sing (2016) |
Who doesn't love a flamboyant, spandex-wearing swine with a Swedish accent who adores Lady Gaga? And there's a black sheep who is literally a black sheep.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 20, 2016
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| 3/4 | 92% | Hidden Figures (2017) |
"Hidden Figures" provides a fresh angle on how demeaning, demoralizing and crazy it was to live in an era of officially sanctioned white supremacy, one that people had grown used to pretending was perfectly normal.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 20, 2016
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| 2/4 | 84% | Silence (2017) |
"Silence" comes to us billed as 30 years in the making. Unfortunately, it plays like 30 years in the watching.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 20, 2016
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| 2/4 | 40% | Why Him? (2016) |
There is a passable 85-minute comedy in here, caked in an additional 30 minutes of flab. Call it a dad-bod comedy.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 20, 2016
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| 4/4 | 81% | Patriots Day (2017) |
A great American movie about the greatness of ordinary Americans, "Patriots Day" combines an electrifying manhunt with the intimacy and feel for character writer-director Peter Berg showed in his brilliant TV series "Friday Night Lights."‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 20, 2016
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| 1/4 | 13% | Collateral Beauty (2016) |
"Collateral Beauty" couldn't be more calculated and manipulative if it slapped you on the back, shoved a giant lollipop into your mouth and immediately tried to sell you a time share in Tampa.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 15, 2016
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| 2.5/4 | 93% | Fences (2016) |
Honorable, worthy and windy, "Fences" is essentially a PBS episode of "Great Performances" that is inflated for the big screen without ever quite belonging there.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 14, 2016
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| 85% | Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) |
The movie has a completely different, more sophisticated feel than most recent special effects-driven entries, including last year's so-so "The Force Awakens."‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 13, 2016
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| 1/4 | 75% | Miss Sloane (2016) |
Heavy-handed message movies don't come more harrumphing than "Miss Sloane," a clunky dramatization of the gun-control argument liberals still don't understand is being conducted solely among themselves.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2016
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| 2.5/4 | 92% | La La Land (2016) |
"La La Land" deserves credit for high spirits even if it's essentially a collection of glamorous throwback music videos for so-so songs.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2016
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| 2/4 | 89% | Jackie (2016) |
"Jackie" does more than a disservice - bordering on an insult - to its subject: It's so obtuse about the history of mores that it's the equivalent of showing Abraham Lincoln reading the Gettysburg Address off a teleprompter.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2016
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| 3/4 | 55% | Rules Don't Apply (2016) |
This is Beatty's first film in 15 years, a project he's been working on for 40 years, and it's immensely pleasing to see him in such fine form.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Nov 22, 2016
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| 2/4 | 23% | Bad Santa 2 (2016) |
A lot of this is funny, and a lot of it isn't.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Nov 21, 2016
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| 2/4 | 60% | Allied (2016) |
"Allied" is slow-footed and tepid, its plot twists dopey and soapy. I was rooting for things to get interesting, but I would have settled for a few surprises.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Nov 21, 2016
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| 3/4 | 85% | Lion (2016) |
This is a true story, and at times a gut-wrenching one, even if it necessarily sugarcoats some aspects of the plight of lost children.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Nov 21, 2016
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