Kyle Smith
Tomatometer-approved critic
| Publications: | New York Post, National Review, KyleSmithOnline.com |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 84% | Heartbreak Ridge (1986) |
What elevates the film are its dead-on verisimilitude about 1980s military culture, its lightly-worn insights into the larger issues at stake, and its precision-lathed dialogue, which is smart but never smarmy.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2018
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| 86% | Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) |
So Ant-Man and the Wasp is worthwhile, if not a must-see, appealing less for its thundering action than for its throwaway gags.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2018
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| 93% | Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) |
The M:I franchise is now 22 years old, but it isn't folding anytime soon.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jul 13, 2018
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| 31% | The Catcher Was A Spy (2018) |
Alas, as directed by Lewin and written by Robert Rodat, the biopic has the feel and the trappings of a thrown-together made-for-TV item: overbearing music, flat declarative dialogue, and surprisingly broad acting from its supporting players‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 21, 2018
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| 55% | Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012) |
That's where the brilliance of the film clicks in: What these characters are facing isn't all that different from the human prospect in general.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 20, 2018
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| 55% | Tag (2018) |
Fisher is completely wrong for her role, Hamm isn't a natural comic, and Johnson is unable to do anything with his trite, woefully underwritten stoner character. But worse than any of these is Jeremy Renner.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 14, 2018
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| 67% | Ocean's 8 (2018) |
Offended as I am by the Ocean's franchise's suggestion that women are only eight-elevenths as interesting as men, Ocean's Eight turns out to be breezy summer fun, a larkish and adroit heist movie with some well-executed tweaks to [the] formula.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 8, 2018
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| 51% | Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) |
The sequel to the hugely enjoyable Jurassic World has very little going for it beyond the usual special-effects wizardry.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jun 6, 2018
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| 92% | John McCain: For Whom the Bell Tolls (2018) |
If McCain might have been a poor president, though, he is surely a great man and a great character‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 31, 2018
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| 91% | The Elephant Man (1980) |
The theme is something of a self-pitying cliché, and yet Lynch takes such a novel path to it that the film has a hypnotic, transcendent force.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 22, 2018
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| 35% | Fahrenheit 451 (2018) |
To be so obviously off-base as Fahrenheit 451 looks right now takes some doing.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 18, 2018
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| 71% | Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) |
Things fall into place too easily. Intensity is in short supply. I dub this movie Soso.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 15, 2018
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| 95% | First Reformed (2018) |
It's an exacting film, substantial and suspenseful, one of the best of the year so far.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 15, 2018
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| 87% | Tully (2018) |
Tully may have its discomfiting aspects, but it's also a clever and entertaining engagement with common workaday weariness. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted May 3, 2018
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| 83% | Avengers: Infinity War (2018) |
My default feeling throughout was numbness bordering on fatigue.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Apr 27, 2018
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| 74% | Little Pink House (2018) |
The writer-director Courtney Moorehead Balaker is painstaking about the various tricks government uses to adapt the rule of law to its own desires.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Apr 19, 2018
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| 94% | Andre the Giant (2018) |
Director Jason Hehir finds the humanity in this superficially bestial figure.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Apr 13, 2018
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| 83% | Borg Vs. McEnroe (2018) |
So this isn't a great tennis film but rather a beguiling character study, a rumination on two Shakespearean types.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Apr 12, 2018
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| 92% | 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) |
As awe-inspiring as 2001 is in its own terms, it's only when you measure it against its peers that you can appreciate how much Kubrick achieved. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Apr 5, 2018
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| 80% | Chappaquiddick (2018) |
Some speculation is unavoidable in the screenplay, but what is known is damning, indeed infuriating, and seeing these events play out on screen lends them the capacity to shock us all over again.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Apr 5, 2018
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| 95% | A Quiet Place (2018) |
It's merely straight-up horror that drops you right into the situation... For me, that's not enough, not when the characters are as uninspiring as this lot.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Apr 5, 2018
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| 73% | Ready Player One (2018) |
Spielberg has a frighteningly plausible vision of our near future, but he lacks the courage to follow through on its implications.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Mar 30, 2018
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| 90% | Isle of Dogs (2018) |
Anderson's films tend to inspire coffee-table books. This one is a coffee-table book, fun to flip through or dip into but not ideal for reading from cover to cover.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Mar 20, 2018
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| 80% | Unsane (2018) |
Gently sliding each piece into place like a carpenter blandly assembling a guillotine, Soderbergh creates something close to the perfect horror movie for our time.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Mar 20, 2018
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| 96% | The Death of Stalin (2018) |
I admired its daring and its ambition, but though it's well worth your time, it doesn't entirely come off. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Mar 7, 2018
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| 89% | Midnighters (2018) |
Ideally, a story like this executes one sharp turn after another while keeping its wheels on the road of plausibility. The Ramsays have pulled off that feat with aplomb.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Mar 2, 2018
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| 92% | Good Time (2017) |
Pattinson's Connie is a classic anti-hero, repellent and attractive at the same time: You want him to keep finding an escape hatch, but you also want him to be caught in the end. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2018
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| 15% | Mute (2018) |
Netflix, being new to the game and eager to build relationships, is awfully indulgent with filmmakers, but a studio president would have told Jones to throw this half-baked script back in the oven.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2018
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| 87% | Annihilation (2018) |
Making movies steeped in vagueness these days is proving to be an excellent way to earn critical praise, but being artfully ambiguous strikes me as a way to cover for not being able to finish the job.‐ New York Post
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2018
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| 47% | Red Sparrow (2018) |
Red Sparrow turns out to be such a smartly crafted work that it's a shame it thought it had to be prurient to hold our attention.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2018
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| 100% | Chris Rock: Tamborine (2018) |
Repackaged, Rock's set could actually make for a Peterson-style self help guide - Rock's Rules for Life.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2018
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| 97% | Black Panther (2018) |
The bad guy is so brilliantly realized by Coogler's frequent collaborator Michael B. Jordan as Erik "Killmonger" Stevens, a former Navy SEAL gone bad. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 14, 2018
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| 24% | The 15:17 to Paris (2018) |
Eastwood and his screenwriter failed to build much of a movie around a few minutes of immense courage.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 8, 2018
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| 61% | A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2017) |
The sad-clown image may be a cliché, but there's nothing trite about this movie's handling of Kenney's story.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Feb 1, 2018
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| 84% | The Final Year (2018) |
To understand why Rhodes and Obama are so pleased with their foreign policy, you have to understand the way they think. The documentary is revealing about that.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 26, 2018
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| 54% | 12 Strong (2018) |
If anything, 12 Strong is most useful in its ability to remind us of that moral clarity we have lost in the years since 9/11, which already feels like a day from another, more serious and sober era. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Jan 25, 2018
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| 26% | Bright (2017) |
I'm not sure the racial allegory adds up to anything much, but give Bright credit for being unlike anything else the movies are serving up these days.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Dec 28, 2017
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| 77% | All the Money in the World (2017) |
I think only critics (who are predictably swooning over the film) and not ticket-buyers are interested in this kind of howitzer attack on the plutocracy, but we'll see. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Dec 28, 2017
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| 91% | Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) |
So many elements in Episode VIII are recycled that it could have been called Rerun of the Jedi.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Dec 12, 2017
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| 91% | Phantom Thread (2018) |
"Feel-good" is not the sensation Anderson seeks to induce; more like, "Feel inclined to burn down the movie theater."‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Dec 7, 2017
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| 87% | The Post (2018) |
But Streep is sublime. At the core of her genius as a performer - and she has earned the right to be called the greatest actress in Hollywood history - is that she keeps finding another approach, keeps surprising us.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Dec 6, 2017
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| 92% | The Shape of Water (2017) |
...the nicest way I can describe it is E.T., phone Harlequin.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 30, 2017
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| 85% | Darkest Hour (2017) |
Now it's Churchill's turn to be shrunken down to a more manageable size.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 30, 2017
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| 88% | Novitiate (2017) |
Novitiate is mostly an open-minded consideration of the devotion that makes some women choose a life of limits, as well as a useful illustration of why inherently conservative institutions are wise to be skeptical about change.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2017
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| 57% | Murder On The Orient Express (2017) |
They don't make 'em like Murder on the Orient Express any more, but when they do, by chance, make 'em, they should cut 'em into tiny pieces, place 'em in a hole, and set 'em on fire, possibly with a sign warning everyone not to sift through the ashes.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2017
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| 40% | Justice League (2017) |
We've seen bad DC movies and bad Marvel movies. But Justice League is something new: It's a bad DC movie and a bad Marvel movie at the same time.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 16, 2017
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| 92% | Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) |
The film gradually gets bored with its own grandstanding and winds up saying not much of anything.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Nov 8, 2017
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| 29% | Suburbicon (2017) |
Clooney's sixth film as a director ... is Suburbicon, a misbegotten mashup of camp, satire, noir, and social commentary based on a Joel and Ethan Coen script from last century. ‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Oct 26, 2017
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| 92% | Thor: Ragnarok (2017) |
As much fun as it is, Ragnarok, by treating everything as an opportunity for a goof, forfeits any chance of taking root in your imagination. Nothing matters here.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Oct 26, 2017
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| 55% | LBJ (2017) |
Harrelson gets close to the essence of this dynamic, irascible, essential figure, making the film a fine introduction to a president far more consequential than the man he succeeded.‐ National Review
Read More | Posted Oct 19, 2017
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