Stephen Holden

Stephen Holden
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications: New York Times
Critics' Group: New York Film Critics Circle

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
70% Dead Man (1995) When Dead Man is imagining the Wild West as an infernal landscape of death, it is furiously alive. When it tries to reflect on those images, it begins to nod out. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 8, 2018
No Score Yet Overacted, underwritten, murky (some scenes appear to have been filmed by candelight) and essentially implausible, it succeeds only in churning up an atmosphere of ghoulish sentimentality. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 5, 2018
62% The Zookeeper's Wife (2017) A polite but pallid recycling of Holocaust movie tropes with epic pretensions. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2017
58% Cezanne and I (Cézanne et Moi) (2017) "Cézanne et Moi" offers a pungent, demystifying portrait of the rowdy late-19th-century Parisian art world where famous painters and poets mingled and jostled for position at dinner parties and art openings filled with shoptalk, backbiting and intrigue. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2017
91% Frantz (2017) As if shedding a skin, the film shucks off its elegiac, white-gloved manners to explore a slippery realm of secrets, lies and moral uncertainty that eventually leads her to consult a priest for advice on how to proceed. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 14, 2017
94% Donald Cried (2017) The movie forcefully reminds you that the past you thought you had left behind still hurts, and that the old wounds you imagined had healed have simply been covered over. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 2, 2017
87% Apprentice (2017) At first "Apprentice" seems to be a basic revenge film in which Aiman stalks the man who killed his father. But it becomes psychologically more complex ... - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 2, 2017
88% Dying Laughing (2017) Pared down, this overcrowded movie could be a teaching tool in a comedy school. But as one comic after another recalls triumphs, misadventures and painful lessons learned, the stories become redundant. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 23, 2017
83% Punching Henry (2017) Mr. Phillips's self-deprecating humor is amusing but not funny enough to give him the edge he needs to rise up and conquer. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 23, 2017
92% From Nowhere (2017) It's one thing to read about roundups of suspected illegal immigrants; it's quite another to observe the anxiety of smart, talented teenagers trying to keep their cool while under the watchful gaze of immigration officials and the police. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2017
82% Lovesong (2017) Little is resolved, and it will leave you contemplating the mysteries of relationships. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2017
30% In Dubious Battle (2017) At least it means well. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2017
67% Ha-Sodot (The Secrets) (2007) The passionate performances of Ms. Bukstein, Ms. Shtamler and Ms. Ardant lend The Secrets enough emotional solidity to prevent it from entirely dissolving in the suds. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2017
100% Vince Giordano: There's a Future in the Past (2017) Digs deeply enough into Mr. Giordano's world to convey the drudgery and headaches of being a bandleader: juggling personnel, scheduling, dealing with a musicians' union and lugging around instruments. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 12, 2017
92% I, Daniel Blake (2017) "I, Daniel Blake" is a powerful return to form for Mr. Loach, the much-honored left-wing British filmmaker who is now 80 and is still in full command as a filmmaker and a social critic. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 22, 2016
31% Passengers (2016) "Passengers" increasingly succumbs to timidity and begins shrinking into a bland science-fiction adventure whose feats of daring and skill feel stale and secondhand. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 20, 2016
No Score Yet Short Stay (2016) Mr. Fendt's first feature film after three shorts, is a throwback to the early days of mumblecore. It views the world through Mike's eyes, and what he sees is unfailingly drab. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 15, 2016
42% All We Had (2016) A well-meaning but formulaic movie with not enough time to transcend predictable clichés. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 8, 2016
82% The Brand New Testament (Le tout nouveau testament) (2016) A surreal comedy whose endless visual imagination matches its conceptual wit. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 8, 2016
100% One More Time With Feeling (2016) Even in the throes of grief, Mr. Cave retains his mystique as a rock shaman. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 30, 2016
90% Bobby Sands: 66 Days (2016) Mr. Byrne's film is a sober, evenhanded recapitulation of Sands's imprisonment and death that places him in a historical context. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 29, 2016
76% Miss Sloane (2016) Partly because "Miss Sloane" is more a character study than a coherent political drama, it fumbles the issue it purports to address, and it eventually runs aground in a preposterous ending. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 24, 2016
55% Rules Don't Apply (2016) It may be hyperbolic to describe Warren Beatty's Howard Hughes movie, "Rules Don't Apply," as a screwball "Citizen Kane." But that's what it feels like. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 22, 2016
94% The Edge of Seventeen (2016) It can hold its own against "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," "Clueless" and other movies that have raised the bar on teenage movies. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 17, 2016
94% Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened... (2016) [Mr. Price's] passionate enthusiasm and sense of wonder animate every frame and leave you with a misty-eyed glow. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 17, 2016
95% Notes on Blindness (2016) The tone of the narration is so wrenchingly honest that the film never lapses into self-pity or relies on mystical platitudes. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 15, 2016
64% Lazy Eye (2016) [A] dull two-character talkfest that fancies itself a gay variation on a chapter of Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy. Oh, if only. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2016
100% Peter and the Farm (2016) The film evokes the natural world with a grand poetic awareness of the primal connectedness of things. From the rapturous to the gross, you can't have one without the other. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2016
81% Don't Call Me Son (Mãe Só Há Uma) (2016) The narrowness of its perspective and its relatively brief 82-minute length disappoint. Yet "Don't Call Me Son" still manages to be a fascinating, sympathetic portrait of a lost boy abruptly thrown to the wolves. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 1, 2016
94% Gimme Danger (2016) "Gimme Danger" is ... plenty entertaining and includes many moments of foaming-at-the-mouth musical fury. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 27, 2016
88% Portrait of a Garden (Portret van een tuin) (2016) As you watch its diligent overseers at work, the movie feels like a Zen meditation on time, nature and human activity. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 25, 2016
21% American Pastoral (2016) Not a desecration but a severe diminution of a complex literary masterpiece. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2016
47% King Cobra (2016) To say it feels reasonably authentic doesn't mean it's very good. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2016
51% The Accountant (2016) Who knows why Mr. Affleck, looking appropriately dead-eyed and miserable, committed himself to this laborious ultraviolent brain tease of a crime thriller. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 13, 2016
50% Mascots (2016) Although "Mascots" is neither as funny nor as satirically acute as its forerunner, it would be churlish to complain too loudly. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 12, 2016
90% Blue Jay (2016) Blue Jay is wistful and beautifully acted until the moment Amanda produces an unsent letter from Jim that she has discovered among the piles of old clothes and keepsakes. Nostalgia gives way to melodrama. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 6, 2016
95% Being 17 (Quand on a 17 ans) (2016) A touching drama about raging hormones, bullying and sexual awakening - and the strongest film in many years by the post-New Wave French director André Téchiné. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 6, 2016
81% Girl Asleep (2016) As it seesaws between Greta's conscious and unconscious minds, the movie begins to feel like a waking dream. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 29, 2016
82% Denial (2016) You wonder if the material would have been more effective as a courtroom procedural adapted for the stage. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 29, 2016
76% Chronic (2016) "Chronic" dramatizes the caregiver's paradoxical relationships to his charges with an acuity that can make it almost unbearable to watch. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 22, 2016
47% The Free World (2016) A movie that abruptly changes direction as it goes along while taking shortcuts that leave its characters underdeveloped and crucial plot elements barely fleshed out. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 22, 2016
91% Miss Stevens (2016) Ms. Rabe's beautifully balanced performance reminds you that people never really grow up. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 15, 2016
78% Bridget Jones's Baby (2016) Despite an abundance of mostly tepid jokes that keeps the comedic tone at a quiet simmer, "Bridget Jones's Baby" doesn't jell. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 14, 2016
100% As I Open My Eyes (À peine j'ouvre les yeux) (2016) "As I Open My Eyes" is best when it observes the fraught but loving mother-daughter relationship between Hayet and Farah. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2016
87% Kicks (2016) The characters have enough dimension to avoid appearing to be symbols of a social tragedy, and the movie's relative gentleness makes the harsher realities of Brandon's world all the more distressing. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2016
70% White Girl (2016) We're all familiar with the term contact high, but not with its antithesis. Because it is so believable, "White Girl" is a contact bummer that's hard to shake. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 1, 2016
61% The Light Between Oceans (2016) The film's solemn visual rhythms exert an almost hypnotic spell that for a time gives a heroic dimension to a story as emotionally fraught as a vintage Bette Davis melodrama. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 1, 2016
84% Fatima (2016) A small miracle of a film from the French director Philippe Faucon. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 25, 2016
83% Kate Plays Christine (2016) Muses intriguingly about the boundaries between actors playing themselves and fictional characters in front of a camera. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 23, 2016
25% Ben-Hur (2016) It needed a star like the Russell Crowe of "Gladiator" to provide dramatic heft. What is "Ben-Hur" without a platform of moral grandeur? Not much. - New York Times EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 18, 2016