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Kyle Smith
Tomatometer-approved critic
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Shayda (2023) |
Though its characters may seem refreshing because they don’t fit the Hollywood stereotype (wisecracking, tough, confident and cool), they are still just types who lack depth or shading. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Dec 01, 2023
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Silent Night (2023) |
The movie may sound ingenious -- Buster Keaton with bloodshed instead of slapstick -- but the gimmick goes stale quickly. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Dec 01, 2023
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The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023) |
This more than 2.5 hour film would rank as one of Hollywood’s sleepiest fantasy blockbusters of the century even without the pointless musical interludes, of which there are at least half a dozen. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 17, 2023
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May December (2023) |
In its refusal to flatten out the bumps of its situation to promote a slogan or a cause, it’s a model to all of those self-satisfied message movies that confuse repeating favored clichés with artistry and reduce character to talking points. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 17, 2023
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Dream Scenario (2023) |
Dream Scenario is such an imaginatively offbeat movie that it’s a shame it isn’t better. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 10, 2023
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What Happens Later (2023) |
The key is understanding that nobody makes it to that age without handling as much baggage as an airport. That’s what makes Ms. Ryan’s second directorial effort a surprising treat. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 06, 2023
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Priscilla (2023) |
Muted, restrained and delicate are not words that ordinarily come up in a discussion of Elvis Presley, which is why Sofia Coppola’s approach to the King is so unexpected and refreshing in Priscilla. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Nov 02, 2023
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The Killer (2023) |
The pretentious and the silly may consider themselves opposites, but frequently they are close companions. They certainly are in Andrew Kevin Walker’s screenplay. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Oct 27, 2023
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Butcher's Crossing (2022) |
The film’s hints of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Moby-Dick and The Old Man and the Sea lend some much-needed weight to what would otherwise be a pedestrian story of men fighting the elements and one another. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Oct 23, 2023
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Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) |
With its plodding story, its lambs vs. wolves characters, and its predictable beats, “Flower Moon” plays like the work of a much less sophisticated filmmaker. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Oct 19, 2023
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Anatomy of a Fall (2023) |
What you take away from Anatomy of a Fall is largely up to you, but it’s a thoroughly engrossing case study. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Oct 12, 2023
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The Royal Hotel (2023) |
While the subject has been the province of clichés and exaggeration, the movie’s points are well-crafted. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Oct 05, 2023
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The Exorcist: Believer (2023) |
Successfully stringing together shocking, disgusting and terrifying moments counts as a solid day’s work for most horror directors, and since The Exorcist: Believer achieves all that it’s competent enough. But I expected better from Mr. Green. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Oct 05, 2023
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The Creator (2023) |
Where The Creator fails is in its script, which after some imaginative world-building in the first act careens first into joyless derring-do and then into heavy-handed political allegory. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 29, 2023
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Mami Wata (2023) |
Cinema’s power to transport is vividly on display in Nigerian writer-director C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s eerie but beautiful visit to a rich and unfamiliar setting. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 29, 2023
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Flora and Son (2023) |
Heart and soul -- those two concepts beaten to death by lyricists -- suffuse every scene of this modest, perfect picture. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 21, 2023
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Dumb Money (2023) |
There’s a more interesting, less strident film under the surface, but it never manages to get out. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 21, 2023
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A Haunting in Venice (2023) |
I was at least interested in the spooky goings-on, even as I grew increasingly tired of Mr. Branagh’s labored attempts to twist an ordinary detective story into a horror flick. The film falls flat at the end, though - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 14, 2023
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Radical Wolfe (2023) |
Though the film can’t capture Wolfe’s writing, it does a public service in passing along its subject’s wisdom. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 14, 2023
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The Inventor (2023) |
The movie is marvelous, in a way: It’s enchanting to see Leonardo drifting along in a reverie as his sketches fill the screen and sweet Renaissance-style music decorates the soundtrack. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 14, 2023
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El Conde (2023) |
I longed for a satire that had more bite. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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Janet Planet (2023) |
Ms. Baker is a minimalist whose fascination with banality exceeds mine, but the film’s younger star, who has never acted before, is wonderfully natural. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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Fingernails (2023) |
The plot’s direction becomes evident early on, but it isn’t especially convincing and it proceeds there as though stuck in holiday traffic. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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Wildcat (2023) |
The film plods but Ms. Hawke shines. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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All of Us Strangers (2023) |
[A] monotonous experience with a hokey finish. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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The Holdovers (2023) |
There might be a sweet 90-minute movie in here somewhere. But as it stands, it’s impossible not to notice how many scenes limp along, how many have nothing to do with the previous one, and how many fizzle out. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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The Bikeriders (2023) |
The finest movie about motorcycle culture I’ve ever seen. Told with gusto à la Goodfellas, this richly evocative look at how a 1960s Midwestern biker club turned into a gang establishes “Elvis” Oscar nominee Austin Butler as a major movie star. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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The Pigeon Tunnel (2023) |
It’s a treat to learn that, before he died in 2020, the great novelist David Cornwell, aka John le Carré, provided Mr. Morris with an in-depth discussion of his deceit-steeped life and works. I was enthralled by every minute of it. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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Rustin (2023) |
Though George C. Wolfe’s movie gets bogged down in intramural squabbles among Rustin and the NAACP head Roy Wilkins (Chris Rock) and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (Jeffrey Wright), Mr. Domingo radiates charisma. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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Saltburn (2023) |
Barry Keoghan, who has an extraordinary talent for playing the awkward and askew, is absolute perfection. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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Daddio (2023) |
Both stars excel in their roles, and Ms. Hall’s astute script builds one unexpected yet plausible revelation atop another as the two develop a surprisingly intimate bond. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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The Zone of Interest (2023) |
The film is a chillingly bleak reminder that ordinary people can be complicit in the most barbaric acts. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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Poor Things (2023) |
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos works on a grand scale for the first time in this spectacularly entertaining, visually phenomenal, “Candide”-like feminist fable. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Sep 07, 2023
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The Equalizer 3 (2023) |
For those who can tolerate extreme violence, The Equalizer 3 is diverting enough. If the script is so-so, the beautiful Italian locations, Mr. Washington’s still-world-class charm and an eerie, frightening musical score by Marcelo Zarvos lift it. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 31, 2023
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The Mountain (2022) |
It’s unclear why this ordinary fellow, of all people, should be singled out for a singular experience, what that experience means, or what will become of him. Mr. Salvador’s delicately gorgeous images don’t cohere into any kind of defined thematic shape. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 31, 2023
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Golda (2023) |
Though the contours of its story are fairly standard statesman-at-war drama, “Golda” is unusually blunt about the internal devastation that comes with overseeing military operations. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 25, 2023
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Scrapper (2023) |
Watching these two mutually suspicious strangers stumble toward forming a family makes Scrapper an invigorating treat, like finding wild flowers bursting out of broken pavement. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 25, 2023
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Strays (2023) |
“Strays” is wildly inappropriate. It’s also wildly funny. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 19, 2023
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Blue Beetle (2023) |
Though it may have some novel elements, the franchise already feels tired, and isn’t much more promising than recent DC efforts “Black Adam” and “The Flash.” This beetle doesn’t have much juice. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 19, 2023
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The Adults (2023) |
A sad but affecting character study that has nothing like a plot but instead ruminates on loss, distrust and misunderstanding within a fraying family. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 19, 2023
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King Coal (2023) |
Filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon, a native of [West Virginia], has done a breathtakingly expressive job of capturing the strangeness, the beauty and the devastation of her homeland in the poetic, entrancing documentary King Coal. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 10, 2023
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Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story (2023) |
It would be content to be dubbed the third-best sports-underdog movie of the year. A general sense that things aren’t heading anywhere too exciting pervades this cinematic chunk of corporate synergy. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 10, 2023
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Dreamin' Wild (2022) |
Dreamin’ Wild suffers from the occasional corny moment, and some of the dialogue is too direct, tending to spell out what ought to be implied. But Mr. Affleck easily holds the film together with another captivating performance. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 03, 2023
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) |
Born in the 1980s, they’re now the Middle-Aged Mutant Ninja Turtles, but the surprisingly fresh feel of their latest movie proves that it’s possible for the not-so-young to achieve springy renewal. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 03, 2023
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The Beasts (2022) |
In balancing the two sides’ competing motives, Mr. Sorogoyen has fashioned not only a taut drama but a parable that is widely applicable across many cultures at this moment. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 01, 2023
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Haunted Mansion (2023) |
Like the Disney theme-park attraction upon which it’s based, at its best it’s entertaining in a quaint, late-’60s way, which makes it a pleasant summer surprise. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Aug 01, 2023
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Oppenheimer (2023) |
Mr. Nolan’s utterly enthralling film lasts three hours. But despite being as talky as a math seminar, it crackles, hurtles and whooshes, generating more suspense and excitement than anything found in the alleged climaxes of the recent superhero pictures. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 20, 2023
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Barbie (2023) |
Barbie is a template for how not to write a crowd-pleasing Hollywood feature. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach are accomplished indie filmmakers who make poor choices to flesh out these characters. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 18, 2023
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The Miracle Club (2023) |
The Miracle Club may not be a miraculous cinematic achievement but it does a fine job of dramatizing the healing power of forgiveness. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 14, 2023
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20 Days in Mariupol (2023) |
Grueling but vital, the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol takes us inside the atrocities visited on the strategically important Ukrainian port city in the early days of the Russian attack in 2022. - Wall Street Journal
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| Posted Jul 14, 2023
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