Anthony Lane

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The New Yorker
For 1,119 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 30% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 68% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Anthony Lane's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 Amour
Lowest review score: 0 The Da Vinci Code
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 614 out of 1119
  2. Mixed: 443 out of 1119
  3. Negative: 62 out of 1119
1119 movie reviews
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    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Saddest Music in the World
    I am casting no aspersions on the director when I say that The Saddest Music in the World is a work of manic depression. The mania is there in the frenzied editing, the inability to concentrate on a detail for more than a few seconds; and the depression is there in the forcible lowering of spirits. [10 May 2004, p. 107]
    • The New Yorker
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Mr. Holmes
    In truth, Mr. Holmes is not Holmesian at all. It is Jamesian, as shown by a wonderful encounter between Kelmot and Holmes — an attraction of opposites, you might say — on a garden bench.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Anthony Lane
    Last Orders
    Never quite shrugs off its literary manners. [18 & 25 Feb 2002, p. 200]
    • The New Yorker
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Anthony Lane
    Road to Nowhere
    Road to Nowhere is a dead end. Most of the performances are carved from balsa wood. [13 & 20 June 2011, p. 129]
    • The New Yorker
      • Posted Jun 6, 2011
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    High Life
    Denis delves into the group psychology of a beleaguered crew, housed in an interplanetary rust bucket. Her devotees will claim, correctly, that her movie blooms with provocative ideas.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Anthony Lane
    2046
    As for the title, well, it made me think of Thomas Carlyle's wife, who read Browning's long poem "Sordello," enjoyed it, but still couldn't work out whether Sordello was a man, a city, or a book. So it is with 2046. A place? A date? A hotel room? A bar tab? You tell me.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Anthony Lane
    A Quiet Passion
    To be fair, A Quiet Passion is wittier, in its early stretches, than anyone might have foreseen, but it’s when the door closes, and the Dickinsons are alone with their trepidations, that the movie draws near to its rightful severity.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 10 Anthony Lane
    The Women
    The funniest thing about The Women is that Mick Jagger is one of the producers.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    The Personal History of David Copperfield
    To a remarkable extent, the new movie is full of cheer. It feels boisterous, bustling, and, at times, perilously close to a romp.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Anthony Lane
    Clemency
    The movie’s energies drop perceptibly in the middle section; lines of dialogue are recited at a sluggish rate, with lengthy pauses, as if the pressure of the presiding theme had numbed the characters’ tongues.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Town
    Affleck the movie director makes you truly, badly want his bunch of ne'er-do-wells to pull off their heists without a scratch, and you can't ask for much more than that. [20 Sept. 2010, p. 120]
    • The New Yorker
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Big Red One
    Its kitschy grabs at the surreal--the scene in a lunatic asylum, where German troops are billeted, manages to be at once implausible and offensive--that blocks any close engagement with the drama. That said, you must see this film for one unstoppable reason, and that is Lee Marvin.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Nope
    Like “Get Out” and “Us,” it is another resourceful meditation on fear and wonder—errant at times, yet strewn with frights and ever alert to the threat of racial hostility.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Rescue Dawn
    There is honor, boldness, and grip in the new movie, but other directors can deliver those. Werner Herzog is the last great hallucinator in cinema, so why break the spell?
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Anthony Lane
    Queen of Earth
    For some viewers, the acidity level of Perry’s movie will be too high to stomach. For others — anyone who thinks that there are too many warm hugs in Strindberg, for example — Queen of Earth awaits.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Paddington
    The writer and director, Paul King, scatters the tale with handfuls of eccentric charm, first in the forest and then in the home of the Browns. At one point, borrowing freely from Wes Anderson, he frames it as a living doll’s house, with each member of the family hard at work or play in a different room.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Corpus Christi
    Whenever the movie strays from its hero, you feel oddly impatient to get back to him, to watch his cravings do battle with his conscience, and to wonder anew what’s burning in his blue-green gaze.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Anthony Lane
    Best of Enemies
    For a better reckoning of 1968, you need a better writer — Norman Mailer, unloved by Buckley and Vidal alike, whose “Miami and the Siege of Chicago” covered the same events. Next to his fervid look at the sinews of power, as they sweat and flex, Best of Enemies is barely more than a skit.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Monty Python's Life of Brian
    For all its scruffiness, the lurching strike-rate of its gags, and the unmistakable smell of amateur dramatics given off by its repertory of rotating players with their stick-on Ted Nugent beards, Life of Brian jitters with good will. [3 May 2004, p. 110]
    • The New Yorker
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    Personal Shopper
    The over-all effect is as taut with tangible evidence as a detective story.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Anthony Lane
    The Jungle Book
    Of the two attempts, I still prefer the one from my childhood.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    While We're Young
    That is what I admire in While We’re Young; it shows a director not so much mooning over the past, with regret for faded powers, as probing his own obsessions and the limits of his style.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    On the Run
    What we glean from Belvaux's trilogy is the reassurance (rare on film, with its terror of inattention) that people are both important and unimportant, and that heroes and leading ladies, in life as in art, can fade into extras before our eyes. [Note: From a review of the entire trilogy.] [2 February 2004, p.94]
    • The New Yorker
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    A Single Man
    The film is slowed by its own beauty, but it is salvaged by two majestic scenes.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Nightingale
    The movie simmers with a longing for revenge, frequently boiling over, and the foe is not just Hawkins but the colonialist order for which he stands: barbarism, thinly disguised as civilization. Many scenes feel punishingly hard to watch.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    Caesar Must Die
    The result feels, like Shakespeare's play, at once ancient and dangerously new.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Anthony Lane
    Maestro
    Spurning a fruitless bid at comprehensiveness, Cooper has conjured something as restless and as headlong as his subject.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Anthony Lane
    Relic
    It’s a hell of a performance by Robyn Nevin, who’s had a long and commanding career on the Australian stage.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Anthony Lane
    Chi-Raq
    The topic is so grave, and the corralling of ancient Greek comedy so audacious, that you long for Chi-Raq to succeed. Sad to report, it’s an awkward affair, stringing out its tearful scenes of mourning, and going wildly astray with its lurches into farce.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Calvary
    The tension of Calvary is fitful at best, and much of the movie trips into silliness, but in Brendan Gleeson -- in his proud bearing and his lamenting gaze -- we see the plight of the lonely believer in a world beyond belief. [4 Aug.2014, p.74]
    • The New Yorker
      • Posted Aug 1, 2014
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