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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    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    A United Kingdom
    On the whole, Asante’s movie, though crammed with the white man’s treachery, has a dulled and inoffensive sheen, and cannot match the visual rigor that Ava DuVernay brought to “Selma.”
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Frantz
    As Adrien, Pierre Niney is extraordinary to behold: pale, tapered, and flickering, like a candle made flesh.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Graduation
    Graduation, written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, is a mirthless farce. All that can go wrong does go wrong, and the process is both compelling and close to unwatchable.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    What We Do in the Shadows
    It was with both joy and mystification, therefore, that I found myself cackling at What We Do in the Shadows like a witch with a helium balloon.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Wonderstruck
    The result is itself a kind of diorama: exquisitely detailed, assembled with infinite care, but lacking the breath of life.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Shall We Kiss?
    The result is that Shall We Kiss? puts its viewers in a bind worthy of the lovers themselves: should we organize a Socratic symposium on the issues raised by the film, or hurl our popcorn violently at the screen?
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Louder Than Bombs
    But Byrne, who has lacked good movie roles of late, is marvellously grave.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    North Country
    You cannot help being stirred by the reach and depth, the constant rebuffs to sloppiness, of a strong ensemble.
    • 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
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    A Master Builder
    A Master Builder is a bold endeavor, thriftily made, and there is muscle and volume in the performances; but had Demme hung back, and kept things cooler and quieter, the mastery of what Ibsen built, and the agon of his extraordinary hero, would have cast a more looming shadow. [4 Aug. 2014, p.75]
    • The New Yorker
      • Posted Aug 1, 2014
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    A Single Man
    The film is slowed by its own beauty, but it is salvaged by two majestic scenes.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Man on the Train
    Leconte lacks the austerity to complete a film in which nothing much occurs. And so, with some reluctance, we are bustled toward a climax. [12 May 2003, p. 82]
    • The New Yorker
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Permission
    Almost everything about Permission feels flighty and parochial when laid beside the fateful mire of “Loveless,” yet Hall, in particular, lends a sober grace to the erotic roundelay.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Saint Omer
    Diop’s work has been in documentary; now we have her first feature, Saint Omer... which retains the attentiveness—the patient ardor—of a good documentary.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    A Woman Is a Woman
    More than forty years have passed since A Woman Is a Woman won the Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival for "originality, youth, audacity, impertinence." (When did you last see a movie that might warrant such an award?) [26 May 2003, p. 102]
    • The New Yorker
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Blue Room
    The great virtue of the movie is its length: a fat-free seventy-six minutes.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Early Man
    The stage of Early Man, though, is stuffed with men and women — on the Neanderthal spectrum, it’s true, but propelled by needs and greeds much like our own — whereas the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air are reduced to the role of extras. It pains me to say so, but Hognob is not enough.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Hoax
    Their kinship (Gere/Molina)--wholly unsexual yet lit, like that of Martin and Lewis, with an exasperated love--is the beacon of the movie, and it just about survives the lengthening shadows of the later scenes.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb
    The audience for Turn Every Page, I’d guess, will be a medley of Freudians, students of political muscle, and New Yorkers—each bearing a copy of “The Power Broker,” Caro’s 1974 book on Robert Moses, whittled down by Gottlieb to the size of a mere warehouse.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Volver
    Yet the film, against my wishes, left me unmoved.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Charlie Wilson's War
    It packs political machination, helicopter gunships, single-malt whiskey, Las Vegas, Islamabad, naked butts, and eight years of war. The film, adapted from George Crile’s book, doesn’t always work, but it sure offers value for money.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Killers of the Flower Moon
    Although its moral ambition is to honor the tribulations of an Indigenous people, it keeps getting pulled back into the orbit—emotional, social, and eventually legal—of white men.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    SPECTRE
    Anyone who has tamped down that youthful yen for excitement should stay away. But the craving for grownup glamour, however foolish, demands equal satisfaction, and Spectre, in providing it, acquires a throb of mystery that cannot be explained by mere plot.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Triplets of Belleville
    Such is the hazard of the cartoon: as a form, it thrives on elongation and excess, yet, within its vortices and crannies, who knows what moldy prejudice can breed? [1 December 2003, p. 118]
    • The New Yorker
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Truth
    Despite these shortfalls, there’s much to relish here. To play a guy like Hank, who must resign himself to being second or fourth fiddle, is a tricky task, but Hawke pulls it off in the quiet style that he has made his own.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Lobster
    The Lobster is more than a satire on the dating game. It digs deeper, needling at the status of our most tender emotions.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
    With no narrator to shepherd us along, the movie feels noisy and restless. The period is revived by a wealth of songs on the soundtrack, and by the sleek and succulent Panther look.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
    You should, nonetheless, make a date to watch Mangold’s film, and, if you have to duck out after an hour because you’ve left something in the oven, no matter.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Booksellers
    Do not be misled by the comic charm of this film. It’s a ghost story, brooded over by the rustling wraiths of bookstores dead and gone.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Attenberg
    The father's resignation to that fate is, on balance, the most compelling aspect of the film, and I will not readily forget the sight of him staring out over the town and mourning the long history of his homeland. "We built an industrial colony on top of sheep pens," he says, "and thought we were making a revolution." Maybe Attenberg is topical, after all.
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