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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    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Anthony Lane
    The Kid with a Bike
    The real reason to see The Kid with a Bike is that it offers something changelessly rare and difficult: a credible portrait of goodness. [19 March 2012, p.90]
    • The New Yorker
      • Posted Mar 12, 2012
    • 87 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Tarnation
    The movie is a daunting blend of head trip, cinéma vérité, music video, and auto-therapy.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Anthony Lane
    The Shape of Water
    The strangest thing about The Shape of Water, which should be one almighty mess, is that it succeeds. The streams of story converge, and, as in any good fairy tale, that which is deemed ugly and unworthy, by a myopic world, is revealed to be a pearl beyond price.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    Caché (Hidden)
    To some degree, “Hidden” is a cat-and-mouse thriller, the only problem being that mouse and cat insist on swapping roles.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    Bisbee '17
    Their amateur restaging of the deportation is at the core of Greene’s movie, which grows into an adventurous exercise in drama-documentary; what could have seemed arch or awkward is handled with grace and tact, and there is even a song. Not that all hurts are healed. The rifts and scars, like those in the landscape, are here to stay.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    My Golden Days
    Oddly, the effect of that imbalance is not just to heighten the charm of the film but to render it more credible: the course of true memory never did run smooth.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Anthony Lane
    The Remains of the Day
    This Merchant-Ivory production strains so hard to portray dignified restraint that it almost seizes up with good manners.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    Anatomy of a Fall
    This is less of a courtroom drama, I reckon, and more of a discordant, highly strung character clash with legal bells and whistles tacked on.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    The Babadook
    No male director would have put so much as a toe inside this trouble zone, although Kent does borrow a helpful domestic hint from “Shaun of the Dead”: rather than vanquish our worst nightmare, why not tame it, lock it away, and hope?
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Little Men
    The best reason to watch Little Men is Michael Barbieri, who musters a blend of soulfulness and aggression that would be remarkable at any age.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 40 Anthony Lane
    The Kids Are All Right
    There are not only glancing moments but whole sequences in this movie when the agony of social embarrassment makes you want to haul the characters to their feet and slap them in the chops.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Anthony Lane
    Cave of Forgotten Dreams
    The eye must travel not merely through the earth's crust but backward in time, as well. Indeed, you could argue that Herzog has succeeded in making the world's first movie in 4-D. [2 May 2011, p. 88]
    • The New Yorker
      • Posted May 7, 2011
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Anthony Lane
    Loveless
    Why is it, then, that Loveless, which has been nominated for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards, should be so much more gripping than grim? One reason is that, for all the deadened souls who throng the tale, the telling could not be more alive.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Anthony Lane
    Of Gods and Men
    This movie can hardly help being beautiful, in such a rarefied domain, but what matters is that it never looks merely beautiful. [28 Feb. 2011, p. 81]
    • The New Yorker
      • Posted Feb 25, 2011
    • 53 Metascore
    • 30 Anthony Lane
    Sex and the City
    Made me laugh precisely once, as a magazine editor let fly with a Diane Arbus gag. It is no coincidence that she is played by Candice Bergen, who gets just the one scene, but who is nonetheless the only bona-fide movie star on show.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Anthony Lane
    The Great Beauty
    Henry James, who loved the place, accused himself of "making a mere Rome of words, talking of a Rome of my own which was no Rome of reality." Sorrentino has made a Rome of images, and taken the same risk. But it was worth it. [25 Nov. 2013, p.134]
    • The New Yorker
      • Posted Nov 22, 2013
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Happening
    Far more valuable is the urgency with which the movie stares ahead, as it were, at any future legislation that would incite women to take such dire measures once again.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Big Sick
    Although The Big Sick breaks new ground as it delves into cultural conflicts, there are patches of the drama that give you pause.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Argo
    Finally, a voice-over from Jimmy Carter, lauding the efforts of those involved. All this is, frankly, uncool - a pity, because the rest of Argo feels clever, taut, and restrained.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Anthony Lane
    The Master
    On reflection, and despite these cavils, we should bow to The Master, because it gives us so much to revere, starting with the image that opens the film and recurs right up to the end-the turbid, blue-white wake of a ship. There goes the past, receding and not always redeemable, and here comes the future, waiting to churn us up.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Wild Pear Tree
    You find yourself gradually engulfed, as if by rising waters, and it seems only fair to report that The Wild Pear Tree lasts for more than three hours.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    First Reformed
    Nobody, not even a hard-core Schrader fan, could claim that First Reformed makes for easy listening, or viewing. If anything, it outstrips its predecessors in severity.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    Baby Driver
    The good news is that, although Baby Driver is not much of a movie, it is an excellent music video — a club sandwich for the senses, lavishly layered with more than thirty songs.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Anthony Lane
    The Double Life of Veronique
    The film is filled to dazzling with the vitreous and the translucent; the flaw running down the window of a Polish train seems, in some mystifying way, as momentous as a rift in space-time. We see through a glass darkly, and often confusingly, but at least we see.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Anthony Lane
    Copycat
    The plot would seem more ingenious if the movie itself didn't copy so many other thrillers (notably "The Silence of the Lambs"), and if it weren't so easy to spot every twist half an hour in advance.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    The Last Seduction
    The movie has a hard forties snap to it -- lust is a weapon and love is a letdown.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    The Green Knight
    The Green Knight wields a peculiar magic, the reason being that Lowery—as he showed in A Ghost Story (2017), which ranged with ease over centuries—is consumed by cinema’s capacity to measure and manipulate time.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    The Salesman
    What follows, in the final half hour of the movie, is an astounding chamber piece, worthy of Strindberg, with the husband, the wife, and her aggressor stuck in a dance of doubt and death. With every shot, our sympathies flicker and tilt.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 70 Anthony Lane
    West Side Story
    Spielberg’s panache and command are evident in every nook of this handsome film. Yet somehow it feels dutiful, and the duty weighs it down (more so, unexpectedly, than was the case with Lincoln, from 2012, which Kushner also wrote). Homage to one classic is paid in the strenuous bid to become another.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Anthony Lane
    The Edge of Heaven
    I prefer to think of Akin, however, not as a forger of patterns but as an ironist who understands that bad luck is a crucible, in the heat of which we are tested, burned away, or occasionally transformed. The Edge of Heaven is about something more exasperating than crossed paths; it is about paths that almost cross but don't, and the tragedy of the near-miss.
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