Ben Kenigsberg

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The A.V. Club, The New York Times, Time Out, Time Out London, Variety, Village Voice
For 1,126 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 29% higher than the average critic
  • 7% same as the average critic
  • 64% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Ben Kenigsberg's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 The Girl and the Spider
Lowest review score: 0 Date Movie
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 395 out of 1126
  2. Mixed: 595 out of 1126
  3. Negative: 136 out of 1126
1126 movie reviews
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    The Meaning of Hitler
    The Meaning of Hitler takes a multifaceted, often counterintuitive approach to examining the underpinnings of fascism.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Ben Kenigsberg
    Hail Satan?
    Wry and illuminating.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    Red Penguins
    If Red Penguins doesn’t always strike a satisfying balance between the glib and the grim, the broader topic — the commercialization of hockey — affords it a novel lens on Russia’s economic transition.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    Tito and the Birds
    The adventure plot in the Brazilian feature Tito and the Birds, directed by Gustavo Steinberg, Gabriel Bitar, and André Catoto, is no great shakes — it wouldn’t be out of place on a Saturday-morning cartoon — but visually, the movie leaves room for the viewer to synthesize, and to dream.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)
    Squaring the Circle is slick and enjoyable enough, but it is also, like the company it chronicles, something of a boutique item, and the reminiscences grow faintly monotonous after a while.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 67 Ben Kenigsberg
    Tim's Vermeer
    This is all fascinating for art-history buffs, and while a documentary is the ideal vehicle for illustrating Jenison’s process, Tim’s Vermeer plays more like an extended PBS special than it does a movie.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    Pray Away
    The harms conversion therapy causes, and the tactics it uses, aren’t news at this point, and Pray Away is more interesting when it focuses on how most of its subjects eventually embraced gay and bisexual identities despite having formerly been so public in their homophobia. Some shifts weren’t long ago.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    Holler
    Riegel has said that Ruth’s story was inspired by her own challenges leaving the area. Even the medium — Super 16-millimeter film, in the era of digital — adds to the ambience of rusting, abandoned machinery.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Ben Kenigsberg
    Cold Case Hammarskjöld
    Cold Case Hammarskjold is finally poised unsatisfyingly between an explosive exposé and a self-conscious put-on. Even a full acceptance of its assertions doesn’t do much to illuminate Hammarskjold’s death.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Ben Kenigsberg
    American Symphony
    While some of the backstage material has an official feel (Batiste and Jaouad are listed among the many executive producers, along with Barack and Michelle Obama), the documentary does not shy from showing private moments.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    How to Blow Up a Pipeline
    How to Blow Up a Pipeline is at its best when it functions as a kind of roughed-up caper movie; it has a degree of suspense and efficiency that are becoming all too rare in the mainstream.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 67 Ben Kenigsberg
    Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?
    Basically, Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? amounts to two men having a mellow discussion about the nature of ideas; it’s formally limited, yet wide-ranging in its material and ambitions. Call it a case of cognitive dissonance.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    For Ahkeem
    While the film ends at a logical stopping point, it feels incomplete. It probably could have used a few more years of filming.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    Path of Blood
    Watching Path of Blood is frequently a queasy experience, and given the bewildering array of names and complications, not always an illuminating one. But it commands attention as an object lesson in the banality of evil.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Ben Kenigsberg
    L for Leisure
    It is possible to admire Mr. Kalman and Ms. Horn’s ambition and at the same time have no idea what they were trying to achieve.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    North Circular
    Not all the material is equally striking, but the film has an original and at times disarming approach to bearing witness.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    This Is Congo
    There is much to admire here, but the sheer scope of the subject matter might be even better served by the capaciousness of a mini-series.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    The Order
    The movie is more effective as a grim, involving cop thriller than it is as an ostensible statement on the Order’s reverberations in the present.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    The Settlers
    The real achievement here is in going beyond the buzzwords of newscasts and talking points to convey a sense of what’s happening on the ground — and to give it a sense of urgency.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Ben Kenigsberg
    Joseph Pulitzer: Voice of the People
    While there are amazing anecdotes here, there is little to catch the eye or ear.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Ben Kenigsberg
    Sauvage / Wild
    It’s tough to build a character study around an unconvincing character.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    Diamond Tongues
    The prickly tone is a difficult balancing act, and Diamond Tongues may settle for being a softer-hearted film than its most cynical scenes portend. But it has a palpable affection for Toronto’s cultural scene and for Ms. Goldstein.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Ben Kenigsberg
    Junction 48
    Junction 48 is more than a mere crowd-pleaser, and it refuses easy catharsis, ending with a cliffhanger. But since this is a movie about deciding to act, maybe that’s the perfect note.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    David Lynch: The Art Life
    Mostly, the documentary is a fond portrait of how one man nurtured his artistic temperament and risked being misunderstood — sometimes by his own family.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Ben Kenigsberg
    The Son of Joseph
    The Son of Joseph can be trying in its whimsy, yet it builds to a lovely finale that evokes the Bible, the French Resistance and the surreal.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    Separated
    If Separated is likely too straightforward — too much of a conventional issue documentary — to be remembered as one of Morris’s richest films, it is not as if the director has abandoned his sense of profound absurdity.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Ben Kenigsberg
    Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost
    At least two ideas running through “Nothing Is Lost,” which is streaming on Apple TV, and which takes its title from a line in a play that Anne wrote, give it a complexity that usually eludes profile-of-an-artist documentaries.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness
    This affectionate documentary is more of a bonbon for longtime fans than an entryway for a broader audience.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    Spiral
    Spiral is best in smaller-bore moments, showing how everyday lives are affected by prejudice.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 40 Ben Kenigsberg
    The Baltimorons
    The Baltimorons aims for bittersweet rather than wacky. Didi is lonely; Cliff struggles with sobriety. And while the film has clear affection for its Baltimore locations (it’s dedicated to the workers killed when the Key Bridge collapsed in 2024), considerably less thought has gone into creating convincing situations for those backdrops.
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