Ben Kenigsberg
Select another critic »For 1,131 reviews, this critic has graded:
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29% higher than the average critic
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7% same as the average critic
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64% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 9.1 points lower than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Ben Kenigsberg's Scores
- Movies
- TV
| Average review score: | 57 | |
|---|---|---|
| Highest review score: | Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 | |
| Lowest review score: | Date Movie | |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 395 out of 1131
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Mixed: 600 out of 1131
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Negative: 136 out of 1131
1131
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Die-hard Elvis fans will no doubt call some of the characterization in Priscilla slander, but part of the achievement here is that Elvis is not simply a monster. Fame has merely given him the superpower of not having to pay attention to anyone else.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 26, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
The Delinquents wants to live modestly. It’s less concerned with satisfying the expectations of its genre than in finding waggish ways to deviate from them. To the film’s thinking, narrative is only a construct.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 19, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
The most barbed aspect of the movie, a National Geographic release, is its acknowledgment of the role that National Geographic itself has played in exoticizing groups like the North Sentinelese.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 12, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
To their great credit, the Irish stars, often loosely clothed and soaked in sweat from the lack of air conditioning, have such presence and chemistry that it’s possible to believe in their intimacy — the pull and tangle of their bodies, their paroxysms of anguish — and even to pretend in the moment that they have full-fledged characters to play.- The New York Times
- Posted Oct 5, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Story Ave is marred by late revelations that appear designed, in a studio-notes sort of way, to clarify motivations. What’s unspoken — and what’s seen — does enough.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 29, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Dancing in the Dust shows Farhadi’s early confidence with using framing and cutting to create tension and parallels — skills that would serve him later.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 28, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Penn scores a coup by getting an on-camera interview with Zelensky on the first day of Russia’s invasion, and he films him on two additional occasions, in a video interview and in person on a later visit.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 18, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
An energetic, ingratiating dramatization of the GameStop stock craze of 2021.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 14, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Hello Dankness belongs to a venerable underground-film tradition of treating refracted entertainment as a mirror for society. No fan of Ken Jacobs’s “Star Spangled to Death,” Richard Kelly’s “Southland Tales” or Joe Dante’s “The Movie Orgy” could help but smile.- The New York Times
- Posted Sep 7, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
There’s something tough to resist about how “We Kill for Love” rescues works from the shadows.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 31, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
The familial and personal tensions give it something extra, elevating it beyond the standard historical documentary.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 24, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Dahan, who also wrote the screenplay, provides a serviceable overview of Veil’s accomplishments and ethical sense (partly shaped by her experiences in the camps), and of the barriers she overcame in misogynistic civic spheres. But her biography deserved a more considered treatment — and a considerably less heavy hand.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 17, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
An uncannily intimate portrait of a couple adapting their relationship to a disease that affects the mind, The Eternal Memory doesn’t aim to hold spectators’ hands.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 14, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
It’s more a grief triangle than a love triangle, and a late revelation alters its symmetry, erasing hard-won sympathy for one character.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 14, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
The director favors absurdist tableaus . . . placid camera moves counterpointed by brutality and shots held so long that it almost seems as if the filmmaker is the one being cruel. It’s a grimly effective strategy for a harsh but powerful movie.- The New York Times
- Posted Aug 3, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Not all the material is equally striking, but the film has an original and at times disarming approach to bearing witness.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 27, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
There’s little in “Underrated” that comes across as spontaneous. That may be because Nicks didn’t discover much that feels fresh. Or it may be that the project, like Curry today, doesn’t have anything to prove.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 20, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Calamy has by far the livelier part, and the energy dissipates whenever Magalie isn’t drawing attention to herself.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 13, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
This history has surely been well-covered elsewhere, but The League recounts it movingly.- The New York Times
- Posted Jul 6, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
In the end, the movie far too easily waves away the potential interpersonal damage Millie has caused.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 29, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
“Desperate Souls” convincingly argues that there’s no other time at which Joe Buck (Jon Voight) and Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman) could have become enduring movie characters, let alone have the tenderness between them depicted so subtly.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 22, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Sometimes wearying, sometimes pointlessly cryptic, Happer’s Comet nevertheless has a distinct way of viewing the world.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 15, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
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.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 7, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Haguel builds this brief but densely structured film in an interestingly modular, rhythmic way, thanks to a percussive score by Zoe Polanski and occasional, abrupt cuts to black following key scenes.- The New York Times
- Posted Jun 1, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
While this documentary draws on a standard tool kit of re-enactments and archival material, its best device is to use clips of Fox’s own movies as a counterpoint to his words, as if Fox weren’t playing fictional characters, but himself.- The New York Times
- Posted May 11, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
It is to the great credit of “Geographies of Solitude” that it never feels expository: It turns an ecology lesson, and an account of a noble, steadfast, single-minded pursuit, into art.- The New York Times
- Posted May 9, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Artistic values aren’t really the point, which is to meet Ukrainians and to see different corners of the bombarded country, where residents, Lévy suggests, have in many cases become inured to the sight of a bombed office building or to the sound of warning sirens.- The New York Times
- Posted May 4, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Those Who Remained leaves much unsaid about their pasts, sometimes at the risk of seeming coy (the word “Jewish” is never spoken). But Hajduk and Szoke are strong performers.- The New York Times
- Posted May 2, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
I Am Everything is content to be a thorough, energetic, largely chronological appraisal, more interested in saluting a musical legend who shook things up than in shaking up conventions itself.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 20, 2023
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- Ben Kenigsberg
Honorable Men: The Rise and Fall of Ehud Olmert is a rare instance of a two-hour documentary that should have been an eight- or 10-hour mini-series, because it would take that long to clarify all the issues it raises, then present persuasive evidence.- The New York Times
- Posted Apr 13, 2023
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