Ben Kenigsberg

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For 1,131 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 9.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Ben Kenigsberg's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989
Lowest review score: 0 Date Movie
Score distribution:
1131 movie reviews
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    The athleticism, physics and what one person calls the “bit of ballet” of the event are all stirring to witness.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    For anyone who has heard audio of Bundy, Kirby’s impersonation will sound chillingly close to the real killer’s deadened, yet at times disturbingly raffish, cadence. Wood is persuasive, too, although Kit Lesser’s script writes the character as a cliché.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Ben Kenigsberg
    While the pieces more or less fall into place, trying to solve the mysteries of Isabella may be missing the point.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Ben Kenigsberg
    The new movie is less cohesive than “Biggie and Tupac,” and Broomfield is not suited to documentaries with willing subjects.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Ben Kenigsberg
    What’s especially peculiar about the focus on Shulan is that, in other respects, The Outsider is an ensemble piece, distributing screen time among a half a dozen people planning for the museum’s opening.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    The Meaning of Hitler takes a multifaceted, often counterintuitive approach to examining the underpinnings of fascism.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    Misha and the Wolves plays best on first viewing, with its surprises intact.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    Drawing on an amazing video stockpile from the 1980s and ’90s, Whirlybird is an editing feat.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Ben Kenigsberg
    Kennebeck weaves uncertainty into the formal design, staging re-enactments mingled with original audio, for instance. The movie is a spoiler deathtrap, but the questions it raises are fascinating.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    If the convoluted history and corresponding formal conceits are difficult to absorb, that is part of the point.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 20 Ben Kenigsberg
    The atmosphere is thoroughly sleazy without being distinctive, and everything about the movie — the emotionless line readings, the half-baked back stories — exudes a terse functionality.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    It is a good primer, well illustrated.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    Muckraking documentaries often conclude with declined-to-comment disclaimers, but David Keene, a former N.R.A. president, is here. Toward the end, he chillingly cautions anyone who thinks the N.R.A. might disappear.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Ben Kenigsberg
    “Scenes” has its moments, as any film that sits Ryan and Corrigan opposite each other in a confessional would. But even special effects near the end play more like the response to a challenge than a spark of inspiration.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Ben Kenigsberg
    A natural ham, Grammer only amplifies what is grandiose and bogus in this material.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    Adapting research that is, by now, hardly breaking news, Forbes has some solid strategies for making the material cinematic.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Ben Kenigsberg
    The heart of this movie, directed by Eytan Rockaway, is the relationship between the writer and his subject. So it’s dismaying when Lansky turns out to include flashbacks, with John Magaro (“First Cow”) playing a much flatter version of the mobster as a young man.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Ben Kenigsberg
    Mitte, who played the son in “Breaking Bad” and himself has cerebral palsy, sells Mike’s tenacity, but the contrivances around him let him down.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 30 Ben Kenigsberg
    12 Mighty Orphans is a plodding football drama in which the characters talk to one another like folksy social workers.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    in covering the repercussions of the branching cases, A Crime on the Bayou shows how superficially straightforward, courageous acts — like refusing to plead guilty unjustly or defending the unjustly accused — are hard.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    the connections drawn in Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation are sufficiently instructive that watching and listening to these writers is also, in a way, like hearing one author in stereo.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 30 Ben Kenigsberg
    If it’s annoying to watch a follow-up snark at itself while implicitly snarking at viewers for buying tickets to a crass-ified Peter Rabbit, the conceit offers evidence that things might have been worse. At least Gluck doesn’t send Peter into space.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 10 Ben Kenigsberg
    Rogue Hostage is shoddy work.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Ben Kenigsberg
    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.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Ben Kenigsberg
    Some sports movies build to inspirational speeches; Under the Stadium Lights treats platitudes as the main event.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Ben Kenigsberg
    The nuances of Ali’s relationship with Louisville — where Ali faced discrimination as a Black American and controversy for his refusal to be drafted — tend to get lost in the celebration of civic pride.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 30 Ben Kenigsberg
    It’s possible that Baggio: The Divine Ponytail will resonate with soccer fans. But the protagonist’s reputed greatness has not made it to the screen.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Ben Kenigsberg
    While the plot is absorbing, the movie continually has characters voice their motivations, leaving little to subtext.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Ben Kenigsberg
    To make a movie that ponders the moral rot of an unjust system while under the gun of that unjust system is courageous and artistically potent.

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