Benjamin Lee

Select another critic »
The Guardian
For 618 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 28% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 70% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 12.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Benjamin Lee's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 53
Highest review score: 100 Moonlight
Lowest review score: 20 The Girl in the Photographs
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 104 out of 618
  2. Mixed: 470 out of 618
  3. Negative: 44 out of 618
618 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Ocean's 8
    The lifeless direction, the unrefined script, the underwhelming cameos, the distinct lack of fizz – there’s a slapdash nature to the assembly of Ocean’s 8 that makes it feel like the result of a rushed, often careless process. It’s made watchable thanks to the cast but star power alone cannot mask creative inadequacy. Stealing a diamond necklace is bad but wasting an opportunity like this is unforgivable.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Land
    There’s just not enough here to make it a worthwhile retread through familiar territory, proof of Wright’s basic competency as a director but nothing more.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Gorge
    There are touches of above-average streaming craft here, distancing it from the standard Netflix equivalent – an indistinctive yet solid score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, some grand cinematography from Guillermo del Toro fave Dan Laustsen – but the film bears too much of that synthetic Apple feel, as if it was primarily made to show off the abilities of a new iPhone.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Vacation Friends
    The base ingredients are here – a charming, comically adept cast, a fun culture clash set-up, idyllic scenery! – but they’re carelessly tossed together rather than combined with any thought, care or even slickness.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Secret Scripture
    Sheridan’s take on the material is solidly made but sorely lacking in subtlety.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    No Exit
    It’s an airport novel that’s now an airplane movie.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Sometimes I Think About Dying
    Ridley though is consistent and sort of revelatory, an actor who has struggled to find her footing post-franchise as is often the case, delivering a surprisingly nuanced and deeply felt performance.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Last Christmas
    It might look the part, with the director Paul Feig successfully capturing the glossy, tourist-friendly London one would crave from such a film, but the script feels like a rejected first draft with unfunny filler one-liners and a scrappy, ill-thought through narrative. It’s a beautifully wrapped Christmas gift that’s filled with rotten turkey leftovers.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Spoiler Alert
    Ineffective leading duo and rote script hamper otherwise affecting true story of a couple tackling terminal illness
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    undertone
    There’s a swirl of creepy noises in A24’s new hyped-up horror Undertone – screaming, gargling, singing, banging – but nothing is quite loud enough to drown out the swirl of films it’s cribbing from.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Mea Culpa
    The stupidity of it all is certainly diverting but it’s all too scattershot and at times stiflingly portentous to cross over into pure camp.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Back in Action
    As it stands, the mostly rather rote Back in Action is best seen as just an excuse to watch Diaz act again, and she’s as charming as she always has been, especially alongside Foxx, with whom she shares a comfortable chemistry.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Cha Cha Real Smooth
    At a young age, Raiff still remains an exciting up-and-coming film-maker of note and even in his sophomoric slump, there’s enough, coupled with his standout debut, to suggest that better things will come. Hopefully better titles too.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Mortal Kombat II
    It all has the distinctly cheap whiff of something that should have gone direct to the small screen – hammy acting, stilted dialogue, chintzy effects, tinny score, Halloween costumes – but without the raucous fun that should come with it.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    A Merry Little Ex-Mas
    Silverstone’s easy charisma, and initial lived-in chemistry with Hudson, can’t overcome a script that isn’t witty or involving enough for us to care about another milquetoast Netflix family frantically hugging and grinning to show how close they are.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Merry Gentlemen
    The stakes here are too low and so is the entertainment value.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Night Teeth
    Night Teeth isn’t quite as dreadful as its truly dreadful title but it’s just as forgettable.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    False Positive
    As the film crashes to a conclusion, early promise fading away, the film has the feeling of a valiant, but misguided, post-Get Out attempt to infuse social commentary within the framework of well-worn genre territory, aiming high but landing low.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Where'd You Go, Bernadette
    It’s the kind of adaptation that is so misjudged that you end up struggling to see why anyone thought it a good idea to adapt in the first place.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Ready or Not
    As a comedy, it’s simply not funny and as a horror, it works better in pieces but not with the consistency a film set over one night would require.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Dolittle
    It’s ultimately a miracle that despite the tortured production process, Dolittle can most generously be described as passable for young, undiscerning viewers. It won’t charm or amuse you particularly but it’s not a catastrophe, the highest praise I can muster.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    7500
    For fans of joyless screaming and stabbing, there might be something here worth your time but for those who expect more thrills from their thrillers or at least something close to a purpose, 7500 is a flight worth missing.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Last Shift
    It’s a mismatched buddy film, but not entirely unsuccessful thanks largely to Jenkins, who can play a role such as this with his eyes closed, and McGhie who captures a mixture of righteousness and despondency.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    In the Tall Grass
    While some of the nastier lurches in the third act will appease genre fans, the guff that surrounds them will probably confuse and ultimately alienate them, the film’s moving parts never really moving in unison.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Godzilla: King of the Monsters
    It’s a film with too much yet somehow so very little.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Falling for Christmas
    A film like Falling for Christmas doesn’t try or need to break the mold, it doesn’t even need to be that good, it just needs to be low-level competent and as these films go, it’s just about passable enough for those who tend to start getting excited about the festive period at least two months early.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Secret: Dare to Dream
    It’s mostly kind of tolerable in a low stakes, rosé-wine-swigging way, inoffensively middling rather than rotten, an easy, undemanding afternoon watch with nothing of note other than a few laughably dumb moments..
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Anna
    Anna is not quite pedestrian but it never really feels like the work of someone with anything to say or prove. It’s competent and even complacent at times, a million miles from what one would expect from the director of The Fifth Element.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Shell
    Minghella doesn’t seem confident in what he’s really trying to make, his film as plainly, ploddingly shot as a daytime soap with an equally rubbishy score. If he’s trying to do a knowing carbon copy of a bottom shelf VHS horror, then he hasn’t gone far enough into studied pastiche to sell it as such.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Little Things
    It’s a film trapped between a low- and a highbrow version of a story we know all too well, landing firmly in the middle of the road.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Samaritan
    It’s a fresh spin that feels awfully stale, a Samaritan less good and more mediocre.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Kill Your Friends
    The difficulty with black comedy is avoiding overkill and Kill Your Friends is a dictionary definition of the word.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Sacrifice
    Gavras leaves them and us stranded on the way to his out-there ending.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Cat Person
    The chillingly unanswered questions of the story are all given the most obvious answers imaginable and relatability is carelessly tossed aside, along with logic and investment.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Gallerist
    What should be wickedly cutting in-the-know dialogue is soft and uninventive, what should be a seat-edge string of escalating circumstances becomes increasingly tiring and hard-to-buy and while the cast is game, they mostly struggle to find the right level for Yan’s admittedly difficult-to-match zany energy.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Lisa Frankenstein
    To its credit, Lisa Frankenstein wears its inspirations on its black lace sleeves, never feigning true originality but there’s only so much looking back we can handle without things being pushed at least a little bit forward. In bringing a subgenre back from the dead, Cody and Williams could have used a little more life.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Dressmaker
    The film is a tonally uneven, genre-shifting hurricane of a thing, wildly careering off the rails and smashing into everything in its view.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Blumhouse's Fantasy Island
    An odd attempt at genre-surfing that ends up well out of its depth.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Blinded by the Light
    There’s something so constructed and suffocating about watching a tried and tested formula not working, the over-sentimental string-pulling on show for all to see.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    I Came By
    Bonneville’s performance will linger, the film not so much.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The First Purge
    Clumsy attempts at comedy are weaved in to try and alleviate the remarkable grimness but all it really does it add to an uneven tone.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Eenie Meanie
    The film is a mildly diverting yet strangely dated caper, a watered-down Tarantino rip-off without a soul of its own.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Resurrection
    It has the feeling of a short film stretched beyond its limit, with all that early tension dissipating, and while there’s certainly something jolting about the gonzo violence in the finale, it’s otherwise ineffectual.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Yes Day
    If you need a charming film headed up by a skilled comic actor about a family going through troubling times then watch Rose Byrne in Instant Family instead because it’s a big no for this one.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Uncorked
    The formula is so well-trodden that it needed a sparkling jolt of energy to justify Penny traipsing his way through it again. Uncorked isn’t exactly corked but it’s definitely flat.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Goodnight Mommy
    Sobel’s direction feels a little lesser when compared with his leading lady, relying on dream sequences to push us to the edge, never getting anywhere close to the iciness of the original or finding anything distinctive enough to separate the aesthetic of his take.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Point Blank
    Its undemanding nature and flat aesthetic making it an adequate background watch at best. Yet there’s also just enough here to make me wish it had been that bit better, a serviceable watch with a frustrating throughline teasing what could have been.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Voyagers
    It’s all just too sanitised and safe, a journey that stumbles as it takes us from the unknown to the familiar, a film that plods when it should stride. How did a bracing idea about rebellion, sexual awakening and lawlessness turn out so boring?
    • 28 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    AfrAId
    It’s too sloppily written and edited for even the least discerning of horror fans to really enjoy, a patchwork of nonsense confusingly stitched together by someone, who at one point, knew better.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Boy Erased
    It’s a curiously underwhelming, muted, often plodding two hours that fails to reach the emotional highs and devastating lows one would expect from the material.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    65
    It’s not quite the toxic disaster it’s being treated as but 65 is nowhere near the giddy lark it should have been, crash-landing somewhere in the middle instead.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Swapped
    The off-brand, bought down the market quality of Skydance animation is initially less of a problem here without the poorly realised humans of Luck and Spellbound to distract but there’s still no immersion or sweep to the world being created, just bright colours which might be enough for some toddlers.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Totally Killer
    There are echoes of Happy Death Day, Back to the Future and The Final Girls in Amazon’s perky Halloween offering Totally Killer, echoes often loud enough to drown out the film entirely. Its time-travel slasher plot cribs elements from all and relies on enthusiasm over invention to keep us entertained, a gamble that only works in brief bursts.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Wicker
    [Colman] knows how to oscillate between broad comedy and heart-wrenching drama but the film around her isn’t as adept. Like the dream husband at its centre, Wicker looks the part but there’s nothing underneath.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    When You Finish Saving the World
    It’s a film of people telling themselves they’re making a difference without really doing much of anything and it’s hard not to feel similarly unmoved by the time it’s all over.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Landscape with Invisible Hand
    A bafflingly botched misfire ... Quite what the film is and who it’s for remains a head-scratcher, a stilted jumble of somethings boiling down to nothing.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Wish
    Watching all the tried-and-tested elements fail to coalesce just makes us nostalgic for the classics instead. Let us all wish Disney can find that magic again.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Tarot
    The writer-directors Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg really have no idea how to fill the gaps between deaths and even at 92 minutes, we’re left with something that feels so much longer.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Georgetown
    Curiously flat ... From the opening few frames through to a clunky introductory sequence, there’s something frustratingly off-balance about Georgetown.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Role Play
    Thanks to the sorry state of the action comedy genre as is, Role Play isn’t a total loss but it’s still much too far from a win.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Spellbound
    It never really feels like we’re on a journey anywhere we haven’t been before, with Spellbound far too bewitched with the past to create any of its own magic.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Mortal Kombat
    A silly and dated new attempt to transport the classic fighting game to the big screen is a late-night drunk watch at best.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Plane
    It’s just about diverting enough for the most part but there’s something a little off about its pacing, French director Jean-François Richet (who peaked a while back with his propulsive Mesrine movies) struggling to corral his moving parts, suspense never really arriving as it should.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Choose or Die
    [Toby Meakins] doesn’t quite take enough advantage of his reality-shifting game sequences (the Englund voice cameo serves to remind us just how wild Wes Craven made those nightmares way back when) but it’s a cut above the average Netflix genre guff.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Cloverfield Paradox
    The Cloverfield Paradox is an unholy mess...As the film bumbles from one confusingly mounted scene to the next, disappointment turns to boredom. The eerie early scenes fade into standard space horror panic and given how crowded that particular subgenre is, The Cloverfield Paradox emerges as a pale imitation.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Your Place or Mine
    Even as glossy run-of-the-mill formula, it’s never even close to being as funny or romantic as it needs to be, devoid of fizzy one-liners and hampered by the pair struggling to muster up chemistry during phone conversations that never feel as lived-in as they would for friends with such extensive history.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Salem's Lot
    While Dauberman manages a handful of effective moments (a morgue scramble with a homemade cross and a drive-in movie light trick are particularly good), he’s never able to capture the slow, escalating dread that a story such as this demands.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Friend Request
    It’s slickly made but shoddily scripted, with sub-reality TV dialogue...and a range of unengaged, soapy performances. There is some fun to be had from the loud and nasty death scenes though, which allow us the pleasure of seeing self-absorbed Facebook addicts get gruesomely murdered.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Your Christmas or Mine?
    It’s a very small mercy, given what he’s working with, but director Jim O’Hanlon is at least able to competently conjure enough Christmas spirit for the film to visually feel of the season, evocative enough to pierce through for those of us who’ve made the journey from London to the sticks for the holidays.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Coffee & Kareem
    It’s a strange movie that can seem mildly interested in tackling bigger issues before swiftly backing down.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Destroyer
    Kidman fearlessly commits to the filth of it all, whether it’s drunkenly fighting off her daughter’s sleazy boyfriend or jerking off a bed-ridden informant, but her radical transformation and some timeframe trickery can’t mask a plot that feels rather empty.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Wingwomen
    Laurent, to her credit as director, is less interested in how a shootout can work as an aphrodisiac, and more invested in how it would affect a female friendship.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Swimmers
    There’s an extraordinary story to be told here. It’s just a shame it had to be told in such an ordinary way.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Blair Witch
    If The Blair Witch Project signalled a new dawn of horror, Blair Witch is the loud death rattle of a once exciting sub-genre, disappearing into the darkness.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Colossal
    Given the bizarro conceit, there’s something surprisingly, and frustratingly, safe about the film.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Greatest Hits
    Even the fantastical elements don’t make that much sense, magic with rules that are loose and undefined, leaving us with an eye-roll of an ending we can see from a mile away.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Patti Cake$
    Patti Cake$ is by no means a hopelessly bad movie, it’s just hampered by its desperate need to be a crowd-pleaser.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Love Lies Bleeding
    Without the garish excess, the script is rote and rickety, a ride to the wild side that’s all out of gas.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Red White & Royal Blue
    Red, White and Royal Blue just isn’t the fun, brain-disengaged romp it could have been, any praise going toward intention rather then execution.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Monkey
    The deaths here are neither funny nor scary or even gross enough to linger, we’re all rendered unshockable far too soon.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Christy
    Christy Martin’s life was filled with devastating blows but in her biopic, we barely feel the impact.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    No One Will Save You
    A fiery Dever gives it more than the film ends up deserving, though, rising to a difficult challenge with both the virtual lack of dialogue and a string of sequences that force her to energetically react to a range of digital effects, a performance that almost saves the movie.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Eden
    It’s all too silly and the writing too hokey for us to keep up and by the end, truly care about who survives or not.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Last Voyage of the Demeter
    It’s ultimately a doomed voyage: for the crew, for the audience and for Universal’s monster movie strategy at large.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Lost Girls
    Lost Girls is sorely lacking and, ironically, one wonders what a Garbus docuseries could have found instead.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Snowden
    In his dry and uninvolving dramatic take, Stone has made a film aimed at breaking out Snowden’s story to the masses but it’s made with such limpness that a swift read of his Wikipedia page will prove far more exciting.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Oh, Hi!
    While the film does happen upon a real, and painful, truth of the problems that come from dating without a label, as things start to devolve, it becomes harder to understand how they ever found themselves here.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    All the Bright Places
    Haley, who last directed the sweet and underseen Hearts Beat Loud, gives the film a stronger aesthetic than most Netflix teen offerings, and Fanning and Smith work hard at charming us into submission, but their hard-to-buy relationship isn’t quite the immersive ride-or-die love connection it needs to be, given the melodrama of the last act.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Sweet Girl
    Thinly etched topicality only gets the film so far (the script is very “I read an article once”) and when the action mechanics kick into gear, it’s yet more of the same with very little to distinguish it from the pack.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Spirited
    The decision to make the film a musical is a genuine head-scratcher, one that’s never justified or even mildly explained given that the two leads are not natural singers and so throughout the lunges into song feel awkward at best.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Time Cut
    The lack of tension, innovative kills or atmosphere is far more of an issue, the film looking every bit as tinny and flat as the very worst that streaming has to offer.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Intuition
    What propels us past the cliches of Intuition is a desire to see just how it all ties together, an assumption that a story as busily plotted as this must have an ace up its sleeve. But the last act is all fizzle, played out predictably with a mundanity that no amount of sweeping aerial shots can disguise.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Zombieland: Double Tap
    As dated as its slow-mo zombie-killing opening credits, at times Zombieland: Double Tap feels like it was made directly after the original yet carelessly forgotten about. It’s rushed and dusty, a film more belonging on Crackle than the big screen, more expensively budgeted than the first yet mostly creatively bankrupt.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Senior Year
    Tonally, it’s all over the place, that aforementioned sap curdled together with Wilson’s trademark crudeness, an R-rated comedy that wants to be both sweet and salty, a balance it never manages to perfect.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Nutcrackers
    The more accomplished the film-making becomes, the more we then expect the script to level up too.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Miss Americana
    It’s brand management dressed up as insight and while it’s not not entertaining, it’s certainly far from particularly revealing, playing more like a PR exercise then a festival-worthy feature.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Trap
    Trap is a thriller that incorrectly thinks it’s fiendishly smart. Maybe if it was more aware of how stupid it actually is, it might have been a lot more fun.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    Antlers
    There’s probably a semi-decent creature feature here and maybe, with a hefty amount of redrafting, a semi-decent human drama but as it stands it fails at both, a satisfying, coherent film buried underneath copious amounts of animal guts.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Watchers
    While we’re compelled along by an urge to know the film’s secrets, convinced that like-father-like-daughter, a twist is on the way, it’s clear from the outset that we are being guided by far unsteadier hands.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Benjamin Lee
    The Cut
    The more British director Sean Ellis prods and provokes, the hokier it all gets, a film about cutting weight that could have benefited from a leaner edit.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »