Caryn James

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BBC, The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times
For 294 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 52% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Caryn James' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Lowest review score: 0 The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 130 out of 294
  2. Mixed: 120 out of 294
  3. Negative: 44 out of 294
294 movie reviews
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    • 89 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    The Seventh Continent (1989)
    The Seventh Continent is one of the most stylish films in this year's New Directors/New Films series. With its fragmented pattern of beautifully composed and repeated images from middle-class life, it rejuvenates a 1960's style that would seem to be exhausted by now. But the Austrian writer and director Michael Haneke pulls viewers through a good portion of the film on the sheer strength of his visual flair, avoiding the classic trap of how to create a film about boredom that is not boring.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Challengers
    The actors keep the film going, at times by sheer magnetic on-screen presence even when the screenplay lets them down.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Pain Hustlers
    While Pain Hustlers is a perfectly fine title, the film probably should have been called Liza Drake, the name of the sales rep played by Emily Blunt, who single-handedly almost saves this tone-deaf drama from itself.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Song of Back and Neck
    Only the comic parts soar, and they fit uneasily with the pallid romance and half-hearted family drama.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
    Craig's performance is wily and joyful, and the film's biggest flaw is that there is too little of him, as Johnson often turns the spotlight from Blanc to other characters.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Dumb Money
    It is funny, irreverent and crowd-pleasing, with a kaleidoscope of likeable characters and actors. Director Craig Gillespie (Cruella and I, Tonya) has turned a saga that ended up before a Congressional finance committee into a breezy entertainment.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Castle in the Sky
    Its detailed fantasy world, including a dark turn-of-the-century mining town and candy-colored futuristic space bikes, is as alluring as any live-action film. Yet this two-hour story about a lost princess, a flying island and space pirates is liable to strain the patience of adults and the attention spans of children.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Near Dark
    You might call this the scattershot school of film making... The result of being pushed and pulled through the confusing styles of Near Dark is simple exhaustion.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Nope
    And as always in Peele films, clues and echoes are so detailed and carefully planted that it's hard to spot everything the first time through. He is still a master filmmaker, and even a mediocre Jordan Peele film is better than the strongest film of an ordinary director. Nope is that mediocre film.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    28 Years Later
    But it takes on a quieter, more psychological tone and becomes infinitely better when Fiennes arrives.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    My Best Friend Is a Vampire
    My Best Friend Is a Vampire does manage to come up with a few witty scenes.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Rebel Ridge
    This story of corruption and conspiracy in a small Louisiana town might have passed as a taut if familiar action thriller — if it had actually been taut.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    The Iron Claw
    The Iron Claw's shallowness and eventual treacliness are especially disappointing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    No Picnic
    It is impossible to separate Mr. Hartman's writing and direction from Mr. Horton's smooth, sophisticated camera work, which offers a broad view of the cluttered streets and also peers up narrow stairwells to suggest Mac's claustrophobic life. However their collaboration worked, ''No Picnic'' does not look or sound quite like any other film, and that's more than you can say about most movies of any size.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Monkey Shines
    Mr. Romero, who adapted the screenplay from Michael Stewart's novel, wraps up more loose ends than anyone cares about, yet leaves some nagging bits of illogic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    A Complete Unknown
    Chalamet gives Dylan a defiant look in his eyes and through these later scenes creates a visceral sense of his restlessness, of how important it is for him to break free of the public assumptions about him, both musically and as the spokesman of a generation. You can finally feel an energy that can't be restrained and that should have been in the film all along.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Dead Calm
    Disturbing for all the wrong reasons.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    See How They Fall
    The script, which he wrote with Alain Le Henry, is as confusing and tiresome as the direction. What is meant to be a touching, comic relationship between Marx and Johnny is simply flat.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    The Princess
    A flawed little time capsule, the doc veers uneasily between kindly character portrait and shallow attempt at media studies.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    A Quiet Place: Day One
    As an emotional journey Day One has its moments. For a supposedly scary movie, it's a little bit sloppy.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Deadpool & Wolverine
    The fights are about as sophisticated as watching kids in a playground, and they rely heavily on slow motion, as if that will instantly create tension.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
    Bill Murray has a single scene as Lord Krylar, an amalgam of all droll Bill Murray characters. William Jackson Harper is wry as a sympathetic telepath, who unfortunately disappears for much of the film.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Jurassic World Rebirth
    If you can't improve on Spielberg – and really, when it comes to this kind of film, who can? – better to try something bold to prevent any waning dino-interest.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Speak No Evil
    The film’s slow-burn pace is an asset, not a flaw. Speak No Evil works best when it focuses on the Americans’ escalating fears, and collapses near the end when the psychological horror story turns into a predictable potboiler. But for a good three-quarters of the way, this Blumhouse production is an entertainingly elevated genre piece.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Parents
    The satire of the 50's is more bland than biting, dependent on authentically garish costumes and sets. And when the horror-film scenes begin to intrude on normal life (what is hanging from the cellar ceiling, anyway?) Mr. Balaban can't make the dark elements seem comic enough to mesh with the rest of this nightmarish joke.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    Behind the impressive CGI, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the definition of generic, all two hours and 25 minutes of it. The ending teases a sequel that offers a more intriguing conflict ahead, but that doesn't help us now.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Earth Girls Are Easy
    With a scatter-shot style that includes lengthy, often lame song-and-dance parodies, as well as special effects, slapstick and satire, the film can't begin to sustain its lunatic premise. But during the lulls between witty scenes, there is always something amusing to look at. Mr. Temple and his collaborators create a near-California so cartoonish and crayon-colored that the film comes to seem like Aliens in Toyland.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Body Snatchers
    With its homogenized flavor, this Body Snatchers seems like a movie made BY pod people, FOR pod people.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Selena y Los Dinos
    Selena y Los Dinos remains a slick doc most likely to appeal to her fans.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Darkman
    Darkman sustains mild interest throughout, but it never takes off, partly because a real-estate scam, gangland shootouts, city corruption and a love story clutter up the sad story of Westlake's strange mutation.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    The best superhero movies let you ignore how ludicrous the plots are, but the silliness of The Fantastic Four is always in your face.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Bonjour Tristesse
    Chew-Bose’s screenplay doesn’t explore the characters deeply enough to replace the book’s jaw-dropping quality with any psychological depth.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    It Could Happen to You
    The other miracle is that the two stars of It Could Happen to You keep it sailing over a script that is often as predictable and flat as the movie's new title.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    The Best You Can
    With strong performances and a fresh premise about an unexpected friendship in middle age, but far too many creaky comic tropes, the uneven film is always watchable but never pops off the screen in a gripping way.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    On Swift Horses
    On Swift Horses isn't a disaster, but given its stars and potential, it is a disappointment.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Battleground
    The film’s immersion into the anti-abortion movement — with a smattering of pro-choice voices woven in — is consistently fascinating. But Lowen’s measured approach also raises a question: How loud does a warning cry have to be to register? Eye-opening though it is, at times Battleground is muted to a fault.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Well Groomed
    There is nothing radical or especially distinctive about the style of this mildly entertaining documentary.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Until the End of the World
    The longer it gets, the loopier it gets. [19 Jan 1992, p.13]
    • The New York Times
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    A Haunting in Venice
    The new film is much pokier in its pacing, with duller characters. Despite some highlights, including Branagh in top form as an even more somber than usual Poirot, the film is watchable but it is also something lethal to a mystery: uninvolving.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Back to the Beach
    Back to the Beach opened yesterday. But if you catch a television commercial for it, or the rock video that's on television, you'll get the joke and see the most this movie has to offer.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Major League
    Major League trots out the standard formula, but has the wit to make fun of it now and then. The film is so loopy that it glides over its cliches and indulges in some congenial movie-baseball silliness.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Oleanna
    Mr. Mamet can be a first-rate film maker, and in works like House of Games and Homicide he trusts language as much as he relies on small, subtle camera movements. Here both the language and Mr. Mamet's film making let him down.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Hero
    Stephen Frears's film is always lively and often shrewd, but in the end Hero is at war with itself. The movie's Capraesque heart is locked in battle with its cynical, contemporary brain.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Hamlet
    Karia’s attempts to make the play cinematic work well at times.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Mo' Better Blues
    From characters to camera angles, this story of a self-absorbed jazz trumpeter is one long cliche, the kind that might make his most loyal admirers wince and wonder, Spike, what happened?
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Shooting the Mafia
    Mildly informative but superficial, Shooting the Mafia is much less dynamic than its title.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Midwinter Break
    Although Manville and Hinds are always worth watching, it’s obviously a problem when the actors and the scenery so thoroughly overshadow a film’s story.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Marc by Sofia
    Despite all the insider’s access, though, in the end the behind-the-scenes episodes offer the illusion of intimacy, rather than anything really illuminating.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    The Little Mermaid
    It remains what it always was: a charming, escapist fairy tale.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Cruella
    Beavan's costumes are dazzling throughout, including Cruella's glittering red dress at the Baroness's gala. But when the costumes overwhelm the characters and story, there's something hollow at the film's centre.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Baby God
    In the end, Baby God does little more than check one more name on a list of predators.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Child's Play
    Child's Play has some limp dialogue among the clever touches. Its appeal is clearly for upscale horror fans rather than a general movie audience. Yet it is a fitting successor to the classic television horror stories it takes off from.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Christy
    For now, Sweeney's celebrity still overshadows her acting.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Miss Firecracker
    A superficial and sporadically witty piece aimed at such easy targets as family squabbles, small-town folk and beauty contests. The film is not actively awful; just dull and banal. [28 Apr 1989, p.C12]
    • The New York Times
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Licence to Kill
    For all its clever updatings, stylish action and witty escapism, Licence to Kill is still a little too much by the book. Mr. Dalton is perfectly at home as an angry Bond, and as a romantic lead and as an action hero, but he never seems to blend any two of those qualities at once.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Heads of State
    The film, from Nobody director Ilya Naishuller, is a typical action-comedy that benefits greatly from its two stars, and slightly from their unexpected characters, before plunging fast into explosive but trite set-pieces.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Magic Hour
    Sometimes eloquent and often rocky, Magic Hour is good enough to make you wish it was much less predictable.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Born in East L.A.
    Enormously good-natured - exactly the wrong tone for a comedy that needs all the rambunctious lunacy it can get. Instead, this story of an American mistakenly deported to Mexico as an illegal alien is amiable and plodding, the very last things you'd expect from Cheech, with or without Chong.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master
    Elm Street 4' does have an endless onslaught of astonishing, often grotesque special effects .Mr. Harlin only has to keep things moving, which he does with restless camera work, swirling high above Freddy and his victims. Freddy, who says I am eternal, seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, immune to directors and scripts.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Strays
    The film has its entertaining, off-the-wall comic moments.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child
    Though the film hints at psychological intrigue, it never moves beyond the limits of its genre.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Dumplin'
    Director Anne Fletcher has made better rom-coms, like The Proposal, but they had better scripts. Written by producer Kristin Hahn, Dumplin’ clings timidly to its YA roots, which are firmly on the unsophisticated side of the spectrum.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Narrow Margin
    Though the story evokes old movie formulas - from Strangers on a Train to the 1952 film The Narrow Margin, which inspired it - this film does not reinvent them. It dully echos their conventions.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Renfield
    Renfield is worth watching for Cage, Hoult and Awkwafina's entertaining performances, and not much more.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Five Feet Apart
    The film becomes more exhausting than tense. In the end, all that manipulation backfires. Unlike the best of its genre, the rote Five Feet Apart isn’t wrenching enough to jerk a single tear.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Magic Mike's Last Dance
    While Channing Tatum is charismatic, and there are a few flashes of wit in the script, the latest Magic Mike sequel is 'tepid'.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    The Sun Is Also a Star
    As talented as Yara Shahidi and Charles Melton are individually, they don’t have much chemistry.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    No Man's Land
    Peter Werner, who has directed some stylish television shows (''Moonlighting'' episodes and the mini-series ''L.B.J.: The Early Years'') is competent but dull here. The endless car chases through parking garages and close-ups of the two friends talking seem conceived for a television-size scale and budget, then blown up to fill a larger screen.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Betsy's Wedding
    Julie Bovasso as Mr. Alda's Italian mother and Joe Pesci as his sleazy brother-in-law infuse their roles with as much life as possible, but they can't overcome the dullness of Mr. Alda's wedding.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Critters
    It's commercially calculated to have something for everyone - suspense, humor, even a bounty hunter from the krites' planet who poses as a rock star. Unfortunately, the film doesn't have the humor or the budget to match any of these goals.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Chantilly Lace
    It is a quirky, ambitious, praiseworthy project that somehow becomes a victim of all the cliches it was invented to avoid.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Now and Then
    In the end, Now and Then doesn't work well enough as nostalgia for adults or as a story that girls today might identify with. Yet its young ensemble makes it vibrant and enjoyable, even when it fails to surprise.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    The Hunt
    The Hunt is a smart satire that uses genre tropes to explore volatile social issues.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    My Policeman
    The deepest flaw in My Policeman is that we grasp too little of the characters' inner lives.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    The Greatest Hits
    It’s an intriguing premise. ... But The Greatest Hits is the kind of film that should sweep you away with its charm and emotion. Instead, it’s too transparently button-pushing to go beyond the stale tropes of the weepy drama.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    The Violent Heart
    There is plenty to admire technically in his drama . . . But its substance is a mashup of ill-fitting parts, indebted to both Romeo and Juliet and Douglas Sirk.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Casper
    Casper is not the kind of smartly written movie that works on children's and adult levels at once. But with its lively pace, smashing visual tricks and one of the cutest heroes on screen, it is an engaging fantasy for very small children.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    American Woman
    The film is lively and detailed enough so it is never boring, but it never takes off dramatically or realizes its intriguing possibilities either.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Species
    The director, Roger Donaldson, best known for the Kevin Costner thriller No Way Out, keeps the film moving. But there is only so much suspense he can generate from this stock story and familiar-looking special effects. Species may work best for viewers who don't like to be too scared by horror movies; it's reassuringly familiar.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    The Best of Enemies
    While it lacks the ambition to turn its obvious plot into a film that feels new, it also avoids the pitfalls of moral smugness and stereotyping. It flows along easily, bolstered by Taraji P. Henson’s and Sam Rockwell’s vibrant performances.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    The Baby-Sitters Club
    The movie The Baby-Sitters Club offers the same comfort factor as the books, but suffers from a definite lack of excitement.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    The Big Town
    This huge cliche of a movie isn't even a distant relation of films like The Color of Money, which can actually make you root for hustlers. The Big Town only proves we've gone back to the 1950's one time too many.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Critters 2
    Critters 2 piles up every stock movie idea you can remember about small-town heroism, macho sheriffs and alien invaders. But whenever it shows a glimmer of wit about those cliches, it leaps back to its safe, dull, derivative style.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Out of Bounds
    Richard Tuggle's new film wants to be a realistic thriller, but it merely acts out kids' fantasies of heroism and adventure, with drugs and rock music thrown in for a contemporary twist.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    Some films can re-energise a genre, like last year's huge hit Godzilla Minus One . . . Godzilla x Kong is the opposite, a dazzling visual accomplishment that already feels old.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Rebecca
    This new Rebecca feels as if someone at Downton Abbey were having a bad day.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Death Wish 4: The Crackdown
    Death Wish 4 is as efficient and predictable as Kersey himself, and inoffensive as long as you can root for a sociopathic hero.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Like Father Like Son
    This slick movie proves how much fun it can be to watch first-rate actors challenge our credulity and rise above a second-rate script.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Satisfaction
    Satisfaction is a typical, low-budget summer movie, where everyone has a hot romance, a good body and an expensive haircut.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Foe
    Foe plays to the strengths of its actors, two of the most natural and subtle on screen, and is endlessly engaging even though it eventually stumbles into head-spinning narrative problems.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Ernest Saves Christmas
    The best that can be said for the film is that it leaves Ernest behind now and then to focus on Santa, who is played by Douglas Seale with sweetness, sincerity and an amazing amount of dignity, considering his surroundings.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
    Captain Kirk and his crew go where too many film makers have too often gone before.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    The Transformers: The Movie
    These robots transform in a flash; the colors are shocking pinks and electric greens; the film is packed with one-to-one combat, large-scale battles and exploding planets. Despite these improvements, though, the movie is not for anyone too grown-up.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Dogs in Space
    The background is energetic; too bad the foreground is just as chaotic...Mr. Lowenstein - whose work includes many rock videos and ''Strikebound,'' a film about Australian miners - prefers sensory overload to coherence.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Elvira: Mistress of the Dark
    Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is a lame attempt to cash in on her character's success.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    The Art of Racing in the Rain
    Shaped by a near-constant monologue from a golden retriever named Enzo, The Art of Racing in the Rain is watchable but flat, with only occasional flashes of wit and feeling.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Caryn James
    Phantasm II
    There are some grotesquely stylish and scary moments in Phantasm II, the sequel to a 1979 film that Don Coscarelli made as a precocious 25-year-old. Unfortunately, these episdoes seem to take as long to arrive as the sequel did.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Caryn James
    Renegades
    With a little more wit and a little less blood, Renegades could have been Lethal Weapon Jr. It is a fast, violent, implausible film about mismatched partners, and though it doesn't exactly break the bounds of its trashy genre, it's not at all bad for what it is.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Fluke
    Though it is meant to be whimsical and touching, the film's style is leaden, and its story has more danger than excitement.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Caryn James
    Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh
    Fortunately, Candyman isn't powerful enough to do much harm. The credits are more intriguing than the film.
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