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.
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