Dan Callahan

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TheWrap
For 137 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 32% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 66% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 10.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Dan Callahan's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 55
Highest review score: 100 Marx Can Wait
Lowest review score: 0 Nina
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 39 out of 137
  2. Mixed: 86 out of 137
  3. Negative: 12 out of 137
137 movie reviews
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    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Dan Callahan
    Diamantino
    This picture feels fated to be remembered as the “giant fluffy puppy soccer movie,” and both the giant fluffy puppies and Cotta provide enough laughs to make it worthwhile.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Dan Callahan
    XY Chelsea
    This is a very difficult personal narrative to try to digest and make sense of, but at least XY Chelsea makes for a start on this, even if it cannot approach anything definitive on her singular story.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Dan Callahan
    Charlie Says
    A very strained attempt to understand the motivations of the women who killed for Charles Manson.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Dan Callahan
    Yesterday
    Curtis’s twee, nudging, corny comedic voice is very much the main sensibility here, far more so than anything offered by director Danny Boyle or anyone else involved.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Dan Callahan
    See You Yesterday
    The content here is very of-the-moment, and the trappings of genre are used in an attempt to tell some harsh truths.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Dan Callahan
    Sauvage / Wild
    Sauvage/Wild is dependent on Maritaud, who shows no fear or restraint when it comes to giving his entire body over to every one of his scenes, because this is a film partly about using your body as a commodity and how that commodity can decline and break down very early.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Dan Callahan
    Adam
    It’s overly ambitious, it has too many characters, and it tries to do too much. But there is also a lot here that feels fresh and original, particularly in the first half, which takes in a lot of new territory — both thematic and geographic — with a pleasing light touch.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 20 Dan Callahan
    Replicas
    The chief distinction of Replicas is how detached it often is from the expected sense of words and images.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Dan Callahan
    The Marriage
    The problem with The Marriage, a well-meaning but structurally lopsided first feature from Yugoslavian director Blerta Zeqiri, is that the marriage plot from the title is so much less interesting than the love plot at its core.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Dan Callahan
    Back Roads
    Given the outlandishness of the material here, it would have been easy to start getting unwanted laughs in the second half of the film, but Pettyfer and his actors find the truth in it, even in a very long and demanding take where Harley confronts his mother in prison.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Dan Callahan
    Amazing Grace
    Amazing Grace is a movie worth seeing and re-seeing and re-seeing again, a testament to the Queen of Soul at the height of her powers, live, in full color, in rich sound, resplendent.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Dan Callahan
    Boy Erased
    It makes its argument against gay conversion therapy — a form of torture usually rooted in the self-loathing of the so-called therapist — persuasively. And it is dramatically impressive most of the time, but it is also very messy and uneven.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Dan Callahan
    Viper Club
    This is a slow-burning movie, but its stealth and intelligence eventually packs an emotional punch.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Dan Callahan
    The Happy Prince
    It finally matters very little that The Happy Prince is haphazardly written and awkwardly directed because Everett is an intelligent man who has a deep imaginative connection to Wilde and his wit and his cruising and his whole worldview.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Dan Callahan
    Studio 54
    Studio 54 is a case of a documentary attempting to tell a story that obviously cannot be fully or satisfyingly told at this juncture. As such, it has value only insofar as it suggests how much that era cannot quite be re-captured.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Dan Callahan
    Hot to Trot
    Hot to Trot brings up some intriguing differences between straight and gay ballroom dancing without ever quite exploring them in depth.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Dan Callahan
    We the Animals
    This movie version sometimes feels evasive or incomplete, partly because you can describe some things in a book that you cannot show on a screen, but it is in most ways an admirable adaptation that does look and sound like memories of a particular childhood.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Dan Callahan
    Ideal Home
    The tone of Ideal Home can be very sharp, and some of the satirical scenes have real bite. Fleming’s writing is at its best here when he is sending up the exaggerated sensitivity of liberals when they are dealing with a minority and not sure what might offend them.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Dan Callahan
    A Kid Like Jake
    The writing in A Kid Like Jake feels more like playwriting than like screenwriting because we are told things in dialogue about Jake but barely ever get to see him behaving.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Dan Callahan
    That Summer
    Once the film turns itself over to the footage of Big Edie and Little Edie Beale, this movie comes into its own as a fascinating companion piece and prequel to the Maysles Brothers film.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Dan Callahan
    The Seagull
    The most impressive thing about this film of The Seagull is that every role has been ideally cast.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Dan Callahan
    Diane
    This is a movie that notices things and people that we are trained to ignore, and you are not likely to forget it.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Dan Callahan
    Mapplethorpe
    Even if budgetary restraints sometimes keep Timoner from fully capturing the time she is re-creating, nothing holds Smith back from making Mapplethorpe come alive again, in every sense.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Dan Callahan
    Jonathan
    Oliver makes sure that every scene in Jonathan is slow, earnest, tidy, and very cautious, and he pulls back from anything that might be too dramatic.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Dan Callahan
    Here and Now
    This is very much a vehicle for Parker, and it plays into some of her strengths and many of her weaknesses.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 20 Dan Callahan
    The Rachel Divide
    Dolezal desperately tries to align herself with absurd terms like “trans racial” in order to try to find some way of making her way of life acceptable, but she always comes up short, and it is impossible to have any sympathy for her because she is so transparently a manipulator and a guilt-tripper.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Dan Callahan
    Rampage
    Rampage is a movie that gets buried in its own top-heavy plot, collapsing itself under that weight just like the Chicago-area buildings do on screen.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Dan Callahan
    Blumhouse's Truth or Dare
    The premise of Truth or Dare is needlessly convoluted, and it is overloaded with information and side characters.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Dan Callahan
    Pacific Rim: Uprising
    Pacific Rim Uprising has zero emotional pull.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Dan Callahan
    1985
    1985 is a film that is full of virtues, not least the acting talent of its cast, who are all expert at conveying a lot of subtext underneath words and physical behavior. It seems clear that Tan (“Pit Stop”) has worked with his actors very closely and sensitively, and he has won deeply felt work from them.
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