Daniel Fienberg

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Hitfix, L.A. Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter
For 148 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 25% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 69% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Daniel Fienberg's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 All That Breathes
Lowest review score: 10 The Master of Disguise
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 87 out of 148
  2. Mixed: 53 out of 148
  3. Negative: 8 out of 148
148 movie reviews
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    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Daniel Fienberg
    Cold Case Hammarskjöld
    It's definitely Brugger's most satisfyingly unsatisfying effort. A conspiracy-fueled murder mystery with some hilarious meta-commentary on the genre, Cold Case Hammarskjold is either a stunning piece of investigative reporting that builds to a revelatory climax or a wily trickster's dark critique of the audience's desperate need for answers.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Daniel Fienberg
    Apollo 11
    I don't think Apollo 11 should be anybody's first or only exposure to the moon landing and its greatest strength is in recognizing that. Its perspective and immediacy are impressive on their own and the documentary takes a worthwhile and distinctive place within the wider storytelling of this important event.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Daniel Fienberg
    306 Hollywood
    306 Hollywood is a personal essay! It's a tone poem! It's a biographical collage! It's an embrace of the banal kitschy! It's magic realism! It's such a little story you may wonder why it's being told at all, except that it's a story likely to touch anybody who has ever lost a loved one, which makes it a very big story.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Daniel Fienberg
    Minding the Gap
    Minding the Gap starts out as one story, suggesting one set of character arcs, and then flows in unexpected directions and underlines new sets of themes, without ever feeling haphazard or ill-considered.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Daniel Fienberg
    Believer
    As a movie it's OK, with very little worth raving about. As a story and message, though, it feels important and worth getting out there in as swift and mainstream a way as possible. Better to inspire some institutional change and maybe save a few lives than to be hailed as art.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Daniel Fienberg
    Won't You Be My Neighbor?
    There's more to Fred Rogers than any 93-minute documentary can contain, and it was easy for me not to lament what Neville wasn't doing and just to embrace what Rogers was.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Daniel Fienberg
    Seeing Allred
    Utterly and passionately hagiographic, the documentary Seeing Allred presents 96 minutes of reasons to stand and cheer for celebrated feminist lawyer Gloria Allred. That means, of course, that for ultra-conservative lovers of Netflix documentaries, it's doubtful that Seeing Allred is going to dramatically change any opinions about her.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Daniel Fienberg
    Generation Wealth
    Easily the most ambitious film of the director's career, but also the most infuriating for all of the sociological and psychological points that it tries to make in ways that are too often unearned or poorly defended.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Daniel Fienberg
    Gideon's Army
    What Gideon's Army does is make a respectful case on the behalf of a profession that too often gets maligned.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Daniel Fienberg
    People Places Things
    Clement is the reason that Will is tolerable, because if you look at the character's on-the-page actions, he's not an especially well-developed man-child.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 83 Daniel Fienberg
    A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile
    Even though The Amina Profile works as a cyber-thriller of sorts, I think it's much more wide-reaching than that, a story about online identity, but also about the danger of media-constructed narratives, one that manages to salute both citizen journalists, but also establishment outlets like NPR.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Daniel Fienberg
    The Price of Free
    Kailash ends on the right notes of hope, without abusing sentiment.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Daniel Fienberg
    The Sentence
    The Sentence is so committed to its concentration on emotion and heart that it's difficult not to get carried away, and it feels almost churlish to quibble with the intellectual responses it barely aspires to.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Daniel Fienberg
    House of 1000 Corpses
    Zombie wants his film to be gleefully demented, but he fails to grasp that loud, inbred evil people torturing stupid, grating benign people isn’t disturbing as much as tedious.
    • 12 Metascore
    • 10 Daniel Fienberg
    The Master of Disguise
    The Master of Disguise represents Adam Sandler's latest attempt to dumb down the universe.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Daniel Fienberg
    The Country Bears
    Kids will probably enjoy the sight of huge, bumbling teddy bears -- Parents will exit wondering why this piece of unnecessary cross-promotion wasn't released straight to video.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Daniel Fienberg
    Mad Love
    de Ayala is required to supply too much of the energy in a film that is, overall, far too staid for its subject matter.
    • 11 Metascore
    • 20 Daniel Fienberg
    Pinocchio
    Visually sumptuous but intellectually stultifying.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Daniel Fienberg
    The Guys
    The Australian actor taps into something miraculous here -- LaPaglia's ability to convey grief and hope works with Weaver's sensitive reactions to make this a two-actor master class.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 10 Daniel Fienberg
    Darkness Falls
    Black cats, ill-timed power outages and children in peril are just a few of the hoary scare tactics ineffectively rendered in the style of so many films buried in the dark recesses of January.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 40 Daniel Fienberg
    Never Again
    Schaeffer fails to develop the relationship beyond clichéd signpost events.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Daniel Fienberg
    The Ballad of Bering Strait
    While the film frequently concentrates on the wrong story, the humanity of the musicians comes through in their own words and actions.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 20 Daniel Fienberg
    Boat Trip
    Cuba Gooding Jr.'s unrelenting energy can be galvanic in good films, but in lesser efforts it reeks of frenzied futility.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Daniel Fienberg
    Below
    Twohy moves effortlessly between conventions of the sub and horror genres, with long tracking shots and masterful sound design, shock cuts and mismatched mirrors and reflections.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Daniel Fienberg
    Narc
    Taut and well-acted, faltering only when the filmmaker loses faith in the power of his story.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Daniel Fienberg
    WXIII: Patlabor the Movie 3
    The two encounters with the beast WXIII -- first in a darkened factory, and later in an empty stadium, to the strains of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in G Minor (Pathétique) -- elevate the disappointingly flat animation into a vivid fable of monster and morality.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Daniel Fienberg
    DysFunktional Family
    His veiled misogyny and totally unguarded homophobia are unconvincing, and when he resorts to chestnuts like comparing how black and white people walk, he comes off as a Pryor caricature, rather than as a devotee.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 20 Daniel Fienberg
    Pokémon 4: The Movie
    It's animated cockfighting for children.
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