Dave Calhoun

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Time Out, Time Out London
For 299 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Dave Calhoun's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Die My Love
Lowest review score: 20 Only God Forgives
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 180 out of 299
  2. Mixed: 116 out of 299
  3. Negative: 3 out of 299
299 movie reviews
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    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Calhoun
    The Promise
    You have to swallow some inadequacies to get the most out of The Promise. It is appealingly photographed and boasts some stunning location work, yet it’s also saddled with the tone of a biblical epic, invisibly watermarked with the label important.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Calhoun
    LA 92
    This is a valuable companion piece to other accounts and a vivid collage of in-the-moment imagery.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Calhoun
    Going in Style
    Don’t think too much about the plot; it’s about as water-tight as a corporate-pension scheme. All three stars deliver exactly what you expect from them — nothing more, nothing new — but their onscreen familiarity is a strange comfort in itself.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Dave Calhoun
    A Quiet Passion
    The talk is pointed and careful in a household that savours the power and meaning of words, but it’s as much the imagery that makes this film such a painterly joy.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    The Olive Tree
    Commentary on a changing Europe – and especially a socially and economically forlorn Spain – underpins ‘The Olive Tree’, but the human relationships are most poignant here.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Calhoun
    The Salesman
    As drama, The Salesman wanders, meanders and searches, mostly pleasurably, until it hits an over-engineered final chapter.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Dave Calhoun
    Viceroy's House
    At the human level, this is shallow, and Chadha clumsily fuses political drama with romantic melodrama.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    Trespass Against Us
    It’s a teasing celebration of outsiderdom without being a full-on endorsement
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Calhoun
    13 Minutes
    It’s an important story, of course, but only mildly engaging as cinema.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    Fences
    It’s easy to throw accusations of staginess at film adaptations of theatre like this, which honour the limitations of theatre and make only limited attempts to open up the play. But there’s a hothouse atmosphere to this domestic drama that works well on screen.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    T2 Trainspotting
    Like the original, T2 Trainspotting is a winning mix of low living and high jinx, a stylized spin on real life.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    Sing
    The animation itself might not be the most inventive out there (this isn’t Pixar), but where Sing soars is in its one-by-one attention to its ensemble of beasts and its obvious passion for music: It’s nearly impossible to watch this film and not be humming the Beatles’ "Golden Slumbers" for days afterward.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 40 Dave Calhoun
    Collateral Beauty
    It’s just impossible to get past the core ridiculousness and arm-twisting manipulation of the plot.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Calhoun
    Assassin's Creed
    The relentless gloom can feel oppressive, but there’s plenty of ambition here, especially in the layered storytelling and woozy sense of time and place, with plenty of soaring aerial shots that nod quietly to the all-seeing eye of a computer game.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Calhoun
    Uncle Howard
    It’s a sad project, a testament to lives cut short and stories half-told.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
    This is an imperfect film, bold but occasionally baffling, and one that in its final act grows into something much more exciting than you might initially expect.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    Moana
    Along with the film’s hippy-ish musings on the relationship between humans and the elements, it gives the film a moving, supernatural touch.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Calhoun
    The Tree of Life
    While it fascinates as much as it frustrates, the film’s saving grace is that it always feels honest and never cynical. It seems both relevant to us and personal to the filmmaker.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    I, Daniel Blake
    It's a spare film, muted in colour and unflashy – and it's all the more powerful and urgent for it.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Calhoun
    Courted
    Fitfully entertaining, with some grabby trial scenes, the film struggles to find a proper, engaging focus.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    Southside with You
    It’s a small, successful sketch of now-great lives.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    The Lovers and the Despot
    The Lovers and the Despot is compelling as a Cold War-era thriller, but it also offers a small window on life in the higher echelons of power in North Korea at that time.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Calhoun
    Lion
    There’s plenty of warmth and compassion here, and the true story is a belter, but this ‘Lion’ doesn’t quite roar.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    The Clan
    The Clan shouldn’t be as enjoyable as it is. But it’s a delight to be in the hands of a storyteller who can impress you with his stylistic bravado (one sequence cuts together a nasty death with ecstatic sex) while never losing sight of the suffering at the story’s heart.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years
    The absence of George and John is felt keenly, but Paul and Ringo are a pleasure to listen to as ageing raconteurs.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    Hacksaw Ridge
    Overall, there aren’t many shades of gray in Hacksaw Ridge, but it’s a movie that fulfills its purpose with vigor, confidence and swagger, and those battle scenes are impossible to take your eyes off.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Dave Calhoun
    One More Time with Feeling
    What Dominik gives us is a portrait of an artist and a man and a family at a low. He doesn’t try to understand, but he does find some beauty and truth among the chaos and despair.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Dave Calhoun
    Nocturnal Animals
    It's the fashion designer's second movie after his 2009 debut A Single Man, and this is a far more ambitious film, with its sprawling cast, various periods, layered storytelling and musings on life and art. But it's also far less endearing and coherent, and feels almost unbearably cruel and cynical.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Dave Calhoun
    Toni Erdmann
    The film’s no-nonsense, visually plain documentary-style of shooting feels utterly appropriate to its sly evocation of the absurdities and banalities of modern life. Just brilliant.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Calhoun
    La La Land
    [Chazelle's] soaring, romantic, extremely stylish and endlessly inventive La La Land is that rare beast: a grown-up movie musical that's not kitschy, a joke or a Bollywood film. Instead, it's a swooning, beautifully crafted ode to the likes of Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Stanley Donen's Singin' in the Rain.
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