Dave Kehr

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Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, The New York Times
For 1,651 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 39% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 59% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Dave Kehr's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Lowest review score: 0 Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 719 out of 1651
  2. Mixed: 703 out of 1651
  3. Negative: 229 out of 1651
1651 movie reviews
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    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Dave Kehr
    Lifeforce
    Director Tobe Hooper seriously overplays his hand, losing the shape of this 1985 film in a barrage of overblown special effects and screaming Dolby stereo.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Underground
    Delirious in its excess, but never less than ferociously intelligent and operatically emotional, Underground represents one of those rare, exhilarating moments when an outsize artistic vision is fueled by an apparently unlimited budget. Not to be missed.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Dave Kehr
    Hold Back the Dawn
    Mitchell Leisen's polished direction serves this 1941 melodrama written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Kehr
    Suspiria
    Dario Argento's grossly overstated mise-en-scene adds some perverse interest to this routine (if unusually gory) horror film from 1976. Argento works so hard for his effects—throwing around shock cuts, colored lights, and peculiar camera angles—that it would be impolite not to be a little frightened
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    High Heels
    It's an admirable attempt, though a less than completely successful one. The film's disappointments lie not so much in Almodovar's controlled, respectful direction as in the strange gaps and displacements of his screenplay, which never seems to supply the scenes we most want to see. [20 Dec 1991]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Dave Kehr
    Yellow Submarine
    The animation is imaginatively conceived, but stiffly executed. A Fantasia designed for heads, the film does no more justice to the music than Disney's artists did. But Disney had the excuse of innocence, whereas this shrewdly conceived commercial project does not.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Dave Kehr
    The Thin Blue Line
    It is an intriguing subject, though so far all that Morris has brought to it is a combination of the morbid and the cruel; he needs to develop some sympathy, too. [16 Sept 1988]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Dave Kehr
    Lady and the Tramp
    The quintessential American love story --the one between the spoiled heiress and the spontaneous, fun-loving guy from the wrong side of the tracks--has seldom been more elegantly and entertainingly told.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    Winchester '73
    The final shoot-out remains a classic study in mise-en-scene, as Mann transforms a jagged landscape into a highly charged psychological battleground.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Kehr
    Play Misty for Me
    Clint Eastwood wisely chose a strong, simple thriller for his first film as a director (1971), and the project is remarkable in its self-effacing dedication to getting the craft right—to laying out the story, building the rhythm, putting the camera in the right place, and establishing small characters with a degree of conviction.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 20 Dave Kehr
    9 Dead Gay Guys
    The film strains mightily to be flashy and hip but finishes more in the realm of the merely distasteful.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Kehr
    Roman Holiday
    Wyler lays out all the elements with care and precision, but the romantic comedy never comes together - it's charm by computer. [Review of re-release]
    • 56 Metascore
    • 70 Dave Kehr
    Plan 9 from Outer Space
    Wood is notorious for his 1952 transvestite saga Glen or Glenda? (aka I Changed My Sex), but for my money this 1959 effort is twice as strange and appealing in its undisguised incompetence.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Hard Boiled
    It's not his most satisfying, full-bodied work, though it does provide many of the Woo pleasures. [18 Jun 1993]
    • New York Daily News
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Full Metal Jacket
    The film has undeniable power, but it's an unusual and unsettling power, a product of a collision between red-hot material and the cool serenity with which Kubrick observes and accepts it. [26 June 1987]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Kehr
    Lifeboat
    The drama is developed without recourse to flashbacks or cutaways, and it is done cleverly and stylishly, though it lacks Hitchcock's usual depth. At times, the film seems on the verge of rising above its frankly propagandistic intentions, but it never really confronts the Darwinian themes built into the material.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    Remember the Night
    The loose, graceful script is by Preston Sturges (one of his last before he turned to directing), and it partakes of a softness and nostalgia that seldom surfaced in his own films. Mitchell Leisen, the director, serves the material very well with his slightly distanced, glowing style.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    The Witches
    There are moments of genuine charm and solid invention, but it's a film that doesn't believe enough in itself. [28 Aug 1990, p.4C]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Dave Kehr
    Airplane!
    The film is funny in a way few of these toothless exercises are. The gags aren't exactly clever, but there are a lot of them, and the cutting finds a fast, effective tempo. Joe Biroc's witty cinematography gives the picture an authentically flat, artificial Universal look, and Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Leslie Nielsen, and Robert Stack are around for added iconographical persuasiveness.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Dave Kehr
    Catch That Kid
    Mr. Freundlich's naturalistic sensibility gets in the way of the film's broad fantasy elements, turning what might have been a stylized romp like Robert Rodriguez's "Spy Kids" into something a little too real for comfort.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    Glory
    Glory has a genuine moral basis, and it makes all the difference in the world. [12 Jan 1990, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Dave Kehr
    The Elephant Man
    Despite the rich associations, the film finally makes little more of its central figure, a hideously deformed young man, than an object of pity.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    The Freshman
    Even without Marlon Brando in it, Andrew Bergman`s The Freshman would be a very funny movie; with him, it seems likely to become a classic.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Near Dark
    Bigelow's is a synthetic talent, in the good sense of the word: She draws together a rich, imaginative range of cultural references (the film noir, the Western, the horror movie, the love story) and narrative styles (the lyrical, the expressionist, the action-based, the psychological), making something new out of the traces of the old. [2 Oct 1987, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Dave Kehr
    Chungking Express
    Experimental in form, it's also open and appealing in its vision of romantic redemption, an avant-garde romp that's also a great date movie. [8 Mar 1996, p.40]
    • New York Daily News
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    Wings
    This 1927 silent feature won the first Academy Award for best picture, establishing a tradition of silliness that hasn’t been broken to this day, but there is some thrilling flying footage and impressively expensive spectacle.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Dave Kehr
    Trouble in Mind
    Alan Rudolph redreams the dream of film noir in this dense, beautifully executed, highly stylized romantic fantasy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    After Dark, My Sweet
    After Dark, My Sweet does capture Thompson's characteristic mood - a sort of lurid fatality, where moral questions have long since dropped out and there isn't much use struggling - but it doesn't have much of his distinctive, disruptive texture. The film is much too smooth for that, much too professional and much too carefully executed. [24 Aug 1990, p.H]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Dave Kehr
    A Passage to India
    David Lean's studied, plodding, overanalytic direction manages to kill most of the meaning in E.M. Forster's haunting novel of cultural collision in colonial India.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    Spellbound
    The gaudy Freudianism of this 1945 Hitchcock film, backed by a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí and an overexcited score by Miklós Rósza, can make it hard to take, but beneath the facile trappings there is an intriguing Hitchcockian study of role reversal, with doctors and patients, men and women, mothers and sons inverting their assigned relationships with compelling, subversive results.
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