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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    • 60 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Point Break
    At her best—and even in a hand-me-down project like Point Break—Bigelow is a uniquely talented, uniquely powerful filmmaker. Where the male action directors are still playing with toys-with dolls and models and matte shots-Bigelow has tapped into something primal and strong. She is a sensualist of genius in this most sensual of mediums.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Imitation of Life
    The secret of Sirk's double appeal is a broadly melodramatic plotline, played with perfect conviction yet constantly criticized and challenged by the film's mise-en-scene, which adds levels of irony and analysis through a purely visual inflection.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Distant Voices, Still Lives
    A gripping and original piece of work, itself sure to be remembered as one of the finest films of the year.
    • 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.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    The Miracle of Morgan's Creek
    Caustic and chaotic in the arch Sturges manner, it's probably his funniest and most smilingly malicious film.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear
    If it doesn't make you laugh, nothing will. [28 June 1991]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Earth Girls Are Easy
    There isn't a better time at the movies right now than Earth Girls Are Easy, a delirious pop musical directed by Julien Temple as a widescreen swirl of color and high spirits.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    The Lady Eve
    Preston Sturges extended his range beyond the crazy farces that had made his reputation with this romantic 1941 comedy, and his hand proved just as sure.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    The Man Who Would Be King
    The film has genuine wit, an appealing sense of grandeur, and very little of the overt "philosophizing" that marred much of Huston's previous work. His eye for the strong, clear lines of landscape had never been sharper, and Oswald Morris's photography has a fine sun-saturated brilliance.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    'Round Midnight
    It isn't much to say that "Round Midnight" is the best jazz film ever made (there's so little competition), but it's true. Tavernier has an impeccable feel for how the music is played and--more important--why it is played. [24 Oct 1986, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Archangel
    Archangel is a perfectly self-contained aesthetic object, maddening in its arbitrariness and opacity, yet wholly absorbing in its flurry of urgent yet incomprehensible significations.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Straw Dogs
    Straw Dogs has the heat of personal commitment and the authority of deep (if bitter) contemplation. It is also moviemaking of a very high order.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Pink Cadillac
    Pink Cadillac is the most graceful, warm-hearted and engaging of Clint Eastwood's comedies. [26 May 1989, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    101 Dalmatians
    This was the last Disney animated feature that Uncle Walt lived to see through personally; it can't be a coincidence that it's also the last Disney animated feature of real depth and emotional authenticity.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Sweetie
    One of the freshest, most exciting first features to appear in a very long time. [19 May 1989, p.1]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Rita, Sue and Bob Too
    Like "My Beautiful Laundrette," "Rita, Sue and Bob, Too" imagines an untraditional romantic relationship, outside the bounds of monogamy and exclusive heterosexuality, as the only effective alternative to a social structure that has reached the end of the line. [02 Oct 1987, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    High Hopes
    It's this balance of vivid performance and directorial detachment that allows Leigh to move freely between delicate sentiment and highly caustic wit; even in his most harshly satirical moments, he never denies the humanity of his characters.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Monkey Shines
    One of Romero's most complex and challenging creations. The film shifts effortlessly between playfulness and outrage, between a distanced irony and an awful, immediate horror.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Always
    It's the film in which an entertainer at last becomes an artist, dealing with manifestly personal, painful emotions and casting them in a form that gives them philosophical perspective and universal affect. It's Spielberg's finest achievement, a film that will look better and better with the passage of time. [22 Dec. 1989]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Paper Moon
    Ryan O'Neal is a con man and Tatum O'Neal is the foundling who may or may not be his daughter. Though their relationship is conventionally drawn, it has a heart that Bogdanovich hasn't been able to recapture.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    The Land Before Time
    It is, in the best Disney tradition, a story of childhood's end, of leaving the family and accepting adult responsibilities. Bluth relates it through a smooth counterpoint of humor, sadness and horror.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Exodus
    Intelligence applied exactly where it is most rare: in the lavish, star-studded epic. Otto Preminger’s 1960 film, based on the Leon Uris novel, makes fine use of dovetailed points of view in describing the birth pains of Israel.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Poison
    Poison is not a film that will play the shopping malls, but it remains a most imaginative, exquisite and compassionate piece of work.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    The Long Goodbye
    The film is so inventive in its situations and humor that its shortcomings—the blunt ideas at its core—don't become apparent before several viewings.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    The Rescuers Down Under
    It's a far better piece of animation than the dismal Oliver and Company of 1988 and last year's smartly conceived but indifferently executed Little Mermaid. Butoy and Gabriel obviously love their medium, the first Disney directors to do so in years.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    The Little Mermaid
    It may not be a transcendent masterpiece of the Disney canon, but The Little Mermaid is still very heartening: It suggests the Disney magic isn't lost after all.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Man Bites Dog
    It's not closed text, but a work of art that needles and disturbs. [14 May 1993, p.H2]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 93 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    The Band Wagon
    For many, this 1953 feature represents the height of the American musical.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Paris Is Burning
    A rough-edged, talking-heads documentary, directed with skill if not polish by Jennie Livingston, that has found a topic almost unbelievably rich in cultural paradoxes and interpretive possibilities. [09 Aug 1991, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 66 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Valley Girl
    Coolidge hasn't made a campy, condescending comedy, but a satiric romance, in which the background gags and caricatures contribute to a sense of significant conflicts and solid emotions. It's irresistible.
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