Dave Kehr

Select another critic »
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 6.3 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
view
per page
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    Chocolat
    Director Claire Denis has attempted a meditative mood piece on the intertwined themes of colonialism and forbidden love. It's difficult, in fact, to tell which is the metaphor for which. But while the movie's tone is impeccably muted, and though its horizontally composed images are striking, and its dramatic rhythms are subtle and sure, there is something gnawingly simplistic in the conception. [12 May 1989, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Kehr
    The Trip to Bountiful
    First-timer Peter Masterson directed; his notion of film is to point the camera in the general direction of the actors.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Dave Kehr
    Klute
    Donald Sutherland works small and subtly, balancing Jane Fonda's flashy virtuoso technique.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Dave Kehr
    Something Wild
    It has wit, originality, color, warmth and formal intelligence. It tempers its escapist dash with a touch of darkness, and for all of its playfulness, never departs from a fundamental seriousness.... Something Wild is superbly unpredictable. [7 Nov 1986]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    Deep Cover
    Deep Cover is a rousing entertainment but also a cunningly subversive piece of work, one that burrows from within genre conventions to defeat expectations and undermine smug certainties. It`s a movie that gets under your skin in a way that no amount of speech-making can.
    • 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
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Dave Kehr
    The China Syndrome
    For director James Bridges, the film looks like a hack job, particularly after the personal anguish of 9/30/55, but it's a very good hack job: strong, simple, and perfectly paced, until the last reel flounders in a bit of overkill.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Dave Kehr
    Grin Without a Cat
    A Grin Without a Cat is a work of extraordinary journalism, but it is also a work of deft and subtle poetry, visual (in the rhyming of gestures and shapes across images and sequences) as much as verbal.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Dave Kehr
    Black Orpheus
    This sort of thing was considered high art not so long ago; now it seems forced and ponderously symbolic.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    Much Ado About Nothing
    Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing presents a pleasant, simplified, heavily emphatic version of a classic text. [21 May 1993, p.C]
    • Chicago Tribune
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Dave Kehr
    Biggie and Tupac
    Whether or not you buy Mr. Broomfield's findings, the film acquires an undeniable entertainment value as the slight, pale Mr. Broomfield continues to force himself on people and into situations that would make lesser men run for cover.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Dave Kehr
    Mikey and Nicky
    One of the most innovative, engaging, and insightful films of that turbulent era of American moviemaking.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Dave Kehr
    Breaker Morant
    The film handles difficult issues of wartime morality, with clear parallels to the American experience in Vietnam, but Beresford's direction is so placid, distanced, and methodical that the film never admits any doubt or debate; it tends to seal up the issues rather than liberate them.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Dave Kehr
    Bound for Pleasure
    It's all oddly sweet, and, for the viewer at least, more than a little dull.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Dave Kehr
    Destry Rides Again
    The material makes no demands on the talents of James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich, but they enter gamely into the farcical tone set by director George Marshall.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Dave Kehr
    Picnic at Hanging Rock
    Director Peter Weir struggles to create an atmosphere of mystical languor, dissolving his actors in blinding sunlight and filling his sound track with the faintly ominous rustles of nature. But the deenergized drama leads only to anticlimax, as Weir suggests much more than he shows and invites the audience to fill in the meanings.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Dave Kehr
    To Live and Die in L.A.
    Friedkin isn't nearly in enough control of his material for the film to qualify as an artwork, yet it's one of his few films with a real emotional current.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Kehr
    Bullitt
    Steve McQueen as a tres chic San Francisco cop, though the real star is his sports car. There isn't much here, and what there is is awfully easy. With Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn, Robert Duvall, and a chase sequence that achieved classic status mainly by going on too long; Peter Yates directed this 1968 feature.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Dave Kehr
    Nine 1/2 Weeks
    Despite a monotonously fashionable mise-en-scene, Lyne generates some genuine erotic tension between his two stars; you believe in their obsessive relationship, even as most of the action and staging registers as ridiculous.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Dave Kehr
    Sounder
    Moving without being mawkish, charming without being coy.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Dave Kehr
    The Train
    Reasonably entertaining, if too long and too literal.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Dave Kehr
    Forbidden Planet
    Even as the SF cliches fall fast and heavy, this is great to look at, thanks to the sumptuous MGM sets and the fine animation and matte work by Walt Disney Studios.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Dave Kehr
    A Fish Called Wanda
    Contains some gaspingly funny moments. [29 July 1988, Friday, p.A]
    • Chicago Tribune
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »