David Fear

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Rolling Stone, Time Out
For 1,267 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 34% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 64% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

David Fear's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion [re-release]
Lowest review score: 0 Madame Web
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 537 out of 1267
  2. Mixed: 641 out of 1267
  3. Negative: 89 out of 1267
1267 movie reviews
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    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 David Fear
    Ghostbusters: Afterlife
    You can look past it muting the spiky chemistry of Rudd and Coon, who deserve more scenes and their own rom-com together, or the way the narrative’s father issues feel so incredibly forced, or how so many of the sequences appear to simply be killing time until the final act. What’s less forgivable is the way that it gets so caught up in the mythology of its hollow nostalgia that is misses why the original meant so much to so many of us way back when.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 David Fear
    Belfast
    It’s a memory piece, evoking a specific time, place, and political crisis in a way that is indelibly, achingly personal.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 David Fear
    Red Notice
    There’s something incredibly deflating about all of this, from the waste of precious screen-talent resources to the sense that you’re watching the last gasp of an age-old formula. It is like staring at a bright, shiny epitaph for two hours.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 David Fear
    Finch
    The whole thing feels so stiflingly familiar that you wonder what has more spare parts, the robot or the movie it’s in.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 David Fear
    Last Night in Soho
    The temptation is to wish that Wright had simply made a horror movie set in the Sixties, that he’d streamlined things a tad more and simply kept his revisionist look at the Carnaby-and-cocktails glamorous life in that bygone moment. But he’s after something a little bigger, and if Last Night in Soho comes across as being stuck in a tonal interzone, you have to admire how Wright is so intent on drawing a line between then and now.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 David Fear
    Halloween Kills
    As with so many middle parts of proposed trilogies, Halloween Kills feels designed to get you from Point A to a future Point C. It forgets, however, that a middle chapter still has to work on its own, and that stranding fans, completists, casual moviegoers, etc. in a weak-link entry runs the risk of permanently turning people off of the whole endeavor.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 David Fear
    The Last Duel
    The experience is not Rashomon Redux so much as enduring a bad rash.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 David Fear
    Lamb
    What felt like an unusual metaphor for how parenting taps into an inherent need to nurture suddenly swerves into Grimms’ fairy-tale territory. It’s the sweetest, most touching waking nightmare you’ve ever experienced.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 David Fear
    The Many Saints of Newark
    Chase has delivered something that walks the tightrope between social melodrama and fan service, and that sometimes teeters on the edge of falling. But he has also given us the foundation for the moment when a man from New Jersey will wake up one morning and get himself a gun.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 David Fear
    Dear Evan Hansen
    You see Evan Hansen, all of his flaws and desires and self-loathing laid bare. And there are enough of these goosebump-inducing, epiphanic moments courtesy of the actor that you see why people might love this film as well as cringe at it. Platt does not ruin the movie. He singlehandedly gives it a voice.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 David Fear
    The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    Jessica Chastain isn’t just the reason to seek out The Eyes of Tammy Faye — she’s the only reason to see this curiously tepid biopic at all.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 David Fear
    Free Guy
    Reynolds is like a puppy dog who moonlights as a male model, or maybe vice versa. He’s the only reason to see Free Guy, but you already know this going in.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 David Fear
    CODA
    CODA knows how to work that conventional-to-a-fault indie feeling like a champ. You may exit smiling. Just don’t be surprised if you also experience the sensation of having just been Sundanced to death.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 David Fear
    Reminiscence
    Although Reminiscence doesn’t try to hide any inherent metaphors — what are most movies these days, really, but nostalgia machines, designed for those stuck in the past? — it doesn’t do much with the material besides fashion something like a dull-edged Blade Runner.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 90 David Fear
    The Viewing Booth
    Even with its simple set-up and at a scant 71 minutes, there’s an entire buffet for thought laid out here. Alexandrowicz may have given us the single best documentary of the year; he has undoubtedly given us one of the most vital.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 David Fear
    Nine Days
    It’s heavy, heady stuff, coming at you via a delivery system of catalog-worthy set design, magic-hour cinematography, and often tamped-down, deadpan performances. And somehow, it all works in harmony to create a ripple effect of feeling that reverberates strongly under its placid surfaces.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 David Fear
    Jungle Cruise
    It’s something closer to an amusement-park attraction named Generic Blockbuster Cruise, where you slowly glide past a bunch of prefab set-ups — over there you’ll see some thrills, look out on your right for some spills and chills — and the whole thing moves inexorably forward on a track, while a skipper cracks the same corny jokes.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 David Fear
    Val
    Val is simply the reflections of an actor with a knack for self-documentation, who has seen better days but remains buoyant by the prospect of making art in one form or another.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 David Fear
    Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins
    Not even the presence of Money Heist‘s Úrsula Corberó as a slinky villain known as the Baroness could stave off a sense of disappointment.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 David Fear
    Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
    You do not need a documentary to prove that the tour guide of No Reservations and Parts Unknown contained multitudes. Any viewer could see him mature and mellow out, or at the very least become more meditative, as seasons progressed. But Roadrunner, Neville’s portrait of the late, beloved Bourdain, would like to give those other sides a bit more screen time.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 David Fear
    Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over
    The War Is Never Over is as much about trauma and processing and empowerment — the real kind, not the bumper-sticker-slogan kind — as it about music, or a musician, or a cultural moment. What it leaves out of Lydia’s history is substituted by what it adds to understanding her story.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 20 David Fear
    The Ice Road
    Neeson has made better pulpy B movies, and he’ll probably make worse ones than this. The good news is that, like buses, a new film from the star tends to come around every few hours, so you can skip this one without regrets.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 David Fear
    Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
    Summer of Soul is both a tribute to the artists and, just as importantly, their audience — which is what makes it not just a great concert film but a great documentary, period.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 David Fear
    I Carry You with Me
    It is a gorgeous film, and one that deserves to be seen on a giant screen as much as that other only-in-theaters release this weekend, F9. And even when I Carry You With Me becomes so lost in its aesthetic that you worry it’s losing focus, this impressionistic approach doesn’t take away from what is an intimate, extremely personal story of two men fighting to build a life with each other.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 David Fear
    Good on Paper
    If you’re seeking anything chewier about the pitfalls of modern dating, or con artistry in the age of social-media enabling, or what women want — from careers to friends, life, love — look elsewhere, pilgrim. But when Shlesinger opens the passenger door to her star vehicle and turns it to into a full-blown buddy comedy, the movie goes from being merely good on paper to being great onscreen.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 David Fear
    Luca
    The mixture of the fantastic and the sublime that’s constitutes the Ghibli house tone is very much what Casarosa & co. aiming for, though the many, many bits of business onscreen suggests a homecooked meal of Disney/Pixar leftovers.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 30 David Fear
    The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard
    There’s an art to making action films, and that artistry is as AWOL here as it is in the first movie.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 David Fear
    Censor
    The whole thing takes on a level of fractured fairy-tale storytelling that nods to both the Brothers Grimm and the father-figure Cronenberg.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 David Fear
    A Quiet Place Part II
    Part II feels like just another case of sequel-itis, something designed to metastasize into just another franchise among many. Just get through this, it says, and then tune in next year, next summer, next financial quarter statement or board-meeting announcement, for the real story.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 David Fear
    Final Account
    An oral history of a once-broken, brainwashed nation, Final Account is the end result of Holland’s efforts to collect testimonies on the unthinkable before those who were there are gone.
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