David Jenkins

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Little White Lies
For 238 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 34% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 61% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

David Jenkins' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Her
Lowest review score: 20 Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 115 out of 238
  2. Mixed: 106 out of 238
  3. Negative: 17 out of 238
238 movie reviews
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    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    The Color Purple
    Director Blitz Bazawule does well to draw out multifaceted performances from his cast, particularly Barrino and Brooks, and with them the big emotional beats all manage to land well enough. Yet the musical flights of fancy feel creatively bound by the stage adaptation and lack a certain eccentric pizazz.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 40 David Jenkins
    West Side Story
    It’s a rare, backwards looking misfire for this director who has always been at the vanguard of cinematic innovation. The care and attention that has gone into the making of this film is undeniable, though at times it feels misplaced and others overwrought.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Two Prosecutors
    It’s a supremely well-made piece of work whose function and message never quite manage to transcend the prosaic. Still, in the strange times we’re currently living through, maybe it’s worth sounding that necessary siren one more time for luck.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    The Eternal Memory
    It’s a pleasant film, albeit one which makes its point fairly early on and then restates it in various, sometimes sentimental ways. The film lacks for a strong narrative arc, and instead opts to filter stories and histories through the present moment.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Fire of Love
    Dosa’s film is a slick, moving and cutely Herzogian portrait of this loving, monomaniacal couple who straddled the line between the eccentric and the earnest.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    The Stranger
    Where Ozon presents as an ironist in much of his work, skewering genres and retro styles, there’s a refreshing seriousness to this mad endeavour that demands attention, even when some of the choices he makes don’t feel entirely right.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Fingernails
    Even though it’s a story that severely lacks for surprise, in both the silly nature of the tests and the question of Anna and Amir’s latent bond, the actors take the material seriously enough for the film to remain engaging enough.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    American Fiction
    There are some great things in this film, yet its intentions are swept up in a mire of tonal indecision and cynicism masquerading as irony.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 David Jenkins
    A Man Called Otto
    It’s a hard film to despise, and it works perfectly well as a supercharged Movie of the Week for the Hallmark Channel, but the lack of attention to detail and nuance mean that much of the film comes off as maudlin fluff rather than lightly philosophical tearjerker.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Memoir of a Snail
    Its recourse to human suffering as a way to jerk a viewer to react feels tiresome after a while, and it’s not helped by an ending which serves as a quick-fix band aid suggesting that sublime happiness is just an unlikely plot twist away.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Architecton
    The film’s thesis is often a little obvious, yearning for a return to a brand of architecture whose half-life isn’t so slim, but ignoring the arduous and exploitative construction methods that were used to produce those grandiose structures of yore.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Twinless
    As a writer and director, Sweeney shows much promise, at times demonstrating the swaggering confidence of the Canadian upstart, Xavier Dolan – the pair even look quite similar. Yet the film works best as a showcase for exemplary range of O’Brien.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Conclave
    It’s all competently performed and executed, with loud booms of sound cued to each scene change as an attempt to ramp up the tension, and lots of behind-the-head tracking shots of cardinals anxiously pacing through corridors and stairways.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Dìdi
    There’s a breezy panache to Wang’s direction, and he’s very good at capturing the comic skulduggery of, say, early instant messaging apps. It’s a shame, then, that it doesn’t have an original bone in its gangly, hunched frame.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Blue Moon
    There are points here where it feels as if Linklater was trying to make a gender-switched version of Fassbinder’s tragic The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, but without really leaning into the forceful bitterness and agency of the protagonist, and opting to have the text make a more profound point about the precarious nature of power and influence.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Empire of Light
    As a whole, the film doesn’t really work, as Mendes is far more successful in dealing with psychological issues than he is with political ones.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)
    It’s a fun little diversion that’s more interested in the salacious gossip and anecdotes than it is offering a more broad inquiry into how these artworks more generally enhance the music they’re being used to sell.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 David Jenkins
    Spencer
    On paper Stewart seemed like an eccentric casting choice, yet she slinks into the material with grace and ease, and her trademark arsenal of half-met glares and anxiety-dashed grimaces perfectly express her desperate yearning to be free of prettified toff prison.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 David Jenkins
    The Amateur
    Malek’s icy performance does little to endear the viewer to Charlie, while his ultra-tactile relationship with his wife – presented in gauzy flashbacks – never feels entirely authentic.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 David Jenkins
    The Fire Inside
    Shields is a worthwhile subject and her accomplishments are incredible, but this film is perhaps one for underdog sports enthusiasts only.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Ghost Trail
    It studiously documents the various ways that Hamid makes his case, even though there’s never that much depth to the character beyond his cloak-and-dagger maschinations and a pressing desire for justice.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
    This archive clip-driven documentary comprises Cousins’ own informed and poetic postulations on the inner-workings of the Hitchcock corpus, as he heads on a jolly, thematically-inclined ramble through one of the great artistic legacies of the 20th century.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Santosh
    It’s a slow, detailed procedural, one which carefully draws you into its dismal intrigue – and it’s engrossing for much of its runtime.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Scala!!!
    This is an exhaustive and lively document of a cult scene that you’re very happy it existed, but maybe don’t want to be a part of yourself.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Hollywoodgate
    It’s a fascinating, chilling, if limited study of how the endless cycle of global warfare plays out.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 David Jenkins
    When Fall Is Coming
    When Autumn Falls strays into some interesting, ethically thorny terrain, but Ozon always opts for the easy, often crowd-pleasing solution rather than to have things become too dark or alienating.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Dreamers
    Dreamers is slight but effective, and perhaps doesn’t quite come back from a twist that occurs about two thirds of the way in when Isio’s situation suddenly changes.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 David Jenkins
    The Long Walk
    The film works best when it allows the boys to simply shoot the breeze and discuss the lives they’ve led up to this moment.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Sick of Myself
    It offers a spitefully funny takedown of a culture which sees no differences between the acts of soul-bearing and self-abasement, and just when you think Borgli couldn’t twist the knife any further, he does just that.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Prey
    The film plays through the scenario with plenty of moment-by-moment gusto, and there’s a lack of flab to it that makes it rather appealing when placed next to so many action blockbusters (many of the interim Predator franchise entries included) that just feel the need to ramp things up to a silly degree. And still, this is a shallow film that offers little more than superficial pleasures.
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