David Jenkins

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Little White Lies
For 237 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 35% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 60% 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: 114 out of 237
  2. Mixed: 106 out of 237
  3. Negative: 17 out of 237
237 movie reviews
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    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    The Legend of Molly Johnson
    Occasionally, the film does lack ambiguity, and there are a number of characters who, just through the casting, make-up and dress, come across as one-dimensional extremes of “goodies” and “baddies”. Yet Molly herself, and the seemingly endless string of physical and psychological trials she endures . . . makes for a satisfying emotional core.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 David Jenkins
    Happening
    This is not a politically didactic film, nor a lapel-shaking polemic, but a film whose obligation towards fine dramatic authenticity succeeds in convincing that this is the correct way of thinking, and any alternatives are incorrect.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Operation Mincemeat
    It’s a model of old school screen storytelling, where the robust individual elements coalesce into the exact sum of their parts and not a single ounce out either way.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 David Jenkins
    Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood
    Apollo 10 ½ is about the subjective intimacy of history, and how all events are just an equally-sized, vibrantly-coloured fragment in the kaleidoscope of our mind.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 David Jenkins
    Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle
    Harari’s film is a practical, simple and saddening document of everyday madness.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 20 David Jenkins
    Sonic the Hedgehog 2
    There’s a joke where people say, “This film’s plot could’ve been written on the back of a napkin!” Yet for Sonic 2, a napkin seems like the equivalent of multi-volumed antiquarian tome, as there is so little of substance to this depressingly rote endeavour.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 David Jenkins
    The Duke
    A jolly throwback to a time when flip, breezy British comedies came freighted with substance, and lots of charismatic performances to boot.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 David Jenkins
    Dog
    There are numerous moments where all the signposts point towards a saccharine dirty bomb, and thankfully, the film seldom allows those to detonate.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 David Jenkins
    Parallel Mothers
    Every shot, every narrative beat, every decision exudes not merely confidence, but the touch of a master.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 David Jenkins
    Amulet
    A wildly ambitious, idiosyncratic and very English domestic horror story baked in the mould of Clive Barker’s seminal S&M gore wig-out, Hellraiser, from 1987.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 David Jenkins
    Licorice Pizza
    Licorice Pizza is a slow-release product, something that creeps up on you, inveigles its way into your conscience. It’s silky-smooth filmmaking perfection, bolstered by a full hand of remarkably charismatic star supporting turns.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 David Jenkins
    Lapwing
    Visually and dramatically, the film doesn’t reinvent any wheels, nor does it set out too, instead happy to splice together a satisfyingly intense period drama with some nice moments of genre pay-off.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 David Jenkins
    You Will Die At Twenty
    At times it’s a little too ponderous, and sometimes struggles to bring variation and surprise to its runtime. Yet this laconic, meditative drama muses on the nature of time and the revelation that, even though Muzamil’s predicament seems highly unlikely to the rational onlooker, the knowledge he accrues is pertinent to all mortals.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 David Jenkins
    Drive My Car
    Drive My Car is endlessly fascinating and rich, the type of film which you could spend hours analysing and come no closer to feeling as if you’ve landed on its true intent.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 David Jenkins
    Azor
    It’s perhaps one or two increments too obscure, too puzzling and too unwilling to give anything away that it seems to end mid-sentence, without any traditional closure. Yet it’s still a bold work that puts great faith in its cast to play along with this game of chilling insouciance.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 David Jenkins
    Passing
    Sometimes the filmmaking doesn’t quite do enough to elicit the requisite intensity from some key conversations, but it certainly lands its most important punch, which arrives at the devastating climax.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 David Jenkins
    The Card Counter
    It’s a supremely compelling tale leavened by its wry humour and a subtle commentary on the essential emptiness of American life.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 David Jenkins
    Eternals
    What’s interesting about Eternals is how genuinely down to earth most of it is, rejecting the time-honoured duality of the flashy superhero who also has to contend with the banality of domestic life. This is more like reality, in that it is about coming to terms with smallness and impotence in the face of so much cosmic sprawl.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 David Jenkins
    Last Night in Soho
    The film is at its best when holding back details and sculpting fine character details, but the intensity is ramped up far too early and it becomes increasingly tough to take the plot seriously, or build an emotional connection with its climactic revelations.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 David Jenkins
    Dune: Part One
    The important scenes are allowed to play out in a way that allows for a slower, more satisfying reveal of character motivation, as well as adding necessary ballast to the emotional foundations for later in the saga.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 David Jenkins
    Balloon
    Tseden directs with a low-slung commitment to a dramatically heightened form of social realism, and this deceptively simple story ends up speaking volumes about how love, sex, marriage and parenting sit at a paradoxical remove from the dictates of the state, and the parochial attitudes of the older generation.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 David Jenkins
    Playtime
    For my money it is the greatest film ever made.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 David Jenkins
    California Schemin'
    There’s an interesting metaphor here for McAvoy’s own career as a Scottish man who earns a crust by perfecting a range of accents and character types. Yet its feelgood arc is all a little predictable and soft-edged.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 David Jenkins
    Stalker
    Stalker is a movie to be watched as many times as physically possible, to be picked apart, discussed, argued over, written about, to inspire music, books, poetry, other movies, teachers, philosophers, historians, governments, even the way an individual might chose to live their life. It really is that astounding.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 David Jenkins
    The Long Good Friday
    Hoskins performance shows a man who clearly believes that he’s on the right side of history, and once this big, good deal is done, he will have atoned for past sins. The film is brutal in the way it conclusively proves him wrong, right down to its iconic final shot in which Shand sits in the back of a car struggling to settle on the emotion that would amply capture his frazzled state.
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