David Rooney

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The Hollywood Reporter, Variety
For 1,359 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

David Rooney's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 The Hand of God
Lowest review score: 10 The School for Good and Evil
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 838 out of 1359
  2. Mixed: 437 out of 1359
  3. Negative: 84 out of 1359
1359 movie reviews
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    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 David Rooney
    Howl's Moving Castle
    The tireless volley of ideas and inventions make this a delight that should connect with kids and adults in both dubbed and original-language versions.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 David Rooney
    Billy Elliot
    Strikes a delicate balance of comedy and pathos with an uplifting final act that delivers a resoundingly satisfying emotional payoff.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 David Rooney
    Mountains May Depart
    While that awkward final section shows Jia's lack of assurance working in English, the misstep is instantly erased in a beautiful concluding sequence that reaffirms the film's aching depth of feeling and extraordinary sense of place.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    Harry & Snowman
    Davis' film is a disarming underdog story that doubles as an animal-rescue advocacy tool.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 David Rooney
    Suspended Time
    Suspended Time does provide some of the pleasures frequently associated with Assayas’ work. . . Mostly, however, the project feels like the result of a writer-director killing time, sketching impressions of a life put on hold by outside circumstances, without figuring out what he wants to say with it all.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    Cryptozoo
    Its freewheeling storytelling often feels slapdash, its hippy-dippy earnestness a touch simplistic and its central allegory is lifted straight out of X-Men. But there's a nonstop fusillade of imagination at work here that commands attention, even when the balance of art-school inventiveness and child-like fantasy threatens to topple into chaos.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 David Rooney
    Crazy Rich Asians
    It's both a relief and a pleasure to report that this high-gloss rom-com — based on the bestselling novel of a Singaporean author, directed by an Asian-American and featuring an all-Asian cast — is such a thoroughly captivating exploration of the rarefied question of whether true love can conquer head-spinning wealth.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    In Order of Disappearance
    In Order of Disappearance provides a wonderful vehicle for Stellan Skarsgard's stone-faced gravitas and calm intelligence.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    Touch
    The movie occasionally veers toward cliché, but its delicacy and restraint keep it dramatically compelling and its emotions are never unearned, right through to its lovely open-ended conclusion.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    Omaha
    While the drama depicts a situation most parents would find unthinkable, it does so with unfailing compassion and sensitivity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    Bad Hair
    A spare neorealist drama that holds attention and emotional involvement with its deft balance of toughness and sensitivity.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 David Rooney
    Highest 2 Lowest
    The director is in the role of the flashy, panache-y showman here, and he plays it to perfection, delivering a big, highly polished chunk of movie that’s pure enjoyment.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 David Rooney
    Heart of Stone
    It gets the job done and is sure to pull solid numbers. It doesn’t hurt that Gadot has appealing chemistry with co-star Jamie Dornan.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    Joe
    Where it really works is in Cage's bone-deep characterization of a man at war with himself.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 David Rooney
    From Afar
    Deliberately detached in its observational style, yet as probing, subtle and affecting as any psychological drama could wish to be, this is an elliptical film that trusts its audience enough to peel away exposition and unnecessary dialogue, uncovering rich layers of ambiguity.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 David Rooney
    The Surrogate
    This clear-eyed ethical drama is propelled by a performance of stunning psychological insight and raw feeling from Jasmine Batchelor. But the film is rendered even more affecting by the careful consideration it gives to the impact of her character's fluctuating decision-making, both on the people directly involved and those on the fringes.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 David Rooney
    On the Rocks
    On the Rocks is very much a father-daughter two-hander — tender and personal, dryly funny and played to perfection by Jones and Murray. Its effortless touch shows the accomplished, genre-hopping Coppola continuing to expand her range.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    Miss Juneteenth
    Imbued with a lovely sense of place and community, this is a low-key film, leisurely perhaps to a fault and dramatically a tad too mellow, though observed with a keen eye for the small details of ordinary lives that elevates the material.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    The Iron Claw
    As Kevin recalls in voiceover, Fritz instilled a belief in his sons that if they were the toughest, the fastest, the strongest, nothing could ever hurt them. The dismantling of that belief in the face of all-too-human physical and psychological vulnerability is ultimately what makes the uneven but heartfelt film affecting.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 David Rooney
    Behind the Sun
    Consummately crafted and stunningly shot in magnificent locations deep in Brazil's remote northeastern badlands, the film unapologetically courts the commercial curve of the international arthouse arena with its rustic exotica and sensory overload of poetic imagery, giving it something of a grandiose air.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 David Rooney
    Les Destinées
    A massive undertaking and an accomplished piece of filmmaking in a solid tradition of intelligent, meticulous literary adaptations.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 David Rooney
    The Rape of Recy Taylor
    With lucidity and deep feeling, Nancy Buirski's documentary maps an ugly trail of injustice and then widens its lens to pay tribute to the women of color whose refusal to be silent helped drive the evolution of the Civil Rights movement.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 David Rooney
    Kiki
    An uplifting sense emerges of the resilience through community of youth who are marginalized, abandoned, isolated, bullied or sexually exploited.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    Most Beautiful Island
    There's much to admire about Most Beautiful Island, with its highly original spin on the immigrant survival story and its compelling protagonist, whose fate remains raw, urgent and real even as she's pulled into outré movie-ish weirdness. Despite some missteps, there are enough strengths to mark this as a promising debut.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 David Rooney
    Fair Play
    If there’s a significant flaw to this confident and compelling debut feature, it’s that it’s sleazy enough to be fun beyond its serious-minded overturning of antiquated gender dynamics, but not quite trashy enough to be truly juicy.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    The Iron Lady
    Meryl Streep gives a fully realized portrait of British Prime Minister Thatcher in a biopic that values character over context.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 David Rooney
    Inside Out 2
    It’s the balance of basic psychology with abstract concepts and inspired observational comedy that makes this a uniquely captivating coming-of-age tale.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 David Rooney
    The Son's Room
    While devotees expecting Moretti's wry worldview may feel shortchanged, others will find this a profoundly moving experience, giving it fuel to cross borders into the arthouse niche.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 David Rooney
    13 Minutes
    The movie is well acted and mostly absorbing, but it spells out everything so painstakingly that there's zero room for subtext.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 David Rooney
    Wicked
    Grande and Erivo give Stephen Schwartz’s songs — comedy numbers, introspective ballads, power anthems — effortless spontaneity. They help us buy into the intrinsic musical conceit that these characters are bursting into song to express feelings too large for spoken words, not just mouthing lyrics and trilling melodies that someone spent weeks cleaning up in a studio.
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