Derek Elley

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Variety
For 400 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 45% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 52% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 3.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Derek Elley's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Atonement
Lowest review score: 10 Thomas and the Magic Railroad
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 199 out of 400
  2. Mixed: 178 out of 400
  3. Negative: 23 out of 400
400 movie reviews
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    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    The Magic Flute
    There's not much magic left in Kenneth Branagh's The Magic Flute. Relocating the 1791 opera to WWI and adopting a hard-edged approach that worked for "Hamlet," Branagh has wrought a "Flute" for high-end aficionados only. Lavishly mounted and well sung, but thin on charm and spontaneity, pic is likely to hit a bum note at general wickets.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    The Hole
    Cool it may be, but scary (or even mildly shudder-inducing) it ain’t, even in 3-D.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Unrelated
    A thinly scripted mood piece centered on an estranged fortysomething among vacationing friends in Italy, Unrelated doesn’t carry the viewer along with its protag’s emotional problems.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Berlin 36
    The picture sports a strong lead cast but is diminished by TV-style helming and production qualities.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Songs from the Second Floor
    One of the most highly crafted pics in recent memory, and certainly the most original in vision of the 23 features competing at Cannes this year, Songs From the Second Floor rapidly wears out its welcome after the first few reels to finish up as a perplexing objet d'art.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    A Good Woman
    Has a script that plays more like a period romancer studded with occasional Wilde-isms and gets uneven treatment from a mixed Anglo-American cast.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Fakers
    Despite engaging performances from a cast led by Matthew Rhys and Kate Ashfield and pro direction by first-timer Richard Janes, yarn about art grifters lacks real snap, which ultimately stems from the so-so script and lack of real coin.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Guru
    Strongly cast, long-limbed yarn contains some of Ratnam's best stuff in its first half but script weaknesses mar the later going and film's overall impact.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Mansfield Park
    But there's little sense of a longer dramatic arc stretching across the characters: Rozema can't seem to hold a single tone for more than a few minutes, and she has too many other axes to grind besides just getting the story up on the screen.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Summer Palace
    Fourth feature by Mainland helmer Lou Ye ("Suzhou River," "Purple Butterfly") shoots for metaphysical drama but ends up saying very little beneath all the poetic voiceovers, sexual encounters and political seasoning.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Shrooms
    By-the-numbers item, in which five American college students literally get wasted while tripping out on magic mushrooms in rural Ireland, is OK vid fodder with few real scares and not an ounce of originality.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Warriors of Heaven and Earth
    A handsome although dramatically muddled Noodle Western.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Tea with Mussolini
    Some fine individual perfs by the tony cast, plus fine period detail and costumes, make the time pass fairly agreeably, but Tea With Mussolini suffers from a fatal lack of focus and emotional center, reducing potentially involving material to a succession of individual scenes.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Thorns
    An involving, often kinetic 2½-hour ride for auds who can accept their entertainment overboiled as well as just hardboiled.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Sukiyaki Western Django
    Basic joke wears off after five minutes, and many bystanders will start to head out of town. But genre/Asian buffs prepared to ride shotgun for two hours will be rewarded with some classy action sequences and densely accoutred widescreen lensing.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Happy Times
    Small but delightful tale about a dyed-in-the-wool spieler who develops a soft spot for a blind girl dumped in his care.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Da wan
    Pic is an obvious but highly accessible entertainment that manages to josh its subjects without being condescending to either Eastern or Western auds.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Mongolian Ping Pong
    A charming but overextended yarn about some prairie tykes who mistake a table-tennis ball for a glowing pearl from the gods.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    24 City
    Result is far more accessible than Jia's previous two pictures, with moments of genuine emotion by the real-life interviewees.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Rumble in the Bronx
    Though Chan wins his usual stripes for death-defying... the movie ends on a dramatically unsatisfying note.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Romance & Cigarettes
    Chockfull of ideas and with an irreverence that irresistibly recalls late '60s American cinema, thesp John Turturro's third outing in the helmer's chair, Romance & Cigarettes, alternately shines and sputters.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Storm
    A potentially gripping legal thriller about what happens when Western Europe attempts to solve Central European problems ends up as dull entertainment in Storm.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Human Traffic
    Well cast, engagingly played and directed with a stylistic pedal to the metal, Human Traffic is a lot of energy adding up to very little.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Pola X
    An often intriguing, sometimes hypnotic work, but one that quickly starts to unravel in the final hour as it becomes clear there’s not much beneath the emperor’s clothes.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
    Talky, repetitive and largely covering the same ground with no new thoughts, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is a major let-down.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Together
    The plucky music student who overcomes adversity is a staple subgenre of mainland cinema and, though Chen Kaige directs with greater slickness and more finesse and humor, there's still little to differentiate Together from any other state-studio pic.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    The Goebbles Experiment
    A man whose name has become a byword for pure evil gets a disarming makeover in The Goebbels Experiment. Far from being the horror show expected from its title, Lutz Hachmeister's cool, almost anti-dramatic docu paints a portrait of an insecure manic-depressive solely through extracts from Joseph Goebbels' own voluminous diaries.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Slap Her... She's French
    Scripters Robert Lee King and Lamar Damon leave no national cliche or double entendre unturned in this good-looking but relentlessly lowbrow outing which plays like "Clueless Does South Fork" with a side order of garlic.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Breakfast of Champions
    Has some fine individual moments but fails to cohere into a grander, more substantial statement on the themes it aspires to tackle.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    A Christmas Tale
    Largely thanks to the snappy editing, short scenes and a strong cast led by a matronly Deveuve and Amalric's enjoyable perf as the black sheep of the family, A Christmas Tale never devolves into a tedious two-and-a-half hours of self-examination. But it also never goes very far, either.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Postmen in the Mountains
    Too slim to make much impression outside fests, this nevertheless reps another solid outing by former art director Huo Jianqi.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Sunshine
    Like a collapsing star, Sunshine initially burns brightly but finally implodes into a dramatic black hole.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Anatomy 2
    A no-holds-barred, thoroughly generic follow-up to the medical horror-chiller that wowed German wickets in 2000.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Millennium Mambo
    A slow, empty, over-mannered snoozer that shows Taiwanese helmer Hou Hsiao-hsien asleep at the wheel.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    The Hurt Locker
    Boal's script stirs a little of everything into the pot, which boils down into seven setpieces divided by brief intervals of camaraderie/conflict among the three protags.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Free Radicals
    An often compelling drama, marbled with dry humor and flecked with the supernatural, that provides food for thought but doesn't quite reach the brass ring.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Dead Man's Shoes
    Film plays as a quirky Brit riff on everything from U.S. slasher pics to revenge oaters but without Meadows' usual psychological complexity.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War
    Kang remains a superb technician, but somewhere the movie forgot to pack any genuine emotion along with its ordnance and K rations.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    J.S.A.: Joint Security Area
    Despite its merits, is neither an art movie nor an out-and-out, propulsive actioner like "Shiri."
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow
    The movie plays like a career summation in which the 68-year-old writer-director has simply run out new ideas.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    The Guru
    A generally entertaining but rather old-fashioned romantic comedy.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Ticket to Jerusalem
    Attempts to meld reality and artifice but to uninspiring results.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Tony Takitani
    Ultimately, this is a striking-looking film -- consciously recalling the paintings of Edward Hopper in its architectural use of space -- which, like its protag, is a little short on real feeling.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    Second time round, Bridget is still fat, funny and endearing -- but "all a bit, um, familiar, actually."
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    The Warrior
    Tendency to go for art rather than action, and a leisurely pace that isn't bolstered by much dialogue or food for thought.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Journey to Western Xia Empire
    A slowly inspiring saga of blood, sweat and horse dung, played with conviction.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Chéri
    Like a passable bottle of champagne, Cheri fizzes and slides down quite easily but lacks real body and doesn't really hit the spot.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Morning Sun
    Admirably balanced production that pulls the curtain back slightly on a little-charted period of modern Chinese history.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Valhalla Rising
    With very little dialogue, and even less plot, five chapter stops lend the movie a skeletal structure: "Wrath," "Silent Warrior," "Men of God," "The Holy Land" and "Hell." But any discussion of the Dark Ages conflict between paganism and Christianity is reduced to just grunts or insults.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Kedma
    A largely dull history lesson…stripped of any backgrounding, peopled with archetypes rather than fully-drawn characters, and features self-consciously arty direction that gets in the way of story-telling.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Devils on the Doorstep
    Has all the classic faults of a picture not only directed by an actor but by an actor who is his own producer.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Calendar Girls
    Though the film is never dull, and playing by the cast is spirited, it's actually a surprisingly gentle movie, with no big "Full Monty"-like finale to send auds buzzing into the street.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    John Rabe
    Despite the emotive subject matter, picture is often too sluggish dramatically, and never knits together its stock Western characters into a satisfying whole.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    The Cherry Orchard
    Chekhov has never seemed such a long haul as in this awkward adaptation of The Cherry Orchard by veteran director Michael Cacoyannis, 77, who's assembled a good roster of names but ones that are not necessarily right for their roles.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    A Touch of Spice
    Using the familiar device of cuisine as a metaphor for national identity and personal feelings, bitter-sweet pic about a man torn between his ethnicity (Greek) and the country of his birth (Turkey) makes its points lightly and entertainingly, with only a routine third act letting down the package.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Ju-on: The Grudge
    A haunted-house one-trick pony.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Dostana
    Gay's the way, but the way's not really gay, in the fluffy and largely entertaining Dostana.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Lions for Lambs
    Amounts to a giant cry of "Americans, get engaged!" wrapped in a star-heavy discourse that uses a lot of words to say nothing new.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Distance
    There’s almost none of the generous, involving humanity (and warm humor) of the previous film, nor any clear take on the personalities in the slackly structured script, largely improvised by the actors.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    The Sea
    Though solidly crafted, with a host of well-etched performances, film is unable to establish a consistent, engaging tone.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Chuen jik sat sau
    High-octane plunge into pop gangster psychology.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    The Mother
    A portrait of a contempo British family drifting apart because of generational differences, The Mother ends up an uneasy brew of too many competing tastes and themes.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Still Life
    Has almost zero plot but molto mood. It will appeal to the most faithful of the director's camp-followers and no one else.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Zhou Yu de huo che
    Chinese thesp Gong Li goes for a striking career makeover in Zhou Yu's Train, a sensual, slickly packaged slice of Euro-style metaphysical cinema centered on a free-thinking woman and the two men in her life.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Silent Water
    Worthy intentions are drowned by schematic scripting and only OK direction in Silent Waters, an achingly PC drama on how Islamic fundamentalism wrecks families and oppresses women.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Kamikaze Girls
    Wears out its welcome at 100 minutes, but could find an audience in the West as a latenight attraction at gay fests.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Dai si gin
    An interesting idea comes over only half-formed in Johnnie To's Breaking News, an effective Hong Kong crimer that partly returns to the realistic style of some of his late '90s dramas, but never properly knits its theme of media manipulation into pic's punchy thriller format.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Ali G Indahouse
    An extremely silly, grossly scatological but often amusing picture that plays like Dumb & Dumber meets Spike Lee in London.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Free Zone
    Amos Gitai's most satisfying pic since war drama "Kippur." Schematic set-up is given a human face by fine performances and a physical journey that's often more interesting than the characters' emotional ones, which are weakened by the Israeli auteur's tendency toward convenient doctrinaire-ism and chunks of expository dialogue.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Blue Gate Crossing
    High on charm but extremely low on content, Blue Gate Crossing is a half-hour short stretched to feature length.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Tokyo Eyes
    Brings nothing new to the table, and spends far too long making the audience think it will.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Bend It Like Beckham
    Writer-helmer Gurinder Chadha assembles a gallery of broadly played stereotypes into a movie about social attitudes that's more rooted in small-screen sitcom than anything deeper.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Mad Detective
    A neat idea that doesn't quite hit the bull's-eye.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Yes Nurse! No Nurse!
    Pic maintains a likable, breezy tone throughout but looks increasingly threadbare of real inspiration or originality as it proceeds.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Heaven
    Sports a lustrous performance by Cate Blanchett that gives the movie much of its final sheen but still can't keep it on the rails as the already flimsy story starts to disintegrate in the final act.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    Though tastily lensed and with a convincing cast led by Cillian Murphy, essentially small-scale picture lacks the involving sweep of Loach's earlier historical-political yarn, "Land and Freedom."
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Hide and Seek
    A routine haunted child psychothriller gussied up with A-list casting.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Lourdes
    Either a subtly subversive black comedy, a deeply spiritual portrait of physical rebirth or a whole lot of nothing in a self-consciously arty package, Lourdes isn't about to reveal its true colors anytime soon.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    In My Country
    An unquestionably sincere but dramatically stillborn outing by veteran John Boorman.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    St. Trinian's
    Mildly amusing result, with plenty of slack in its 100 minutes, should work OK with its target audience of female Brit tweenies, who won't notice the pic's shoddy technical package, sloppy direction and the way the original films' antiestablishment tone has morphed into a celebration of dumbed-down "yoof" culture.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    In This Tricky Life
    A colorful, enjoyable ride most of the way but could have been even better if Beatriz Flores Silva's direction had more often risen above the functional and had not gotten a bad attack of conscience in the closing reels.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Redacted
    Deeply felt but dramatically unconvincing "fictional documentary" -- inspired by the March 2006 rape and killings by U.S. troops in Mahmoudiya, south of Baghdad -- has almost nothing new to say about the Iraq situation and can't make up its mind about how to package its anger in an alternative cinematic form.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Backstage
    With its booming soundtrack of songs -- written by Laurent Marimbert and sung by Seigner herself -- and good chemistry between Le Besco and Seigner, pic at times has an operatic emotional intensity that will turn off some viewers but provide a guilty pleasure for others.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Captain Corelli's Mandolin
    Strikes too many false notes on the dramatic side to add up to a satisfying emotional experience.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Neal 'N' Nikki
    Fluff is hardly the word for Neal 'n' Nikki, a mismatched romantic comedy that makes most Bollywood twosomes look like art movies.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    The Protector
    Boasting the same refreshing avoidance of CGI and wire work as "Warrior," slickly made production (largely by the same team) is more consciously aimed at the international market, with its Australian setting and multilingual dialogue.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    The Low Down
    The lowdown on The Low Down: charm 8, content 2.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Outlander
    Not helped by a wooden perf from Jim Caviezel as a humanoid alien who accidentally imports a real alien to eighth-century Earth.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Paradise Now
    Handsomely shot in widescreen, mostly on actual West Bank locations, and well-played by the cast, pic lays out the issues in an accessible but rather too over-correct way, seemingly eager to please all parties at the expense of real passion.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Spring Fever
    Overlong and very Euro-flavored.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Climates
    Immaculately shot and composed as always, and moving at Ceylan's usual measured pace, this one is slightly enlivened by more likable perfs and a trim 98-minute running time.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Very Bad Things
    Basically a very conventional movie gussied up with a few jaw-dropping moments. Unlike genuinely amoral pics such as "Heathers" or "Shallow Grave," it never seems really comfortable with its characters' actions.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Wolke Neun
    Overall tone lies somewhere between Mike Leigh and Ken Loach in performances and look, with a modest tech package.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Mr. Nanny
    Cross Uncle Buck with Home Alone, stir in the Hulkster, and you've got Mr. Nanny, a gonzo comedy-actioner that should entertain the under-12 and couch-potato sets.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Snow Cake
    Boosted by a delish performance from Carrie-Anne Moss as a local vamp who helps unthaw the Englishman, but holed beneath the waterline by a gratingly miscast Sigourney Weaver as the persnickety autistic.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Derek Elley
    Love the Hard Way
    Doesn't ring true as a love story between a cocky scam artist and a clever biology student, despite a game effort by Charlotte Ayanna in an impossible role and Adrien Brody at his loosest.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    The Ghost Writer
    What the picture most needed was a complete cinematic rethink and, yes, even some action to move it along.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    Est - Ouest
    Too often caught between trying to be a sweeping period drama and intimate love story at the same time, with a script that's never fully satisfying on either count.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Derek Elley
    Blind Mountain
    Low on drama and originality, and high on deja vu, sophomore outing by writer-director Li Yang ("Blind Shaft," 2003).
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Derek Elley
    The Cave of the Yellow Dog
    Davaa's strong visual sense, engaging cast and respect for basic film grammar make this slim exercise in managed reality go the distance.
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