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.
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