Eric Hynes

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Time Out
For 135 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 31% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 67% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 12.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Eric Hynes' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 53
Highest review score: 100 Little Fugitive (re-release)
Lowest review score: 20 To Age or Not to Age
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 29 out of 135
  2. Mixed: 91 out of 135
  3. Negative: 15 out of 135
135 movie reviews
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    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    Make Believe
    First-time director J. Clay Tweel oversells the importance of both the Vegas event and of magic in general-you'd think he were filming a spiritual movement rather than hidden-ball tricks. His wide-eyed subjects do make magic happen-but that has less to do with illusion than innocence.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    The First Grader
    A lot of history gets horned into this undeniably inspirational parable, though slick execution and simplistic storytelling make it a lesson suitable only for easily impressed elementary-school students.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 20 Eric Hynes
    An Invisible Sign
    Except for two brief summits between Alba and Messina's pillowy lips, however, An Invisible Sign fails even to pander effectively.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    Lebanon, Pa.
    The culture wars may be simmering throughout writer-director Ben Hickernell's script-the Save the Whales and pro-choice bumper stickers on Will's VW invite a brutal barfly beatdown-but the real casualties are momentum and narrative cohesion.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    Exporting Raymond
    Offers an intriguing outsider's document of Russian culture reinventing itself from the outside in; its main export, however, seems to be good old-fashioned Ugly Americanism.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
    Rather than an argument or exposé, the movie is a condescendingly narrated demonstration of how money makes the movie world go round. (Stop the presses.)
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Eric Hynes
    Armadillo
    It's a sickening but stunning portrait of combat that looks past notions of bravery or brutality, guilt or innocence, to bear witness to a thoroughly besieged humanity.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Eric Hynes
    Trust
    Schwimmer is so committed to telling grim truths about modern living (whither goes humanity in the age of Twitter and sexting?!?) that he abandons the film's tantalizing slide into B-movie exploitation.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Eric Hynes
    Korkoro
    Even as it stands as a cinematic monument to mass suffering, Korkoro can't help but swing, strum and celebrate life for as long as it lasts.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    Monogamy
    While Shapiro does a fine job of emulating kink classics like "Blow Out," his film lacks one element that De Palma wouldn't have been caught dead without: a sense of humor.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    Elektra Luxx
    It's another episodic, shaggy-dog parade of L.A. denizens caught in moderately compromised positions.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Eric Hynes
    Happythankyoumoreplease
    Radnor tries to pin a tail of significance on this donkey, but he seems content with light comedy and mere proficiency. To which we can only reply: Nothankyounomoremilquetoast-please.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Eric Hynes
    The Sky Turns
    What elevates The Sky Turns beyond a lovely little elegy and into the realm of greatness is Álvarez's refusal to shape the film as a tragedy.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    Twelve Thirty
    Despite a few moments of surprising insight, Twelve Thirty comes off as more mechanistic than organic; it's composed rather than truly lived.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Eric Hynes
    The Red Chapel
    Uniting Sacha Baron Cohen's daredevilry with Werner Herzog's bombast, Brügger aims to expose "the evilness of North Korea" with a gloriously incoherent, kazoo-and-whoopee-cushion–inflected stage show starring a self-proclaimed "spastic."
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Eric Hynes
    I Am Secretly an Important Man
    The film works to inform as well as to preserve an air of mystery around Bernstein, an apt approach that occasionally slips into the willfully opaque. By all accounts, this secretly important man was tough to live with, but not too hard to love or admire.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    Queen of the Lot
    Jaglom can craft a scene and stage organic conversations, but if his saps and suckers never wander beyond a hermetic view of the real world, then so what?
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    The Legend of Pale Male
    Lilien certainly captures Pale Male's wild animal beauty in loving close-up. What his film needs, however, is distance.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Eric Hynes
    Undertow
    Undertow's three impassioned lead performances and Fuentes-León's honest engagement with thorny matters of identity, sexuality and community still make it an easy movie to get swept up by.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    Eichmann
    The movie's twitchy, diabolical monster is neither persuasive nor historically tenable, and unlike Arendt's Eichmann, he's far too easy to dismiss.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    A Small Act
    It's an inspiring narrative-as are the interwoven stories of three students hoping to earn that educational gift-but the doc itself is more of a telethon-ready fund-raiser than a work of dramatic reportage.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    Wild Target
    It's entertainment designed to resemble a good time without aspiring to provide one.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 20 Eric Hynes
    Kalamity
    Inane dialogue, extraneous scenes and wooden performances make for an experience that's less edge-of-your-seat than one very long, amateur hour and a half.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Eric Hynes
    Punching the Clown
    While never uproarious, Punching the Clown exudes the clever, warped sincerity of its star, eschewing uppercuts for a series of playful jabs.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Eric Hynes
    The Lottery
    Director Madeleine Sackler favors an agenda of advocacy over complexity, making The Lottery an effective, if unapologetically one-sided, piece of agitprop.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    Ramona and Beezus
    A tepid rom-com, replete with a nostalgic Bangles tune.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Eric Hynes
    Mademoiselle Chambon
    A train station finale is textbook tearjerker territory, but it still teems with exquisite sorrow.
    • 15 Metascore
    • 20 Eric Hynes
    To Age or Not to Age
    A mess of arrhythmic editing, mopey first-person inserts and distractingly choppy narration, all making a heady topic that much more difficult to follow. To focus or not to focus should have been the first question.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Eric Hynes
    Cropsey
    With tinkling thriller music and dramatic voiceover narration, this modest but engrossing first-person documentary comes on like a true crime caper.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Eric Hynes
    The Wildest Dream
    There's inherent drama in watching a person amble up a mountain, but it's an act of bad faith to oversell a stunt.
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