Ernest Hardy

Select another critic »
Film.com, L.A. Weekly, Village Voice
For 601 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 47% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Ernest Hardy's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 58
Highest review score: 100 Vanishing Pearls: The Oystermen of Pointe a la Hache
Lowest review score: 0 3000 Miles to Graceland
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 287 out of 601
  2. Mixed: 199 out of 601
  3. Negative: 115 out of 601
601 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Ernest Hardy
    Restless City
    Told in an elliptical style with a pacing and jagged rhythms that take some getting used to, the thrust and power of the film lies in its poetic imagery.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 10 Ernest Hardy
    Deadline
    The fact that real-life deadly racial animus in America is often cartoonish in its manifestation doesn't excuse Deadline's cliché-ridden characterizations of bigotry. Worse, the film has no pulse and no dramatic tension, despite its subject matter. It's a slog to get to its big revelations.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Ernest Hardy
    A Simple Life
    A deceptively simple film, gingerly peels layer after layer of sharp insights into the dynamics of familial love, using compassion and droll humor as its tools. Its strength is that it manages to tap genuine emotion without succumbing to sentimentality.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Ernest Hardy
    Surviving Progress
    The film trots out a who's who of great thinkers - Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking, Margaret Atwood, assorted scientists and historians - who are riveting as they walk us through the question of whether we will or can survive progress. The anticapitalism prognosis is grim, and the hope offered is slim indeed.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Ernest Hardy
    Love in the Buff
    Buff gels into a surprisingly moving look at the machinations of the heart.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Ernest Hardy
    The Raid: Redemption
    Lean, fast-moving, and filled with game-changing fight sequences that have a brutally beautiful (or beautifully brutal) quality, Gareth Evans's Indonesian martial-arts film The Raid: Redemption lives up to its viral hype.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Ernest Hardy
    Pray for Japan
    Filmed over a period of six weeks and supplemented with animated music sequences and chilling news footage of the terrifying deluge, Pray is both an elegy and a love letter.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Ernest Hardy
    The Forgiveness of Blood
    Marston nails the claustrophobia of small-town life and the turbulent emotionalism of teenagers, but what pushes the film toward sublimity is the way he delicately captures all of the characters' inner lives as their world slowly crumbles.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Ernest Hardy
    Kinyarwanda
    Cast with both professional and novice actors (which results in uneven performances), the beautifully shot film is filled with exquisite moments.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Ernest Hardy
    Under Fire: Journalists in Combat
    Fascinating and often devastating.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Ernest Hardy
    The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
    What gives the film its human dimension are the conflicting memories of former residents.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Ernest Hardy
    The Front Line
    Tightly directed and well acted (even though many characters are cut-outs from every war movie you've ever seen), The Front Line shoehorns little known history into a familiar format, and it works.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Ernest Hardy
    An African Election
    Even those who closely follow African (or global) politics will likely be bowled over by the real-life plot twists unfolding before Merz's camera. What makes the film especially resonate now is the frustration with the status quo that is consistently voiced by the people on the street.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Ernest Hardy
    The Big Fix
    The film's scope is staggering, including its detailed outlining of BP's origins and fingerprints across decades of unrest in Iran.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Ernest Hardy
    Dzi Croquettes
    It's the mind-blowing performance footage (and there's lots of it) that makes this a must-see film.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Ernest Hardy
    Oranges and Sunshine
    At the film's center is Emily Watson's pitch-perfect performance as Margaret Humphreys, the real-life social worker who in 1986 stumbled over the hidden practice.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Ernest Hardy
    The Sons of Tennessee Williams
    A tedious exercise in filling in historical blanks through exhausted tropes.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Ernest Hardy
    Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone
    A love letter to the group. Packed with fantastic performance footage, it solidly makes the case that, throughout the '80s and early '90s, Fishbone was one of rock's best live acts ever - furiously energetic, innovative, leaping multiple genres in a single song.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Ernest Hardy
    American Teacher
    What's made powerfully clear is that we've reached a dire point of crisis that, while largely rooted in economics, is about so much more than dollars and cents.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Ernest Hardy
    Benda Bilili!
    But real-life hard-knock plot twists, as well as some tweaking of form (there's no narrator or voiceover of any kind; the film's subjects outline their grim realities largely through their rhythmically upbeat songs) make the film absolutely riveting, as does the fiercely rousing music.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Ernest Hardy
    One Fall
    The cast is engaging, and there are a few light-chuckle moments, but the script needed another rewrite, and the film itself needed to be guided by a thornier sensibility than Fuller's.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Ernest Hardy
    Where Soldiers Come From
    Much of what's presented is familiar territory, but it's the moments that fracture prejudices and expectations that stick with you.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Ernest Hardy
    Special Treatment
    That's why Special Treatment is so disheartening. The film, starring Huppert, quickly telegraphs that its ideas are too shallow for a talent as deep as hers.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Ernest Hardy
    Mozart's Sister
    These subplots hint at what could have been, nudging the film toward biting rather than obvious commentary on the intersections of gender, sexuality, and creativity, and the costs of thwarting expression of any of them. But Féret barely explores this, and the film suffers for it.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 90 Ernest Hardy
    Late Autumn
    In remaking the 1966 South Korean film "Full Autumn" and setting it in America, writer-director Kim Tae-Yong uses the melancholic, gray backdrop of Seattle as both character and metaphor, crafting a film that's visually beautiful and incredibly moving.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Ernest Hardy
    Angel of Evil
    In many ways reminiscent of "Mesrine" but suffers greatly in comparison. It hits many of the same marks -- but the scenes unfold almost elliptically, never really building or illuminating character, and never sparking narrative momentum.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Ernest Hardy
    Spork
    Writer-director J.B. Ghuman Jr. shoehorns the character into a witlessly stitched homage to other films - notably "Heathers."
    • 6 Metascore
    • 30 Ernest Hardy
    The Abduction of Zack Butterfield
    The script is often ludicrous (gratuitous digs at feminism; muddled commentary on war and the military), the sets look like sets, and the acting-aside from Helsham and Plunkett-doesn't even rise to the level of student films.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Ernest Hardy
    The Big Uneasy
    Shearer builds an airtight case to prove his thesis, and one of his most chilling arguments is a roll call of brave souls whose lives and careers have been systematically wrecked in pursuit of the truth.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Ernest Hardy
    Louder Than a Bomb
    The movie floats to another realm entirely when the cameras go into the home of Nova Venerable, a smart, eloquent, gorgeous girl whose love for her special-needs younger brother and their hardworking single mom is expressed in terms that sidestep the formulaic verbal and physical bombast of so many of her peers.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »