G. Allen Johnson

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San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner
For 521 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

G. Allen Johnson's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Fire of Love
Lowest review score: 0 The Out-Laws
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 344 out of 521
  2. Mixed: 83 out of 521
  3. Negative: 94 out of 521
521 movie reviews
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    • 77 Metascore
    • 25 G. Allen Johnson
    24 Frames
    Still, I’m not sure Kiarostami really intended this film to be a movie. It seems more like an art installation. Of note is the terrific sound design; the sound is credited to Ensieh Maleki, who captures full, rich, peaceful sounds of nature.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    Leaning Into the Wind
    Leaning Into the Wind asks us to appreciate art for art’s sake, and that’s not a tough ask at all.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 G. Allen Johnson
    Have a Nice Day
    A bleak, at times fascinating but strangely inert Chinese animated film.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    Small Town Crime
    Buoyed by an appealing lead performance by John Hawkes, Small Town Crime is a smart, sharply written detective story that, though not without humor, plays it straight and tough.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 G. Allen Johnson
    Quest
    A moving, quite amazing documentary.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    On the Beach at Night Alone
    On the Beach at Night Alone is really Kim’s film. Her performance won her the best actress award at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and she is in every scene, warts and all.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 25 G. Allen Johnson
    Blade of the Immortal
    At 2 hours, 21 minutes, feels like a slow death by a thousand cuts.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 G. Allen Johnson
    The Paris Opera
    For a documentary about one of the most prestigious opera institutions in the world, The Paris Opera has, maddeningly, very little opera.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    Tom of Finland
    A good, strong movie, but never threatens to be great. One salivates at the adventurous directions the film could have explored.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 G. Allen Johnson
    Wasted! The Story of Food Waste
    In the face of this relentless nihilism, it’s quite an achievement that the new documentary Wasted! The Story of Food Waste is so darned entertaining and hopeful, as well as informative.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 25 G. Allen Johnson
    Better Watch Out
    A horror “comedy” about a deranged 12-year-old boy with a script that feels like it was written by a deranged 12-year-old boy.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    Unrest
    Like many first-person medical documentaries — such as the recent “Gleason” — Unrest can be really hard to watch. Brea’s film, though, might be the beginning of hope for millions of sufferers who might see the film, and could be a conversation starter for additional funding into research.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    School Life
    It’s a quiet film that almost slips by without notice.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 G. Allen Johnson
    Brad's Status
    When explored by writer-director Mike White’s expert, soulful script, Brad, against all odds, becomes a sympathetic figure, and the film itself achieves a sort of poetry.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    Rebel in the Rye
    Salinger, who died in 2010 at age 91, probably would have hated this movie. If Jones doesn’t quite pull it off, it is at least a film of many pleasures and a thought-provoking look at American literature’s most famous loner.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 G. Allen Johnson
    A Very Sordid Wedding
    The film is undeniably energetic, with a lot of good lines written by Shores, but it descends into obvious preachiness, and from this view, the unrelenting wackiness becomes overwhelming. Still, good times are had by all.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    I Do... Until I Don't
    A play-it-safe film, with its chaos a little too controlled. But Bell’s examination of the institution of marriage has it insights, and there are laughs.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 G. Allen Johnson
    Birth of the Dragon
    The problem with Birth of the Dragon, George Nolfi’s largely fictionalized account of a 1964 fight between an Oakland martial arts instructor named Bruce Lee and San Francisco instructor Wong Jack Man is that Lee...is the third-most important character in the film.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    The Fencer
    The Fencer, directed by Klaus Haro, is basically a “Hoosiers” remake — a true story set in a 1950s small town, in which a coach with a mysterious past arrives to shape a rag-tag bunch of kids into tournament contenders (there’s even a halfhearted romance that seems thrown in at the last minute in both films) — but that’s OK. It’s a winner here, too.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    Marjorie Prime
    Hamm perfectly plays Walter as a sort of suave, GQ version of HAL 9000, and Davis and Robbins have their most satisfying feature film roles in years. Along with the pitch-perfect Smith, they provide the humanity to Almereyda’s vision of a species in danger of slipping into the void of selective memory and loss.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 G. Allen Johnson
    Leaving Las Vegas
    Nicolas Cage gives one of the best performances of his strange, courageous career.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 G. Allen Johnson
    Goya in Bordeaux
    Dreamy and elegantly filmed.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 25 G. Allen Johnson
    Battle in Heaven
    A spectacular failure, despite further evidence of the director's keen eye and bold cinematic ideas.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 88 G. Allen Johnson
    Secrets & Lies
    Leigh has a gift for demonstrating character from the outside in.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    Price of Glory
    A movie that features rich Mexican American characters and an uncompromising story line is always timely.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 G. Allen Johnson
    I Am Cuba
    Powered by the great Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov ("The Cranes Are Flying") and the unmatched handheld black-and-white cinematography of Sergei Urusevsky, it is one of the most visually hypnotic films ever -- and that's not hyperbole.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 G. Allen Johnson
    The Full Monty
    There isn't a whole lot of fancy subplotting, just a potpourri of funny and engaging characters.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 63 G. Allen Johnson
    Jerry Maguire
    Now "Rod Tidwell," with Jerry Maguire as a supporting character, would be a movie to pay to see.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 G. Allen Johnson
    Prefontaine
    But then, just when it appears the race is lost, Steve James' love for his character and art form kicks in and wins the day, and, though flawed, Prefontaine is an engrossing portrait of a complex figure.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 G. Allen Johnson
    Man with a Movie Camera
    Excited with the possibilities of the relatively young film medium, Russia's Dziga Vertov took to the streets of Moscow, Odessa and Kiev to give us a portrait of an ever-changing world that is more essay than documentary. It's a 1929 silent film that added its punctuation in the lab - jump cuts, dissolves, split screens, etc. - to create an indelible work in cinema history. [13 Apr 2017, p.E8]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
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