Glenn Kenny

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Premiere, RogerEbert.com, The New York Times
For 1,918 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Glenn Kenny's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Shadow
Lowest review score: 0 Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,189 out of 1918
  2. Mixed: 470 out of 1918
  3. Negative: 259 out of 1918
1918 movie reviews
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    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Glenn Kenny
    Graves Without a Name
    The accretion of detail — narrative, visual and verbal — gives the movie an unusual density. The depiction of human cruelty is appalling, but the way “Graves” makes the viewer feel the necessity of its filmmaker’s calling is profoundly moving.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 63 Glenn Kenny
    Jafar Panahi's Taxi
    Panahi’s latest act of defiance is entirely commendable on a number of levels, but I regret to say that from my own perspective, Taxi is the weakest of the films he’s made since he was enjoined from making them.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
    The compassion expressed here, and the rich complexity of everything the movie takes in, make this Poitras’ best film.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Before Sunset
    Yep, this movie is basically a yakfest, but an incredibly fluid and involving one, and if you have any kind of affinity for either of the characters, you’re bound to find the picture a kind of miracle.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Only Yesterday (1991)
    Like “Kaguya,” it functions as a highly sensitive and empathetic consideration of the situation of women in Japanese society—but it’s also a breathtaking work of art on its own.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 75 Glenn Kenny
    32 Sounds
    Green’s approach as the narrator is sometimes a little too “gee whillikers” to suit the tastes of this grumpy old man, but 32 Sounds hit my sound and vision sweet spot just fine most of the time.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 75 Glenn Kenny
    I Called Him Morgan
    I Called Him Morgan evokes times and places, and the sorrows and joys of the jazz life in those times and places, with real integrity.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    American Splendor
    One of the funniest, smartest, most moving pictures of the year.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Phantom Thread
    The movie is, of course, beautifully made. Anderson’s visual style is remarkable. Shooting the picture himself, reportedly, with the collaboration of lighting cameraman Michael Bauman, he frames in a Kubrick-inflected style but cuts with a Hitchcock-influenced one.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Wojnarowicz
    [An] exemplary documentary.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Glenn Kenny
    Paths of the Soul
    The movie so upends the traditions of documentary and narrative filmmaking that “dramatizes” may be inaccurate — the filmmakers followed the real pilgrims for a full year, after all. But the movie is so well made and engaging that such distinctions will make little difference to the viewer.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Finding Nemo
    I don't think we're going to see a better--a funnier or more genuinely heartwarming, for that matter--comedy this year.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Paterson
    The movie’s protagonist, played with spectacular attention to detail and what feels like a genuine sense of affinity by Adam Driver, is named Paterson.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Persepolis
    While avoiding specious bromides about universality, Persepolis insists on communicating with its audience, and insists that communication and empathy are the keys to our survival.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Glenn Kenny
    Paris Calligrammes
    The filmmaker has what seems like a torrent of anecdotes and attendant ideas to impart, but the movie never feels rushed.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    A wildly imaginative, hugely entertaining tour de force that asks big questions about life and love and fate while never ceasing to fully engage the viewer.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Glenn Kenny
    Eyimofe (This Is My Desire)
    While the themes here are, of course, redolent of neorealism, the filmmakers don’t make ostentatious nods to cinema past. Their voice is their own; the camera is mobile when it needs to be, but stands still much of the time, letting the excellent cast build their characters as the events of the film test their endurance.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Glenn Kenny
    The Lives of Others
    von Donnersmarck delivers something extraordinary and rare: a thriller that's entirely adult in both its concerns and perspective which manages to be as thoroughly gripping as any finely tuned albeit adolescent Hollywood nail-biter.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 75 Glenn Kenny
    House of Flying Daggers
    All told, while the goods that Daggers offers are choice, the movie ultimately demonstrates that too much can be, well, more than enough.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    National Gallery
    Like the Maysles brothers, like Shirley Clarke, like D.A. Pennebaker at his heights, Wiseman has created a body of work that proves him a great filmmaker, period. His latest picture, National Gallery, is a typically lucid, graceful and unobtrusively multi-tiered work.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Glenn Kenny
    Seymour: An Introduction
    Throughout the picture, Bernstein interacts with genteel folk who quietly deplore what they see as the American perception of art and art-making.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
    The Tale of Princess Kaguya is both very simple and head-spinningly confounding, a thing of endless visual beauty that seems to partake in a kind of pictorial minimalism but finds staggering possibilities for beautiful variation within its ineluctable modality. It’s a true work of art.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Glenn Kenny
    The Alto Knights
    While it’s inevitable that some, maybe many, viewers will find the dual role a distraction, those who hunger for De Niro in mobster mode will get more than their fill.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 88 Glenn Kenny
    Magellan
    Magellan, about the titular Portuguese explorer, clocks in at a relatively tidy two hours and 45 minutes, making it practically an ideal starter picture for those curious about Diaz’s work.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Zama
    Ms. Martel’s attention to period detail is impeccable without being show-offish about it. But Zama is not the kind of period piece that aims for suspension of disbelief.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Long Day's Journey Into Night
    Its various components defy logical arrangement both as viewed and in retrospect. What they build up to is even more seductive than anything that led up to it — a moment of breathtaking romanticism that’s as intoxicating as it is unexpected.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Democrats
    Both inspiring and upsetting, Democrats is, finally, a film that deserves to be called “necessary.”
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Glenn Kenny
    Capote
    Catherine Keener is remarkably subtle and soulful as Capote's friend and helpmeet Harper Lee, who delivers a shocking verdict against him at the end, but the movie, as you probably will not be surprised to learn, is owned by Philip Seymour Hoffman.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 88 Glenn Kenny
    The Death of Stalin
    Yes, The Death of Stalin is a kind of farce, but it’s a mordant one. It never asks us to laugh at cruelty; it does make us laugh at the absurd pettiness and ultimate small-mindedness of the men perpetrating that cruelty. And Iannucci is a superb ringmaster.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Glenn Kenny
    Hard Truths
    Writer-director Mike Leigh is 81 years old, and his movies consistently have a fire that's practically adolescent while imparting a wisdom that's possibly ancient. "Hard Truths" is a tragi-comedy character study of near-febrile vitality. And, entering the sweepstakes rather late in the game, it's one of the very few great films of 2024.
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