Henry Barnes

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The Guardian
For 84 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 25% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 73% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 9.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Henry Barnes' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 56
Highest review score: 100 The Double
Lowest review score: 20 Arthur Newman
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 84
  2. Mixed: 63 out of 84
  3. Negative: 3 out of 84
84 movie reviews
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    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Shepherds and Butchers
    Shepherds and Butchers doesn’t know which it is: the twisty legal drama that’s going to herd us through the issue or the ferocious expose, laying out the quotidian grimness of systemic death. It’s better at the latter. Even though much of the action is penned in the courtroom, the horror – and the interest – are played out in the past.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Paddleton
    Duplass and his co-writer, director Alex Lehmann, deliver this strange concoction – an improv bromance mixed with a tragic love story – with delicacy.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    High Flying Bird
    In picking at a system until it’s threaded, High Flying Bird is a classic Soderbergh construct.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Martyrs
    What’s left after the gore is stripped away is a mildly bloody, meatless horror.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    War on Everyone
    You can’t let your heroes be truly, purely horrible. But McDonagh’s moral twist comes in way too late and much too hard. It leaves you dizzy.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Bleed for This
    For all its smashed open cuts and swollen eye sockets, Younger’s film remains an oddly sterile experience. For a biopic, it is remarkably featureless.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    David Brent: Life on the Road
    It’s a rehash that neither develops the character nor betrays him. It simply assumes that we still share his weaknesses and therefore care about the fool.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    The Killing$ of Tony Blair
    There are moments when the film aches for focus. This again is down to Galloway. He is, like Blair, charismatic, opportunistic and never entirely consistent. The documentary lives and dies on those strengths and weaknesses.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    From the Land of the Moon
    The film takes on Gabrielle’s listlessness, slumps into an opiated fug. The malady is mysterious and not easily treatable. It just exhausts you. It transforms from a story about release to just another jail. At times it felt like there was no escape.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    The Divergent Series: Allegiant
    Big but boring, expansive but cheap-looking, Allegiant spins in place, waiting for next year’s Ascendent to come along and offer resolution. In all candour: you can do without it.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Things to Come
    Things to Come is a smart, earnest undertaking: an exploration of the insecurity that can hit any of us, at any age, when we start to question the life we’ve built.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Forsaken
    Jon Cassar’s film rejects the recent revisionism that’s flooded the genre. His take – a straight rip-off of the classics – is weirdly refreshing as a result.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    This Changes Everything
    A macro argument is being filtered through people’s local concerns, but without getting to know the subjects, you can understand their suffering, but can’t feel it.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    London Fields
    Novelistic, rich and awfully silly, London Fields – like Ben Wheatley’s take on High Rise - is a long-awaited adaptation of a popular and gloomily prophetic book, that seems unnecessary.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 20 Henry Barnes
    Mr. Right
    Mr Right is Grosse Pointe Blank meets Dexter. Liman meets Tarantino. Derivative idea meets sloppy execution.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Sunset Song
    It’s all fairly indulgent. But Sunset Song also has a viciousness that stops it falling too deep into a slumber
    • 30 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Stonewall
    An outrageously misjudged drama that flirts with the story of the birth of the gay rights movement.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Trumbo
    [Jay Roach] wants the film to be fun, while the story is serious. It’s a good idea and an admirable intention. But it does suffer the odd wobble.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    High-Rise
    Wheatley has made High Rise his story, instead of Ballard’s. That’s fine – but, unfortunately, it’s a less interesting take.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    The Martian
    A wide-eyed tribute to human ingenuity that packs enough snark to pull itself out of the black hole of earnestness, even if its fuel runs out partway through.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Where to Invade Next
    Where to Invade Next is a romantic film, equally affecting and annoying in its simplicity.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Station to Station
    The artists’ blathering about the creative process and the nature of existence gets monotonous. It’s the ordinary folk that keep the film on-track.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Fantastic Four
    The cast are some of the most promising actors of their generation, but what chemistry there is between them is swept away by wave after wave of expository dialogue and ludicrous exclamation.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
    A sequel that is slick with silliness, but peppered with enough wit and peril to sustain the franchise’s momentum.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Terminator Genisys
    Salvation was boring, but Genisys makes you sad. Risk-averse Hollywood has made a crash-test dummy of a once great franchise, simply throwing everything at it to see what it stands.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    A Perfect Day
    Inconsistency is A Perfect Day’s biggest problem. The script is scalpel sharp in some places, flabby as the well-blocker in others.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Play
    The message is laid on slow and thick, but it's no less powerful for it.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Predestination
    Even if Predestination is distinctive chiefly for Snook’s excellent performance, it’s still a tricksy story well-handled by its directors. It doesn’t offer any new twists on the genre, but it is clever enough to leave you satisfied that you don’t want the time back.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Tip Top
    There's so much thrown into Tip Top that nothing stands out.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets
    You can't help thinking he's missed the point of Pulp. Their music denigrated the people as much as it celebrated them. Habicht leaves the city in love with a surface-level reading of Cocker's take on it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
    Director Francis Laurence ekes a paltry story out. The special effects are limp and the script a little creaky, although somehow it still manages to thrill.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Interstellar
    It’s a glorious spectacle, but a slight drama, with few characters and too-rare flashes of humour. It wants to awe us into submission, to concede our insignificance in the face of such grand-scale art. It achieves that with ease. Yet on his way to making an epic, Nolan forgot to let us have fun.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Before I Go to Sleep
    It aims for sexy and/or dangerous, but the tone is dry and the pace lags.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Red Army
    Red Army is executive produced by Werner Herzog and Polsky borrows some his impishness. He makes sport of the old guard's rebuffs, glories in the occasion when Fetisov gives him the finger. This, he seems to say, is the attitude that made these guys.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Nightcrawler
    From a subdued start Nightcrawler unfurls into a ghoulish and wickedly funny satire on journalism, the job market and self-help culture.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Men, Women & Children
    A huge improvement on the muddled melodrama of Labor Day, Men, Women and Children is still a flawed Jason Reitman film. Its scope is too big, his ambitions too high.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Good Kill
    Niccol creates an atmosphere that is airless and dull, an unusual tone for a modern war film, but one that fits the subject matter perfectly.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Wild
    Vallée, in collaboration with screenwriter Nick Hornby, gives the film its energy by pulling the narrative apart. They create a two-hour hallucinatory montage of the hike and Cheryl's back story that's wound together with the songs, phrases and poetry that she recited to herself as she walked.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Horns
    Horns plays instead like a high concept beer advert – breezily stylish, memorable in its time, but a bit too full of gas.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Jimi: All Is by My Side
    The result is an unpredictable film, a difficult approximation of a biopic. But it delivers a Jimi Hendrix experience somehow the richer for sidelining the man and subverting his music.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Henry Barnes
    The Other Woman
    The Other Woman scrawls out a dumb dumb-feminist message with a big, fat marker pen.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    The Players
    If only the transitions in and out of the dollops of broad sex comedy weren't such a bumpy ride.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    The Love Punch
    Sometimes it works - Brosnan and Thompson are sedately charming, Spall and Imrie are naturally funny together - but there's only so much humour you can squeeze out of Pierce's dicky prostate.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Frank
    For a film that champions talent that takes risks, Frank can sometimes feel a little too conventional. The real Sidebottom's wayward genius would be a hard fit for any story arc, but Frank does a good job of dipping into surrealism and pop in equal measure.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    White Bird in a Blizzard
    Nothing really adds up to much, past a solid performance from Woodley and the energetic - if out-of-place - turn from Green.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Song One
    Writer-director Kate Barker-Froyland's debut feature is a mournful number, held back by an uncertain performance by Flynn and an alienating reverence for the restorative power of middling indie-folk.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Infinitely Polar Bear
    Infinitely Polar Bear is heartfelt and honest, but it's too cute by half.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Imperial Dreams
    Vitthal's film is full of heart, but overly ambitious. He could have made it easy on himself and steered us down a much more familiar route. Instead he delivers a moralistic story that's pure in its intention and a real slog to watch.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Happy Christmas
    Joe Swanberg's follow-up to Drinking Buddies is short and slight, but undeniably charming.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    The Raid 2
    The Raid 2's faults are not in Evans's technique – he's unusually adept at capturing the art of violence. Instead, the film suffers from too much potential.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Whiplash
    It's rare to see a film about music that professes its love for the music and its characters equally.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Belle
    Amma Asante's second feature tells Dido's extraordinary story in handsome, if formulaic, style.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    How I Live Now
    A gooey love story is pitted against the end of the world. No wonder the romance comes up wanting.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    What If
    It's pulled this way and that by a hiddly-fiddly soundtrack, spun senseless by scene after scene of Radcliffe and Kazan trading flirtatious banter.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 100 Henry Barnes
    The Double
    The Double isn't an original idea. It wasn't even in Dostoyevsky's time. But it's a great story. And Ayoade has produced a brilliant copy.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Out in the Dark
    There's romance and tragedy, but little depth and no nuance.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Rush
    What Rush has to offer is a great human drama, two dangerously talented men pushing each other to risky victory and a superb script, delivered with some mastery by Hemsworth and Brühl.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    The Wolverine
    The flat hammerblows of The Wolverine bear little relation to the zing and pop of Matthew Vaughn's colourful treatment. Inconsistency is inevitable in a world that's constantly being dug up and done over, but it leaves us no time to fall in love with anything being flung at us.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Blood
    Originality may be out of Blood's jurisdiction, but it manages to plod on, dutifully walking a tired old beat.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Citadel
    Foy's talent lies in suggesting horror, not delivering it.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Chasing Mavericks
    The script's a drowner, the acting's awash. Again and again Butler returns to the sea. He just about survives the buffeting.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    The Crash Reel
    A crash reel – a greatest hits of a boarder's most dramatic falls – is meant to entertain. But Walker takes the cheap thrills of the format and flips it painfully on its head.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    The East
    The East – a sleek thriller clogged by its noble message – heads south. It becomes sanctimonious, makes you contrary. I left craving a Big Mac.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Monsters University
    A fun, disposable watch.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    World War Z
    While some of World War Z is rotten, the whole stands as a punchy, if conventional action thriller.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 20 Henry Barnes
    Arthur Newman
    The flat-out dullness of Arthur is the point of Dante Ariola's debut feature, but it's also its undoing.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Simon Killer
    Brady Corbet is excellent as thoroughly unlikable Simon.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Let the Bullets Fly
    Between the kung fu, the gunplay, a gentle romantic subplot and the extreme gastronomy – there's something for everyone.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    What Maisie Knew
    The adults' behaviour is almost as confusing for us as it is for her. It's a neat trick that reminds us these weighty adult issues are both life-changing and, in the moment, somewhat insignificant to someone Maisie's age.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    The We and the I
    Gondry's argument – that pack mentality crushes individual expression – follows a similarly predictable route, but there's enough of his signature playfulness (especially in the use of mobile-phone footage to present flashbacks) to keep the journey entertaining.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    The Place Beyond the Pines
    The Place Beyond the Pines is ambitious and epic, perhaps to a fault.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Pitch Perfect
    The soundtrack's ironic bent might dissuade older viewers (Simple Minds are venerated), but they'd be missing out on one of the best musical comedies since A Mighty Wind. The song's the same, but Pitch Perfect is a great cover version.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    This Is 40
    It's not bad, exactly – but it is boring and very rarely funny. This is laboured. This is aimless. This Is 40. It's really quite a grind.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Parked
    Parked putters, but doesn't go anywhere.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    A Royal Affair
    The chemistry between Mikkelsen and Vikander barely simmers, when it should boil. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating affair of state.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    The Perks of Being a Wallflower
    The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a perfect fit for its target audience – the Harry Potter kids who are following Emma Watson through her baby steps towards the stronger stuff.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Cloud Atlas
    Tykwer and the Wachowskis' other twist on this karmic hokum - to cast each of their actors in multiple roles across the stories, regardless of age or race - is less successful.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    Argo
    There's a degree of puffery in the writing, however, that makes this drama untrustworthy.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Looper
    Once you commit to the lexicon – to the blunderbusses, the silver, the loops that close and the loops let run – you're in for a breathless ride. It's been a patchy summer for sci-fi, absent of anything that really sticks in the mind. Johnson's deep, distinctive film plays on repeat.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    [REC] 3: Genesis
    The dancefloor's full of bodies, the bride and groom have been backed into a corner by relatives desperate for their pound of flesh. Pretty much your average wedding, then.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    The Green Wave
    Ahadu pulls the curtain back on a government that was willing to imprison and torture its electorate.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Henry Barnes
    The Avengers
    It's fun to watch Whedon pitch his heroes against each other. Child's play, maybe, but entertaining all the same.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Henry Barnes
    Lockout
    Pearce has fun; world-weary in the style of a 15-year-old told one too many times to tidy his room – but shoddy special effects and the surface-level sass of the president's daughter leave this one spinning in low orbit.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Henry Barnes
    Tiny Furniture
    Dunham, who pads through much of this extremely well-written, often funny and very touching film in the semi-nude, doesn't give a damn about any of it.

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