Jason Bailey

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L.A. Weekly, The New York Times, The Playlist
For 156 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jason Bailey's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 If Beale Street Could Talk
Lowest review score: 10 Sextuplets
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 93 out of 156
  2. Mixed: 41 out of 156
  3. Negative: 22 out of 156
156 movie reviews
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    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Jason Bailey
    Daddio
    Johnson and Penn’s connection is genuine, and there’s an awful lot to like here. Shame about that title.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Jason Bailey
    Aisha
    It is a thoughtful and intelligent film, and it finds a gifted actor doing some very tricky things quite well.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Jason Bailey
    The Dead Don't Hurt
    Mortensen is playing with iconography here, so it’s less about that destination than the journey — and he finds the right, delicate, evocative note to conclude on and holds it exactly as long as he should. “The Dead Don’t Hurt” isn’t your typical revenge Western, but audiences willing to stick with it will find a picture rendered with grace, patience, and artistry.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 67 Jason Bailey
    Rather
    "Rather” is ultimately a valentine, which is fine. But as such, it’s not as tough on Dan Rather as he would’ve been to such a subject himself.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 33 Jason Bailey
    First Time Female Director
    First Time Female Director is a tremendous disappointment because Peretti is such a gifted performer; it’s understandable to go in pulling for her (this viewer certainly did), but those layers of goodwill just peel away as scene after scene simply does not work. Too much of what she’s assembled is just half-hearted cringe comedy—much of it without the comedy half of the equation.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 91 Jason Bailey
    The Pigeon Tunnel
    What is truly, and thrillingly, new here is Morris’s thematic interest. The deeper he goes into the rabbit hole with Cornwall, the more his true subject becomes apparent, as the picture becomes a penetrating investigation of the idea that great artists freely use fiction to work through the very real pain of their own lives—even in work that’s not explicitly or even transparently autobiographical.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 42 Jason Bailey
    Lee
    Lee knows exactly how it wants to look, yet it has little that’s new or interesting to say.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Jason Bailey
    Woman of the Hour
    Kendrick leans more into the dark comedy and general dread of the situation, winding the picture tighter the deeper she goes, and her work here is ambitious and impressive.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 33 Jason Bailey
    Corner Office
    Hamm makes himself look bland, which is no small accomplishment. But he’s also smothering much of what makes him an exciting actor.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Jason Bailey
    Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed
    He led a fascinating, complicated, often contradictory life, and Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed does it justice.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 67 Jason Bailey
    I Used to Be Funny
    Above all, I Used to Be Funny is a fine showcase for Sennott’s considerable gifts.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 58 Jason Bailey
    Somewhere in Queens
    You can see the conflicts and dramatic beats coming from a mile away, and the corniness of the ending is absolutely immeasurable. It’s an inoffensive and even likable picture, but not a particularly compelling one.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Jason Bailey
    Late Bloomers
    It’s about as well-acted and enjoyable a version of this particular thing as you’re likely to find.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Jason Bailey
    Self Reliance
    Johnson and Kendrick are just terrific together — ample chemistry, excellent comic byplay — and the sense of play, the feeling of one-upmanship in their scenes together, immediately cranks the picture up a notch.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 33 Jason Bailey
    Evil Dead Rise
    The movie’s practical and special effects are a rogues’ gallery of gougings, stabbings, shavings, and scalpings; those who like to have their stomachs turned will find much to cheer about. But is it actually scary – suspenseful, tense, trafficking in more than the cheap shock of a jump scare or vivid effect? Not really, no.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Jason Bailey
    Bottoms
    Once you get on this one’s wavelength, it’s wildly funny and delightfully subversive.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Jason Bailey
    Landscape with Invisible Hand
    There’s a curious shortage of honest-to-goodness laughs in Finley’s script; the humor is strained, and it doesn’t really land as science-fiction either. ... “Landscape with Invisible Hand” is, at best, an ambitious failure.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Jason Bailey
    Flora and Son
    If we’re being honest, Carney isn’t breaking new ground here, and I keep waiting for him to make a movie that will finally fully exhaust his Whole Thing. But Flora and Son is not that movie.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 83 Jason Bailey
    Bad Behaviour
    It’s genuinely thrilling to watch a filmmaker with a specific voice and oddball style taking genuine risks, and the way she successfully navigates these tonal transitions, how she cuts the cynicism with sincerity and vice versa – well, it’s kind of miracle.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Jason Bailey
    You Hurt My Feelings
    The new film most directly recalls “Enough Said,” Louis-Dreyfus and Holfocener’s collaboration of a decade ago, which also concerned the Louis-Dreyfus character hearing things she shouldn’t. This film doesn’t quite measure up to that one — Jeffrey Waldon’s cinematography is oddly murky, and Menzies can’t provide the strong counterpoint James Gandolfini did. But it’s nevertheless smart, warm, and very, very funny.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 67 Jason Bailey
    The Pod Generation
    Barthes’ screenplay is clean; for the most part, it’s brainy but not didactic, and thoughtful but not dull.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Jason Bailey
    The Starling Girl
    This is a movie that barely speaks above a whisper, even when its characters are howling in pain inside.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 42 Jason Bailey
    Fair Play
    Domont’s script just turns into a series of victories, defeats, increasingly distracting narrative leaps, and ultimately silly turns of tone that seem designed to provoke whoops and sneers and cheers.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 42 Jason Bailey
    If These Walls Could Sing
    “Walls” is more like a Wikipedia entry— the hyperlinked names appear, and the key events are noted, but there’s not much in the way of genuine insight.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 33 Jason Bailey
    Babylon
    If nothing else, Babylon is a giant swing, a three-plus hour orgy (sometimes literally) of sex, drugs, and cinema, a respected young artist reaching for a profound statement about art and commerce and America. He misses it by a country mile, but hey, he sure does take that swing.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Jason Bailey
    Return to Seoul
    Return to Seoul begins as an intimately off-the-cuff stranger-in-strange-land story and becomes a sprawling epic of personal discovery. It’s one of the best films of the year.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Jason Bailey
    Personality Crisis: One Night Only
    The film’s key asset is Johansen, and “Personality Crisis” pulls off the neat trick of serving as an introduction for us newbies while providing new insights and footage for the fans – the latter primarily in the form of the mellow concert footage.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 25 Jason Bailey
    Black Adam
    A joyless, glacially paced compendium of interchangeable scenes of people floating around in their goofy masks and capes, tossing clichéd dialogue and CG lightning bolts, and punching each other into buildings.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 67 Jason Bailey
    Ticket to Paradise
    The pace drags in the home stretch a bit, and the laughs dry up considerably. None of this matters much. George and Julia spark and sparkle, which is what the trailers promise, and it’s what the movie delivers.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 33 Jason Bailey
    Halloween Ends
    And the score, again by Carpenter, his son Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies, is another banger, often lapping the action onscreen for mood and dread. It almost becomes a provocation, forcing us to long for more active involvement by Carpenter, a filmmaker whose skill and restraint frankly puts Green to shame. Who knows if Halloween Ends will actually conclude the slasher series (let’s not forget that “Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter” was the fourth of twelve installments). But I’ll say this: even as a fan of the franchise, when the title came up at the end of Halloween Ends, I found myself hoping to God they weren’t kidding.
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