Jen Chaney

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New York Magazine (Vulture), The Dissolve, The New York Times, TV Guide Magazine, Washington Post
For 98 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 10.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jen Chaney's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 56
Highest review score: 100 North by Northwest
Lowest review score: 0 Love the Coopers
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 42 out of 98
  2. Mixed: 35 out of 98
  3. Negative: 21 out of 98
98 movie reviews
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    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Jen Chaney
    Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F
    What made the first two so successful — Beverly Hills Cop III is not canon in my world — is that they also functioned as delivery systems for Murphy’s charms as a total ham willing to freak out or speak in a parade of goofy voices for the sake of getting a laugh. Axel F does that too, but more than anything, it’s a reminder of how fun it can be to watch a Beverly Hills Cop movie.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Jen Chaney
    A Five Star Life
    A Five Star Life steers away from pat answers and stereotypically Hollywood conclusions, a narrative direction that’s all the more refreshing with a woman in the lead role. But in its second half, Tognazzi’s movie derails as it starts trying to hammer home its points with too much force.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Jen Chaney
    In Country
    These guys are so fascinating, in fact, that it feels like In Country could and should have gone longer than 80 minutes so that the movie could delve more deeply into their psyches and provide more context behind how these reenactments were born.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Jen Chaney
    The Black Sea
    If Harden weren’t such a naturally magnetic presence, The Black Sea would not work nearly as effectively as it does. But he’s fascinating and unpredictable to observe, carrying the entire film on his shoulders as if it weighs nothing at all.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Jen Chaney
    Emptying the Skies
    As illuminating as that article may have been, though, Emptying The Skies, a documentary based on Franzen’s story that borrows its headline as its title, ultimately makes a more searing imprint on the psyche.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Jen Chaney
    The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear
    This is a film about people whose stories are still being written, and who, despite their palpable sense of exhaustion, are still seeking healing and hope. There are no Hollywood endings here. That’s just the truth, which Gurchiani has proved she’s committed to capturing.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Jen Chaney
    Downton Abbey
    How pleasurable to once again escape to this thoroughly ridiculous, richly rendered place and live there, if only for a couple of hours until the credits roll.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Jen Chaney
    A Will for the Woods
    It becomes clear that this isn’t just a documentary that seeks to demystify green burials. It’s one that tries, and largely succeeds, to demystify the process of letting go of life.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Jen Chaney
    Teenage
    Wolf — who wrote Teenage with Jon Savage, author of “Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture 1875-1945” — deftly weaves together various media in a way that breathes its own youthful, stream-of-conscious life into the documentary genre.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Jen Chaney
    Turbo
    A derivative but nevertheless good-hearted movie that’s peppered with enough clever touches to engage adults as well as moviegoers of the smaller, squirmier variety.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Jen Chaney
    Furious 7
    Yes, the whole movie feels overstuffed and overlong, and the non-action scenes are often dragged down by stilted dialogue. But Furious 7 buzzes with a frenetic energy so contagious, there’s no sense in resisting it.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Jen Chaney
    Fast & Furious 6
    Like its predecessors, doesn’t need CGI, 3-D glasses or even praise from film critics. It just needs to please its audience with amped-up, old-school thrills that make its target demo whoop and holler with every zoom, smash and ka-BOOM. Consider this review a declaration that it does just that.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Jen Chaney
    A Birder's Guide to Everything
    The film captures its lush, leafy settings with an understated evocativeness that fully immerses the audience in its sense of place. The problem is that the movie ultimately leans too heavily on that sense of understatement, failing to let genuine, unexpected emotion fully break through to the surface.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Jen Chaney
    Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater
    It’s a perfectly pleasant cinema-studies seminar, but one that stops just short of teaching its students anything truly insightful.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Jen Chaney
    Cat Person
    The most compelling moments come from watching Braun and Jones advancing toward and retreating from each other. It doesn’t sound quite right to say they have good chemistry; it’s more accurate to say that both actors understand how to make the lack of chemistry between their characters real and tangible.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Jen Chaney
    Anita
    It doesn’t provide enough rigorously reported context about what happened in 1991 to feel like anything close to a definitive portrait of the Anita Hill vs. Clarence Thomas saga.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Jen Chaney
    Sample This
    As an enjoyable documentary about the history behind a surprising game-changer of a song, this film works well. But it misses the opportunity to take its material to the next level and say something bigger.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Jen Chaney
    Class Action Park
    Class Action Park tries with only partial success to capture the dissonance between the funny war stories told about that hazardous site and how awful and tragic it was that young people lost their lives there.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Jen Chaney
    My Old Lady
    My Old Lady isn’t the tart slice of dessert that its initial scenes suggest it might be. In fact, it only becomes truly compelling in its second half, as Horovitz drives toward darker material and farther away from the light.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Jen Chaney
    The Many Saints of Newark
    In its subtext, this movie tells us that nothing is as good as you might hope. That’s true of the era that Tony would later, wrongly, glorify. And it’s true of a movie that is fascinating to study and consider, but not nearly as good as the television series that made us wish for this movie to exist.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Jen Chaney
    Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    The movie Honk for Jesus: Save Your Soul belongs to Regina Hall. By the end, she has seized it with both hands thanks to a performance that, especially in the film’s second half, is explosive, multi-layered and, unfortunately, much more purposeful than the film itself.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Jen Chaney
    Broadway Idiot
    As a stand-alone documentary, it begs for more conflict and a broader canvas from which to explore the contemporary theater scene.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Jen Chaney
    About Last Night
    Hall and Hart have appeared together in several movies, including 2012’s Think Like A Man, but have never been paired as love interests. Here, they lock into a manic, improvisational groove from minute one.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Jen Chaney
    Planes: Fire & Rescue
    The Disney animators still take great care to capture the majestic beauty in the jagged landscapes and towering conifers of the Yellowstone-esque Piston Peak Park. Unfortunately, the same contours and shading don’t apply to the characters.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Jen Chaney
    The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
    The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is like the family movie equivalent of a Krabby Patty: It tastes fine and will satisfy some cravings. But it’s ultimately a product cranked out to make money and keep our consumer-driven society, much like Bikini Bottom’s, chugging along without significant disruption.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 50 Jen Chaney
    The Bag Man
    The Bag Man is always teetering on the edge of amateurish absurdity, before being tugged back from the edge by its actors.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Jen Chaney
    Moxie
    It’s obvious that Poehler and her colleagues have taken great care to impart all the right civic and social lessons, and that’s good. But watching Moxie, you wish they could have exhaled more and allowed more unresolvable messiness to infiltrate the movie’s spaces.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Jen Chaney
    Big Stone Gap
    Big Stone Gap suffers from some hokey moments, including an ending that’s both implausible and too heavy on the sap.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Jen Chaney
    Merry Christmas
    Lacks a sense of structure and purpose, ambling from one tense conversation to the next without effectively making a impact.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Jen Chaney
    Decoding Annie Parker
    Decoding Annie Parker could have shown much more effectively and deeply that the fight against an often ruthless disease can be won by women attacking it from multiple sides. Instead, it sticks mostly to one track, taking audience members on a journey that, sadly, via the movies or their own lives, they already may know a little too well.
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