Jesse Hassenger

Select another critic »
Consequence, Decider, IGN, Paste Magazine, Polygon, The A.V. Club, The Daily Beast, The Guardian, The Verge, The Wrap, TheWrap
For 801 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jesse Hassenger's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score: 91 American Honey
Lowest review score: 12 Asking for It
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 362 out of 801
  2. Mixed: 370 out of 801
  3. Negative: 69 out of 801
801 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 54 Metascore
    • 80 Jesse Hassenger
    Keeper
    Part of what makes Perkins’ film so refreshing is the way it prioritizes its visceral effect on an audience over a desire to bend that story into a modern relationship parable. As clever as so many contemporary horror movies are, they often write toward theme rather than shooting toward immediacy.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    The Running Man
    [Wright] continues to prove more adept at tightly weaving his thematic concerns into genre-friendly comedy. Making a muscular, fun-enough adaptation of The Running Man is at once beneath him and beyond him.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Jesse Hassenger
    Now You See Me: Now You Don't
    Despite the franchise being nearly old enough for a legacy sequel, there’s a light musicality to its various feats of showmanship that makes it feel like a scrappy upstart. So does the perpetual feeling that it might disappear in a puff of smoke.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 85 Jesse Hassenger
    Train Dreams
    It deserves a big screen if possible, though; Bentley and Kwedar have made an enveloping movie, one that might more closely echo its obvious influences from the comfort of home. This is a movie that belongs out in the beautiful, terrible world.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Jesse Hassenger
    Predator: Badlands
    The movie works in its moment. It seems to know that an obvious, crowd-pleasing helping of franchise nonsense at least needs to have some kind of meat, however synthetic it may secretly be.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 69 Jesse Hassenger
    Die My Love
    Die My Love is a powerful primal scream, only undercut by the question of whether it’s in love with the sound it’s making.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Jesse Hassenger
    Anniversary
    What Jan Komasa’s film gets right is how so much right-wing radicalization, especially in upper classes, stems from status-based grievances.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    Hedda
    Hedda is DaCosta’s most direct and purposeful adaptation yet, but like her other films, it’s missing some ineffable push past its beginnings into more expressive territory. The process of adaptation feels more confident than the conclusion.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 39 Jesse Hassenger
    The Woman in Cabin 10
    The whole story hinges on a twist that’s superficially clever on paper but wildly farfetched in practice. Once that hinge has swung, Stone ratchets up the supposed tension with attempted murders, scuffles, chases, and confrontations. Yet as these attempts at excitement emerge, the movie itself flattens out.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 66 Jesse Hassenger
    Good Fortune
    For much of its runtime, Good Fortune sustains a kind of witty, neo-Capra sensibility. When it comes time to bring that sensibility up to date, Ansari politely skips out.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    Is This Thing On?
    Is This Thing On? might come to its healing from an appropriately modest place, but there’s still a bit of actorly grandiosity under its skin.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 63 Jesse Hassenger
    Ballad of a Small Player
    The movie illustrates the gambler’s lifestyle almost too clearly; it’s a great example of how big, splashy victories can still feel like too little, too late.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 66 Jesse Hassenger
    Kiss of the Spider Woman
    This latest Kiss of the Spider Woman is nearly as ramshackle as its fictional namesake; it’s not the powerhouse it should be. But it comes together. And for Lopez, its artifice looks more like a form of honesty.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Jesse Hassenger
    Roofman
    It’s a star vehicle for Tatum and Dunst that can’t put all of its faith in the healing power of charisma and chemistry.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    TRON: Ares
    The result is a pretty dumb movie with beautiful visual effects, cleanly shot action, and a kickass soundtrack. Wouldn’t it be great if the future of blockbusters was only this bleak?
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Jesse Hassenger
    After the Hunt
    After The Hunt does eventually add up to something greater than its flood of but-what-about details.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 58 Jesse Hassenger
    A House of Dynamite
    Despite some white-knuckle moments, Dynamite slackens with each runthrough of its perma-climactic 15 minutes. In the world of global catastrophes, Bigelow increasingly resembles an unwitting tourist, just like the rest of us.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 59 Jesse Hassenger
    Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
    Springsteen’s earnestness makes him seem like a nicer, more open-hearted sort than Dylan in A Complete Unknown. It also makes for a less prickly character in a less entertaining movie.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 71 Jesse Hassenger
    Jay Kelly
    There are hints of The Life Aquatic, which Baumbach co-wrote with Wes Anderson, with its absentee father who may not be a great artist either, as well as Anderson’s train-set Darjeeling Limited. Gorgeous as Jay Kelly is, and as funny as it is in moments, it can’t help but feel a little minor by comparison – a little easy, even, on its man-who-wasn’t-there protagonist.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 58 Jesse Hassenger
    Late Fame
    Even Dafoe, seemingly incapable of a false note or forced delivery, ultimately must fall in line with the movie’s broad-arc predictability.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 64 Jesse Hassenger
    Anemone
    Day-Lewis, as expected, is utterly convincing inhabiting this space, with two very different showstopping monologues, one grossly comic and one filling in a defining event in his past. It’s easy to forget, given his legendary status and reluctance to play the game, how much fun it can be to watch Day-Lewis at work.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Jesse Hassenger
    The Mastermind
    The movie evokes retro genre coziness and unease in equal measure, one creeping up from beneath the other.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 65 Jesse Hassenger
    The Strangers: Chapter 2
    For roughly the length of a TV episode, it floats above its ugly franchise architecture in a dreamlike state of divine ridiculousness.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 49 Jesse Hassenger
    Steve
    It’s like a TV pilot poorly dressed up as a character study.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 91 Jesse Hassenger
    One Battle After Another
    DiCaprio is so terrific, and Infiniti such a charismatic find, that viewers may find themselves wishing the cast, both principal and supporting (which also includes Regina Hall and Alana Haim), had room in this 162-minute movie to bounce off of each other with a little more frequency.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 58 Jesse Hassenger
    A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
    Is A Big Bold Beautiful Journey a piece of wannabe creativity with a yawning hollowness at its center, or an A-list romance with some welcome aesthetic sensitivity? Like the outcome of a first date, it will ultimately be determined by chemistry.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 45 Jesse Hassenger
    Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
    Beyond a handful of vaguely contemporary references – podcasts; crypto; Stormy Daniels – there’s little sense of the present in Spinal Tap II, not even of the band being particularly out of touch with it. It’s been four decades since the first film! Shouldn’t their resentments be pettier, their epic reconvening more desperate?
    • 71 Metascore
    • 65 Jesse Hassenger
    The Long Walk
    The Long Walk reaches for something profound and disturbing, while at the same time wary of risking a bad stretch.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 59 Jesse Hassenger
    The Threesome
    So many romantic comedies revel in formula, turning a genre into an embarrassing mating ritual soundtracked by the rustle of screenplay pages and bad scene-transition pop. If nothing else, The Threesome understands a greater range of emotional, physical, and logistical possibilities – so acutely, in fact, that it sometimes wanders away from the “com” part of the rom-com altogether.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 59 Jesse Hassenger
    The Conjuring: Last Rites
    The Conjuring movies seem consciously designed for people who use horror movies as comfort-watches. There’s no need to begrudge some well-made (if frustratingly drawn-out) sequels following heroic characters through a few satisfying shivers. But it might be just as well if Last Rites does wrap up the series as advertised. By now, the gentler rhythms of retirement fit these movies almost too easily.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »