Jesse Hassenger

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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
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    • 26 Metascore
    • 59 Jesse Hassenger
    Madame Web
    At times, the movie’s pleasingly jumpy visual scheme and nostalgic 2003-era cheese threaten to form an alliance and make Madame Web work in spite of itself. After all, the movie, even or especially in its worst moments, never gets dull (or weirdly smug, like its sibling Venom movies). It also never fully sheds a huckster-y addiction to pivoting, until it’s pretty far afield from what works about either a superhero movie or a loopy woo-woo thriller.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 38 Jesse Hassenger
    Upgraded
    Ana may be attempting to climb the class ladder, but the movie moves between classes with a freedom that feels weakly imagined.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 71 Jesse Hassenger
    Good One
    This is a striking introduction to Donaldson’s unflinching eye.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Jesse Hassenger
    Argylle
    Matthew Vaughn’s latest directorial effort doesn’t traffic in the same edgelord button-pushing as his Kingsman series, but as that relief fades, it becomes clear how much Argylle is recycling ideas and imagery from those (and other, better) movies. Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell make an endearing pair, but they’re committed to an occasionally loony adventure that lacks the grace necessary to match its stars.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Jesse Hassenger
    Role Play
    Role Play wants to be a star-driven caper merging complicated relationship dynamics with exciting espionage action. But despite a few brief signs of life, both sides of the film are woefully unconvincing, as are its stars. Kaley Cuoco goes way too broad, David Oyelowo looks pained, and the whole thing strains to imitate better movies.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 45 Jesse Hassenger
    Mayhem!
    If you want to make a slasher-level action-mayhem movie, make the damn movie; don’t pretend your excuses for ultraviolence come from a humanist core. Mayhem! yearns to be taken seriously in all the wrong places.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 71 Jesse Hassenger
    Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom
    Revived and pumped up for the sequel, Wan’s synthy semi-psychedelia still makes for a delightful trip, but maybe Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom could have used a little fresh air; for all of the eye-popping colors, creatures and action flourishes he engineers in and around the sea, there isn’t a single sequence as front-to-back satisfying as the surface-world rooftop chase in Italy that popped off the screen in the first movie.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 59 Jesse Hassenger
    The Color Purple
    The Color Purple is involving on a scene-to-scene basis, but it has a processional quality. Though it’s less constrained than Spielberg’s sometimes sentimentalized version of the material, the new movie isn’t less sentimental – or less thirsty for audience approval.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 71 Jesse Hassenger
    The Archies
    Even as it endeavors to ultimately subvert a few Archie Comics tropes and deepen a few of its initial teen-movie stereotypes, The Archies feels reluctant to instigate lasting change in its characters, like a TV series preparing for a long run. Here’s the thing, though: I’d happily spend another two and a half hours with The Archies, so long as it kept the music going.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Jesse Hassenger
    Leo
    Leo looks like the kind of standard big-studio animation Netflix has been regularly knocking off, but it’s far funnier, and more unexpectedly sweet, than the average kid-targeted cartoon. In fact, Robert Smigel, Adam Sandler, and their collaborators have made one of the funniest movies of the year that doubles as a love letter to the complexities of teaching kids, in or out of the classroom.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Jesse Hassenger
    Trolls Band Together
    Trolls Band Together hits its chosen notes with its trademark glitter-drunk energy and some bonkers visual invention, but its mashing up of shiny pop hits (not to mention past Trolls movies) approaches exhaustion.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Jesse Hassenger
    Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
    Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain has way more laughs than the standard direct-to-streaming comedy, with some gloriously silly running gags and hilarious non sequiturs. But it lacks any real point of view behind that silliness.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 54 Jesse Hassenger
    Rustin
    Exploring the mechanics of this epochal event is a great idea, led by a memorable performance from Domingo, that somehow still manages to render the protest march as flat and lifeless as any obligatory TV-movie checklist.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 71 Jesse Hassenger
    Sly
    Perhaps the most endearing aspect of Sly is how it re-emphasizes that the real Stallone is, in fact, a pretty chatty, even loquacious guy. Even his references to his own limitations name-drop enough artists to undermine that lunkheaded image.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 35 Jesse Hassenger
    Five Nights at Freddy's
    A movie that feels like it’s been machine-learned and reverse-engineered from YouTube fanfic, rather than rooted in any kind of recognizable human experience, behavior, or psychology.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Jesse Hassenger
    Priscilla
    Though Coppola may be singing a familiar song, it rings with clarity and purpose, and unlike most biopics, it does not outstay its welcome.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 71 Jesse Hassenger
    in water
    In Water has more of a sad-sack quality than the semi-spirited chattiness of In Our Day, yet its images of young people wandering around in search of inspiration, artistic or otherwise, also have a shivery, ghostly edge that makes the melancholy feel earned.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 71 Jesse Hassenger
    In Our Day
    Throughout all the chatter, some naturalistically repetitive and some more philosophical, is a sense of characters searching, whether that’s communicated through acting advice, relationships to vices (“How can it be bad for you? It’s just food”) or musings on the shortness of life.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 77 Jesse Hassenger
    Janet Planet
    The many great scenes in Janet Planet underscore the frustrations of its few bad ones: Even an emotionally tumultuous childhood can be a lot more absorbing than the indulgences of the adult world.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 67 Jesse Hassenger
    The Beast
    Despite Seydoux’s uniquely magnetic ennui – could any other contemporary actress imbue a beautifully bored model with such empathy? — and MacKay’s gameness to bring a little nuance to a real creep in the 2014 section, The Beast has an undercurrent of restlessness, maybe even listlessness.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 78 Jesse Hassenger
    Evil Does Not Exist
    Hamaguchi’s film – and the performance style of Omika, a Hamaguchi crew member moving into acting here – is too controlled to produce an anguished tragedy out of this material, but it’s too unsparing to offer an easy exit.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 78 Jesse Hassenger
    All of Us Strangers
    A lot of movies attempt to replicate the experience of a dream; this one situates itself right on the edge, whether ecstatic or delirious or stricken, of waking up.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Jesse Hassenger
    PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie
    PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie feels more like a legitimate feature film than its predecessor, but it’s still well within the realm of distractor cinema rather than something parents would want to watch with their kids.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 61 Jesse Hassenger
    Expend4bles
    If Stallone has gone through long stretches of unrelatability in his worst movies, The Expendables 4 does bring him back him down to the common man with its flashes of dorky buddy-movie glee: Hey, I like Jason Statham too!
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Jesse Hassenger
    The Creator
    For a designated last great hope of original sci-fi, this is a surprisingly programmatic picture.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 62 Jesse Hassenger
    Spy Kids: Armageddon
    The lessons are sweet, the kid actors are cute, and the kid audience will probably enjoy it accordingly. Whether it sticks in their memory for 20 years or even a few months, though, is another question entirely.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 68 Jesse Hassenger
    You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah!
    If You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah does have the feel of an expensive, well-appointed, but not exactly lushly-made family project – maybe even a coming-of-age gift to the younger Sandler daughter – at least it mounts a charm offensive, rather than treating its audience like a pack of easily manipulated rubes.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Jesse Hassenger
    Blue Beetle
    There may be bolder DC superhero movies, but despite that body-horrific transformation, Blue Beetle sure is the nicest one in a while.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 61 Jesse Hassenger
    Meg 2: The Trench
    If Wheatley seems a bit lost as to how to wring the maximum amount of suspense from this material, he at least maintains a location-hopping cornball sci-fi zip.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Jesse Hassenger
    They Cloned Tyrone
    On a scene-by-scene basis, though, They Cloned Tyrone is well-crafted entertainment, buoyed by its three major performances.
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