Joe Leydon

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Variety
For 872 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 65% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 31% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 8.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Joe Leydon's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 57
Highest review score: 100 No Greater Love
Lowest review score: 0 Movie 43
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 363 out of 872
  2. Mixed: 380 out of 872
  3. Negative: 129 out of 872
872 movie reviews
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    • 48 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Abe & Phil's Last Poker Game
    This low-key and deeply felt indie is unsentimentally blunt while addressing the humiliating debilitations that often define geriatric life. At the same time, however, it scrupulously eschews excessive grimness and shameless heart-tugging, and elicits more than a few laughs in the bargain, while focusing more often on how the title characters deal with last chances and unfinished business.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Joe Leydon
    Sugarcane
    Sugarcane” is the product of humane and insightful filmmakers who are determined to never let anyone forget, and put their moral outrage to exemplary good use. Still, you’re left with the forlorn suspicion that their best efforts to find justice for the living and the dead, however commendable, are part of a campaign that might be endless.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Joe Leydon
    When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
    Lee takes time to explain the stories behind the stories, to unearth revealing details under-reported in other accounts, and to identify individuals among the faceless masses of unfortunates.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    The Winding Stream
    The Winding Stream is cogent and compelling as a pop-culture history lesson, and genuinely uplifting while it shows how contemporary artists — along with descendants like Rosanne and John Carter Cash — keep the legacy of A.P., Mother Maybelle, June and Johnny alive and thriving.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Barnyard
    Zippy enough to delight youngsters and clever enough to engage their parents.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    45365
    A seductive, fascinating tapestry of small-town life.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    American Underdog
    American Underdog is a thoroughly predictable yet hugely entertaining sports biopic that is bound to please almost anyone who’s not a sourball cynic or a snarky critic.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    The Endurance
    Conveys enough of the stirring true-life drama recounted in Butler's other Shackleton docu to satisfy ticketbuyers who demand substance even in larger-than-life entertainment.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero
    The film is sufficiently intelligent and entertaining to engage most grown-ups and, no kidding, fascinate history buffs.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Joe Leydon
    Knocked Up
    Uproarious. Line for line, minute to minute, writer-director Judd Apatow's latest effort is more explosively funny, more frequently, than nearly any other major studio release in recent memory.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Joe Leydon
    No Greater Love
    A fascinating and heartfelt documentary.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    A heady spirit of spontaneity permeates the proceedings, suggesting the entire pic, much like the concert it documents, was conceived, planned and completed in a single burst of creative enthusiasm.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Mutual Appreciation
    If John Cassavetes had directed a script by Eric Rohmer, the result might have looked and sounded like Mutual Appreciation.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Blood on Her Name
    A film that remains relentlessly absorbing for all of its compact 83-minute length largely because it places its audience in the position of helpless witnesses to a slow-motion trainwreck.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    RRR
    The movie is such an irresistible and intoxicating celebration of cinematic excess that even after 187 minutes (including intermission or, as the title card announces, “InteRRRval”), you are left exhilarated, not exhausted.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
    By turns amazing, amusing and appalling.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Animals
    Throughout the first half of Animals, there is a welcome amount of humor and some flashes of romantic warmth to alleviate the ever-present undercurrent of dread. As director Collin Schiffli gradually tightens the screws and builds suspense, however, the mood darkens.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Truman
    Cesc Gay’s wise, wistful and well-observed film about two friends enjoying a final reunion in the shadow of impending death, is by turns amusing and affecting — and quite often both at once.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Untraceable
    Unfolding like a better-than-average episode of a first-rate TV police procedural, Untraceable is a satisfying slice of solidly crafted meat-and-potatoes filmmaking.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Chicken People
    An illuminating and amusingly entertaining look at the thriving subculture of competitive poultry breeders.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Thunder Soul
    Mark Landsman's spirited Thunder Soul offers a heaping helping of uplift while documenting the past triumphs and recent reunion of a predominantly black Houston high school's singularly accomplished jazz stage band.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    The Wendell Baker Story
    A loose-knit, character-driven comedy that percolates with good-vibe amusement, often earning industrial-strength guffaws with sneaky one-liners and tossed-off non-sequiturs.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Lucky
    Everything Harry Dean Stanton has done in his career, and his life, has brought him to his moment of triumph in “Lucky,” an unassumingly wonderful little film about nothing in particular and everything that’s important
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Linoleum
    Consider this review primarily as an encouragement: Stick around. Your patience will be amply rewarded.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    What Lies Upstream
    What Lies Upstream is a quietly devastating documentary that’s all the more attention-grabbing for being such a scrupulously restrained and slickly polished piece of work.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    March of the Penguins
    Sometimes harrowing, sometimes hokey, sometimes heartwarming nature documentary.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Two Family House
    For all the pic’s sentimentality, De Felitta refuses to back away from some unpleasantly realistic touches.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Joe Leydon
    High Fidelity
    Trenchantly witty and acutely insightful.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    My Flesh and Blood
    One leaves My Flesh and Blood with admiration for the lenser's craftsmanship, and for her ability to remain an unobtrusive observer during moments of extreme emotional turmoil.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Beware of Mr. Baker
    When a documentary begins with its subject using his crutch to deliver a vicious blow to the director's nose, it's reasonably safe to expect less-than-smooth sailing ahead.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Number 37
    Far more substantial than a run-of-the-mill Hitchcock homage, Number 37 is richly satisfying on its own terms as a singularly crafty and strikingly well-crafted thriller that signals the arrival of a promising filmmaking talent.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Born to Fly
    Born to Fly teasingly suggests that some displays of avant-garde virtuosity could be enjoyed equally by venturesome aesthetes, dance enthusiasts and devotees of World Wrestling Entertainment.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    The Phantom
    A fascinating and ultimately infuriating documentary.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Hard Eight
    Four excellent lead performances, vividly evoked ambience and a masterfully sustained mood of quiet desperation mark Sydney as an impressive piece of work.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Never Look Away
    Never Look Away gives us as complete a portrait as seems humanly possible, for which Lawless merits abundant credit.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story
    To paraphrase an admonition from a classic Rolling Stones album: This movie should be played real loud. And in venues where people can, if they choose, get up and dance.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Kedi
    [A] splendidly graceful and quietly magical documentary.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    My Darling Vivian
    Deftly illustrating the testimonies with a treasure trove of material — photos, home movies, personal correspondence — provided by the daughters, the filmmakers have fashioned a narrative that begins as a sweet fairly-tale romance, then gradually turns sour.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Best of Enemies
    Both fascinating as a glimpse at the not so distant past, and provocative as an account of what arguably was an early step in the decline of political discourse on television.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Unlovable
    There are times when you’re tempted to turn away when Joy makes the latest in a long line of really bad, even self-destructive choices. But deGuzman’s performance is so arresting and engaging, you keep your eyes glued to her — if only so you don’t miss the next development that will be hilarious or heartbreaking or both.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    We Feed People
    [A] technically polished and emotionally stirring close-up view of celebrity chef José Andrés and his nonprofit World Central Kitchen.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Starving the Beast
    Starving the Beast repeatedly sounds cautionary notes that escalate to the level of fretful alarms. And yet, for all that, the movie never seems shrill or didactic.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    People's Republic of Desire
    People’s Republic of Desire is provocative and unsettling as it brings us on a guided tour through the digital marketplace for something resembling human contact.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Shanghai Noon
    This enjoyable East-meets-Western likely will succeed on its own terms as a sure-fire, long-legged crowd-pleaser.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Daughter from Danang
    An intelligent, well-observed and ineffably poignant study of an Amerasian woman's attempt to trace her roots by journeying back to Vietnam.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    95 Miles to Go
    An engaging crazy-quit of comedy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Get Low
    With a mix of sly humor, homespun grace and affecting poignancy, Get Low casts a well-nigh irresistible spell.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Gerald's Game
    Taken strictly on its own terms, the film adaptation is an arrestingly and sometimes excruciatingly suspenseful psychological thriller lightly garnished with horror-movie flourishes...and driven by a compelling lead performance that is entirely worthy of a description too often misapplied to lesser work: tour de force.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    The Great & The Small
    Bias provides an emotionally and dramatically satisfying conclusion for his dramedy — which takes its title from a children’s book read aloud twice, each time with starkly different impact — by making sure that everyone gets what’s coming to them before the final credits roll.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Hello, My Name Is Doris
    Despite some bumpy tonal shifts and inconsistencies of characterization, Hello, My Name Is Doris impresses as a humanely amusing and occasionally poignant dramedy.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    From Nowhere
    Credible and creditable performances by a fine cast of promising newcomers and familiar veterans enhance the emotional impact of this low-key but compelling indie.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Boy A
    Picture inspires respect for its first-rate performances, artful construction and meticulous understatement.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    All Things Must Pass
    It is much to the credit of Hanks and his collaborators that All Things Must Pass makes this particular iteration of the oft-told tale come across as freshly compelling, even poignant.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    The Retrieval
    Equal parts suspenseful road movie, persuasively detailed period drama and emotionally resonant coming-of-age story, The Retrieval is an outstanding example of regional indie filmmaking accomplished with limited resources and an abundance of skill.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Joy Ride
    Hot-wired, white-knuckle thriller.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    The Mighty Macs
    Family-friendly and abounding in uplift, The Mighty Macs is an undemandingly pleasant indie drama.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Herblock: The Black & the White
    Stevens offers a couple of revelations that bring the documentary to a dramatically and emotionally satisfying conclusion — and, not incidentally, leave a viewer with the pleasing sensation of discovering a worthy individual.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story
    The documentary adroitly sustains interest with a standard-issue mix of archival material, interviews with intimates and admirers, actors’ voiceovers and dramatic re-creations.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    That Evening Sun
    Deliberately paced, richly atmospheric drama also boasts first-rate work by a splendid supporting cast and impressive production values.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Courageous
    Moviegoers devoted to faith-based fare will flock to megaplexes for Courageous, easily the most polished production so far from brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, the prolific and increasingly accomplished filmmaking pastors at the Sherwood Church of Albany, Ga.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    She Rides Shotgun
    Rowland ratchets up the suspense with cunning and confidence, advancing the narrative and introducing secondary characters with suitable swiftness and meticulous precision that never call undue attention to themselves.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    A Crooked Somebody
    Working from a smartly constructed script by Andrew Zilch, director Trevor White (“Jamesy Boy”) does an impressive job of propelling the narrative along parallel tracks of arrestingly suspenseful thriller and knowing media satire.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    The Legend of Drunken Master
    Well positioned to slake the thirst of action fans for world-class, slam-bang rough stuff.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    The Heart of the Game
    Compelling but traditional feature.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Oswald's Ghost
    Oswald's Ghost impresses as a concise, intelligent and rigorously well-researched piece of work.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Running Wild: The Life of Dayton O. Hyde
    Beautiful lensing by Mauro Brattoli and an evocative score Steve Poltz enrich the pic’s flavor as a document of, and a tribute to, an iconic cowboy’s indomitable spirit.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Creep
    A slow-burning found-footage suspenser with some mildly clever twists and a knockout payoff.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Daylight
    Some movie buffs will be amused to note slight but perceptible plot similarities between Daylight and, of all things, "The Tall T," Budd Boetticher's classic 1957 Western. To their credit, the filmmakers more or less acknowledge the influence in the closing credits.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Teacher's Pet
    A doggone hilarious cartoon extravaganza...virtually bursts at the seams with a supersized abundance of witty wordplay, silly songs and inspired sight gags.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Facing Nolan
    Its lack of manufactured drama is one of the most engaging things about it, especially if you are a baseball fan who has ever marveled at the miracle that was, and is, Nolan Ryan.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked The World
    Although its reach occasionally exceeds its grasp, Catherine Bainbridge’s Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World earns respect as much for its achievement as its ambition.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Eye in the Sky
    A rivetingly suspenseful drama that deftly intertwines elements of ticking-clock thriller and tragic farce.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Down in the Delta
    Poet Maya Angelou's debut feature directing effort is a solid and affecting piece of work.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    A Disturbance in the Force
    To be sure, the fans will appreciate it a lot more than casual viewers. But it’s also an irresistible hoot for anyone with fond memories of star-studded 1970s musical/variety TV specials.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Cook County
    Despite a few continuity problems, this rough-edged, low-budget drama impresses with spot-on performances, perfect-pitch dialogue and an overall sense that something bad might happen at any moment, unless something worse happens first.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Second Skin
    The human dramas of individual gamers are what really make this technically polished documentary so fascinating and potentially commercial.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Five Fingers For Marseilles
    Five Fingers for Marseilles turns out to be an impressively effective and engrossing cross-cultural hybrid that has a great deal more than novelty value going for it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    The Price of Sugar
    A solid and affecting piece of work.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Bill Nye: Science Guy
    Bill Nye: Science Guy is an efficiently thought-provoking study of what it means to be a rational and analytical advocate for science in an age when deniers of evolution and climate-change often seem to have higher profiles, deeper pockets and louder voices. But it’s even more interesting as the story of a beloved celebrity who wants to reinvent himself, to be taken more seriously.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Kill Zone 2
    Helmer Cheang and action director Li Chung Chi offer an impressive array of rock-’em-sock-’em setpieces — including a battle royale at a cruise ship terminal, and grand finale in a Hong Kong high-rise — and the performances, especially those by Wu, Koo and Zhang, are thoroughly attuned to the movie’s overall tone of fever-pitched martial-arts noir melodrama.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    The Lookout
    A stealthy neo-noir drama that isn't afraid to take its time developing characters on the way to the payoff of a neatly designed caper scenario.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    The Hangover
    At once raucously free-wheeling and meticulously contrived, picture satisfies as a boys-gone-wild laff riot that also clicks as a seriocomic beat-the-clock detective story.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Palio
    The film boasts characters as rich, and a narrative as entertaining, as might be found in the most crowd-pleasing of scripted sports sagas.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    I Believe in Unicorns
    A sensitively observed and arrestingly impressionistic drama that feels at once deeply personal and easily accessible.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    Matilda
    A delightfully twisted fairy tale that artfully juggles broad tomfoolery and sly drollery, along with a generous serving of sight gags enhanced by special effects. Even though it's being pitched primarily at younger moviegoers and their parents, pic is exuberantly quirky enough to please almost anyone.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Best Summer Ever
    Overall, however, Best Summer Ever is too earnest and charming to ever feel smart-alecky or unduly spoofy, and the winning performances by DeVido and Wilson go a long way toward encouraging a serious emotional investment in the relationship between Sage and Tony.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Screwball
    It works surprisingly and consistently well as a storytelling flourish for a documentary that does not traffic in subtleties or moral indignation while repeatedly and boisterously posing the question: “Can you believe these people actually did this?”
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Paul Williams Still Alive
    An engrossing and satisfying picture, one that can be enjoyed even by people who have never before heard of its subject.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Hellboy
    Has more than enough across-the-board appeal to attract mainstream auds unfamiliar with source material.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    The Life of Reilly
    With equal measures of prickly wit, gleeful pride and bemused gratitude, Charles Nelson Reilly looks back at his life, and invites his audience to share the view, in this thoroughly engaging filmization of his one-man stage show.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    The Rookie
    Quaid's effortlessly compelling and engagingly earnest performance keeps pic grounded in down-to-earth reality.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Tiny Furniture
    What it doesn't have, to its credit, is a neat conclusion. In the end, the film appears to suggest that Aura likely will feel free to keep searching for herself, repeating mistakes and making new ones, because she has all the time in the world.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Abduction: The Megumi Yokota Story
    Looks, sounds and fascinates like an exceptional episode of a true-crime TV series.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    You Go to My Head
    If you can surrender yourself to the measured rhythms of the film and accept its mix of feeling and artifice, you may find much to admire here.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Undefeated
    Enjoyably upbeat and intelligently inspiring.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    After Class
    Time and again during After Class, Schechter makes pinpoint-accurate choices that are even more impressive when, after it’s done, you replay the movie in your mind, and you realize what an exceptional piece of work it is.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Joe Leydon
    October Sky
    Immensely entertaining and unabashedly inspirational.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Joe Leydon
    Jim Allison: Breakthrough
    Prosaically straightforward but consistently interesting portrait of the maverick research scientist who was awarded a 2018 Nobel Prize in medicine.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo
    The film benefits greatly from its ability to review events from the viewpoints of the men on the ground in Houston.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Joe Leydon
    Warrior
    An improbably effective and affecting mix of raw emotions and exciting smackdowns.
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