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.
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