Kenji Fujishima

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Paste Magazine, Slant Magazine, The A.V. Club, The Playlist, Village Voice
For 194 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 25% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 72% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Kenji Fujishima's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 58
Highest review score: 91 Reds
Lowest review score: 10 Honeyglue
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 106 out of 194
  2. Mixed: 51 out of 194
  3. Negative: 37 out of 194
194 movie reviews
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    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Kenji Fujishima
    Dark Star: HR Giger's World
    It weaves through past and present, memories and reality, analysis and history, like a mercurial mind reminiscing seemingly at random.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Kenji Fujishima
    5 Flights Up
    Ira Sachs, for all the tenderness of feeling he brought to Love Is Strange, wouldn't have countenanced the stacked-deck sentimentality that lies at this film's heart.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 38 Kenji Fujishima
    Hyena
    The Gerard Johnson film's blanket cynicism is its most shopworn quality of all.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Kenji Fujishima
    Heaven Knows What
    If nothing else, Heaven Knows What is one of the most harrowing cinematic depictions of drug addiction in recent memory, reliant less on formal gimmickry than on close observation of behavior.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Kenji Fujishima
    Félix And Meira
    Maxime Giroux's sharp filmmaking instincts aren't always supported by similarly acute dramatic instincts.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Kenji Fujishima
    Court
    Chaitanya Tamhane's grand canvas is Indian society as represented by its legal system, and what it reveals is none too flattering.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Kenji Fujishima
    She's Lost Control
    Anja Marquardt feels the need to puff up her film with relatively artificial conflict that generally comes off as sops to screenwriting conventions.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Kenji Fujishima
    Paddington
    The film recalls its stylistic forbears at their best: flowing with whimsy, but never at the expense of the beating heart of its human (and animal) characters.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Kenji Fujishima
    The Search for General Tso
    Director Ian Cheney doesn't delve too deeply into the possibly unsettling questions the documentary raises about society at large.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Kenji Fujishima
    Tip Top
    Instead of finding one consistent tone and sticking to it, Serge Bozon allows the wildly hilarious and the grimly serious to uneasily coexist, exulting in the resultant clash.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Kenji Fujishima
    Concerning Violence
    Here is a film that isn't afraid to risk didacticism in order to put across its vision of the debilitating physical and psychological effects of colonialism.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 38 Kenji Fujishima
    V/H/S: Viral
    One need go no further than the film's first segment to grasp how little interest the latest entry in the anthology series has in generating chills from the lo-fi.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Kenji Fujishima
    Red Army
    Gabe Polsky's quiet yet welcome achievement is to allow us to see the individual amid the politics, clearly and sympathetically.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 75 Kenji Fujishima
    Virunga
    This is muckraking journalism that moves confidently with the brio of an action thriller.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Kenji Fujishima
    Low Down
    There's only so much that Fanning's vividly expressive face and Hawkes's charismatic sensitivity can mask before we realize how little we truly understand what goes on in anybody's head.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Kenji Fujishima
    The Book of Life
    Jorge R. Gutierrez subsumes the film's darker themes in a relentlessly busy farrago of predictable kids'-movie tropes and annoying attempts at hipness.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Kenji Fujishima
    Summer of Blood
    Onur Tukel is able to offer a reasonably fresh spin on familiar vampire-movie tropes, giving pitiless misanthropy pedal-to-the-metal comic wit.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Kenji Fujishima
    '71
    It distinguishes itself from Pual Greengrass's films by virtue of its close attention to political and moral ambiguities.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 38 Kenji Fujishima
    Metro Manila
    Sean Ellis doesn't so much understand Filipino society as merely sees it as grist for standard genre fare, perhaps hoping that the foreign setting will somehow automatically make the clichés feel fresh.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Kenji Fujishima
    14 Blades
    An immensely gifted physical performer, Donnie Yen isn't strong enough an actor to suggest an authentic inner life to his character beyond a vague sense of stone-faced dissatisfaction.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Kenji Fujishima
    Dinosaur 13
    To some extent, the use of a wide aspect ratio and the doc's emphatic score takes its cues from paleontologist Pete Larson's passion.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 38 Kenji Fujishima
    Deepsea Challenge 3D
    Less explored in all the ensuing back-patting is the question of whether Cameron is, in fact, sincerely interested in learning more about the world around him or whether this mission is merely intended to stroke his own ego.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Kenji Fujishima
    Me and You
    Not even Bernardo Bertolucci's choice of a lead actor with visible facial acne scars, in a welcome gesture toward authenticity, is enough to overcome the gaping hole of psychological nuance at the center of the film.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Kenji Fujishima
    The Amazing Catfish
    The familiar premise is done with enough intelligence and heartfelt conviction that it rises above its potentially cliché trappings.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 25 Kenji Fujishima
    Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
    A glorified act of hero worship that leaves one hard-pressed to form any conclusion other than an infinitely positive one about Shep Gordon.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Kenji Fujishima
    Who is Dayani Cristal?
    As informative, revealing, and occasionally poignant as some of the unearthed revelations are, the doc is ultimately hampered by a level of self-congratulation that nearly undoes its effectiveness as an activist polemic.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 25 Kenji Fujishima
    Fading Gigolo
    The question of why one should actually work up any emotional investment in what happens to these people is never really answered, much less asked in the first place.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Kenji Fujishima
    Watermark
    By keeping explanatory talking-heads interviews to a minimum, the filmmakers put their trust in the audience to draw their own conclusions based on what they present to us.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 38 Kenji Fujishima
    Flex Is Kings
    Putting aside the generic human interest, the film turns out to be shockingly deficient in its on-screen depiction of flexing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Kenji Fujishima
    Mistaken for Strangers
    Adds up little more than an anguished man using the hook of following his famous brother in order to gaze, however critically, at his reflection for 75 minutes.
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