Kenneth Turan

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Los Angeles Times
For 2,642 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 66% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 32% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Kenneth Turan's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 72
Highest review score: 100 Vertigo
Lowest review score: 0 Stolen Summer
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,845 out of 2642
  2. Mixed: 659 out of 2642
  3. Negative: 138 out of 2642
2642 movie reviews
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    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Oslo, August 31st
    Oslo is an example of strong, confident filmmaking in which nothing is miscalculated or out of place. Anchored by a devastating performance by Anders Danielsen Lie, this portrait of existential despair is beautifully made without being self-conscious about its art.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Her
    Acerbic, emotional, provocative, it's a risky high dive off the big board with a plot that sounds like a gimmick but ends up haunting, odd and a bit wonderful.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Son of Saul
    Son of Saul is an immersive experience of the most disturbing kind, an unwavering vision of a particular kind of hell. No matter how many Holocaust films you've seen, you've not seen one like this.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Up
    Rarely has any film, let alone an animated one powered by the logic of dream and fantasy, been able to move so successfully -- and so effortlessly -- through so many different kinds of cinematic territory.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Dunkirk
    The surpassing accomplishment of Dunkirk is to make us feel an almost literal fusion with its story. It's not so much that we've seen a splendid movie, though we have, but as if we've been taken inside a historic event, become wholly immersed in something real and alive.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    The Quiet American
    Star Michael Caine, who gives one of the great, inescapably moving performances in a career filled with them, based his character on personal impressions of the late author. And Greene's lifelong concern with moral ambiguity gives this film a texture and complexity that movies don't usually achieve.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Rust and Bone
    Romantic but pitiless, fearlessly emotional as well as edgy, Rust and Bone is a powerhouse.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    The Hurt Locker
    Overwhelmingly tense, overflowing with crackling verisimilitude, it's both the film about the war in Iraq that we've been waiting for and the kind of unqualified triumph that's been long expected from director Kathryn Bigelow.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Silver Linings Playbook
    Silver Linings Playbook is rich in life's complications. It will make you laugh, but don't expect it to fit in any snug genre pigeonhole. Dramatic, emotional, even heartbreaking, as well as wickedly funny, it has the gift of going its own way, a complete success from a singular talent.
    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    The Godfather
    Overflowing with life, rich with all the grand emotions and vital juices of existence, up to and including blood. And its deaths, like that of Hotspur in "Henry IV, Part I," continue to shock no matter how often we've watched them coming. [16 Mar 1997, Calendar, p.7]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    My Journey Through French Cinema
    As its title indicates, My Journey Through French Cinema is personal with a capital “P,” a passionate, opinionated, drop-dead fascinating documentary essay about that country’s film history put together by a clear-eyed enthusiast who was born to tell the tale.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Tony Takitani
    An exquisite film, as elegant and precise as an impeccably cut diamond. It's small in scale but wholly mesmerizing, holding us captive as it demonstrates how much enveloping richness can be conveyed with a minimalist style.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Iraq in Fragments
    Langley's impeccably nonjudgmental camera knows exactly what details to record. Drawn from more than 300 hours of footage, the film's all too brief 94 minutes mesmerizes with its insight and, rarer still, its beauty.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    EX LIBRIS: The New York Public Library
    Frederick Wiseman's Ex Libris: The New York Public Library is more than a magisterial mash note to that distinguished establishment, it’s a heartening examination of the vastness of human knowledge and the multiple ways we the people endeavor to access it.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Air Force One
    At once vigorous and old-fashioned, a piece of expertly crafted entertainment that gets the job done with skill and panache. [25 July 1997]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    The Princess of Montpensier
    Epic and intimate, historical and contemporary, moving and thought-provoking, the impressive The Princess of Montpensier has something for all and sundry but especially for those who like to believe that films can be as boldly intelligent as they are entertaining.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Waltz with Bashir
    Provocative, hallucinatory, incendiary, this devastating animated documentary is unlike any Israeli film you've seen. More than that, in its seamless mixing of the real and the surreal, the personal and the political, animation and live action, it's unlike any film you've seen, period.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    The Crying Game
    This offbeat emotional thriller is an unusually satisfying film, intricately constructed, surely directed and splendidly acted. [25 Nov 1992]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 75 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    The Beat That My Heart Skipped
    What has resulted is a blistering film you feel in the pit of your stomach, a jumpy, edgy piece of work that thrusts us into a personal maelstrom so tortured and intense, the emotions could be spread with a knife.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    A Most Violent Year
    A vibrant crime story filled to overflowing with crackling situations, taut dialogue and a heightened, even operatic sense of reality, A Most Violent Year captures us and doesn't let go.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Aladdin
    Aladdin is a film of wonders. To see it is to be the smallest child, open-mouthed at the screen's sense of magic, as well as the most knowing adult, eager to laugh at some surprisingly sly humor.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    The Act of Killing
    It's a mind-bending film, devastating and disorienting, that disturbs us in ways we're not used to being disturbed, raising questions about the nature of documentary, the persistence of evil, and the intertwined ways movies function in our culture and in our minds.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Upstream Color
    Part science fiction scare movie, part offbeat romance, part completely unclassifiable, "Color" is also one-man filmmaking of a remarkable sort.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Saraband
    Bergman has never been an ordinary filmmaker, and what he's given us is no genial last hurrah but rather an intensely dramatic, at times lacerating examination of life's conundrums that is exhilarating in its fearlessness and its command.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Brooklyn
    A godsend for audiences who hunger for rich emotion presented with wit, grace and not a trace of sentimentality, Brooklyn illustrates the power of restraint in dealing with poignant, impassioned material.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    The Manchurian Candidate
    The strength of sensational material joined to excellent acting, superior filmmaking and uncanny political relevance has made The Manchurian Candidate into exceptionally intelligent entertainment and a high point of director Jonathan Demme's career.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Rejoice and Shout
    Rejoice provides both a melodic education and a once-in-a-lifetime concert in one soul-stirring package.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    I Called Him Morgan
    Artistic, obsessive and intoxicating, I Called Him Morgan is a documentary with a creative soul, and that makes all the difference.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Out of Sight
    Engaging and consummately entertaining.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Kenneth Turan
    Up in the Air
    Up in the Air makes it look easy. Not just in its casual and apparently effortless excellence, but in its ability to blend entertainment and insight, comedy and poignancy, even drama and reality, things that are difficult by themselves but a whole lot harder in combination. This film does all that and never seems to break a sweat.
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