Kerry Lengel

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Arizona Republic
For 176 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 61% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 37% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Kerry Lengel's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Too Late to Die Young
Lowest review score: 20 Peterloo
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 86 out of 176
  2. Mixed: 86 out of 176
  3. Negative: 4 out of 176
176 movie reviews
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    • 32 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Cats
    I guess I was charmed in spite of myself. I’m reminded of a quote from Alexander Pope I had to memorize as a kid, which gave me fair warning about the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber and “Cats”: “Vice is a monster of so frightful mien / as to be hated needs but to be seen; / Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, / We first endure, then pity, then embrace.” Did I tear up a little? Maybe. Do I ever need to see “Cats” again? Nah, I’m good.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Kerry Lengel
    Cyrano, My Love
    While the actors certainly have charm, the farcical plot is so formulaic that the comic fizz often feels forced.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Jumanji: The Next Level
    Outdoing all of the headliners, at least when it comes to capturing voices and body language, is a new character inside the game played by Awkwafina of “Crazy Rich Asians.” It’s subtle, but there’s something more authentic about her version of the shtick. She’s just more in the moment — or maybe less desperate for a laugh.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Waves
    Waves is definitely not a film for everyone, but it has hidden depths that will reward the patient.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Kerry Lengel
    Honey Boy
    For me, it doesn’t really matter if LaBeouf is letting himself off the hook, or if Honey Boy is the ultimate vanity project of a pampered narcissist. What matters is that he has plunged into the maelstrom of his own memories and emerged with a real work of art — something that feels real, feels true, even though we all know it isn’t.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Motherless Brooklyn
    Even if the big thematic statements are less than subtle, the story is solid and thought-provoking, and the performances are just stylized enough to match the intensity of Norton’s deep-dive performance.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
    With “Maleficent’s” feminist message suffering a relapse, the sequel looks more like generic film fantasy than a fresh take on an old story. The cuddly creatures and razzle-dazzle action are enough to make two hours disappear, but it’s only Jolie’s bat-winged charisma that will rattle on in your memory.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Joker
    The Joker’s superpower is his resentment, his narcissism, and Phoenix cultivates these methodically in his performance, slowly transmuting the character’s awkward fragility into a kind of raging charisma — aided and abetted, of course, by all the tricks of art direction, sound design and editing that a journeyman filmmaker has at his disposal.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Downton Abbey
    Through all the skillfully juggled subplots, the overarching conflict has always been the family’s quest to keep hold of Downton Abbey — and thus preserve their role as the heart of the community, envied and adored by all — while also keeping up with the march of modernity.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Don't Let Go
    The plot is ingeniously engineered, but the narrative is like a low-res image. It gets the idea across, but without the kind of details that make it memorable.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    After the Wedding
    There’s a lot to be admired here, and After the Wedding certainly gives you a lot to think about. It just doesn’t quite make you feel all the feels.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Kerry Lengel
    Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
    There’s a fine line between homage and rip-off, between a clever mashup and a messy pileup of tired tropes. But, much like a rainbow, where that line appears is in the eye of the beholder.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Kerry Lengel
    The Reports on Sarah and Saleem
    The power dynamics between two peoples locked in “asymmetrical conflict” — not to mention two sets of gender codes — set the stage for Alayan’s thriller. In storytelling terms, they are the rules by which the tightly wound plot unspools. But the film’s great strength, in addition to the usual quality-control things, is its care to humanize, not demonize, the characters who are playing by those rules.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Kerry Lengel
    Too Late to Die Young
    In Too Late to Die Young, Chilean writer-director Dominga Sotomayor excavates details from her own memory to unlock a hidden bonus level of starkly original cinematic beauty. This spare coming-of-age story is a slow-burning stunner, despite hardly having a plot at all.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Spider-Man: Far from Home
    “Far From Home” ends up being one of the more entertaining and satisfying installments in Marvel’s never-ending story cycle, thanks to a tautly constructed narrative that packs in plenty of fan service without getting overly complicated.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Annabelle Comes Home
    An ever-changing obstacle course does sustain its own kind of tension, but it’s not like there’s a real puzzle to solve, nor any arc to the plot. The movie is just a succession of scary stuff happening, haunted-ride-style.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Shaft
    In the end, this may be a case of a pop-culture icon being dragged down by the weight of trying remain relevant past its prime. It’s not woke, but you can’t call it racist. Maybe racist-ish. Misogynistic-ish. Entertaining-ish.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Pavarotti
    Maybe Pavarotti would be even more compelling if Howard had delved deeper into the contradictions and controversies. But the director does achieve the first goal on entertainment: Always leave them wanting more.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Ma
    Ma is one loony little horror film, and Octavia Spencer has a grand old time being the craziest thing in it.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    The Sun Is Also a Star
    Under the perfectly paced direction of Ry Russo-Young (“Before I Fall”), Shahidi and Melton develop an easy chemistry on the way toward a satisfying denouement that’s neither tear-jerking tragedy nor fairy-tale wish fulfillment.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Trial by Fire
    Even though Trial by Fire is less than a masterpiece, it still came as a gut punch that forced me to examine my own complicated feelings on the issue. In short, it taught me something, and that was a surprise.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Avengers: Endgame
    For fans, counting up how many superheroes can emerge from the clown car of one three-hour movie is half the fun. For casual moviegoers — say, those who might skip minor installments such as “Ant-Man and the Wasp” — it accounts for half the exhaustion, a bit of world-building fatigue to go along with the sensory overload of a fantasy realm that seems stuck in perpetual apocalypse.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 20 Kerry Lengel
    Peterloo
    It doesn’t take long to suspect you are witnessing an epic fail of Alexander proportions — a visionary filmmaker pouring years of craft and ambition, not to mention millions of dollars and the talents of dozens of gung-ho actors, down the drain of a misconceived “statement.”
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    The Public
    [Estevez] still hasn't progressed beyond the film-school basics, but somehow he managed to recruit an all-star cast of (presumably) like-minded activists for The Public.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Shazam!
    Like Tom Hanks in Big, Levy does a great job of capturing — or parodying — the giddiness of a kid flexing his adult muscles (literally and figuratively). The two-hour-plus running time breezes by in a well-paced adventure that mines familiar comic-book tropes for laughs.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    The Heiresses
    The title implies a sort of old-world glamour, but the proverbial gilded cage is looking a bit dilapidated in The Heiresses, a subtle but intense character study from Paraguayan director Marcelo Martinessi.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    The Highwaymen
    Directed by John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, Saving Mr. Banks), it’s a well-crafted procedural, but it’s also a whole lot of familiar tropes put together in familiar ways.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Triple Frontier
    It’s a movie that maybe tries to do too much, but it does enough of it well to keep you glued to the screen.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    The Sower
    The great strength of The Sower is that it doesn’t try to do too much. It zooms in on its microcosm with a tender urgency that offers a glimpse of complex humanity without reducing the story to some sort of pithy takeaway.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
    One kudo to this lazy effort: The climax does have a real end-of-a-trilogy feel, making further sequels less likely. Silver linings, folks.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Glass
    Inevitably, embroidering upon a fairly simple idea saps some of its impact, and Glass ends up tipping more toward the self-conscious genre-riffing that “Unbreakable” offers an antidote for.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Escape Room
    At least it could have been fun-bad, not just boring-bad.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Once Upon a Deadpool
    OK, maybe they cut a couple seconds out of that scene where Deadpool gets ripped in half, but the movie's sardonically gruesome sensibility remains intact.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Border
    Border brings to horror-fantasy the same Swedish sensibility that “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” brought to crime thrillers. Welcome to the land of eternal night.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    El Angel
    Ortega wants us to see that allure, feel that lust. But to do it, he has to turn fact into fiction.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    The Mercy
    Firth remains in low gear throughout his character’s transition from fuzzy dreamer to desperate schemer to mad transcendental poet. It takes a bit of voiceover to get the job done, but Firth’s steadfast refusal to chew scenery turns out to be the key to his performance
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Ralph Breaks the Internet
    It’s a bit of a letdown, though still entertaining.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
    With a filmography stuffed with masterpieces, the Coen brothers’ greatest trick is balancing the ironic commentary on cinema and storytelling with the dramatic impact of compelling human stories well told. And it’s a trick they pull off again and again.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
    While it is a perfectly serviceable placeholder in the larger series, its contributions to the Potterverse are disappointingly minor.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
    Fans of fancy period costumes and supernatural effects both get plenty to gawk at, but the story offers no real surprises, and that includes the big plot twist.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Bohemian Rhapsody
    If it doesn’t have the family drama of “Walk the Line” or the psychodrama of “The Doors,” Bohemian Rhapsody does deliver what any music biopic must: convincing characters and some kick-butt simulated concert experiences.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Mid90s
    Hill isn’t offering a sociological treatise. Mid90s is all about lived experience. It’s about a place and a time and offers little inkling of its characters’ futures.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    The Oath
    Somewhat courageously, the film’s real focus is not on the obvious villains in this tale of two Americas, but on the absurd contradiction of its liberal hero watching a political apocalypse unfold on his iPhone.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    The Sisters Brothers
    More than anything, The Sisters Brothers is an exploration of how far you can take an anti-Western before it snaps out of the genre’s orbit entirely.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Fahrenheit 11/9
    This brand of gonzo journalism was effective in Moore’s 1989 debut about Flint and General Motors, “Roger & Me,” but it has long since devolved into self-parody.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    White Boy Rick
    Purely from a standpoint of craft and storytelling, it’s a good flick, although maybe not well attuned to the bombastic times.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    God Bless the Broken Road
    Like nine out of 10 faith-based films, it lets the message crowd out the other elements of good art: character development, thematic complexity, even basics such as a compelling conflict.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Operation Finale
    The acting is great, but screenwriter Matthew Orton’s attempts to give the film the philosophical heft that it deserve fall somewhat short.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Kerry Lengel
    Alpha
    It delivers plenty of exciting action with some CGI-assisted visual flair, from stampeding bison to a starkly beautiful image of a frozen lake with our hero flailing on the wrong side of the ice. Hughes’ efforts to bring emotional drama to the proceedings fall flat, however, relying on coming-of-age clichés that strip the story of any real surprise.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Kerry Lengel
    The Darkest Minds
    It’s formulaic. It’s predictable.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Kerry Lengel
    Shock and Awe
    Journalists deserve to be heralded — just not in this holier-than-thou cinematic cri de coeur. So, on behalf of journalists everywhere, I have to tell Mr. Reiner thanks, but no thanks.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Keep the Change
    This gently humorous, fiercely honest indie film is a step forward in the quest for a move inclusive Hollywood, which seems to one of the themes of the cultural moment. Some may dismiss it as identity politics. But movies like this prove that it’s about broadening our scope and deepening our understanding.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Blockers
    There’s nothing self-serious about it. Blockers has all the brashness and irreverence that any comedy fan of the Apatow era could ask for, even as it represents a more gender-balanced future for Hollywood.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Goldstone
    As a cinematic diatribe set in a stark moral universe, Goldstone comes in loud and clear.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
    It’s a lazy, thoroughly unoriginal bit of storytelling, but it has just enough cheeky humor and bass-thumping action scenes to be a potential crowd-pleaser.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    The Man Who Invented Christmas
    It lays on the pathos, moralizing and forced whimsy thicker than figgy pudding, but it’s still entertaining, heart-warming family fare, thanks in large part to charmingly sincere performances.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Loving Vincent
    Visually you can certainly call the film a breakthrough.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Step
    You might say the lack of a Hollywood narrative arc is both a strength and a weakness in this film, because Lipitz isn’t entirely clear about what story she is trying to tell.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
    The sequel is even more “all about Al,” but ironically, with any question of another electoral run put to rest, the results work better as cinema.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Risk
    Artfully shot and mooded-up with a jittery ambient soundtrack, Risk is compelling because the enigma of Assange is compelling.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Below Her Mouth
    While Below Her Mouth is no doubt some classy-looking porn, it’s a pretty lousy movie, because all that sex leaves precious little time to develop character, plot or thematic depth.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    After the Storm
    Abe’s performance is compelling in the way it captures the gap between who Ryota has become and how he wants to see himself, and Japanese screen veteran Kirin Kiki gives a terrifically nuanced turns as his again mother, pulled between the disappointments of the past and a fierce determination to find joy in her present.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Mr. Gaga
    Naharin’s dances, amply illustrated from decades’ worth of film, is visceral, emotional and sometimes shocking.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Man Down
    I can give the filmmakers — director Dito Montiel and screenwriter Adam G. Simon — the benefit of the doubt on good intentions, but their approach doesn’t tug at the heartstrings so much as it pistol-whips the audience with its grandiose and (ineptly) manipulative storytelling.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Trolls
    The characters are clichés and the plot is assembly-line predictable.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Kevin Hart: What Now?
    If you dig Hart’s stuff, you’ll probably love the movie. So go.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    The People vs. Fritz Bauer
    It’s a compelling portrait both of Bauer and of a fraught moment in German history. But from the vantage of the present, the issues — and the characters — seem pretty black and white.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Kerry Lengel
    Kubo and the Two Strings
    The story is captivating from the very first moments.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Equity
    If there is a criticism to be made, it’s that Equity is just a bit too low-key to fully draw the audience in. The chiaroscuro lighting and thrumming mood music build tension slowly and surely, but never enough to make you inch forward in your seat. Just a smidgen of Gordon Gekko bombast might kick things up a notch.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Kerry Lengel
    Equals
    The final resolution of the plot is actually rather intriguing, but the journey to it is so slow and predictable that most moviegoers will have long since lost interest.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    How He Fell in Love
    It never feels contrived, never panders to our illusions. When the ending comes, it is neither expected nor a twist. It’s just what happens.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Warcraft
    It aims to match the mythic gravitas of “The Lord of the Rings” — even throwing in a nod to the Book of Exodus for good measure — and the results fall paint-by-numbers flat.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
    Yes, “Popstar” is dumb, dirty fun. So what’s not to like?
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    The Angry Birds Movie
    Screenwriter Jon Vitti and first-time directors Fergal Reilly and Clay Kaytis certainly give it a try, but their bag of tricks is mostly recycled and their sense of humor is aimed squarely at 12-year-old boys.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Being Charlie
    The narrative feels undercooked, its life lessons just a bit too glib.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Keanu
    If Keanu sometimes comes off as another sketch stretched a little thin, that doesn’t put it in too shabby of company. It may not be as great as “The Blues Brothers,” but it’s up there with “Wayne’s World” — and light-years ahead of “Coneheads.”
    • 29 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Ratchet & Clank
    It’s cute and entertaining, in a Saturday morning cartoon kind of way, but this one is just for the kiddies.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    The Boy and the Beast
    The Boy and the Beast might not quite have the storytelling sophistication to win over every adult, but for teens and tweens in the midst of their own coming-of-age stories, it has the potential to be a wondrous eye-opener.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Rolling Papers
    There’s never a sense the filmmakers are preaching the gospel of legalization, although they are certainly not preaching against it, either.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Daddy's Home
    Not that there’s anything wrong with raunch. But in the Judd Apatow era of raunch-coms, Anders’ version is pretty weak tea.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Don Verdean
    It’s an enjoyable ride, but probably not one you need to take twice.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    A Royal Night Out
    Though there are no blazing historical insights here, the film is filled with moments of ribald humor and tender poignancy that offer glimpses into a society divided by class but united, mostly, in an outpouring of sheer, overwhelming relief.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Cut Snake
    Muscled and ruggedly un-manscaped, Stapleton is an intimidating presence based on physicality alone, but the actor ratchets up the menace factor with a gripping portrayal of a man driven by emotions more complex than mere anger.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Prophet's Prey
    Prophet’s Prey isn’t definitive, but it is compelling and occasionally even cinematic.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 50 Kerry Lengel
    Once I Was a Beehive
    Like all faith-based films, it’s preaching to the choir. But as cinematic sins go, Hollywood regularly commits worse.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Boulevard
    Despite his roots as an over-the-top stand-up comedian, Williams long ago proved himself to be one of those rare actors who can truly inhabit a role, and “Boulevard” is no exception. But that’s not always enough to keep the viewer’s eyes glued to the screen.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
    McQuarrie delivers a tense, eye-popping amusement-park ride that’s almost as exciting as it is forgettable.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Kerry Lengel
    Amy
    [An] exhilarating, brutally depressing documentary.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Kerry Lengel
    Minions
    The Minions themselves aren't as endearing as they are in the previous movies, maybe because there are fewer of them bumbling around, or maybe because they just haven't found their true supervillain love yet. Or maybe some sidekicks, no matter how loveable, just aren't cartoon-hero material
    • 38 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Terminator Genisys
    Genisys is more entertaining than the last two installments, although it's not nearly as good as the first two.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Escobar: Paradise Lost
    After a predictable opening hour, Paradise Lost manages to deliver a surprise or two as it switches gears into a full-on thriller. But it never gets close to the epic heights to which it aspires.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Insidious: Chapter 3
    Insidious: Chapter 3 is almost more a spoof of a classic like "The Exorcist" than it is an homage. It's not scary horror, it's silly horror, and the audience is in on the joke.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Kerry Lengel
    When Marnie Was There
    There are no princesses, monsters or castles in the sky, but that doesn't mean there is no magic.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    In the Name of My Daughter
    Téchiné's fidelity to the facts delivers a disappointing denouement to an intriguing character study.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Arlo & Julie
    Arlo & Julie is a comedy, a mystery and a romance rolled together, yet it barely adds up to one movie.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    5 to 7
    For an R-rated romance about a young writer's affair with a sultry French siren, 5 to 7 generates all the heat of an Easy-Bake Oven. It aims to sizzle but quickly fizzles.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 50 Kerry Lengel
    The Cobbler
    The Cobbler definitely won't please the audience for Sandler's mainstream blockbusters, and it's unlikely to win him new fans among the indie intelligentsia, either.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Deli Man
    There's nothing particularly earth-shattering here, but maybe that's appropriate for a film honoring food that aims to be mouthwatering but unpretentious.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 40 Kerry Lengel
    Seventh Son
    Seventh Son is recommended only for the most far-gone of fantasy addicts, for whom it will serve as a sort of methadone. It won't exactly satisfy, but it will tide you over until the next season of "Game of Thrones."
    • 33 Metascore
    • 60 Kerry Lengel
    Annie
    Annie has never been the most sophisticated of children's stories. The latest version is formulaic and predictable, but it has its charms, not the least of which is Wallis' easy smile and sassy screen presence.
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