Kevin Maher

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The Times
For 191 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 39% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 60% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Kevin Maher's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Pride & Prejudice
Lowest review score: 0 The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 86 out of 191
  2. Mixed: 85 out of 191
  3. Negative: 20 out of 191
191 movie reviews
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    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Kevin Maher
    Elio
    Nothing here resonates and its slavish adherence to recent Pixar formula is ultimately deadening. Yes, Elio, you are unique and wonderful. Your flaw is your gift. Now, please, can we all go home!
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Kevin Maher
    Queer
    It’s visually appealing, obviously, because Guadagnino does not make ugly films. But it’s difficult to convey how little, dramatically speaking, is happening here.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Kevin Maher
    Bugonia
    In short, Yorgos, move on.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
    It’s Hugh Grant, returning as the ageing, inveterate “ladies’ man” Daniel Cleaver, who steals the show.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 20 Kevin Maher
    Die My Love
    Nothing has dramatic impact. Nobody seems to believe anything they’re doing. Lawrence and Pattinson, two innately charismatic performers, are strangely self-conscious, and so many of their scenes seem like experimental improv or half-cooked rehearsals.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    Blitz
    Arguably the most heroic character in the film is the city. And Blitz is, instantly, one of the great “London Movies”.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    The Room Next Door
    In these intensely moving moments it feels as if the two artists — Joyce and Almodóvar — are connecting across time, desperate to express the ineffable, and keen to capture a creative moment that honours both the living and the dead.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Kevin Maher
    Companion
    Thatcher’s performance is mostly a marvel. She’s instantly sympathetic, the most deliberately “human” being in the film, and yet the genius of her characterisation as a robot is in the way she slightly over-enunciates her dialogue and walks with the odd shuffle of a Thunderbirds marionette.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Kevin Maher
    A Complete Unknown
    Still, Norton’s great. It should’ve really been the Pete Seeger story.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Kevin Maher
    Hedda
    There’s only one thing worse than being trapped in a theatre watching a badly staged play: being trapped in a cinema watching a badly adapted stage play. And so it is, frequently, with this Ibsen update that’s pulled in too many directions at once by its ambitious director, Nia DaCosta, and the producer-star Tessa Thompson.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    The Friend
    Yes, the canine element is structurally paramount, and yes, Apollo the Great Dane, as played by Bing, is adorable and regally sad throughout. But this is pedigree material.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    The Devil Wears Prada 2
    It is difficult to overstate Streep’s importance, and how deeply she inhabits a role that, for any other actress, would certainly be cartoonish — the outfits, the glasses and the whispered catchphrase “that’s all”.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Maher
    Emilia Pérez
    The songs are often exquisite, the duets heartbreaking. The performances are trophy bait, Saldaña’s especially. And the go-for-broke direction belies the notion that a septuagenarian like Audiard should be making movies of autumnal wisdom. This is a vivid, high-energy film, one of the year’s best.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    I Swear
    There’s a hint of repetition in the mid-section and a schmaltzy third act courtroom scene. But all flaws are overcome by Aramayo’s technically precise and heart-rending turn. It’s astonishing.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Kevin Maher
    The Ugly Stepsister
    Fans are calling this the Brothers Grimm meets The Substance but it’s better than that sounds. And certainly harder to watch.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 40 Kevin Maher
    The Phoenician Scheme
    On the positive side, Threapleton, the daughter of Kate Winslet, is sensational. Quietly commanding, but always glowing with charisma, she is the discovery here.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Kevin Maher
    How to Train Your Dragon
    It’s loud and diverting and very young children are sure to be entertained. But it’s also utterly dead, right down to its hollow, greedy, cash-grabbing core.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    La Grazia
    La grazia is wonderful. It is slow initially and sometimes difficult but it gradually, seductively seeps into you and becomes near impossible to shake.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    The Piano Lesson
    Mostly newbie director Malcolm Washington puts his trust in Wilson’s words, the play’s complex characterisations and the phenomenal performances from his never better cast.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Kevin Maher
    Rumours
    The film is fun for a while, and it’s certainly the most commercial project that the experimental Canadian director Guy Maddin (Twilight of the Ice Nymphs) has delivered. But it’s also pretty tedious and not half as smart as it might have been. Plus it’s very lazy, and smug.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    Hallow Road
    Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys deliver a concentrated burst of parental trauma in this propulsive psychological thriller that’s set almost entirely inside a Land Rover late at night. It’s like Tom Hardy’s Locke but more intense.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5
    In a project that took a full year to edit, with unfettered access to the Orwell estate’s entire archive, Peck proves impossibly adept at layering in seemingly disparate clips, quotes and footage without ever once losing sight of his central message. Much like Orwell, in fact, it’s the clarity of his polemic that impresses most.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    Dead of Winter
    A thrillingly tense game of kill-or-be-killed.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    Thunderbolts*
    In the end the most radical element of this revamped Marvel entry is its suggestion that the problems of the world can’t be solved by a super-powered punch to the face, but by a heartfelt group hug. Sappy and saccharine, perhaps. But possibly the movie we need right now.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Kevin Maher
    F1: The Movie
    There’s an unashamedly “enthusiastic” cross-promotional quality to the film, like a two-and-a-half-hour Formula 1 commercial, that never quite gels with its hoary central story.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Kevin Maher
    Crime 101
    This is all good fun but at about the midway mark (see the chunky running time) it begins to lose its vitality, ceasing to be a new Heat and becoming more of a reheat.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Maher
    Ne Zha 2
    This is nearly two and a half hours of eye-gouging spectacle with jabs of heartfelt emotion, deftly orchestrated by the relatively inexperienced writer, director and animator Jiaozi (remember the name).
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Kevin Maher
    Superman
    There are glimmers of intrigue, as well as quirks and curios.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Kevin Maher
    Merchant Ivory
    The film ends far too neatly and with a speedy pass over the failures, but there is much here to savour.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Kevin Maher
    Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
    And then, saving the best till last, literally (of the entire franchise), there’s a helter-skelter biplane chase along South Africa’s Blyde River Canyon that’s simply one of the most extraordinary and apparently death-defying stunt set-pieces that anyone, let alone an A-list megastar, has ever attempted to put on film. And for this, Tom Cruise, we salute you. Mission accomplished.
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