Kevin Thomas

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Los Angeles Times
For 1,782 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 75% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 24% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Kevin Thomas' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Grand Hotel
Lowest review score: 0 The Tiger and the Snow
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,177 out of 1782
  2. Mixed: 442 out of 1782
  3. Negative: 163 out of 1782
1782 movie reviews
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    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Ran
    Ran, which translates as "chaos" or "turmoil," is at once brisk and vital, elegiac and contemplative, intimate and epic, tragic yet shot through with humor. It combines the energy of youth with the perspective of maturity. It encompasses all of human nature in its folly and grandeur, and it does so in images as beautiful and terrifying as any ever captured on film and in performances that are impeccable.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    The Evil Dead
    Unquestionalby it's an instant classic, probably the grisliest well-made movie ever. [26 May 1983]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
    May well be Imamura's funniest film; it is also one of his most accomplished. It is the work of a mature artist who has kept his adventurous spirit alive, which he has expressed in a complex and risky work carried off with an effortlessness that comes only from wisdom and experience.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    The City of Lost Children
    The City of Lost Children is a stunningly surreal fantasy, a fable of longing and danger, of heroic deeds and bravery, set in a brilliantly realized world of its own. It is one of the most audacious, original films of the year. [22 Dec 1995]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Mean Streets
    Mean Streets is a jazzy riff of a movie, zigging and zagging as if to the beat of snapping fingers. Its greatness lies in its leanness, with nary a word, a move, a gesture that's nonessential.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    The Tao of Steve
    A constant, idiosyncratic pleasure that leaves us eager to see what the Goodmans and Logue will do next.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    RA. One
    Anubhav Sinha's exhilarating fantasy Ra.One is Bollywood at its best. It has energy, spectacle and humor, song and dance, but razzle-dazzle special effects and action stunts never overwhelm its story of enduring love that unfolds amid an intricate and inspired sci-fi odyssey.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    10 Things I Hate About You
    Lutz's dialogue is consistently sharp and snappy, and the large cast forms a sparkling ensemble under Junger's adept direction.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    35 Shots of Rum
    For 20 years, Claire Denis has been among France's foremost filmmakers with her acute yet subtle observations of the ebbs and flows within relationships. Her perception and understanding seem to grow only richer over the years, and her newest film, 35 Shots of Rum, is surely one of her finest -- and thereby one of the best films of the year.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Grand Hotel
    Boasting one of the most exciting all-star casts ever assembled, glittering with authentic glamour, this MGM hit is one of those happy instances when art and entertainment are one. [17 Jun 1991, p.F9]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Wonderland
    In short, Wonderland is an extraordinary film, as entertaining as it is observant, about ordinary people.
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    The Sure Thing
    Of course, "It Happens One Night" comes to mind, but The Sure Thing is so sparkling and original in its humor, so perceptive about human nature in its own right, that its key elements seem classic, not carbons.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Au Revoir les Enfants
    It has the subtlety and devastating impact of Renoir’s prophetic classic Rules of the Game, and it is suffused with the calm, detached tragic irony and inevitability of the ancient Greek plays.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    À Tout de Suite (Right Now)
    It's hard to imagine many films surpassing or even equaling the effect of this supple, breathtakingly direct, small French film.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Marwencol
    Watching Marwencol, Jeff Malmberg's probing documentary on Hogancamp's undertaking, is an exhilarating, utterly unique experience.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Gabrielle
    A period chamber drama drawn from a Joseph Conrad short story and of such intensity and passion that it transcends a specificity of time and place to achieve timelessness and universality.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Pride and Prejudice
    MGM's 1940 Pride and Prejudice holds up better than you might expect as a prime example of Hollywood studio gentility in the '30s and '40s. [11 Aug 1996, p.74]
    • Los Angeles Times
    • 71 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Chasing Amy
    A little movie with big truths, a work of such fierce intelligence and emotional honesty that it blows away the competition when it comes to contemporary romantic comedy.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut
    “Donnie Darko" was one of the best pictures released in 2001. Now that it has returned in a 20-minute longer--and richer -- director's cut, it seems sure to be ranked as one of the key American films of the decade.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Sankofa
    Sankofa unfolds as a kind of oratorio--the film’s music in itself is incredibly rich and intoxicating--in which people deal with terrible cruelty through ritual and incantations of the African gods. It is a celebration of the strength of black people, in drawing upon their spiritual roots, to defy their oppressors--past and present alike.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Lorna's Silence
    A gritty, deceptively low-key, no-fuss, no-frills movie of consistent originality and surprise in which suspense arises straight up from the heroine's evolving character.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    I Vitelloni [re-release]
    It was this ineffably poignant semiautobiographical reverie that unleashed fully Fellini's shimmering, flowing poetic style, echoed perfectly in a plaintive score by Fellini's potently evocative collaborator, Nino Rota.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    The Duchess of Langeais
    Jacques Rivette has brought the Balzac short story to screen as a superb chamber drama. His is a graceful work of austerity and formality that perfectly captures the chaos of repressed emotions that see beneath the rigid conventions of aristocratic society.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Burma VJ: Reporter i et lukket land
    Filmmaking at its most fearless, with Ostergaard creating a suspenseful, harrowing account of his original key subject, known only as "Joshua."
    • 44 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Pearl Harbor
    The film's immense cast and crew, headed by director Michael Bay, writer Randall Wallace and stars Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale, blend artistry and technology to create a blockbuster entertainment that has passion, valor and tremendous action.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    The Elephant Man
    David Lynch's superb and subtly ironic 1980 film reveals the shining humanity in a horribly disfigured--and horribly mistreated--young man who actually lived in England in the late 19th Century and was rescued by an enlightened Victorian physician.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Baran
    A superlative work, offering a rich emotional experience that at the same time calls attention to the seemingly endless suffering of the Afghan people.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Gone with the Wind
    The older it gets, and we with it, the more we're able to see in it. As few American films have, Gone With the Wind succeeds both as historical epic and as intimate drama.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
    Incisive yet supple, wrenching yet deeply pleasurable, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada easily ranks among the year's best pictures.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 100 Kevin Thomas
    Northfork
    A thoroughly original accomplishment of a high artistic order, Northfork features flawless, spare production design by Ichelle Spitzig and the Polish brothers' father, Del, and cinematographer M. David Mullen's striking images slide effortlessly into Dalí-like Surrealism.
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