Kimberley Jones

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Austin Chronicle
For 1,017 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 40% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 58% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 6.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Kimberley Jones' Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 All the Real Girls
Lowest review score: 0 My Boss's Daughter
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 569 out of 1017
  2. Mixed: 311 out of 1017
  3. Negative: 137 out of 1017
1017 movie reviews
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    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    Lola Versus
    What's translated to film feels like a rough draft, with bullet points at beginning and end, demarcating Lola lost, Lola found. And in the middle? A vast, vague maw.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    Hysteria
    Rather born to wear a frock coat, Dancy shares the stammer-blush, winning-grin methodology of countryman Hugh Grant, only with more probity and better posture.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 89 Kimberley Jones
    Moonrise Kingdom
    Anderson and his co-writer Roman Coppola have crafted an elegant and emphatic metaphor for adolescence, that tumultuous province of firsts and lasts.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    Headhunters
    The film holds its twists too close to the chest, and there's little to chew on till the ambitiousness of its plotting is revealed late in the film.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 78 Kimberley Jones
    Snow White and the Huntsman
    Ambitious, brutish, ruthlessly unromantic – has the right idea casting its heroine as a Joan of Arc-type crusader and its evil queen a dissertation (albeit first draft) on beauty as the most direct path to power for the disenfranchised female.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    First Position
    It's a wealth of material at odds with a scant running time and shallow focus.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    What to Expect When You're Expecting
    Hopelessly old-fashioned then, but not the aggressively bad picture you might have anticipated.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 78 Kimberley Jones
    Sleepless Night
    Sisley is a former stand-up comic, although you'd never guess it here: Finding himself in the eye of a colossal shit storm of his own making, his Vincent is brusque and action oriented, his face, a picture of ulceration in progress.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 78 Kimberley Jones
    The Five-Year Engagement
    Stoller and Segel don't shy away from rational, relatable adults, which may be an unsexy selling point for a romantic comedy, but that attention to authenticity elevates the likable, low-stakes The Five-Year Engagement.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Delicacy
    Comedic actor François Damiens mines but never mocks Markus' awkwardness, thereby creating a winning portrait in decency. His tracing, with the ever-luminous Tautou, of the slow bloom of new love is a thing of understated beauty.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Kimberley Jones
    Chimpanzee
    By film's end, you'll wish they tossed Allen in the rainforest and left him for the leopards to snack on.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Lockout
    The space prison set-pieces get the job done; only in the film's terrestrial bookends does this nuts-and-bolts action film show its rust.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Kimberley Jones
    Mirror Mirror
    This is fussy filmmaking, overly made-up (the costume mandate seems to include the buzzwords "coffee filters," "croquembouche," and "Day-Glo paint") and bereft of wit.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
    After a sparky first half greatly aided by Kristin Scott Thomas' devilish turn as an unsentimental press secretary, Salmon Fishing grows soggier. It's such a pretty, witty gloss of a picture, it hardly knows what to do with real-world terror, hence the Snidely Whiplash-like limning of Muslim extremists.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    Jeff Who Lives at Home
    The Duplass brothers have an exceptional eye for microexpressions (yes, they're still zoom-happy), and there's something to be admired in this new interest in a macro lens on the universe's workings. If only it didn't take wading through so much drear to get to that divine.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 40 Kimberley Jones
    A Thousand Words
    If A Thousand Words' formula seems familiar, that's because writer Steve Koren has tripped down this quasi-metaphysical path before in "Bruce Almighty" and "Click."
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    Chico & Rita
    The very best animation can excite the senses and inflame the imagination. But Chico & Rito's charmless line drawings just made me wish the film was live-action instead.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    Wanderlust
    Wanderlust is flawed, too, but for its exploration of financial ruin and alternative lifestyles, it shows once again that Aniston, at the very least, knows which way the wind is blowing.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Kimberley Jones
    The Vow
    Perhaps Sucsy was overwhelmed by his immersion in such colorful and outré material; he's chosen for his followup, the I Can't Believe It's Not Nicholas Sparks weepie The Vow, the cinematic equivalent of a lie-down.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Richard Garriott: Man on a Mission
    While Man on a Mission doesn't precisely neuter Garriott's weirder ways, it does push them aside for a more boilerplate message of the father/son bond.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 89 Kimberley Jones
    Pina
    Excepting the occasional shot that forces the eye on a particular dancer, Wenders largely films the action in a way that re-creates the effect of attending a performance in a proscenium theatre – only without having to scrabble for the best seat in the house. No matter where you are, you're already in it.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Big Miracle
    Big Miracle is all formula, but with just enough savvy to temper the gentle-spiritedness and qualify it as that rare family film with an emotional manipulativeness that doesn't leave a sick slick in the mouth.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 40 Kimberley Jones
    One for the Money
    Wouldn't it make more sense on basic cable? Plum screen incarnate (and film producer) Katherine Heigl got her start in TV, on Roswell and Grey's Anatomy, and her public persona – a combination of prickliness and adoration-seeking that has famously grated on viewers' and critics' nerves alike – has historically played better there.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 20 Kimberley Jones
    Underworld: Awakening
    There is running, hiding, fighting, shooting, bleeding, biting, slicing, dicing, and damnably little entertainment value in any of it.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    As a portrait of what happens to a family when its glue disappears, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wrung a bucket of tears out of me.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    The Iron Lady
    If I may presume: Thatcher probably would have preferred more action, less talk.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Carnage
    The script is chockablock with al dente amusements – obvious targets still make for wickedly funny one-liners – and the German actor Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) is terrific as the only parent unburdened by decorum.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 78 Kimberley Jones
    A Dangerous Method
    It's a period piece about the origins of psychoanalysis and the sexual confusions of its progenitors that is eloquent and handsomely made, if never quite revelatory.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 89 Kimberley Jones
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    One wishes for a chewier whodunit – there just aren't enough clues for the viewer to work with – and the reveal of the mole is perversely anticlimactic. But maybe that's just stickling. We always knew Smiley'd get his man.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 89 Kimberley Jones
    Shame
    Equally harrowing and heartrending, Shame is a film that feels akin to going into battle, and I for one didn't emerge unscathed.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Kimberley Jones
    The Sitter
    For a comedy, The Sitter is frightfully spare on full-bodied laughs.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 20 Kimberley Jones
    New Year's Eve
    Mostly, New Year's Eve is appalling stuff, a poorly constructed, sentimental sham. Auld lang suck.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 20 Kimberley Jones
    The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Chicago, Gods and Monsters) takes over the directing reins for these final two parts; his most noteworthy contribution to the series so far is a terrifyingly staged birth scene that should turn the teen fan base off of sex altogether … which is precisely what this whole dumb, punishing series has been gunning for from the start.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    The Descendants
    The Descendants is beautifully shot (by Phedon Papamichael) and compellingly performed, especially by its young stars, and it has moments of startling tenderness. If only it didn't feel phony to its bones.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Kimberley Jones
    Immortals
    The Greek myths, of course, will endure. The same cannot be said for Singh's silly, self-serious, instantly forgettable, and inaptly named Immortals.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    A grinning but toothless comedy, this Christmas-themed outing pales in inventiveness compared to the original, which brought sweet, silly anarchy to its one-thing-leads-to-another plotting.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Like Crazy
    There's no question that the actors and filmmakers have fashioned a compelling (if unformed) love story of a certain age – which is not to be confused for a love story for the ages.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 78 Kimberley Jones
    Tower Heist
    To a one, they nail the humor, all right, but they also, quite crucially, humanize the high concept.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 20 Kimberley Jones
    In Time
    They have some fun playacting at class warriors on the lam – and Seyfriend, it must be said, rocks a killer bob – but it's all just big-budget dress-up in a futurescape that reeks of phoniness.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Kimberley Jones
    The Three Musketeers
    Still, once you accept Paul W.S. Anderson's entirely unnecessary adaptation on its own terms (nonsensical, underachieving), it has its limited charms, which include a snigger-inducing alphabet soup of accents, a standout rooftop swordfight, and British comedian James Corden as the Musketeers' put-upon manservant.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 78 Kimberley Jones
    The Names of Love
    What is so surprising – even exhilarating – about The Names of Love is that it shucks off the desultory roadblocks that engine the modern romantic comedy – all that razzmatazz of missed connections and dunderheaded misunderstandings.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Kimberley Jones
    The Big Year
    The Big Year's biggest disappointment is its inadequacy in elucidating the passion of the birder. What ardency, and what an exceptional, impenetrable world they move in. I for one wanted a better look at it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    The Way
    The Way never arrives anywhere you couldn't see coming a mile away, but it does so with such empathy that its conclusions feel comforting rather than overly predictable.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Kimberley Jones
    Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure
    But most damningly, Shut Up Little Man! fails to convey what was so hypnotic about the original tapes, and Bate's decision to re-enact the transcripts with actors seems weirdly contrary to the spirit of the thing.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 40 Kimberley Jones
    Killer Elite
    There's nothing here for the viewer to do, no kinks to work out, no double-crossings to anticipate, not even a half-hearted flail at figuring out how Danny ticks.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Kimberley Jones
    What's Your Number?
    What goes most wrong is the casting. Every facet of Faris' performance feels off.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 89 Kimberley Jones
    50/50
    Mostly it's just terribly funny and sad and beautifully acted and terrifically feel-good for being, you know, a cancer comedy.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 78 Kimberley Jones
    Life, Above All
    In its third act, Life, Above All takes a bit of a dip into la-la land, in terms of believability – how precisely is an impoverished family supposed to have afforded an ambulance and hospice care? – but that doesn't diminish the emotional impact of Manyaka's performance and the idea that courage can be infectious, too.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    I Don't Know How She Does It
    For the first 30 minutes I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a really promising pilot for network TV.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Crime After Crime
    I suspect it's that spirit as much as the injustice of her incarceration that drew so many people to her cause and inspired this labor-of-love documentary about her journey to hell and back.
    • 9 Metascore
    • 0 Kimberley Jones
    Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star
    What does startle is how tiresome it all is.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 89 Kimberley Jones
    Drive
    I can't remember the last time I felt so seduced by a film.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    Apollo 18
    The real tension of the piece lies in the sound design, with its layering of heavy breaths, inexplicably compromised frequencies, and invasive thwackings of no known origin to the ship hull.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 11 Kimberley Jones
    Shark Night 3D
    About as humorless – and joyless – as they come.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Echotone
    Echotone is scattered, for sure (the sound ordinance battle is poorly handled), but as an anecdotal account of Austin in the first decade of a new century, it's rarely anything less than compelling.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 78 Kimberley Jones
    Senna
    Undeniably gripping stuff.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 20 Kimberley Jones
    Redemption Road
    As the film's central focal point, Simpson (who also co-wrote the script) is an awful zero – you could hardly imagine a more uncharismatic lead – and his embarrassing swings at big emotion in the climax prove the final blow to a film already hobbled by mawkishness.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    One Day
    Sturgess, saddled with a caddish character, is less compelling, but he does provide the film's only spot of unloosed, raw emotion. Everything else feels too precisely and too compactly assembled for much impact.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 30 Kimberley Jones
    Glee: The 3D Concert Movie
    The film restages the greatest hits of the show's many musical numbers, to greatly diminished effect, with lackluster choreography and all the narrative appeal stripped away.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Kimberley Jones
    The Future
    As an unsparing portrait of disaffection among the small-paycheck, faux-creative class, The Future is rather astute … which isn't to say it isn't also bang-your-head-on-the-wall annoying.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    The Help
    The Help may be more interested in the moral at the end of the story than the story itself, but what saves the film from its meticulous one-dimensionality is that nuanced, deeply moving cast.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    Tabloid
    Morris has found a real character in McKinney, but to what end, I couldn't say.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    The Change-Up
    Instantly forgettable but intermittently funny movie.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    Cowboys & Aliens
    For better or worse (and I'd argue the latter), the aliens are as monolithically evil, unformed, and un-individuated as characters as Native Americans once were in the earliest of Westerns.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest
    White couldn't stay away, and neither can the band's legions of fans, who bop up and down in sold-out arenas at the reunion tour that provides the film's hopeful coda.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Kimberley Jones
    Captain America: The First Avenger
    The final conflict is so protracted as to comfortably accommodate a bathroom break. Don't worry. You won't miss anything you haven't seen before.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 67 Kimberley Jones
    Friends with Benefits
    The middle of a movie is often where filmmakers lose their way, but Friends With Benefits nails this stretch, in which nothing very remarkable happens as two people talk, in bed and out of bed. There's a fine line between fun-dirty and ick-dirty – sometimes you can't identify the line until it's been crossed – and this film keeps its toes on the right side of raunch.
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