Kyle Smith

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New York Post, Wall Street Journal
For 1,913 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 35% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 64% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 13.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Kyle Smith's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 52
Highest review score: 100 The Birth of a Nation
Lowest review score: 0 Victor Frankenstein
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 789 out of 1913
  2. Mixed: 407 out of 1913
  3. Negative: 717 out of 1913
1913 movie reviews
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    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Inferno
    The film is never gripping, but at least it moves. Director Ron Howard does his best to spark excitement with cheesy horror-movie editing — brief shots of the damnation in store if the virus is unleashed — and there are a couple of twists to keep things lively. Nothing is what it seems, unless it seems ridiculous, in which case it’s exactly what it seems.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Under the Shadow
    Any parent who has ever scrambled desperately to find a doll to appease a wailing child as though it were a life-and-death situation will appreciate the wit of this multilayered, dread-soaked chamber piece.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    The Girl on the Train
    Lacking either the narrative shiftiness or the trashy thrills of “Gone Girl,” this one is the kind of flick few will watch twice: It has about as many twists and turns as an L. The third act of a movie shouldn’t make you feel as though the first two acts were a waste of time.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 100 Kyle Smith
    The Birth of a Nation
    Both broader and deeper than the relentless and monotonous “12 Years a Slave,” it’s one of the few important movies to hit cinemas this year.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    Burton may give us a bland hero, a tepid love story and a muddled plot but, hey, at least he’s got a skeleton army doing battle with giant tentacle monsters at an amusement park.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    The Lovers and the Despot
    It’s told in a woefully pedestrian way, with talking-head footage forming the bulk of this slow-to-develop film. Still, it’s a creepily fascinating tale.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 0 Kyle Smith
    The Dressmaker
    "The Titanic" is now the second-biggest disaster Kate Winslet has ever been associated with. Her new one, The Dressmaker, is like some hellborn alloy of film noir, campy melodrama, “High Plains Drifter” and the Darwin Awards for people who die in moronic accidents.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Storks
    Less enjoyable than making a baby but more enjoyable than raising one, the animated feature Storks delivers a bouncing bundle of blah.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Blair Witch
    Running and screaming may be essential to a lot of horror movies, but as Blair Witch shows, they’re not scary in themselves. For that, you need the stuff between the running and screaming.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Operation Avalanche
    A cute, spunky found-footage thriller undone by a lumpy plot and a weak ending, Operation Avalanche revisits the urban legend that the moon landing was faked, with some fresh twists.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Snowden
    Snowden could have been a character portrait, but instead it’s like “The Bourne Identity” minus the chases and fights, which is like a ham and cheese sandwich minus the ham and cheese. As a consequence, I suspect, this film will make no bread.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Other People
    Deeply personal screenwriting and a superlative performance by Molly Shannon as a dying mom lift Other People above the level of many similar tragedy-inflected indie comedies.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    Ithaca
    This movie is resolute about being as homey and obvious as it can possibly be. Somewhere, Norman Rockwell is thinking, “Sheesh, even I was edgier than this.”
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    The 9th Life of Louis Drax
    A dopey psychological thriller that combines elements of “The Sixth Sense” with an overbearing sentimentality, The 9th Life of Louis Drax flat-lines from beginning to end.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    The Light Between Oceans
    Beautifully photographed and acted, with a somberly affecting tone, the film, by Derek Cianfrance, is nevertheless marred by severely contrived elements.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    Morgan
    A dull, listless, derivative chunk of celluloid lacking any spark or even basic storytelling ability.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Southside with You
    A pleasingly low-key effort pitched at fans of the first couple.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    The Hollars
    A gooey morass of indie-movie clichés, the wacky-family dramedy The Hollars marks yet another egregiously cutesy attempt to rekindle that “Garden State” magic.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Don't Breathe
    Apart from its thin characters and occasional trite moments, as well as a silly attempt to set up a sequel, Don’t Breathe is just about perfect. It’s as lean and relentless as the best John Carpenter films.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    Hands of Stone
    Trite and vulgar boxing flick.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    Morris from America
    It’s a small movie, but in his third feature, indie writer-director Chad Hartigan proves he is a major talent, imbuing the interactions with wit and warmth and charm.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    War Dogs
    After an hour or so, when the would-be comedy War Dogs finally gets around to a point to focus on, it’s stale ammunition that’s been sitting in a dusty Albanian warehouse for 40 years. I assume the movie got its jokes from the same place.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Hell or High Water
    A desperado drama wrapped around a Bernie Sanders campaign speech, Hell or High Water overcomes its vapid political leanings with loads of West Texas atmosphere, smart dialogue and acutely observed relationships.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    Pete's Dragon
    A cinematic enchantment, a low-key 1970s-style kids’ movie brimming with sincerity and heart. It’s one of the best films of the year.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    The Brooklyn Banker
    Borrowing a few tricks from Martin Scorsese, the film isn’t a slavish imitation but an engrossing and grounded drama. It’s a pity, then, that director Federico Castelluccio, best known as Furio of “The Sopranos,” can’t deliver a powerful conclusion.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    The Little Prince
    Like a Pixar movie shorn of the cutesy and manipulative aspects that marred “Inside Out,” the animated remake of The Little Prince, hitting theaters and Netflix, is as fragile and beautiful as the beloved rose guarded by the wee fellow of the title.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Suicide Squad
    If it has a genius for anything, it’s disorganization: What promised to be a Super Bowl of villainy turned out more like toddler playtime.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Bad Moms
    Bad Moms is like “Sex and the City: The Sneakers-and-Minivan Years,” a good-natured girl-power comedy that balances a bland sitcom structure with some weird and hilarious moments.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    Indignation
    Indignation is devastating, haunting and important.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    Nerve
    The sharpest, wildest and most unpredictable thriller I’ve seen this year.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Jason Bourne
    I love the series, but Jason Bourne is the worst of the five.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Summertime
    Two dull people have a dull love affair in Summertime, a French drama that drags on like an August afternoon.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Star Trek Beyond
    They should have called it “Star Trek Into Drowsiness.”
    • 2 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party
    Cheesier than a Kraft Singles truck but half as subtle, Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party is an attack on all things Democratic whose many valid points get buried under bluster
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Café Society
    A scrapbook of bits from better Allen films that builds up to a hearty shrug.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Equals
    Doremus can’t quite make the emotional breakthroughs rewarding enough to justify the slow buildup, but the icy beauty of the film makes it worth watching.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Zero Days
    At the end the film turns into an infomercial for President Obama’s Iran deal, but Gibney delivers plenty to think about — and fear.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Cell
    For John Cusack in Cell, the bad news is that his phone just ran out of juice. The good news, sort of, is that those who are on their phones were just attacked by a piercing signal that turned them into flesh-munching zombies.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
    As filthy as the back of a sanitation truck — but it has heart, too. Most of the comedy is funny, some of it is hilarious.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Our Kind of Traitor
    A dismal, low-energy affair.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    The Purge: Election Year
    The Purge: Election Year imagines that, right now, laws are being ignored, people gun each other down with impunity and the death toll is horrendous. It’s too bad the title “Chicago” was already taken.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Life, Animated
    Life, Animated oversimplifies the situation, contriving to use endless clips from Disney movies to make a case that movie magic really can better people’s lives. Unfortunately, by the end of the movie it’s clear that Disney can’t help Owen negotiate sex, breakups or many other challenges he faces as an adult.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    The Phenom
    Written and directed with compassion by Noah Buschel, the film is a low-key chamber piece better suited to television. But don’t let its restraint fool you: As unshowy as it is, The Phenom has an impressive collection of tools.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Free State of Jones
    Free State of Jones is enticingly difficult to chart. It’s anti-war, anti-plutocracy and anti-racist, but it’s also pro-Bible, pro-gun, anti-tax and sympathetic to the poor whites who usually get tagged as racist. Its hero is an avowed Republican named Newt.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words
    Quotable, controversial, anarchic, charismatic and handsome (in an ugly way), the zany avant-garde rocker Frank Zappa had everything one needs to be a star, except talent.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    The Shallows
    The girl kept talking and strategizing as heavy string music played on the soundtrack. This was doubly weird because: a) it made me feel like the bad guy; and b) life doesn’t normally have a soundtrack. Somehow the bitch got hold of a flare gun. Ever had a flare gun fired into your hide? Unpleasant.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)
    If it’s possible to make a morally old-fashioned film about teen orgies, writer-director Eva Husson has done so with Bang Gang, a quietly chilling look at the sex lives of a group of bored high-school students.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made
    Imagine “Moby-Dick” rewritten in crayon, and you’ll get the idea.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Kyle Smith
    De Palma
    Sharp, funny and as mesmerizing as the master’s notoriously languorous suspense scenes.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Warcraft
    No, Warcraft isn’t a ridiculous mess; it holds together on its own musclebound terms. It neither tries to be jokey nor undercuts itself by being unintentionally funny. And it offers a bit more complexity than some other nonstop action flicks adapted from video games. It’s a real movie, just not a good one.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    Time to Choose
    The climate-change documentary Time To Choose makes the disaster movie “The Day After Tomorrow” look like a model of judiciousness and restraint.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
    A movie that sets out to make boy bands look silly. The conceptual error is obvious. There’s low-hanging fruit and then there’s fruit that’s already on the ground, rotting underfoot.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Alice Through the Looking Glass
    You certainly get your 20 bucks worth of spectacle out of Alice Through the Looking Glass. So breathtaking are the landscapes, so whimsical are the creatures, so marvelous are the marvels that I wanted to give a standing ovation to whoever signed the check to pay for all this. Expensiver and expensiver!
    • 58 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
    It’s kind of cute but mostly just awkward, somewhere between watching bros who slept through French class trying to work their game in Nice and endless CBS sitcoms about nutty guys ruled by exasperated, boring women.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Last Days in the Desert
    I tried squinting. Didn’t work. I turned my head slightly to the side. Uh-uh. No matter what I tried, I could not, cannot and never will be able to see Ewan McGregor as Jesus Christ.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Sunset Song
    Davies’ quiet, painterly film largely eschews musical cues that would heighten its emotional impact, but as it is, Sunset Song is captivating in its sincerity.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    The Lobster
    Loaded with dazzling ideas that don’t ultimately pull together.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Elstree 1976
    Elstree 1976 is an amazing experience. I’m shocked that a documentary revisiting the making of “Star Wars” could be this boring.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Captain America: Civil War
    After the first two “Captain America” entries, the finest comic-book movies of the last five years, this one is disappointing. The story doesn’t make sense.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    Ratchet & Clank
    Small fry will learn an important lesson taking in the recycled storylines of Ratchet & Clank: Like nearly all recycling, it’s garbage.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    The Family Fang
    Yet merely “playing with concepts” doesn’t quite add up to a film, and The Family Fang, adapted from Kevin Wilson’s novel, feels like an extended therapy session.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    A Hologram for the King
    To describe this as a movie about a mediocre businessman biding his time before an appointment probably makes it sound more exciting than it is.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    Tale of Tales
    An English-language film from Italy, Tale of Tales toys with the ogres, princesses and crones of classic fairy tales to almost no dramatic effect, albeit with lots of sex and gore. Imagine the Brothers Grimm’s cousins Tyler and Jake writing for a late-night slot on Cinemax and you’ll get the idea.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    An Eye for Beauty
    An Eye for Beauty star Éric Bruneau proves to be a haircut in search of a man, which makes him ideal for this vapid adultery drama that delivers the character depth of your average spread in Architectural Digest.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    The Jungle Book
    Probably no studio mulls its “brands” as obsessively as Disney does, and The Jungle Book is very much a careful, calculated brand extension, not a reinvention. But that’s just fine: What better lesson to teach kids than respect for what came before you?
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Sing Street
    Carney’s film (unlike his disappointing previous effort “Begin Again”) is mad, irrepressible youth incarnate, by turns as exuberant as “The Commitments” and (nearly) as heartfelt as “Once.”
    • 51 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    Hardcore Henry
    It’s breathtaking. It’s dazzling. It’s world-altering, is what it is. For the first time ever, a movie has actually done it. Hardcore Henry has precisely replicated the experience of watching someone else play a video game.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Louder Than Bombs
    Directed with great sensitivity by Norway’s Joachim Trier, the film is superbly, subtly acted.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Demolition
    Demolition, written by Bryan Sipe is, like director Jean-Marc Vallée’s previous films “Wild” and “Dallas Buyers Club,” a tale of interior repair sought through obsessive and near-penitential acts, but it’s stranger and at times more interesting than those other two.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Kill Your Friends
    A comedy as black as vinyl, Kill Your Friends is a music-industry tell-all set at a decadent London record label in 1997.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    The Girl in the Photographs
    In the end, the movie (executive produced by the late Wes Craven) degenerates into a routine, though ably constructed, horror flick.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Everybody Wants Some!!
    A fulsomely, aggressively modest no-star picture, it’s a plotless, pointless two-hour hangout.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    I Saw the Light
    I Saw the Light is as vital as a two-hour shrug.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Born to be Blue
    In Born To Be Blue, Ethan Hawke plays the heroin-addicted jazz trumpeter Chet Baker as a kind of guy version of Marilyn Monroe — breathy, fragile, a country naif struggling to stay anchored in this world instead of drifting off into the next.
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