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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    • 86 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    The Great Beauty
    There’s an exhilarating sadness to it all that amounts to cinematic poetry.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Summer Hours
    Even for a French drama, Summer Hours is so slow as to be practically still.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Kyle Smith
    Sentimental Value
    Sentimental Value is an affecting look into a fractured family. Art and domestic life intertwine with each other, inform each other and perhaps support each other more than is at first apparent, leading to an ending that provides a satisfying union of the two realms.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    The Interrupters
    The movie is more a situation than a narrative, and it's repetitive and depressing. One interrupter -- a murderer who did 14 years in prison -- says of the program, "In essence, it's just a Band-Aid." At best: One of his colleagues gets shot in the back for his peacekeeping effort.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    No Other Choice
    You’d be unwise to look to the movies for economic insight—this one amounts to an extended fatuous argument that an individual who behaved like a corporate restructuring would be a psychopath. But among contemporary socio-economic parables, Mr. Park’s latest is an amusingly cutting one.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
    In Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, selfish oldsters scheme to rob young people of their vital essence, sacrificing them in the process. It’s basically “Social Security: The Movie.”
    • 85 Metascore
    • 30 Kyle Smith
    A Real Pain
    It’s thin and flat, the opposite of inventive, surprising, daring or insightful. Though it’s billed as a comedy-drama, nothing in it generates laughs, even of the cringe variety.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Get Out
    It’s Peele’s first film, but it has none of the rough edges or self-indulgence you’d expect from a rookie.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    An Education
    Despite the lingering aroma of Victorian rot shrouding 1961, An Education is excitingly young.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 25 Kyle Smith
    Battle for Haditha
    The film is an exposé only of a filmmaker's senseless contempt for the military.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    Exit Through the Gift Shop
    It's mainly about a supremely annoying French-born LA clothier who became a hugely successful artist without pausing to consider his utter lack of originality or talent.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    Kings & Queen
    A long, messy cinematic novel full of hate, love, murder, ghosts, madness, poetry and Catherine Deneuve.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Kyle Smith
    Knocked Up
    Ridiculous comedies can be fine, but the ones that matter creep up close to the truth. This one lives in it.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    Thanks to his (Oldman) mastery, and Alfredson's, no film this year left me hungrier for a sequel.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 40 Kyle Smith
    The Wild Robot
    This denial of nature is more banal than inspiring. The robot may grow a heart but the movie feels strictly mechanical.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    The Beasts
    In balancing the two sides’ competing motives, Mr. Sorogoyen has fashioned not only a taut drama but a parable that is widely applicable across many cultures at this moment.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    The Dark Knight
    The highest praise I can give a superhero movie is that it makes me forget about its 10-cent-comic-book soul.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Kyle Smith
    The Pursuit of Happyness
    A viral blast of the American Dream. It's "Rocky" with a briefcase.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Everybody Wants Some!!
    A fulsomely, aggressively modest no-star picture, it’s a plotless, pointless two-hour hangout.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Kyle Smith
    Black Bag
    Messrs. Soderbergh and Koepp have followed one of (Elmore) Leonard’s Laws—“Leave out the parts that people skip”—to construct an electric, fast-paced thriller that amounts to one climactic scene piled atop another.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    The Fabelmans
    Understanding that a knockout finish is the most important element, Mr. Spielberg delivers spectacularly in a scene drawn from a real-life meeting. He puts a mischievous twist on his well-earned reputation for sentimental endings by dramatizing an encounter with one of the gods of celluloid.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 Kyle Smith
    Turn the River
    Turn the River lacks almost everything Eigeman has as a performer: charisma, wit and snappy delivery.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Fruitvale Station
    The film, then, places a heavy hand on the scales of justice as it winds up with a fuzzy plea — an implied demand for a second, federal civil rights trial for the cop, who got a light sentence. But the shooting wasn’t a racist one.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
    Directed and written by Kelly Fremon Craig, it’s a charmer: sensitive, funny and grounded. It’s also a kind of rebuttal to many woeful cinematic trends, foremost among which is dishonesty, or lack of verisimilitude.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 63 Kyle Smith
    Children of Men
    Director Alfonso Cuarón has a vision so mesmerizingly terrible that it alone - at least, for those who enjoy a gorgeous nightmare - is reason enough to see the film.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Kyle Smith
    Intercepted
    In little more than an hour and a half, it provides an education into the experience of the continuing atrocity with which only the most detailed journalistic accounts can compete.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Kyle Smith
    49 Up
    Dropping by on the same people every seven years like an old friend - or an unwelcome relative - Apted has constructed a peerless, suspenseful work that develops character to a depth that would make Tolstoy jealous. If you have any interest in documentaries, watch the DVD of the first film, "7 Up" (49 Up hits DVD Nov. 14). You won't be able to stop.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    The Seed of the Sacred Fig
    Through a single family, Mr. Rasoulof has created a vivid portrait of the dilemmas of today’s Iran, where the power of iman, or faith, suggests one kind of observation but the power of the iPhone suggests another.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 88 Kyle Smith
    The White Ribbon
    The White Ribbon is one of the finest films that ever repelled me, a holiday in the abyss.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Kyle Smith
    Fire of Love
    Though marred by an unfortunate title (“Fire of Love” sounds like a disco number from about 1979) and by the wobbly vocals of its narrator, Miranda July, who speaks in a fragile croak, the film is one of the year’s few awe-inspiring documentaries—a visually ravishing record, a bustling adventure, and an engrossing character study that begs to be remade, with actors, as a big-budget Hollywood narrative feature.
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