Kyle Smith

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New York Post, Wall Street Journal
For 1,925 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 14 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: 794 out of 1925
  2. Mixed: 411 out of 1925
  3. Negative: 720 out of 1925
1925 movie reviews
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    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    The Lost Bus
    The film is plagued by flaws: James Newton Howard’s relentlessly bombastic musical score, an elementary storyline, underwritten characters. As expertly as Mr. Greengrass recaptures the flaming horrors, his film is a somewhat superfluous successor to an excellent documentary on the same subject, Ron Howard’s 2020 feature “Rebuilding Paradise.”
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
    If you emerge from this movie with a strong urge to rewatch the entire saga, you won’t be alone. Neither will those who emerge with tears of gratitude in their eyes.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Kyle Smith
    Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
    If “Spinal Tap II” doesn’t quite earn an 11 on a scale of one to 10, I’d say it rates a strong 7.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 30 Kyle Smith
    The Roses
    As the Roses start to become increasingly hostile to each other in front of others, the tone is meant to be hilariously nasty. Instead it’s merely monotonously vulgar, as a long string of one-liners relies more on the supposed shock value of profanity than on wit.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Kyle Smith
    Caught Stealing
    Who better to lead us into this netherworld than a late-night bartender, the kind who is still slinging shots at 4 a.m.? As Hank, Austin Butler turns in yet another starburst performance in Darren Aronofsky’s careening, sordid, often hilarious noir about a man on the run in a metropolis abounding with weirdos, poseurs and goons.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Kyle Smith
    Honey Don't!
    Mr. Coen and Ms. Cooke’s plot is such a muddle that they more or less expect us to dismiss it. The interstitial moments and incidental comedy are meant to be the chief attraction here. Minus Joel Coen, however, the jokes are thin and tired.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 20 Kyle Smith
    Eden
    The entire movie comes across as awkward, even flailing to hold our interest.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Kyle Smith
    Nobody 2
    It’s a lot of fun, but nothing special, another in a long line of semi-comical fight movies.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    Suspended Time
    Mr. Assayas has crafted a beautiful and moving tableau of how one small group dealt with a bewildering change. The time when Covid-19 ruled our lives is one many of us might prefer to forget. May our most gifted artists resist that impulse.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    An Officer and a Spy
    Though the affair dragged on so long before Dreyfus was finally cleared that Mr. Polanski confines the resolution to an epilogue, he has nevertheless made an oft-told tale lively and urgent. “An Officer and a Spy” is Mr. Polanski’s finest work in many years.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    The Naked Gun
    In these days when flat-out comedy features are scarce, it’s one of the most welcome tenants at the summer multiplex. A mid-movie snowman gag puts the new one over the top, bestowing on it the honor of being mentionable alongside its predecessors. It sets the lunacy level to “inspired.”
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    The Sparrow in the Chimney
    Among the film’s strongest qualities is its suspense: Mr. Zürcher builds a wicked sense of anticipation about just how far its desperately unhappy characters may go. As bleak as it is, The Sparrow in the Chimney is a skillfully painted portrait of an unstable menagerie.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    Folktales
    There is a lot of untapped potential here, and a reality-TV series covering the same subject would be welcome. Nevertheless, inspiring true stories about youth are a little too scarce these days, and “Folktales” is not only magical and warm, it’s also a bracing interlude of good cheer.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Kyle Smith
    The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    Making your characters relatable, likable, charming and vulnerable might seem to be a fairly obvious assignment, but it conflicts with the comic-book-movie urge to make its characters completely and devastatingly awesome. In getting back to basics, “First Steps” proves to be easily the best superhero movie of the year.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Kyle Smith
    Smurfs
    The several mediocre songs seem like filler intended to pad out the running time to 90 minutes, but then again, everything else seems like padding too.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Kyle Smith
    Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
    “Dogs” is a beguiling recreation of one irrepressible childhood. The movie is sometimes funny, sometimes heartrending, but always invitingly candid and relatable. In its specificity it winds up being universal: As children, we really were odd little beasts, weren’t we?
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Kyle Smith
    Superman
    Superman can be a myth, a god, an American emblem or a symbol of the overachieving immigrant, but making him a schmo who’s so weak he’d be in deep trouble if it weren’t for his ridiculous dog feels like a dizzyingly dismissive choice.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 20 Kyle Smith
    Jurassic World Rebirth
    At no point does anything shocking, or even interesting, happen.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    blur: To the End
    Here’s a brilliant idea for a rock documentary: Catch up with a band in the creaky fog of middle age, long after the hits. A certain toll has been exacted, a certain humility achieved, and yet the story is not yet over.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 70 Kyle Smith
    M3GAN 2.0
    Wittily written and directed by Gerard Johnstone, who directed but did not write the first film, the follow-up is notably clever, amusing, ambitious and densely plotted. Unlike its predecessor and most works from the horror-thriller production company Blumhouse, it combines a high-concept premise with a highly complicated story.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Kyle Smith
    F1: The Movie
    “F1” is a fun, exciting, predictable popcorn picture so formulaic it even contains a reference to formula in its title.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Kyle Smith
    Elio
    Though the movie is consistently fun and has some clever ideas to go with its marvelous look, its story is thin and episodic, without much in the way of momentum.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 30 Kyle Smith
    28 Years Later
    Mr. Boyle has made more than his share of memorable films, but he has also delivered some stinkers and unfortunately his new one carries the fragrance of a zombie underarm.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    How to Train Your Dragon
    The movie generally looks great, thanks also to Dominic Watkins’s expansive production design, yet it thinks very little of its audience and comes across as a pee-wee “Game of Thrones.”
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Kyle Smith
    Materialists
    Though Materialists only partially delivers on its promise, is only occasionally funny, and has little to say that’s new, Ms. Song and her cast put enough feeling into it to make it glow.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Kyle Smith
    The Life of Chuck
    The Life of Chuck is an overstuffed suitcase of a movie, one that comes off as a bit graceless and misshapen with all of the cramming and jamming.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Kyle Smith
    Ballerina
    The movie is like a two-hour trailer, with one viscerally intense fight scene following another, filmed as usual for the series in long, fluid takes to maximize the wow factor.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 40 Kyle Smith
    Karate Kid: Legends
    The movie makes no attempt to dress up any of its many clichés.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Kyle Smith
    Bono: Stories of Surrender
    If Bono is melodramatic, Mr. Dominik is an enabler. Thom Zimny’s matter-of-fact direction of another paternally damaged rock star’s concert confessional, “Springsteen on Broadway,” let its star’s charisma shine through. “Stories of Surrender” is more like an epic of self-parody.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Kyle Smith
    The Phoenician Scheme
    It’s amusing but trifling; busy but at times inert. It hints at an emotional payoff but is too wary of actually going there.
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