Liam Lacey

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Original-Cin, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
For 1,802 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Liam Lacey's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Citizenfour
Lowest review score: 0 Vacation
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,089 out of 1802
  2. Mixed: 514 out of 1802
  3. Negative: 199 out of 1802
1802 movie reviews
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    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Fugitive Pieces
    The strengths of Fugitive Pieces are its fluidity and subtlety. Emotional repression may be one of the most difficult conditions to portray honestly, and Dillane's performance of Jakob is a study in the art of creating sympathy by not asking for it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Ain't in It for My Health: A Film About Levon Helm
    The portrait of the ailing artist is bittersweet, but when Helms sings or plays, the look on his face is pure joy.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Alpha
    Alpha aims to be not just a story but a transporting visual experience, which is one area where it over-reaches.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Skate Kitchen
    As fresh as the female perspective is, as Skate Kitchen circles and swoops through the Manhattan twilight toward its conclusion, there is a sense of missed potential, that the film could have been much richer than it is.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Life Itself
    When it came to describing what was happening to him, Ebert was forthright, clear-eyed and admirably free of neurosis and self-pity.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    The Aviator
    Running at about three hours, The Aviator is long, and the momentum occasionally flags. The depiction of Hughes's first mental breakdown feels a little obsessive-compulsive itself.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    La Promesse (The Promise)
    The theme could be trite or maudlin in lesser hands. Here, through the Dardennes' judiciously stylized way of telling the story, there is a real exhilaration in the film's ability to capture Igor's emotional dilemma. [6 Mar. 1998, p.C8]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee
    More about Ali as media star and social figure, less about the quicksilver athlete.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Rio 2
    The superiority of the musical sequences, and laziness of the writing, creates a dynamic where you find yourself wishing the characters would shut up and dance.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Pink Ribbons, Inc.
    Pink Ribbons, Inc. is unabashed advocacy filmmaking. In spite of improved mortality rates and scientific advances, few women in the film will acknowledge that pink-ribbon-financed research has done any good at all.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Lilo & Stitch
    Tuned in to the anarchic wisecracks and slapstick humour of traditional Warner Bros. cartoons. In contrast to the computer-generated characters and slick script of a movie like "Shrek," Lilo and Stitch still feels like a cartoon aimed at kids, not their parents.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Murderball
    Reportedly, after seeing the film, rapper Eminen is anxious to play a wheelchair athlete in a coming movie.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    For such a mush-ball teen movie, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants carries a welcome amount of grown-up emotional truth.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Flushed Away
    This is a sewer blessedly free of actual sewage, which makes Flushed Away more kid-friendly than, say, the average "South Park" episode.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    A Bug's Life
    In a movie about an ant colony, perhaps it's futile to complain about a superfluity of characters. Yet this need to cover every permutation of cuteness is one major drawback to the cast of A Bug's Life.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Thirteen Lives
    It’s a film that has some obvious parallels to Howard’s Apollo 13, a docudrama about a small group of endangered people in a claustrophobic space, with worldwide media attention on a rescue effort and a happy ending, thanks to technological ingenuity, courage, and collective effort.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Sweetheart
    Sweetheart, a coming-of-age first feature from Marley Morrison, has a cozy familiarity to it.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    For Madmen Only: The Stories of Del Close
    There’s no doubt that spotlighting Close’s reputation in our recent cultural history is worthwhile. But the documentary is unjust in ignoring such seminal figures as acting coach and academic Violin Spolin, who developed and wrote the bible on the subject (Improvisation for the Theatre).
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Keyhole
    Like Maddin's melancholic and relatively more conventional "My Winnipeg," Keyhole is about a memory house, but one that is even more fragmented, mythical and elusive.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Attachment
    Written and directed by first-time Danish director, Gabriel Bier Gislason (the son of Susanne Bier), it’s a moody low-key psychological affair, free of schlock and gore, and ultimately, more of a romance than a scare fest.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
    Well-spoken but humorously self-deprecating, Berg admits that, between the hours spent writing, rehearsing and performing, she spends more of her life as Molly than she does as herself.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Certified Copy
    Ultimately, Certified Copy – with its unresolved loose ends – is a puzzle box without a key.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Welcome to Collinwood
    Filled with a sweet, loopy sensibility and some fresh comic turns, Welcome to Collinwood is a low-budget American film that falls into the good-but-slight category.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Despicable Me 2
    An animated sequel that, despite not achieving the inspired lunacy of the first movie where Gru literally steals the moon, is smartly calculated to deliver squeals to kids and amusement to accompanying adults.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Funny Boy
    The urge to find hope in tragedy is as inevitable as the one to recognize shapes in clouds. But Funny Boy leaves an unsettling chasm between this one slender story and the grim history it represents.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Brotherhood of the Wolf
    Utterly preposterous but so full of enthusiasm and flashy style that it's entertaining anyway, The Brotherhood of the Wolf is like the platypus of genre films.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Red Satin
    Part of the charm of Satin Rouge is that it avoids the obvious with humour and lightness.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Uproar
    With no risk of over-subtlety, Uproar mixes gentle quirky comedy with a few digs at clumsy white allies and the myth of the innocent bystander.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Spider-Man
    There's a particular upside-down, half-masked kiss that instantly becomes one of movie history's more memorable smooches. It's the kiss to send any teenaged boy on a spinning high, as well as launching the new age of arachnophilia.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Tigertail
    As an ersatz arthouse pastiche, Tigertail is crafted with care. Nigel Buck’s cinematography effectively registers the different time periods and locations, and Michael Brooks’ plaintive score balances Pin-Jui’s taciturnity. On the negative side, the film’s hopscotching flashbacks can be confusing and there’s a lot of stylistic spin for what amounts to a prosaic family drama.
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