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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    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Liam Lacey
    Three Identical Strangers
    In both its light and dark phases, Three Identical Strangers comes across as almost too calculatedly entertaining, as Wardle carefully deals out the critical information, with the odd red herring, for maximum effect. In its defense, the film is consistently compassionate and fair-minded. Ultimately, the film confirms its investigative legitimacy by refusing to offer easy answers.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Liam Lacey
    American Fiction
    Pointed, wryly funny, and well-cast, American Fiction is easy to recommend for its humour and timely commentary.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Il Divo
    Fortunately, there's always the fascination of watching actor Toni Servillo, who does a brilliant job of playing Andreotti (known as Beelzebub) as a kind of devil with a clown's exterior.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Liam Lacey
    No
    Take the backroom political machinations of "Lincoln," add in the showbiz sleight of hand of "Argo," and you’ll get something like No, a cunning and richly enjoyable combination of high-stakes drama and media satire.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    My Architect
    A twofold story of heroic achievements and personal failings.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Liam Lacey
    Police, Adjective
    A simultaneously realistic and absurdist examination of police work.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 63 Liam Lacey
    Django Unchained
    Tarantino's approach is so enamoured of the exploitation cinema he emulates, there is a serious risk that noble intentions get smothered in juvenile comedy and cinematic grandstanding.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Pacific Rim
    Of all this year’s loud, over-long summer action movies that, in various ways, simulate the experience of having a tin bucket placed over your head and being struck repeatedly with a stick, it must be said that Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim is by far the most entertaining.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 25 Liam Lacey
    The Forger
    Occasionally a movie comes along that’s such an awkward compilation of ideas it fascinates: The Forger, a Boston-set melodrama involving cancer, Impressionist art and deadbeat dads, is only about half that good.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Liam Lacey
    Shadow
    While the thematic scheme may be ancient and remote, Zhang’s poetic compression and technical pizazz feel as fresh as a splash in a mountain stream.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Liam Lacey
    Memoir of a Snail
    The genuine cathartic effect of the film is achieved by an accumulation of smart choices, including the dryly witty narration, the ingenious visual surreal world building using kids’ crafts table materials, the strong voice cast (including vocal cameos from Eric Bana and Nick Cave) and an elegant classical-style score.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 88 Liam Lacey
    Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
    Death, torture, humour and even budding eroticism -- now this is more like it.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Paprika
    Paprika is a creatively dizzying and visually dazzling allegory about alternative realities.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    The Hate U Give
    Only by stepping back is it possible to see how peculiar and relatively original the movie is: A politically radical black youth drama for mainstream consumption; dissonant entertainment for fractious times.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 63 Liam Lacey
    King Kong
    The verdict? King Kong may be a great movie event in a "Jaws/Titanic" sense of blockbuster impact and cultural talking point, but it is not a great movie.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 25 Liam Lacey
    Charlie St. Cloud
    What "serious" means for young actors, as we know from Miley Cyrus's "The Last Song," is maudlin, and Charlie St. Cloud is no exception.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Liam Lacey
    Mirai
    Well-observed and gently amusing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    The Story of the Weeping Camel
    Plays like a sophisticated children's story.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 91 Liam Lacey
    Mountains
    In this nuanced and often joyful film, the only violence involves the recurrent crash of bulldozers through stucco and timber walls as the neighbourhood transforms and some dreams get crushed as well.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Bad Education
    Even when the plots of sexual confusions, transgression and tragedy became absurdly complicated and arbitrary, there was always the mise-en-scène to die for.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 100 Liam Lacey
    The Voice of Hind Rajab
    Yes, The Voice of Hind Rajab is both emotionally distressing and ethically uncomfortable, brutally so, as it was intended to be. But for all the reviewers’ gut-wrenching adjectives, the critics were physically safe from harm.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 67 Liam Lacey
    Waves
    This is the sort of film that will divide audiences between those who will have their hearts torn out… and those who will want to tear out their hair.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Liam Lacey
    Ridicule
    Ridicule is, finally, a movie that shows it understands the mechanism of wit and hierarchy intimately, and rejects it unequivocally in favour of the more inclusive and gentle world of humour. [11 Dec 1996, p.C1]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Liam Lacey
    The Testament of Ann Lee
    The Testament of Ann Lee can be seen as a feminist companion piece to the much-awarded 2024 film The Brutalist, which Corbet directed and Fastvold co-wrote, starring Adrian Brody as a fictional Holocaust survivor and brilliant architect.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    The Wrestler
    The excesses are easy to forgive, both for the humour and charisma of Rourke's outsized performance and Aronofsky's canny low-key direction, which make for a combination that is irresistible.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Liam Lacey
    The Internship
    Though by no means a good movie, The Internship floats along for fairly well for about half its length, thanks to the easy interplay between the two stars and a certain melancholic topicality.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 88 Liam Lacey
    Junebug
    A movie that gets wonderfully under your skin.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
    At times, the film is unabashedly cloying, like a ASMR Forest Gump or a Minion with sensitivity training. But if you can get past that, there’s an admirable ingenuity to the technique, integrating live action and stop-motion with humour and an easy, natural flow.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Liam Lacey
    The Christophers
    The Christophers is full of heady thumb-sucking questions about legacy, artistic expression and commerce, and reinvention, a subject Soderbergh knows well. This is far from blockbuster Soderbergh (Erin Brokovich, the Oceans trilogy, Magic Mike), but a return to the basics: A set, a mobile camera, a couple of terrific actors, and a story to explain what brings them there.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Food, Inc.
    In many areas, Food Inc. could be accused of being a fast-food version of a documentary – it's everywhere at once, skipping across the surface of a vast subject, and adding nuggets of sweetness to the scary filler.
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