Liam Lacey

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Original-Cin, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
For 1,801 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: 1,088 out of 1801
  2. Mixed: 514 out of 1801
  3. Negative: 199 out of 1801
1801 movie reviews
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    • 64 Metascore
    • 83 Liam Lacey
    The Traitor
    The Traitor is a pleasure to watch. Working with cinematographer Vladan Radovic, Bellocchio blends sweeping camera work and flurries of action with painterly lighting and often ironic musical cues. The story itself is somewhat over-stuffed — the time-jumping narrative (Bellochio and three other writers are credited) and an onscreen counter of murder victims — but this is still a welcome chance to see a great old school European auteur at work.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 83 Liam Lacey
    Rosie
    We’re gripped by the tension of Greene’s tautly calibrated performance, as a mother performing a daily high-wire act, trying to keep her family together and her children from harm.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
    The subject alone should ensure that it gets lots of attention from film reviewers and despite a jumpy, hodge-podge style, should be generally enjoyable to anyone interested in the seductive, contentious cultural phenomenon of The New Yorker’s famous critic.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Clemency
    Reservations aside, Clemency has moments of shivering gravity. Almost all of them involve complex emotions registered in Woodard’s extraordinary face, her dignified resistance to a turmoil of emotions within her, and her agonized need for forgiveness.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 25 Liam Lacey
    Dolittle
    A family movie with lots of CGI-talking animals and star Robert Downey Jr. hiding his charisma, Dolittle is a tiresomely chaotic concoction.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Liam Lacey
    Cunningham
    The film is kinetic and elliptical, with clips from different eras juxtaposed in panels, moving back to a single frame of dancers’ feet, or artfully posed in instants of euphoria. This is a film that makes you want to absorb the language of dance or, at least, immerse yourself in more Merce, which makes this an exemplary introduction to a major twentieth century artist.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Liam Lacey
    Like a Boss
    Apart from the overall endorsement of women’s friendships — and the credible warmth between the two likeable stars — the script’s feminist message is hopelessly muddled.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Liam Lacey
    63 Up
    The project is a unique social experiment which we can all participate in, in a way, dipping back in time to connect with old acquaintances and, inevitably, measuring our own ups and downs in the interval.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 91 Liam Lacey
    A Hidden Life
    Terrence Malick’s latest, A Hidden Life, is one of the year’s most ambitious films and an arguable masterpiece, though, admittedly, your receptivity to it depends on your capacity to experience three solemn hours of waving fields of wheat, theology and Nazi cruelty. c
    • 81 Metascore
    • 83 Liam Lacey
    Invisible Life
    A stylish melodrama and feminist lament.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    To quote Bill Murray’s song again, “Star Wars/ those near and far wars” checks the boxes of a lot of the audience’s base, while seeming unburdened by real gravity.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Dark Waters
    While Dark Waters is something of a let-down for a Haynes film, it’s otherwise sturdy enough. One can admire the commitment of Ruffalo, who plays the role of the modest, decent, semi-accidental hero without vanity or trite psychology.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Liam Lacey
    Varda by Agnès
    Charm, humanity and a passel of filmmaking insights are all here, rewarding both the dedicated fans and newcomers to Varda, who achieved a new level of public profile in her last decade.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Liam Lacey
    Atlantics
    A magic realist fantasy, a ghost story, a love story and political allegory, Atlantics packs a deceptive amount of complexity in a gauzy, slender film.
    • 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.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 83 Liam Lacey
    Synonyms
    Synonyms free-wheeling episodic structure can grow a tad wearying, but Mercier’s aggressively kinetic performance and Lapid’s take-no-prisoners dismantling of the Israeli macho mystique — or French hypocritical superiority — are, in the best way, outrageous.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Liam Lacey
    Frankie
    The result is a work stiff with pointed talk and chance encounters, little of which feels original. The acting, while variable, often has a stilted, recitative quality, as if the characters, rather than family members, recently met at a script readings.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Liam Lacey
    The Irishman
    This is some of De Niro’s most moving work in years. His performance full of anxious misfit energy, where his often-parodied grimaces, tics and haunted gaze feel entirely correct.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Liam Lacey
    Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
    Norwegian director Joachim Rønning (who co-directed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) offers nothing unexpected here, in what amounts to a complicated exercise in paint-by-numbers movie-making.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 83 Liam Lacey
    By the Grace of God
    Ozon’s film evolves less as a procedural story than a character study.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 42 Liam Lacey
    Gemini Man
    As the movie flips through familiar Bourne/Bond tropes, the dialogue by David Benioff, Billy Ray, and Darren Lemke, feels clichéd to the point of parody, with lines like “It’s like The Hindenburg crashed into The Titanic!” Or, “I think I know why he’s as good as you. He is you!” Only, let’s be honest, not as good.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 58 Liam Lacey
    Roger Waters: Us + Them
    For the fans, Us + Them offers a meticulously constructed concert experience for a fraction of the price of a live ticket and a chance to join a chorus in yelling back at the TV. For the casually curious, be forewarned: While Waters still burns with righteous zeal, at an often repetitious 135 minutes, the film will leave your backside feeling uncomfortably numb.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Sometimes Always Never
    Sometimes, the script is very funny; always, it tries too hard to please; and it never lets you forget that it has been calculated down to a smirk and a teardrop.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 67 Liam Lacey
    The Laundromat
    The Laundromat consistently feels as if it’s intended to be funnier or more poignant than it actually is.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 67 Liam Lacey
    Before You Know It
    Typical of a certain kind of Sundance feelie comedy, Before You Know It is both promising and exasperating enough you’ll probably leave the cinema thinking of ways it could be improved.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 67 Liam Lacey
    Blinded by the Light
    While Chadha includes a few gritty nuggets about the psychological cost of immigration, the problems are mostly smothered in a warm jelly of sentimentality, a surfeit of stock characters and an exhausting succession of feel-good breakthroughs.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Liam Lacey
    Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
    If you’re already on to the more sinister stuff, this is probably an unnecessary retreat into mild ickiness.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Liam Lacey
    Cold Case Hammarskjöld
    Cold Case Hammarskjöld is likely to be divisive; I’m divided myself. Brügger’s awkward juxtaposition of clowning with real-life horrors is off-putting. In a time plagued by conspiracy theories, the film is an example of an acutely timely uneasiness, reminding us how conspiracies can be simultaneously toxic and compelling.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 25 Liam Lacey
    47 Meters Down: Uncaged
    The sharks are disappointingly not scary but they’re interesting-looking with their plastic torpedo heads and serrated-saw smiles. When they leap out of the dark to dismember bodies, they bloody the waters in swirling lava lamp patterns that feel almost peaceful. Or perhaps I’m just trying to find a nicer way to say dull.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Liam Lacey
    Honeyland
    While the characters and events are real, the artful design of this film and its allegorical resonances seem to put Honeyland in its own genre – that of a real-life fable.
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