Lisa Kennedy

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The New York Times, Variety
For 188 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 10% same as the average critic
  • 28% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Lisa Kennedy's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 71
Highest review score: 100 Compensation
Lowest review score: 40 A Castle for Christmas
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 129 out of 188
  2. Mixed: 59 out of 188
  3. Negative: 0 out of 188
188 movie reviews
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    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Lisa Kennedy
    Alan Pakula: Going for Truth
    Pakula’s work with actors or the resurgent meaning of his trilogy could have been documentaries unto themselves. But the viewer might not have gotten an adjacent set of insights from his family, particularly Hannah Pakula, his second wife. Her tender, incisive regard creates an ache even as it offers solace.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Lisa Kennedy
    Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
    The director-writer Kelly Fremon Craig’s rendering of the book about puberty, family and nascent spirituality offers lessons in how a cherished object, when treated with tender and thoughtful regard, needn’t turn precious.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Lisa Kennedy
    Chevalier
    That this movie — directed by the Canadian filmmaker Stephen Williams and written by Stefani Robinson — leans too mightily on romance to the detriment of exploring more fully his genius feels like a missed opportunity.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Lisa Kennedy
    Personality Crisis: One Night Only
    A first-rate raconteur, Johansen — wearing a pompadour, sunglasses and bespoke suit — brings the funk. The storied Café Carlyle delivers the chic.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Lisa Kennedy
    Spinning Gold
    With filial care but a flawed script, the filmmaker delves into what drove Bogart, the man, more than Bogart, the artis.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Lisa Kennedy
    The Worst Ones
    Luminously photographed and nimbly edited, The Worst Ones — which won the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 — offers a provocative critique of filmmaking practices. It also presents a subtle defense of the onscreen miracles revealed by the young and the raw.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 90 Lisa Kennedy
    Rewind & Play
    The film is not merely playback or payback on behalf of one Black artist by another. Rewind & Play dazzles because it is and will remain a wonder to witness Monk seemingly discovering his compositions again and again, his fingers conjuring, his right foot etching rhythms.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 70 Lisa Kennedy
    The First Fallen
    A gay man of a younger generation, de Oliveira mourns the vulnerability of these characters’ bodies while paying tribute to their flourishes and fears.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Lisa Kennedy
    The First Step
    While there’s much to admire here, there are stylistic choices that vex. The First Step stumbles as it tries to balance its interest in Jones with the significance of the bill.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Lisa Kennedy
    A Lot of Nothing
    In his feature debut, the director Mo McRae displays a nice way with actors and a gift for visual tension, but in aiming for absurdist humor, he lands on something more vexing. It’s the script — by McRae and Sarah Kelly Kaplan — that’s the problem.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Lisa Kennedy
    Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
    "Going to Mars” responds creatively to the call of its ingenious subject thanks to the directors’ soulful grasp of her work, and Terra Long and Lawrence Jackman’s skillful editing.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Lisa Kennedy
    The Persian Version
    The Persian Version is a bit madcap and self-indulgent, not unlike its protagonist, before it settles into a groove that foregrounds Shirin.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Lisa Kennedy
    You People
    Hill and London build on a nice vibe. Their characters are playful and frisky, in sync with their eye rolling and mouthing of apologies from across a room.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Lisa Kennedy
    The Drop
    The Drop is smarter than it is funny. As sympathetic as Konkle and Fowler are as the beset couple, had the film leaned into its intelligence more, trusting its bleak comedy and affording its other characters a little emotional wiggle room, it may have achieved a more perfect coupling of each.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Lisa Kennedy
    The Quiet Girl
    Although The Quiet Girl — Ireland’s entry for the best international feature Oscar — is not holiday fare, there may not be a movie more expressive of the season’s benevolent ethos than this hushed work about kith and kindness.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Lisa Kennedy
    Loudmouth
    As straightforward as it appears, Loudmouth also invites an engaged but necessarily judicious scrutiny.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Lisa Kennedy
    Scrooge: A Christmas Carol
    This update has its moments of aplomb, but too many of Dickens’s most incisive lines are no more, which invites the not entirely charitable, two-word retort Scrooge made famous.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Lisa Kennedy
    The Noel Diary
    The director Charles Shyer brings a journeyman’s ease to the screenplay (based on Richard Paul Evans’s novel by the same name): embracing holiday movie expectations here, gently deflecting them there.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Lisa Kennedy
    Stutz
    A film that skillfully navigates vulnerability, brainy insights and artistry.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Lisa Kennedy
    Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues
    The film is a trove of Armstrong’s love of music and his labor. And because so many of those who lend their insights are now departed, it has the feel of a mausoleum worthy of a humble yet celebratory “Saints Go Marching In” second line.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Lisa Kennedy
    Descendant
    If you’ve ever wondered what “holding space” looks like in practice, the director Margaret Brown’s deeply attentive documentary Descendant provides moving examples.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Lisa Kennedy
    The Same Storm
    It’s an often-touching time capsule of a harrowing moment in which rampant death and police brutality, white privilege and surging activism answered the call of so much grief.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Lisa Kennedy
    Sell/Buy/Date
    Jones — who wrote, directed and stars in the film — doesn’t treat the tensions between exploitation and empowerment, personal agency and systemic cruelties, as binaries. Instead, they are riveting, confounding and, as exchanges between Jones and her mother attest, personal.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Lisa Kennedy
    Last Flight Home
    It is a tribute, a grappling with mortality, an exercise in self-surveillance, a messy home movie, a brief account of aviation history and a lesson in letting go and grief.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Lisa Kennedy
    Mr. Harrigan's Phone
    There’s a bittersweetness to Craig and Harrigan’s friendship and good chemistry between the leads.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Lisa Kennedy
    What We Leave Behind
    What We Leave Behind insists upon power in stillness, and the poignancy in staying — and leaving.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Lisa Kennedy
    A Jazzman's Blues
    A Jazzman’s Blues is packed with outsize emotions, but also grand themes.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Lisa Kennedy
    About Fate
    It would all be pretty boilerplate, but Mann’s anchoring appeal — his lean into Griffin’s modesty and decency — saves the movie from a sorrier fate.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Lisa Kennedy
    Gigi & Nate
    What happens once the film vilifies the animal rights contingent, however, is an example of how movies can protect their heroes and create their scapegoats (pardon the expression) to the detriment of dramatic complexity.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Lisa Kennedy
    Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.
    Regina Hall is a wonder as the woman who stands by her man for a mash-up of reasons, not least being the elevated position the title first lady confers.
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