Mark Feeney

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Boston Globe
For 460 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 33% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 64% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Mark Feeney's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Hermia & Helena
Lowest review score: 12 The Inbetweeners Movie
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 301 out of 460
  2. Mixed: 115 out of 460
  3. Negative: 44 out of 460
460 movie reviews
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    • 50 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Hit and Run
    Put Christian Bale behind the wheel, and Hit & Run would make a billion bucks - except then there'd be no room for Shepard, and that movie would hardly be worth watching.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    The Hedgehog
    Achache's direction is deft and assured. She lends the film a nice, easy rhythm that conceals the story's alternating whimsy and melodrama and almost compensates for them (almost).
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Halston
    It’s an understatement to say that Tcheng is drawn to this material. He revels in it. Yet he’s too clear-eyed to turn Halston’s story into a morality tale.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    The Good House
    Thanks to its two leads, The Good House very much succeeds as character study. As narrative, it doesn’t fare anywhere near as well.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot
    “Don’t Worry” is not a conventional biopic. That makes sense — Callahan sure isn’t a conventional biopic subject — but that unconventionality can present problems. Sometimes the movie is sentimental. More often, it’s scabrous. Maybe if the movie didn’t feel overlong (trim and tight it’s not), those qualities might seem better balanced.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Love, Cecil
    All in all, Beaton could have been a character in an Evelyn Waugh novel — both belonged to the Bright Young Things, in ’20s London — except that he and Waugh detested each other.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Candyman
    Acute and skillfully made, Candyman is also pointedly political.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Oliver Sacks: His Own Life
    The documentary’s chief virtue, after the very considerable pleasure of getting to spend time in Sacks’s company, is learning how much his personal life rivaled his career in remarkableness.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Crimes of the Future
    Crimes of the Future works better as sort-of treatise than sort-of thriller. It’s a paradoxical thing to say about a filmmaker as intensely visual as Cronenberg, but his ideas are even more shocking than his images.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    The Batman
    The Batman doesn’t plod, but it sure lacks a spring in its cinematic step.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Victoria and Abdul
    There’s a reason the names in the title don’t appear in alphabetical order. Abdul is the far more interesting character, but it’s her majesty the movie dotes on. God save the queen? Oh yes, and God help the rest of us.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Elvis
    When Elvis is good, it’s quite good, in an awful sort of way. When it’s awful, it’s quite awful, in an entertaining sort of way. The movie can’t make up its mind if it’s chronicling a struggle for the soul of America (spoiler alert: bye-bye Beale Street, hello, Vegas) or it’s just a tabloid schlockfest.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Tenet
    Moviemaking doesn’t come any tauter or with more velocity. But that confusion is a warning. It’s going to apply to the entire movie; and the longer “Tenet” lasts, the more of an issue confusion becomes.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Payback
    Debt is bad, we can all agree, as is its conceptual cousin, greed. It would have been intellectually bracing, though, to have a Gordon Gekko equivalent on hand to argue otherwise.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Lucy and Desi
    Overall “Lucy and Desi” is very much a valentine.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    The Way I See It
    What’s best about the documentary is all that Obama sun. It’s hard to come by these days, even in retrospect. The shade, however, and what occasions it, is all too available.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Design Is One
    You may not recognize the Vignelli name, but you certainly recognize their designs.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    The Duke
    It’s a pleasure watching Broadbent and Mirren share the screen. That’s true even when they bicker, which they frequently do.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Munich: The Edge of War
    Tight close-ups, jittery hand-held camera — lots and lots of jittery hand-held camera. The idea, presumably, is to impart urgency, immediacy, dynamism. Instead it causes visual exhaustion.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    For No Good Reason
    One of the best things about the documentary is their interaction, as Depp visits Steadman at his home in the English countryside — surely, it has a garden? — watching him draw and paint (and splatter) in his studio while asking him questions about his life and work.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Ingrid Goes West
    Ingrid Goes West doesn’t offer Plaza a breakout role so much as a dig-deeper role. There’s a bravery to her performance that recalls De Niro as Pupkin. Actors really, really like to be liked — and understood. Ingrid is intensely unlikable — and opaque.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    The Woman Who Loves Giraffes
    The documentary loses a bit when Dagg returns home, and an alarmingly perky score doesn’t help. Late in life, after her tenure struggles, she published a new edition of her dissertation and found herself rediscovered.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
    A bit more internal tussle would have both better honored her spirit and made for a better documentary.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Master
    Open-endedness in a narrative can be a good and challenging thing; or it can be a sign of having gotten in too deep and not being able to figure out how to get out. “Get Out” knew how to get out. “Master” doesn’t.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Memoria
    Memoria isn’t a film about explanation. You get caught up in it. You don’t ask why. You don’t wonder what’s going on, what will happen next. You just accept it. You trust Weerasethakul. Until about the 100-minute mark (the runtime is 136 minutes), he justifies that trust. Then things begin to falter.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Widows
    All movies are phony. What, you think beautiful people doing ugly things on a screen is real? Some movies are phonier than others. Widows is one of those. The always thin line between a twisty plot and a silly one gets crossed about an hour in.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Last Night in Soho
    Notwithstanding its irresistible rhinestone array of mid-’60s popular culture, Last Night in Soho is an exercise in nostalgia only in passing. What it is is a horror movie, released just in time for Halloween.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Turning Red
    From the texture of red panda fur to the detailing of a Toronto streetcar, “Turning Red” is a feast for the eyes. But the plotting, dialogue, and characters aren’t quite up to the studio’s standards.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Enola Holmes 2
    Enola doesn’t just break the fourth wall. She tickles it, winks at it, and tugs at its sleeve. With another actress, this would be annoying. With Brown, it’s charming.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 63 Mark Feeney
    Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band
    Robertson’s ex-wife, Dominique. Her thoughtful presence is a very welcome departure from the standard rock-doc formula. She provides the kind of reality check — an under-the-influence Manuel almost got her killed when he totaled her Mustang, with her in the passenger seat — rarely found in such films. In that sense, it isn’t just the Band that was different but “Once Were Brothers” is, too.
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