Rick Groen

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The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
For 1,531 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 43% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 55% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Rick Groen's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Kafka
Lowest review score: 0 The Amityville Horror
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 851 out of 1531
  2. Mixed: 449 out of 1531
  3. Negative: 231 out of 1531
1531 movie reviews
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Coco Before Chanel
    This is the story of the diminutive Coco before she became the fashionable Chanel – in other words, the whole movie is one long first act.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Without Limits
    There's a line near the end of Without Limits that's meant to sum up the tragic flaw of the movie's hero: "He insisted on holding himself to a higher standard than victory." The same might be said of the movie itself, which refuses to adhere to the basic success formula of the sports bio-pic -- the familiar arc that moves from early success through character-forming struggle to eventual triumph. [25 Sep 1998, p.D9]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    My Week with Marilyn
    The acting is superb, the settings are beautifully recreated, the dialogue crackles with occasional wit, but where's the juice? Although lovely to gaze upon, the whole thing feels a bit precious and porcelain, more teapot than sexpot.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Waltz with Bashir
    Profound, and profoundly affecting.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Freshman
    Not nearly that bad, hardly that good - just an amiable, good-natured, fun-loving flick with moments of low comedy that will be remembered for . . . well, hours, maybe. [20 July 1990]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
    Surprisingly funny yarn about a drug-addled cop in the Big Easy.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    In the Mouth of Madness
    In the Mouth of Madness may leave your spine a little short on tingle (any amount of irony always dissipates the scares), but it compensates by neither insulting your grey matter nor sparing your funny bone. In a genre more brain-dead than not, that's an awfully attractive trade-off. [03 Feb 1995]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Up in the Air
    As for the implicit tragedy amidst the funny business, the swelling ranks of the unemployed, the movie has no solution but instead offers itself as implicit solace: Escape, ye wretches, into my clever humour and my nifty dialogue and my star's considerable charm.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Looper
    Looper ups the ante like a poker player on speed. What a potpourri of genres we have here – noir again, but sci-fi too, and action and horror and psycho-drama with existential trimmings, the latter designed to invite the thinking viewer into the fray.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Circumstance
    As the plot moves toward the climax, where each girl is forced to make a hard choice dictated by her unique "circumstance," that feeling of compression, of so many contradictory urges and needs vying for attention, grows almost overwhelming. Such is life among the young in present-day Tehran, up on the screen for all to see – all but those who most need to see it.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Gladiator
    The upside? Visually polished, credibly acted and competently directed courtesy of Ridley Scott, the film is always likable. The downside? Well, it's never anything more than likable.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Attenberg
    What a strange, moving, puzzling, funny, frustrating and ultimately absorbing film this is.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Maid
    A little gem of social realism that makes up in polish what it lacks in consistency.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    UHF
    The laughs just keep rolling as 'Weird Al' makes a movie. Overheard from a still-convulsing woman after a recent screening of Weird Al Yankovic's UHF: "I'm sorry, but that's funny." I'm sorry, but she's right. Yuks you feel obliged to apologize for are yuks nonetheless. And UHF prompts a lot of apologies.
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Turtles Can Fly
    Not everything here is that vivid or uncluttered. Sometimes, the film betrays the circumstances of its making, shot hastily on location in Iraq after the fall of Saddam just as the extended conflict was beginning.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Junior
    A happy, healthy, bouncing baby of a movie. [23 Nov 1994]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Imposter
    The utterly bizarre story made national news when it broke, has since provided much magazine fodder, and popped up only two years ago adapted into a dramatic feature. Now it receives the documentary treatment and, in the devilishly manipulative hands of director Bart Layton, what a treatment it is – the weirdness just gets weirder.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Fracture
    The delight here is in the sheer workmanship. The performances, the direction, the plotting, they're just nicely engineered, usually with an eye to that most underrated of virtues -- refined simplicity.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Daybreakers
    The symbolism is about as subtle as a fang to the neck. Really, Daybreakers is more fun than foreboding; it's fright-lite, yet that's par for the bloody course in these busy apocalyptic days.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Crash
    The result is a film where blisteringly naturalistic drama bumps up against sentimentally arch melodrama (that's the biggest collision in Crash). Haggis showed the same tendency in his script for "Million Dollar Baby," yet there it was better hidden under a simpler narrative. Here, the tendency has gotten magnified right along with his thematic ambitions.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Never Let Me Go
    What we see is admirable, but what we feel is minimal.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    House Party
    Because of its patently commercial instincts, this is basically a black knock-off of a popular genre. Yet, despite those instincts, and despite the sophomoric moralizing, the movie has zest. The edges are sharp; it holds our attention by holding on to the vestiges of its unique black perspective. In that sense, House Party doesn't so much sell out as buy in - there are worse faults. [11 May 1990]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Arthur
    Arthur constantly flirts with the trite and dallies with the excessive. But it goes steady with neither, and so makes for a very pleasant companion on a warm summer eve. [17 July 1981]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Wanted
    This is a blockbuster busting out of the block; this is a Hollywood staple served up on a European platter; this is summertime fare with a wintry verve.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Hanna
    It's one of those imperfect pictures that manages to command and hold our attention straight from the opening frames.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Shallow Grave
    Just sit back, plug in, and enjoy the shocks - so adroitly administered, so sweetly sensational. [24 Feb 1995]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Closer
    Despite Marber's sardonic wit and Nichols's intelligent direction, the film winds up in the ironic position of practising exactly what it preaches: Closer invites and even gains our intimacy, only to finish by driving us ever farther away.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    City of God
    In God's ghetto, as in so many of the world's forsaken places, warring armies of infants brandish their weapons of self-destruction, while politicians bluster and inspectors sleep.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    So much cinematic majesty perched precariously atop so little common sense. But, hell, maybe Quentin's right; relax, enjoy -- a castle with a shaky foundation is still quite a sight.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Fast Times at Ridgemont High
    If the publicity release can be believed, he worked an entire year "undercover as a student to research teenage life". On the basis of what surfaces here - one stock phrase (the kids say "Go for it]" a lot) and a multitude of stock characters - Crowe might better have spent the time curled up with re-runs of Ozzie and Harriet. Give this intrepid researcher 12 months at General Motors and he might just discover the wheel.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    United 93
    Greengrass's reluctance to unduly demonize the villains or overly sentimentalize the victims is commendable on the surface, but it tends to blur the two sides and to mask the gulf that separates them.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Transamerica
    What a fine, tender, delicate, funny, gender-bending-and-rebending performance this is.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Derrida
    The picture's charm lies in the continuing by-play between the filmmakers and their subject, with each side doing its best to deconstruct the other.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Kissing Jessica Stein
    Men may be gay by nature, but women are lesbians by choice -- for them, it's a simple matter of trading up. Such is the implied message of Kissing Jessica Stein.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Mars Attacks!
    A flashy nineties flick with a campy fifties feel -- it's playful, naive, clever, silly, often inventive, occasionally uneven and, compared to studio offerings to date, the best present under this year's cinematic tree.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Charlie Wilson's War
    Takes a kernel of truth and roasts it into a popcorn movie. There's terrific fun to be had, and much wry comedy too. What's missing, surprisingly given the subject matter, is any real sense of gravity.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Hyde Park on Hudson
    As for Daisy, her inflated role is problematic. Although at the periphery of the action, the woman stands at the centre of the film, doubling as the compromised love interest and our voice-over narrator. But even Linney can't bring her to life.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Of Gods and Men
    Be prepared to exercise the same patience and forbearing as the Trappists, because the pacing here is all Grecian urn – so much "silence and slow time."
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    My Big Fat Greek Wedding
    With Corbett's laidback persona nicely countering Vardalos's authorial performance, the picture radiates a pure affability that's awfully attractive. My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a very slim movie that succeeds on its own modest terms without pretense or apology.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Meet the Fokkens
    Despite the occasional stumble, the doc never falls, thanks to the sheer strength of its subjects' undaunted and indomitable character.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Monkey Shines
    This is Romero at his best - a set-piece of sustained chills all precisely shot and rhythmically cut, good enough to make us forgive (if not forget) the cast that is merely competent, and an ending that is downright tepid. But even at half-throttle, Romero can quicken the pulse. Worse than it could have been, Monkey Shines is still better than most. [29 July 1988]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Lookout
    A sensitive coping drama after all, while still serving up that noirish heist flick with comic flourishes. That's some range, and in 99 succinct minutes too: Most pictures would be lucky to do half as much in twice the time.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Yes Men
    Packs a wickedly satiric punch.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Superman Returns
    Superman returns, and he's far from inconsequential yet considerably less than super - just a demi-god content to forfeit our love for our like.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Thin Red Line
    Like no other war movie you've ever seen.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Nixon
    This three-hour opus, bearing only the eponymous title of Nixon, is an intriguing ramble through the social psychology of man and country alike. Indeed, the simple dialectics that both animated and marred Stone's earlier work are redeemed here precisely because they're invested in a single, complex personality - consequently, this film is more character-driven than any of its predecessors. [20 Dec 1995, p.C1]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Governess
    Once again, then, impeccable visual detail and uniformly strong performances combine to create a polished, if slightly airless, result. [14 Aug 1998]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Bling Ring
    How do you make a movie about shallow people in a shallow culture and not end up with a shallow movie? For writer-director Sofia Coppola, the answer is to dramatize a story “based on actual events,” then to step back and present it as a case study in pure anthropology.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Dead Again
    The cinematic equivalent of a "good read" - pick it up and you can't put it down; put it down and it's gone forever.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Imagine Me & You
    The fluffmeister here is writer-director Ol Parker, and say this for young Ol: This may be his feature debut, but the guy is one hell of a smooth engineer.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Mother
    At least by Hollywood's conservative standards, Mother proves that the wayward son is alive and well -- softer in manner but still a subversive at heart. [10 Jan 1997, p.C1]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Catch Me If You Can
    The movie could have used a further dose of the resonance Walken gives it, and a more intellectually adventurous director might have brought the theme close to home.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    In a Better World
    Give director Susanne Bier full marks: Her encasing parable is brand new and immediately provocative.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    In the Realms of the Unreal
    The film, like its subject, is more adroit with pictures than with words.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Even the Rain (Tambien la Lluvia)
    It's all a bit too schematic, yet the ambition is admirable and the message powerful: Today, no less than yesterday, the weak must be strong to survive, and their strength is endlessly tested.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Tree of Life
    The result actually plays like a divine pronouncement, cosmic in scope and oracular in tone, a cinematic sermon on the mount that shows its creator in exquisite form.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Marion Bridge
    Always engaging and often compelling.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The People vs. Larry Flynt
    The result is good dirty fun, flecked with enough wit to help you overlook the relatively barren characterization.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Way Home
    If you ever doubted the power and scope of silent film, watch The Way Home. The narrative arc is as broad as any chattering feature, the emotional depth is greater than most, and it's all achieved with virtually no dialogue.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Made in Dagenham
    This time out, with a few exceptions, the inspiration feels solid and earned, not saccharine and contrived.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The We and the I
    Still, credit Gondry, like Tocqueville before him, with at least re-examining tired clichés and scraping the rust off stereotypes.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    My Best Friend's Wedding
    Although there are definite lags here, those "glittering" set-pieces are funny enough (at least one is hilarious) to stave off any prolonged yawns.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Anna Karenina
    The results are generally refreshing. Much of the film takes place inside a theatre, as if to suggest the shenanigans of the Saint Petersburg aristocracy were a form of public entertainment.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    This is a war film with an anti-epic feel, best when it forgoes the forced march of plot to hunker down in the trenches of our flawed humanity.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    A Knight's Tale
    In every way but one, A Knight's Tale is a bouncy pop song of a movie, the snappy/happy kind that puts a grin on your face and a tap to your toe, shifting the heart into high and the mind into neutral. [11 May 2001]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    To Die Like a Man
    The title leaves no doubt about the ending but, thanks to Santos's unflinching performance and Rodrigues's continued audaciousness, the climax still takes us aback.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Bright Star
    Mainly, though, it's the exquisite restraint - both of Cornish's performance and Campion's direction - that gives the film its power.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Unfinished Song
    In the end, then, just Vanessa Redgrave and Terence Stamp and those voices – their solos contain this picture like carved book-ends, vintage and lovely and still so profoundly of use.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Cop Land
    A good film prevented from being a great film by an act of well-intentioned but misguided casting.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Redacted
    Love it, hate it, but be sure to watch it, because this odd and disturbing picture is as different as the war it reflects, and that difference is vast enough to seem profound.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Why We Fight
    The strength of this documentary lies in its balance, or at least the careful appearance of balance.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Tsotsi
    The result is the kind of feel-bad/feel-good movie that brazenly manipulates our response and leaves us grateful for it -- so relentlessly dark is the premise that, by the end, we just need to believe in the prospect of light.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Raising Victor Vargas
    A grownup departure from the teen-romance norm -- it speaks nothing about passion and volumes about trust.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Shame
    This is an affecting picture that leaves the viewer as wrung out as the protagonist. No doubt you'll be seduced but, in the end, you may also feel abandoned.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Quitting
    Quitting begins to seem intriguing in concept. Now comes the best news: It's just as compelling in execution.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Middle of Nowhere
    Sometimes, the quiet lyricism of DuVernay’s direction seems at odds with the grittiness of the subject matter, like poetry force-fed into prose.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Ali
    It's not Smith's fault that the movie can't quite pry apart the man from the myth from the metaphor. The three may well be inseparable by now and, at this point in his history and ours, that's surely the way we prefer it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Shine a Light
    Ultimately, Shine a Light is illuminating indeed, even fascinating, but not in the way Scorsese intended. What he has created, inadvertently, is an invaluable documentation of semi-fossilized Stones – musicologists may like it, sociologists should love it and, some distant day, anthropologists will treasure it.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Harry and the Hendersons
    What do you get when you cross King Kong with E.T.? Harry And The Hendersons is what, and it's a delightful enough offspring - often funny, occasionally charming and always mighty eager to please. Too eager at times, but that's a forgivable flaw in an otherwise engaging hybrid. [5 June 1987]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Frost/Nixon
    Shakespeare would have delighted in the chapter, especially in the antagonist, but not at the expense of the longer and darker and still-unfinished book.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    There's a missing element whose absence, forgive me, I can't help but lament. This is a movie about magic that ultimately lacks the magic of movies."
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Travelers and Magicians
    With its intricate design, sly humour and timely theme, Travellers and Magicians is a lot more than just a travelogue.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Conversations with Other Women
    For once, the gimmick is a perfect reflection of the characters.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    My Brother Is an Only Child
    Great title, and the whiff of existential loneliness that it conjures up – brothers locked not in solidarity but in solitude – permeates the entire movie.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Coffee and Cigarettes
    Odd but engaging film.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Mao's Last Dancer
    The delight of this film isn't so much in the tale as the telling.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Into the Blue
    Stockwell takes an especially leaden screenplay, floats the dull thing up from the depths of mediocrity, and makes it cinematically buoyant. Within limits, that is.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Adventureland
    Yes, the delight of this movie lies in these devilish details, and it's clear that writer-director Greg Mottola knows them well.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
    The cheery result is enough to renew one's faith in Uncle Walt and the boys - a family picture that transcends the cliche, a light-bright romp where the sentiment isn't cheap and where the action isn't childish. Now there's a novelty item for you. [27 June 1989]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Solitary Man
    Solitary Man makes too good on its title – it’s a fascinating character study isolated within a mediocre film.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    You'll be rewarded with a terrific finale. The twists here are the rare sort that seem both narratively surprising and emotionally engaging.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    London River
    Here, in orderly fiction, the reverberations bring about the alignment of cultures, the meeting of minds and the comforting assertion that "our lives aren't that different." Maybe so, and the film deserves full marks for trying, at times movingly, to convince us. In the end, the argument is a little too neat to accept, but far too poignant to ignore.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Tyrannosaur
    The principals are superb, with Mullan and Colman doing a masterful job of inhabiting their separate but equal prisons.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
    Those who lived through the Vietnam War era, and paid attention, will find this documentary short on revelation but long on poignant reminders.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Edtv
    EDtv is precisely the kind of brisk, straightforward, amiable and accessible material that shows Howard’s skills to advantage.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Life Is Beautiful
    Ultimately, Benigni's comic refinery merely transforms the banality of evil into a lesser sin -- the evil of banality.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Panic Room
    Generally makes good on its promise. There are shivers to be felt, especially in the early stages, and there's fun to be had, including the post-movie pleasure of detecting the soft spots in the plot. The result is an always-watchable picture from a director capable of more.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Moneyball
    Turning the stately game into something few can resist – a smart and lively comedy of manners.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Morvern Callar
    With little dialogue to assist her -- just the strains of that wonderfully organic music -- she still manages to suggest the internal struggle, and to slowly reveal a fierce toughness that flies in the face of conventional morality.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    A League of Their Own
    Marshall treats everything, from the feminist themes to a soundtrack that features period chestnuts redone by contemporary singers, with a unique mix of the furiousand the subdued - a broad knee-slapper one moment, a delicate caress the next. No wonder we root for it. With the count full and our hopes wavering, A League Of Their Own smacks a stand-up triple and dares us not to cheer. Go ahead - give in and be a fan. [3 July 1992]
    • The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
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