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 5.8 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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    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Rick Groen
    360
    To their credit, both Meirelles and his cast infuse as much realism into the artifice as they can muster, but it's not nearly enough. The too-neat script boxes them in, and leave us out. In that sense, 360 doesn't so much connect our shrunken world as strangle the life from it – the circle feels like a noose.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Rick Groen
    Total Recall (2012)
    Today's Total Recall does nothing to tarnish the image of yesterday's – 22 years from now, I expect it to be hailed as a classic.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 25 Rick Groen
    The Watch
    It's a dumb-ass comedy done strictly for a seriously large paycheque.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 63 Rick Groen
    Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
    In Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, the times may be hard but the apocalypse is soft. Welcome to the anti-"Melancholia."
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Safety Not Guaranteed
    Call me biased, but I'm quick to put out the welcome mat for any movie – good, bad or indifferent – that resists easy categorizing. That's certainly the charm of Safety NotGuaranteed, which flirts with two very different genres yet never goes steady with either.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 63 Rick Groen
    The Woman in the Fifth
    The Woman in the Fifth is an interesting chameleon until it runs out of disguises, and all that was transitory just looks transparent.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 25 Rick Groen
    That's My Boy
    Will be construed by the faithful as an embarrassment of riches and by the rest of us as cruel and unusual punishment.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Prometheus
    There's definite mastery here, but it's hardly a masterpiece.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Moonrise Kingdom
    Even by his stylistic standards, Anderson has cranked up the artifice.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Snow White and the Huntsman
    Yes, there are many splendid reasons to see Snow White and the Huntsman – enough, maybe, not to care that neither Snow White nor the Huntsman rank high among them.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Where Do We Go Now?
    So the interrogative title is left to hover over the ending, as it does over all those tension-filled places near and far. Speaking as a foolish man, I had high hopes for these wise women – given the historic alternative, I still do.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Men in Black III
    Delight, a modest yet palpable measure of the stuff, is restored.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Rick Groen
    Virginia
    It's all rather wacky and hard to follow or fathom, although maybe that's attributable to Virginia's schizophrenia veering off on its delusional phase.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Rick Groen
    The Samaritan
    About a third of the way along, there's a shocking revelation that definitely packs a punch. Problem is, it's followed by a near-immediate return to familiar narrative convention, where the noir ante rises exponentially toward a climax that arrives too hastily and ends too neatly.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Rick Groen
    Detachment
    Ultimately, Detachment invites us to feel precisely what it warns against – detached.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Rick Groen
    The Avengers
    Expected too is the result: a kind of sterile opulence or, if you prefer, a magnificent emptiness.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 38 Rick Groen
    Darling Companion
    The film sputters and stalls and winds up behaving like the worst sort of oldster – passing gas and pretending to be deep.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Rick Groen
    Safe
    Love the kid though, and Statham too – it takes a star with quality to be so rock solid in a crumbling yarn.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Payback
    Payback is nothing if not brave. It's a documentary attempt to give concrete shape to an abstract discussion, using the medium of film to transplant a nuanced thesis – on the concept of debt – from its natural home on the printed page.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 38 Rick Groen
    The Lucky One
    Another Nicholas Sparks novel, another cinematic brush with insulin shock.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Rick Groen
    Lockout
    Pearce pumps a surprising amount of levity into his one-liners – sure, it's still hot air, but at least the banter comes fully inflated.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Deep Blue Sea
    Happily, in his adaptation of the Terence Rattigan play, The Deep Blue Sea, Davies has found a setting close to his heart and a subject more nearly suited to his style.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Bully
    Indeed, like all bureaucracies, the educational version is a bit of a bully itself. In Sioux City at least, the official response to bullying is to recognize its existence but to deny it's an "overwhelming issue," and retreat behind the comforting bromide that "kids will be kids."
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    Damsels in Distress
    This is a mannered comedy, more stylized and theatrical, almost surreal at times, and less accommodating to his trademark brand of razor-sharp dialogue.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Rick Groen
    The Forgiveness of Blood
    There's much to observe – for example, the thoroughly credible performances of the cast, most of them non-professionals.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 38 Rick Groen
    Mirror Mirror
    Call me Grumpy, but this seems less an adaptation than a random assault.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Rick Groen
    The Hunger Games
    A film that transforms a popular work of teen fiction not just by faithfully exploring its themes but, more important, by proving those themes have a very grown-up resonance.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 63 Rick Groen
    Being Flynn
    In this tale of two lives, Being Flynn gets the emphasis wrong. The success that has many fathers is altogether predictable; it's the despicable orphan of failure who has us in his thrall.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Rick Groen
    Casa de mi Padre
    Really, Casa de mi Padre is a skit blown up to a feature flick, amusing for a while until its welcome wears out.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Rick Groen
    Silent House
    Silent House is a bundle of horror-flick tropes yoked together like a package deal.
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