Robert Abele

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L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, TheWrap
For 1,597 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 44% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 50% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Robert Abele's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 A Poet
Lowest review score: 0 I Melt with You
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 828 out of 1597
  2. Mixed: 492 out of 1597
  3. Negative: 277 out of 1597
1597 movie reviews
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    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Abele
    Passenger
    Per usual with movies like this, spelling out the terror (the roots are in hobo codes and religious legend) becomes, regrettably, a shock absorber, not a facilitator. But the scares were middling to begin with because Øvredal — a game but overeager trickster — telegraphs his set pieces as if he were equipped with a flare gun and detour cones. Then again, it might be an attempt to distract us from thinking too hard about all the illogic in Zachary Donohue and T.W. Burgess’ screenplay
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
    It’s never quite riveting enough as canon or fodder to supplant anyone’s memories of [insert favorite “Star Wars” film here].
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    The Wizard of the Kremlin
    The problem, though, from its clichéd interview framing (Jeffrey Wright plays an American journalist visiting the retired Baranov at his estate) to the tediously narrated flashback structure, is that the movie never lives and breathes inside its stitched-together moments, preferring to be a relentless, country-hopping talkfest in which characters opine as if fully aware of the consequential era they’re in, fully ready to explain it.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist
    “The AI Doc” is a well-intentioned but aggravating soup of information and opinion that wants to move at the speed of machine thought.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Eternity
    As good as Teller is as a husband in crisis, the Oscar-winning Randolph is her own commanding source of light, enough to sell this movie’s feel-good abstracts and wry commentaries on her own.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Christy
    It’s all highlights and lowlights, rarely interested in the in-between stuff that makes watching all the rounds of a bout so necessary to appreciating what it means to survive on the canvas.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Dracula
    As often as you may be tickled by its fanged silliness, you’ll also be drained.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Good Fortune
    Ansari’s ambition is admirable but he’s better at diagnoses than solutions. His gold-touch move is giving the hilariously deadpan Reeves one of his best roles in years: a goofy meme brought to disarming life and the movie’s beating heart.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue
    The movie ultimately treats us like adrenaline junkies, assuming we lack curiosity.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Steve
    “Steve,” sincere in its hardcore concern, believably acted, is too scattered and schematically plotted to fully pull us into the emotional toll and scruffy joys of this work.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    The Lost Bus
    There are scenes of nerve-jangling terror that weld you to your seat, but they’re sandwiched in between a lot that feels very much sculpted for three-act character arc effect by Greengrass and co-writer Brad Ingelsby.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    The History of Sound
    For all the movie’s crisp attention to bifurcated lives, The History of Sound more aptly resembles a painstakingly dry still life than a moving picture.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
    When the key comic minds behind that singular sendup of past-prime glory-seekers aim to rekindle their magic, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues leaves one thinking some classics are better left in their original, endlessly re-playable states.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Love, Brooklyn
    A tender city romance about about gentrification and Black melancholy, “Love, Brooklyn” brings together appealing actors and the charms of New York’s ever-changing borough into soft focus. It feels a little too carefully arranged to ever truly get under your skin as a modern-day affair about disillusioned hearts.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Diciannove
    Though never disorienting or obnoxious (à la “Euphoria”), it can get tiring: a restlessness of spirit and technique that occasionally separates us from this lost antihero when we crave a closer connection to him. Especially since first-time actor Marini is stellar casting.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    I Don't Understand You
    The tone swerve into body-count humor and the nuts and bolts of violence eventually prove too much for Crano and Craig to effectively mold into a comedy of perception and privilege.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Rust
    There’s an elegant severity to the natural elements that share the frame with the movie’s characters, manifested in silhouettes against vast cloudy skies, delicate snowfalls, shafts of light in dark interiors and crisp air filled with smoke and dust. A testament to lives cut short, Rust is beautifully filmed and all the sadder for it
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Bonjour Tristesse
    One can appreciate the effort behind this well-made Bonjour Tristesse without necessarily feeling its turmoil.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    On Swift Horses
    Just when the central characters’ fascinating messiness achieves peak interest, you realize this movie’s earnest commercial shimmer is never going to segue into a denser, darker poetry.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    The Legend of Ochi
    Writer-director Saxon’s own virtuosity, occasionally aggressive, eventually leaves our hopes for real emotions wanting, once we’ve become attuned to the dazzle.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Being Maria
    Palud’s directorial emphasis on that internal experience, guided by a simple shooting style trained on Vartolomei, is what keeps Being Maria afloat on its turbulent seas.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Death of a Unicorn
    What should be a nasty hoot, however, is closer to a ho-hum.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    The Assessment
    As with a lot of filmmakers transitioning to long-form narrative after success with bite-sized flash, “The Assessment” is a commanding mood piece until our thirst for deeper emotional and thematic resonance reveals its shortcomings.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Robert Abele
    The Monkey
    Given its overabundance of empty shock humor, the movie seems afraid to be about much of anything except its toy monkey’s prankish body count.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Millers in Marriage
    Mildness reigns and indifference blooms. What calls out to be well seasoned — a dish with bits that are scorched and raw — is instead merely a tepid porridge.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Parthenope
    The movie is built on the drifting life of a smart, stunningly beautiful and unfulfilled woman. But “Parthenope” shouldn’t have to strain as hard as it does — it plays like a fragrance ad. That qualifies as a disappointment for a filmmaker whose sensualist impulses are God-tier.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    Day of the Fight
    This soft-jab tragedy never finds the depth of expression to become a truly layered tale about choices, regrets and what we do with the rounds we have left.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Robert Abele
    The Universal Theory
    Nothing in The Universal Theory is going to blow your mind, but as it plays its fastidiously crafted notes of conspiracy and chaos, you’ll know the idiosyncrasies of the art house are alive and well.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    The Outrun
    The problem is that Ronan is also forging her compelling warts-and-all portrait of obliteration and recovery in another type of gale storm, that of undisciplined filmmaking at odds with the patient harvesting of characterization.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Robert Abele
    Saturday Night
    In Jason Reitman’s overstuffed, adrenalized Saturday Night, a dramatization of the windup to that fateful first broadcast, you don’t feel the buzzy air of revolution so much as hear the voice of present-day legacy curation getting in the way.
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