Stanley Kauffmann

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The New Republic
For 471 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 39% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 59% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Stanley Kauffmann's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Lowest review score: 0 Hulk
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 274 out of 471
  2. Mixed: 152 out of 471
  3. Negative: 45 out of 471
471 movie reviews
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    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Stanley Kauffmann
    Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
    Literal-minded to the last, I felt nothing but pity for Tom Cruise, fanged, wigged and costumed, trying hard with his considerable talent to make his sanguinary appetite real. [12Dec1994 Pg. 24]
    • The New Republic
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Devil Wears Prada
    The best performance comes from Stanley Tucci as the Runway art director. Tucci presents a homosexual man without a trace of cartoon--shrewd, skilled, and weathered without being worn. It is a well-judged and accomplished piece of work.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    September 11
    Obviously the variety that was bound to result was part of Brigand's plan. The astonishment is that almost all of the assemblage is fascinating, very little is poor, and one segment is superb.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Stolen
    Whatever the outcome of all this hugger-mugger, as yet unresolved, Stolen gives us hints about a special sort of muscle.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Nina's Tragedies
    Overall Nina's Tragedies is another instance of a subject discussed here lately--a foreign film that is seen one way at home and another way abroad.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    Edmond
    What the role needs, and what Macy cannot quite provide, is the sense not of a robot but of a potent man who has been imprisoned by rote. Remember Jack Nicholson in "About Schmidt."
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    Taking Sides
    We can almost hear the way he (Keitel) will speak a line before he speaks it. The triteness of the role and its performance, instead of dramatizing the contrast between this philistine and the artist, makes the confrontation between the two men a smug setup.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Ladies in Lavender.
    The film is old-fashioned because it exists. No one, to use an ever-dubious line, makes films like this anymore.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Laurel Canyon
    Frances McDormand plays the record-producing mother with the nativity that talent makes possible.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 30 Stanley Kauffmann
    Ransom
    For all the film's frantic editing, it never really takes off, principally because of Gibson. He never seems concentrated, really present. He was better as Hamlet. [1996Dec9 Pg.27]
    • The New Republic
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    13 Tzameti
    We are meant to think about a society that revels in this moral pit. But all that puzzled me was why an audience would need a film to immerse it in wanton, speciously motivated death when the television news provides so much of it every day.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Enduring Love
    That climax stretches credibility, but the whole point of the piece is that the Joe of the opening has become someone else.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 20 Stanley Kauffmann
    Dogville
    Disembodied, patchy, pointless work, which isn't even successfully pretentious.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Stanley Kauffmann
    Boys on the Side
    The entire film feels like the result of a market study. Tests were held (it seems) to determine which problems would have the most audience-grab, particularly when combined with two other problems. [06 Mar 1995 Pg.30]
    • The New Republic
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Guys
    Nelson's writing, as arranged by Simpson, adds absolutely nothing to our experience of September 11.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Stanley Kauffmann
    Stealing Beauty
    Bertolucci's original story--a generous adjective--was made into a screenplay by the American novelist Susan Minot, who has an unwavering eye for the predictable and an ear for the tired phrase. [24 Jun 1996 Pg.32]
    • The New Republic
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    Battle in Heaven
    We may indeed yawn a bit from time to time, but we know that we are yawning in the presence of a director who is intelligently disturbed by the moral inertia he sees around him and whose future is worth watching.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Stanley Kauffmann
    Spartan
    Mamet's understanding of the essentials here and his skill in supplying them are not major achievements for him, but it would be wasteful not to recognize them. Spartan is another feather, though a small one, in his cap.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 100 Stanley Kauffmann
    Brassed Off
    Herman handled his script cleanly and cast the picture well. [09Jun1997 Pg 30]
    • The New Republic
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Godfather: Part III
    Andy Garcia, who first became noticeable in The Untouchables, has seductive strength, homicidal cool. One reason to look forward to Part IV is that he'll fill the center better than Pacino does. [21 Jan 1991, p.26]
    • The New Republic
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Stanley Kauffmann
    Copying Beethoven
    We are left finally with a double response: it is hard to know exactly why the film was made, what its emotional and thematic point is, yet we are glad it happened because of Harris's performance.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Stanley Kauffmann
    Winter Solstice
    Sternfeld not only deals empathically with his cast, he seems to know that his screenplay is not very novel or stirring; nonetheless, he wants to present these human beings in their skins, so to speak.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    Love! Valour! Compassion!
    Candor about homosexuality is now so widely accepted as part of theater-film possibilities that plays and films offering not much more than such candor seem dated. In that sense Love! Valour! Compassion! is an important, if dull, milestone. [09Jun1997 Pg 30]
    • The New Republic
    • 69 Metascore
    • 30 Stanley Kauffmann
    Kill Bill: Vol. 1
    The really relevant defect of this thriller is that it isn't scary.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 10 Stanley Kauffmann
    Michael Collins
    For me, the execution of the picture is so weak, so imitative, so facile that it makes all the thematic discussion seem idle. [25 Nov 1996, Pg.30]
    • The New Republic
    • 59 Metascore
    • 30 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Shape of Things
    His (LaBute's) work needs attention even at its nadir, which I hope this new film is.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Stanley Kauffmann
    Nanny McPhee
    I hazard the guess that quite small children--pre-science fiction, pre-heroics--will enjoy its fairy-tale quality.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Jarhead
    The daring achievement of Jarhead is that it is not a film about war, about combat: it is about being a soldier.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
    The most important aspect of the stories about all five characters is the way they are told. Attal and his editor Jennifer Augé have found an attractive playful style: they never let the stories rest, almost juggling them, and keep them gamboling before us.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Hunt for Red October
    Little in [Connery's] character is explored or colored. It's not a highly complex role, but the man has qualities that could make him interesting; after all, it's his aberrant action that initiates the whole naval plot. Connery merely fulfills his contractual obligations to the producer-no depth in him at all. [26 Mar 1990, p.26]
    • The New Republic
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