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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    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Le petit lieutenant
    This is the fourth film directed and at least co-written by Beauvois. (He has acted in a number of pictures, including a previous one of his own, and he is in Le Petit Lieutenant for a while.) He is a clean and sure director, with a good selective eye: he knows where we ought to be looking at any moment. We can hope for more Beauvois films with worlds of their own.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 30 Stanley Kauffmann
    Carnage
    The whole is just a wan rejection of traditional story, as well as a weak slap at those who still bother to attack the story tradition.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Carandiru
    No element in the story, or collection of stories, has much novelty: yet the picture grips, because we sense that the director clearly knows he is treating familiar material and forges ahead out of passion.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    Collateral
    The director, Michael Mann, remembers the best of film noir pretty well, but it doesn't protect his film against its ultimate Movieland silliness.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams
    It is the two leading performances that make the film seem almost to reach down and embrace us.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Ushpizin
    The picture has enough good feeling and chuckle to take it out of the parochial.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Stanley Kauffmann
    Swimming Pool
    May Ozon and Rampling do more at the level of this film's first hour. Or maybe they could amputate the last part of Swimming Pool and finish the film as it deserves.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Tsotsi
    The cast is so good that a kind of counterpoint arises between the riskily lachrymose story and the firm verity of the acting.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Primary Colors
    The result is glib, often funny, sometimes bumpy, and ultimately depressing.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Prisoner of Paradise
    The contrast between Holm's pearly speech and the dark things that he tells us and that we see almost outlines twentieth-century civilization, elevation and brutality at opposite ends of the spectrum.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    Gunner Palace
    The picture is too long. It repeats and repeats. Thirty minutes, instead of its eighty-six, could have told us all we need to know about the danger and tedium of these lives.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 10 Stanley Kauffmann
    Elephant
    A braggart piece of empty exhibitionism.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Hoax
    Entertaining though The Hoax is, the film that I imagined before I saw it was better.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Our Father
    The story of the film is a quiet local tale; the directing is sophisticated.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Only Human
    As directors, Harari and De Pelegri have just the right light-fingered glissando touch. Not a moment sags. Their cast relishes and fulfills the tempo.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Your Friends & Neighbors
    LaBute's dialogue reminds us that, along with that of such others as Hal Hartley and Jim Jarmusch and Whit Stillman, the sheer writing, these days, of some American films is remarkably fine. LaBute has cast his film to match, with people who can handle his dialogue neatly. [31 August 1998, p. 28]
    • The New Republic
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Sacco and Vanzetti
    A story that is still healthfully discomfiting to remember.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Stanley Kauffmann
    L'Auberge Espagnole
    The pace is fairly hectic, which it needs to be. (Mustn't linger on bubbles.) The performances are warm, especially the tender Judith Godrèche as the doctor's wife.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Cinderella Man
    Crowe is, in his unique way, astonishing. Even at his biggest moments he seems both convincing and somewhat reticent.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Colors
    But conventional though the patterns are, the dialogue, in black and Latino lingo, is topically hot and is heated further by contemporary street naturalism, which in fact is less "natural" than consciously theatrical; so the familiarity of the story is disguised by the crackle of the production. [16 May 1988]
    • The New Republic
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Strayed
    Téchiné has a reputation in France as an especially empathic director of women--Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche among them--and he has understood this Odile very well.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Batman
    It's relatively easy to convey the claustral in interior scenes, but [designer] Furst and the director Tim Burton do it even when the setting is a great flight of steps before the municipal building or the huge square where Batman and the joker confront each other. [31 July 1989, p.24]
    • The New Republic
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Black Gold
    An engrossing documentary.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Out of Africa
    Meryl Streep is back in top form. This means that her performance in Out of Africa is at the highest level of acting in film today. Also, since she is Streep, it means that a return to form is not a return: she has realized a character utterly different from any she has done before.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 10 Stanley Kauffmann
    Barton Fink
    Billed as a comedy, but it could also be billed as a drama, a satire, an allegory, or a film (partially) noir. It wouldn't matter, or help... Not since Robert Altman has any American filmmaker been as overrated as this pair. [30 Sept 1991]
    • The New Republic
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Stanley Kauffmann
    There's Something About Mary
    The gem in this rag pile is Cameron Diaz as Mary: quick, witty, pretty, warm. There is something about Mary. [17 Aug 1998]
    • The New Republic
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Absolute Wilson
    This film is a valuable signet of Wilson's carefully articulated independence.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Nathalie...
    Whatever the plot, it is soothing to be in the company of Fanny Ardant, who plays Catherine and whose twenty-five-year career is dotted with small treasures.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 90 Stanley Kauffmann
    Friday Night
    Denis and her editor, Nelly Quettier, have assumed that they do not have to show the details of sex because we know them already. Instead, Denis and Quettier create a small visual poem on the subject.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Vodka Lemon
    As the picture winds on, the feeling grows that Saleem, who clearly knows these people, wants to show that their mode of life in this stark setting has, in a gentle way, a touch of the ridiculous.
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