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 0.6 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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    • 99 Metascore
    • 90 Stanley Kauffmann
    Army of Shadows
    One particular bit of luck for this reissue is the fact that Melville's cinematographer, Pierre Lhomme, was on hand to help with the restoration of this thirty-five-year-old film. The result is a paradoxical beauty. Very many of the scenes are in sunlight--Melville avoided such facile stuff as shadows for suspense--yet they are chilly. The seasons vary, but the general effect is of a bright winter day that is freezing.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Stanley Kauffmann
    Breathless
    It is a film of flawless consistency and uncompromised truth.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Battle of Algiers
    Whatever the news-linked reasons for its revival, Pontecorvo's film is wonderfully worth seeing, or re-seeing, for its own sake.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Pulp Fiction
    But the way that this picture has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. Pulp Fiction nourishes, abets, cultural slumming. [14 Nov 1994]
    • The New Republic
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Stanley Kauffmann
    Schindler's List
    And Ben Kingsley--O rare Ben Kingsley!--is the Jewish accountant whom Schindler plucks from a condemned group to run his business and who combines gratitude with disdain, subservience with pride. (Actors who want to study the basis of acting--concentration--should watch Kingsley.) [13 Dec 1993]
    • The New Republic
    • 86 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    The English Patient
    The English Patient is excitingly promising. Then the screenplay goes rotten, like an overripe melon. [Dec. 9, 1996]
    • The New Republic
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Sideways
    Payne's directing is alert, warm, patient. He knows that the surface must keep us interested until we go below it, and his confidence holds us.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Stanley Kauffmann
    Reversal of Fortune
    Irons, busily offset by Silver, gleefully choreographed by Schroeder, gives the picture its real bravura reason for being. [19 Nov 1990]
    • The New Republic
    • 93 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Do the Right Thing
    There's a great deal in black America that has yet to reach the screen, and Lee is a prime candidate, in gift and gall, to help fill the gap. [July 3, 1989]
    • The New Republic
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Stanley Kauffmann
    8½
    I don't think that 8 1/2 "says" very much, but it is breathtaking to watch. One doesn't come away from it as from, say, the best Bergman or Renoir-with a continuing, immanent experience; one has to think back to it and remember the effect. But that is easy, for the experience is unforgettable.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Stanley Kauffmann
    Secrets & Lies
    Leigh, the writer, ties up things somewhat neatly and is a touch homiletic. Leigh, the director of cast and camera, is masterly. [Sept. 30, 1996]
    • The New Republic
    • 92 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    Goodfellas
    Scorsese's style, fierce as it is, doesn't accomplish what he clearly expected of it. Often, in many arts, fresh treatment can redeem familiar subjects, but it doesn't happen here. [Oct 22, 1990]
    • The New Republic
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Stanley Kauffmann
    Moolaadé
    Sembène's love of his people and his commitment to the richness that underlies the poverty of their condition have always made his films gems of truth, as they do once again here.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Stanley Kauffmann
    Lost in Translation
    Coppola handles her film with very pleasant economy, with a kind of warm precision. Her father, who was one of this picture's producers, can be as proud of her as we are grateful.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Monty Python and the Holy Grail
    Neither as sparkling as it is said to be nor as bad as it seems to be at the start. But it's pretty good—thus, as British phenomena go these days, exceptional.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Sweet Hereafter
    Any film that provides Ian Holm with a large role is off to a good start. The Sweet Hereafter gets off to that start and keeps going. [Dec 8, 1997]
    • The New Republic
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Stanley Kauffmann
    Before Sunset
    The result is a peculiar small gem, a true Linklater gem. The verity of the film, rather than any novelty or twist, keeps us fixed.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Saving Private Ryan
    Steven Spielberg's new film begins as a monumental epic; then it diminishes; and, by its finish, is baffling. [August 24, 1998]
    • The New Republic
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Crying Game
    Jordan would like us to believe that the three films are stages in a metamorphosis, but the stitching shows… Part Two, explored and expanded, might have made a good film, especially since Davidson gives a quiet, knowledgeable, perfectly poised performance. [14 Dec 1992]
    • The New Republic
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Queen
    Whatever the virtues of The Queen--and it certainly has them--it simply would not exist without Mirren.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Truman Show
    The Truman Show is a reminder of the Beckett theme. The screenplay by Andrew Niccol starts from something like Beckett's abstraction and reifies it with details of contemporary culture, then moves on into fantasy. [June 29, 1998]
    • The New Republic
    • 90 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    Hannah and Her Sisters
    At least we know this Allen persona, whatever his current name; the other characters, starting from scratch, don't get much past scratch. Although the picture spreads its attention fairly evenly among them, most of them end up as supporting cast because they are only life-size puppets. [Feb 10, 1986]
    • The New Republic
    • 90 Metascore
    • 70 Stanley Kauffmann
    United 93
    To see the flight captain and co-pilot checking the plane before takeoff, to watch the varied passengers settling into their seats, is more agonizing than watching passengers board the ship in all those "Titanic" films. With United 93 we see these people unknowingly stepping into a history that is still in terrible process. But as a work in (let's call it) the Akhmatova mode, it does not and could not succeed.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Capturing the Friedmans
    A prime candidate for a time capsule, to disclose a century hence the current state of some of our civilization's discontents, including the ability to be convinced that one is telling the truth even when one is lying.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 50 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Age of Innocence
    What helps Pfeiffer most is the fact that though she is exceptionally pretty, she patently doesn't rely on her prettiness: she wants to act. But, with her Ellen, though we know what she means from moment to moment, we simply don't feel it... Winona Ryder is disastrously miscast. [18 Oct 1993, p.30]
    • The New Republic
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Stanley Kauffmann
    Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    Gondry's virtuosity lifts the film far past science fiction into cinematic efflorescence. He shows us, more seductively than other directors have done, how freehand use of film can capture the flashes in our minds that slip between words.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Best of Youth
    Like some wines, The Best of Youth travels well. From its earliest moments the film is intelligently seen.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Stanley Kauffmann
    Lost Embrace
    The overall effect is of a young director treating some old problems with the cinematic lexicon of his time. So he is able to create warmth without slush.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Lives of Others
    Despite the fact that parts of this film remind us of past pictures with comparable themes, the director and his actors make it immediate, gripping.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 10 Stanley Kauffmann
    The Piano
    An overwrought, hollowly symbolic glob of glutinous nonsense... I haven't seen a sillier film about a woman and a piano since John Huston's "The Unforgiven" (1960), a Western in which Lillian Gish had her piano carried out into the front yard so she could play Mozart to pacify attacking Indians. [13 Dec 1993]
    • The New Republic
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