Stephen Dalton

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Film Journal International, The Film Verdict, The Hollywood Reporter
For 252 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 36% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 59% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 3.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Stephen Dalton's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Fatherland
Lowest review score: 20 Unhinged
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 132 out of 252
  2. Mixed: 101 out of 252
  3. Negative: 19 out of 252
252 movie reviews
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    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    The Corrupted
    There is enough rich narrative potential in The Corrupted for an ambitious state-of-the-nation TV miniseries in the mold of The Wire. Unfortunately, Scalpello and screenwriter Nick Moorcroft take the lowest common denominator route, falling back on tired mob-movie clichés, stock characters and leaden dialogue so generic it could have been written by an algorithm.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Lingua Franca
    While Sandoval's hard-working dedication is admirable, and her semi-autobiographical story full of latent dramatic potential, Lingua Franca is ultimately an underpowered, amateurish disappointment.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    The Town That Dreaded Sundown
    An initially promising genre reboot ends up feeling like a major failure of nerve.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    The Dead and the Others
    As an experiment in collaborative, exploratory docudrama, The Dead and the Others is an admirably committed enterprise. Sadly, as a cinematic experience, it is flat and functional.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Effie Gray
    Effie Gray is an exquisitely dreary slice of middlebrow armchair theater which adds little new to a much-filmed story.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Serena
    It is difficult to believe a single word of it, still less to care about these relentlessly selfish and short-sighted characters.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Mobile Homes
    This unflinching yet compassionate depiction of marginalized misfits boasts a few pleasingly poetic flourishes, but it suffers from some common first-time director flaws, notably a listless narrative, thinly developed characters and a relentlessly somber mood.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Zeros and Ones
    The scrambled narrative, listless pace, clumsy stabs at profundity and severe lack of humor will limit the film’s appeal to existing converts and cult movie connoisseurs.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    David Brent: Life on the Road
    David Brent remains an enduring comic grotesque, but this sporadically amusing big-screen resurrection is more cash-in reunion tour than killer comeback album.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    The Girl King
    Reclaiming Kristina as an icon of queer liberation and female empowerment is a worthwhile premise, but sadly the finished film is a stodgy multinational pudding that fails to give this concept wings.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Student
    Omirbaev fails to invest either the murder plot or its political subtext with much suspense or conviction.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    The Snowman
    For all its high-caliber talent mix, The Snowman is a largely pedestrian affair, turgid and humorless in tone. The cast share zero screen chemistry, much of the dialogue feels like a clunky first draft and the wearily familiar plot is clogged with clumsy loose ends.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Aloft
    Strip away its gorgeous wintry landscapes and we are left with a symphony of ponderous New Age mumbo-jumbo masquerading as philosophical wisdom.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Diana
    Halfway between a guilty pleasure and a missed opportunity, it makes the crucial mistake of treating curious viewers like deferential subjects, demanding far more sympathy than it deserves.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Dad's Army
    Dad’s Army is hobbled by too much broad slapstick and labored clowning.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Heli
    Heli is undoubtedly made with serious intent, but it is also relentlessly depressing and curiously uninvolving.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Stratton
    Director Simon West aims for a kind of Jason Bourne or Mission: Impossible feel, but he falls short in budget, star power and explosive spectacle.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Johnny English Strikes Again
    Johnny English Strikes Again is an oddly mirthless addition to the series.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Son of a Gun
    While Avery handles the kinetic action set-piece with impressive swagger for a first-timer, his self-penned screenplay is a major weak point.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Damascus Cover
    Sadly, Berk’s stale screenplay simply lacks the heft or depth to lift it above third-hand homage to earlier, better, smarter films.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Anon
    The premise is smart, the ingredients classy and the overall look stylish. But Niccol’s paranoid anxieties about the totalitarian dangers of cyberspace feel oddly glib and dated, light on thrills or narrative logic.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Amanda
    In its favor, Amanda boasts subtle, sensitive lead performances from Lacoste and Multrier, who has a rare easy naturalism for such a young performer.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 40 Stephen Dalton
    Zaytoun
    The film’s facile message of cross-cultural unity owes more to fairy tale than reality, but the action is slick and the story gripping.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 30 Stephen Dalton
    Asthma
    Lack of originality and self-awareness prove to be a fatal combination. There is something way too familiar about Hoffman's rites-of-passage portrait of wasted youth, with its inevitable soundtrack of fashionable angst-rock and predictably retro-cool cult-movie influences.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Stephen Dalton
    All Eyez on Me
    Given the tragic and highly charged events it depicts, All Eyez on Me is oddly low on emotional bite, perhaps because it never feels real. As clean and polished and blandly overlit as a TV soap opera, Boom’s film looks and feels smaller than Tupac’s cinematic life story.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 30 Stephen Dalton
    Grace of Monaco
    The real problem here is not the shameless blurring of fact and fiction, but how unforgivably dull it all seems.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Stephen Dalton
    Nekrotronic
    This bloodthirsty comic-book fantasy is let down by its infantile humor and derivative, incoherent plot.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Stephen Dalton
    Gemini Man
    The disappointing end result feels less than the sum of the talents involved, a weak script and thin high-concept plot only just held together by smart visual wizardry.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 30 Stephen Dalton
    Winchester
    Mirren always brings a touch of class, of course, even to deluxe schlock like this. But Clarke is something of a blank leading man while the secondary characters are mostly pale phantoms sleepwalking through a thinly drawn plot.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 30 Stephen Dalton
    Absolutely Anything
    Absolutely Anything is a flabby misfire full of labored slapstick, broad caricatures and groaningly absurd plot twists.
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