Stephen Hunter

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Baltimore Sun, Washington Post
For 1,039 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7.5 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Stephen Hunter's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 58
Highest review score: 100 The Simpsons Movie
Lowest review score: 0 Simply Irresistible
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 518 out of 1039
  2. Mixed: 275 out of 1039
  3. Negative: 246 out of 1039
1039 movie reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Trolösa
    Held together by the intensity of its focus.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Chunhyangdyun
    Demonstrates that sometimes the simplest stories are the most profound, and certainly possess the most moral authority. It's a film that emphasizes loyalty and sacrifice, values that have become jokes in most other films these days.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Kandahar
    That's the movie: It's taking us inside the burqa to the woman.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Bad News Bears
    Matthau was merely worthless, while Thornton, God bless his soul, rises to the actual level of sociopathic. I love it when that happens.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Too Much Sleep
    It's nothing less than a spiritual journey set in New Jersey.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Treasure Planet
    Boasts the purest of Disney raptures: It unites the generations, rather than driving them apart.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Enduring Love
    It's the best kind of movie: so alive in its storytelling that only in retrospect do you realize that the ideas represent a metaphysical inquiry.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Shanghai Knights
    Far from great but greatly entertaining.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Sade
    What an amazing little film. God love the French. They make movies with ideas in them, other than: How many cars can we blow up?
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Barbershop
    It's funny as hell, and I am proud to say that as a card-carrying white guy, I got three, or possibly even four, of the 239 jokes.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    The Cuckoo
    It's a whimsical tale of war and redemption, of faith, hope and even some charity...It's quite a treat, as a matter of fact.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    With a cast like this, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a superior performance vehicle and on that count alone is never less than riveting.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
    It's pretty funny. You don't actually watch it so much as indulge it and admire its cleverness.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Mulholland Dr.
    Lynch's new movie, Mulholland Drive, is a trip and a half: It's like playing Twister and Scrabble simultaneously while high on LSD. Oh, and it's dark out.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Mission: Impossible II
    Such a feast of outlandish pleasures it'll send you home steam-cleaned and shrink-wrapped.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Failure to Launch
    The movie is one of the best American films in months and months and the best comedy since I don't know when. It even makes you sorta kinda like Matthew McConaughey.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Hilary and Jackie
    The movie is exquisitely directed by Anand Tucker in an anti-documentary style that sometimes fractures the time sequence, sometimes re-creates moments impressionistically instead of objectively and is vivid in style.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    No End in Sight
    Ferguson builds a compelling case of bad judgment, error, stubbornness and arrogance.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Infamous
    Though it's not as good as the brilliant "Capote," it's nevertheless a riveting, well-made picture.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Grazia's Island
    It's slight but in a haunting way, like a half-remembered dream.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Tell Them Who You Are
    Possibly without meaning to, the younger Wexler has made a superb examination not of professional cinematography -- really, who cares? -- but of the eternal bad business between fathers and sons.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    The Italian Job
    For two hours, the bliss of the brainless fluff is yours for the asking. It cheerfully puts the escape back in escapism.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Undertow
    The movie builds slowly to its grinding climax, and the suspense -- the standard by which a thriller must primarily be judged -- is first-rate.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Pecker
    Frequently funny, just as frequently repulsive, it's filmed in Waters's trademark deadpan style that some adore and some loathe.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
    A considerable kick, though it would have helped if one of the boys had wiped off the lens of the camera once in a while.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    The Ant Bully
    The movie is an epic adventure with a rigorously moral point of view.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Children of the Revolution
    The movie is one of those brilliant and rare blends of paradoxical elements -- both the tragedy and the folly of history, the weight of inheritance, the pressure of the ideal, lots of fairly steamy sex, even a secret agent or two.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Le bossu
    Great sword fights, great acting, fabulous sword fights and, of course, really cool sword fights.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Black Knight
    Lawrence is miraculous, as always.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    The Devil's Backbone
    This film is much more atmospheric; it builds, not so much logically as viscerally, until you feel you can't escape. Lurid and overdone as it is, it's still a real disturber of the peace.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Casino Royale
    Turns out to be cracking good entertainment, as well as a fresh start for the perdurable 21-picture franchise.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    The Eye
    Although almost nothing about The Eye is surprising, the movie is nevertheless engrossing, as it mutates from horror movie to ghost story to psychological drama to disaster flick (a late, stunning twist). It casts a spell strong enough that viewers won't want to look away.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    The Hills Have Eyes
    Even as he reinvents, Aja invents. He's clearly working on a big budget for his first American film and has been told he can do anything he can think of. Visually, the movie is wildly alive, full of sure touches.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Personal Velocity: Three Portraits
    Embraces reality, humanity and compassion, as leavened by wisdom and wit.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Alien: Resurrection
    So drippy and slippery you'll feel that you're hiding in Kevin Costner's nasal passages during the filming of "Waterworld."
    • 89 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Letters from Iwo Jima
    In the last half-hour, the story, like the Japanese, loses its way; lacking any clear-cut goals except survival, the film becomes repetitive. Letters From Iwo Jima is a necessary movie; too bad it's not a great movie.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    The Princess Blade
    It's all story, character and dazzling martial arts violence, as orchestrated by fight choreographer Donnie Yen at breakneck speed.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Mansfield Park
    It isn't Austen, but it's delicious fun.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic
    She is so funny she should come with a seven-day waiting period.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Strayed
    Strayed has the strange clarity of a fable. It strips everything away until only instincts and emotions are left.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    An Ideal Husband
    Parker stays with and even streamlines Wilde's clever manipulations of betrayals and lies and plots and counterplots. Yet the film never feels stagy.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
    Will seem a classic if you're stoned, and only slightly less funny if you're straight.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Facing Windows
    The film is slick, beautifully acted and completely entrancing.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    Blow Dry
    It's fun. Hey, it's almost spring, Rickman is fabulous and so is Richardson. Warren Clarke is continually funny. And Heidi Klum alone will melt the snows of yesteryear.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Stephen Hunter
    There's Something About Mary
    This one is dumbest. And funniest, as if that matters even a little bit!
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie
    About a third as funny as it thinks it is. Still, that's pretty funny and about twice as funny as most American comedies these days.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Batman Returns
    This baby takes place in Tim Burton's id. It's a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Deep Cover
    Deep Cover is good fun.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    That's Entertainment! III
    What's most pleasing about That's Entertainment! III is the numbers themselves. I almost wish they'd done away with the concept of "documentary" and simply offered the snippets as pure cavalcade. [29 Jul 1994]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Kiss of Death
    You feel yourself sinking deeper and deeper into a whole universe that's been put together with almost anthropological intricacy and feels convincing to its tiniest detail. [20 Apr 1995]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    The Crow
    The Crow, the death-haunted, mega-violent, pulpy, vigorous final film of Brandon Lee, may not qualify as much of a monument to a lost life -- what film could? -- but it's a hell of a movie.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    The Client
    Let's get Sarandon and Jones into another movie soon; they're wonderful. Schumacher can direct and there's probably even a part for Brad Renfro. As for Grisham, he needs a course in remedial plotting.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument
    Amalric is low-key and immensely likable, but what makes his Paul a worthwhile companion on a three-hour voyage is his utter sincerity, coupled with self-aware irony. He's not a phony, a user, a Romeo or a slut. His earnestness is his best quality; he tries so hard to do the right thing, sometimes only failing by a little. [10 Oct 1997, p.N48]
    • Washington Post
    • 80 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
    The movie rides the very thin line between art and trash, between exploitation and illumination. It's true, certainly, that it takes one into a universe of such moral squalor that one feels tainted afterward.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Microcosmos
    A stunning documentary that examines life at the ground level in a patch of banally pretty but otherwise nondescript French meadow. [27 Nov 1996]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Once Were Warriors
    It's a fine, fierce and nearly unforgettable movie.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Dave
    Though it stops short of explosive comedy, the Ivan Reitman film is consistently amusing in its populist celebration of common sense and decency in the place of sophistication, power-brokering and cynicism.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Unforgiven
    Only in its final minutes does it somewhat squander its grip on the moral imagination, in a climax that seems oddly to undercut all that's come before and return us to the hallowed sense of violence as cleansing which so animates the world's true killers.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    First Knight
    First Knight is sublime summer entertainment, from the passion and beauty and grace of its stars to the thrust of its drama to the awe of its spectacle. [07 Jul 1995]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Love Jones
    Nothing of much surprise happens and nearly everybody will feel twinges of the familiar. It's very specific, but also universal in the gentle way it watches two people who are attracted to each other, and what they do about it. [14 Mar 1997]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    The Craft
    The Craft casts a spell with a cast of four kicky young actresses, atmospheric California settings, cool special effects and the attitude of a music video. [03 May 1996]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    The Nightmare Before Christmas
    Macabre and astonishing, Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas is a brilliant piece of technology, perhaps undercut a bit by the insincerity of its story and the blood-and-thunder music of Danny Elfman (every single piece he writes sounds like every other single piece he writes). But nasty kids and bored parents should love it.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    The Net
    It's exciting and satisfying, even if the chief villain isn't terribly original and the chase scenes are overlong. Bullock is plucky and believable as an average person who must marshal her strength and smarts to get her life back.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    The Fugitive
    The Fugitive runs hard and true the whole way through.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Get on the Bus
    Whatever its flaws, Get on the Bus is fairly electric with hope and anger. [16 Oct 1996]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Ghost in the Shell
    Oshii is able to knit together action sequences with extraordinary power and conviction.... Ghost in the Shell is absolutely terrific.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    2 Days in the Valley
    The movie never seems to force its connections or its revelations upon us, but merely discovers them in their provocative places; in short, it doesn't seem to be working very hard, but the apparent simplicity is deceiving: There's a grand, clever and ultimately satisfying plan under all the running around and bumping into each other. [27 Sept 1996]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    What Happened Was...
    An intense two-character drama that follows as the participants in an office flirtation attempt to go up a notch toward an actual relationship, with disastrously unforeseen consequences. [11 Nov 1994]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Naked
    You may feel like you need a drink and a shower when you come out of "Naked," but at least you'll know you've been somewhere new.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Ladybird Ladybird
    Ladybird, Ladybird is full of powerful, disturbing imagery. It offers a portrait of a woman victimized by a powerful and unfeeling bureaucracy, one that will literally rip a newborn out of the arms of its parents. But it's not didactic. [10 Feb 1995]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 86 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Heavenly Creatures
    But the most piercing thing about Heavenly Creatures is Jackson's refusal to forgive the girls. He indeed understands them and empathizes with them. But when he has to, he exposes the horrid squalor and ugliness of the crime, which, after all, was a blood-soaked execution, crude as anything done in Rwanda. [9 Dec 1994]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Orlando
    Generally, Orlando is too busy having witty fun to turn into a cautionary tale against one sex in favor of the other. It's more like an extremely vivid drawing-room comedy imposed on the background of a historical epic.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Stephen Hunter
    Reality Bites
    The best -- the brilliant -- bits of Reality Bites etch in epigram, anecdote and brittle, dazzling dialogue the inner life of young people who want desperately to believe but haven't decided in what. It loves them but it doesn't pity or sentimentalize them. It's tough as nails.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    S.W.A.T.
    While the movie is stupid, it is -- hooray, and let's put this in all the national ads! -- not appallingly stupid.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Eagle vs Shark
    The movie isn't funny in any big way so much as recognizable in its patterns of dysfunction, delusion and futility. But you believe in it, because you believe in the small but decent lives of its characters, a rare experience for a hot weekend in June.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    5x2
    You can make a good movie about a bad marriage, as countless directors, the latest being Ozon, have discovered.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    The Sixth Sense
    It's like an enema to the soul as it probes the ways of death ? some especially grotesque in a family setting. You leave slightly asquirm. You know it will linger.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    The Dancer Upstairs
    It's not a great film, but in its reckless audacity -- an American director working from a British novel set in Latin America, dealing with the largest themes of Latin American art, politics and history -- it's reassuring. Someone's still willing to take a big chance.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    No Man's Land
    You want a happy ending? You want sunshine, sentimentality, a sense of justice and honor and duty? Me too. But you won't find it here.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Mrs Palfrey at The Claremont
    It's all expectable, it's all enjoyable: British theatrical professionalism at the highest pitch.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Shall We Dance
    As glossy and overproduced as the thing is, it's a GOOD Big Stupid American movie.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Boiler Room
    As a piece of journalism then, Boiler Room is first class.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Quinceañera
    It's not fierce, it's not angry, it's not radical, it's polite and what might be called "life-affirming." But it does have a couple of attributes most movies don't.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    The Gingerbread Man
    One of those movies that's great fun to watch, even if it decomposes more totally in your mind with each step out of the auditorium.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Mongolian Ping Pong
    This is one of the most becalming films ever made. The grasslands seem oddly serene, and to watch them is to feel your pulse rate flatten out -- yet another aspect of Mongolian Ping Pong's transcendent charm.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    The Notorious Bettie Page
    Director Mary Harron may have more courage than talent -- and she's got a lot of talent. It's too bad Bettie's story isn't more dramatic.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Beowulf
    The story works, but I wish they'd teach these avatars to act.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    My Super Ex-Girlfriend
    The two starring performances are spot on. Wilson gets the tone that screenwriter Don Payne so expertly evokes: It's a weird sort of self-aware despicability...Thurman is beautiful, fearless and perfectly believable as a superhero.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    National Treasure
    Cleverness can be overrated but it can be underrated too, and the best thing about National Treasure is how clever it is.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Cinderella Man
    With all that going for it, one must ask, why didn't they just tell it completely straight? In other words, why did they feel so compelled to create an utterly bogus Max Baer for the virtuous Jim to fight in the movie's admittedly compelling climactic, championship bout?
    • 39 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Daddy Day Care
    If you attend the movie with your expectations lowered by Murphy's recent films, you'll be reasonably amused.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    I Think I Love My Wife
    The movie is hilarious...there's Rock's encounter with Viagra, which I can't describe but has to be one of the funniest scenes of the decade.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Happy Endings
    The acting in this ensemble is of such a high order that the movie simply takes you in and makes you feel these lives as real.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Ice Princess
    A somewhat formulaic if nevertheless crudely effective manipulation of the figure skating themes that all of us girls love so much.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
    It's romantic manliness at its purest, almost but not quite schmaltz, ideally calculated to please true believers and ironic snorters at once.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Being Julia
    May lack originality but makes up for it in sheer bravado and really nice clothes
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Days of Glory
    Is there anything new here? Honestly, not really. The content is the same, the plot the familiar litany of ordeals leavened by soapy interludes. But the fight that develops is taut, tough and extremely bitter; it's never showy in the grinding, big-movie Spielbergian way, but a portrait of the war's daily interface with hell in a very small space, as the four stand against a much larger unit.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    The Last Shot
    Despite its generic title and flat ending, tickles most of the way through.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    Stateside
    So unexpected and unpredictable and so full of tiny grace notes that its ultimate collapse seems almost irrelevant.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 70 Stephen Hunter
    The Lost World: Jurassic Park
    For the first half-hour, the movie is pretty crummy. Even Spielberg appears bored with the script's lame setup, its quick evocation of the first movie and its wan establishment of human villains and heroes. Like any 50-year-old adolescent, he can't wait for the dinosaurs. And when he gets to them, the movie ceases to bear any relationship to conceits of narrative and becomes a sheer adrenalin spike to the brain stem.
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