Steve Persall

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Tampa Bay Times
For 1,125 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 65% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.5 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Steve Persall's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 Vertigo
Lowest review score: 0 The Last Airbender
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 708 out of 1125
  2. Mixed: 310 out of 1125
  3. Negative: 107 out of 1125
1125 movie reviews
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    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Danny Collins
    Danny Collins isn't the most artistic or surprising movie, and Fogelman's appropriation of Lennon's music to explain what's obvious gets stale. But it does contain a wonderful performance by Pacino, when it was debatable if we'd ever say that again.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Jackie
    Anchored by Natalie Portman's uncanny impersonation — wispy voice, aristocratic posture — Jackie fascinates and frustrates, sometimes at once. We can't be certain any of her actions here are true. Some don't seem likely.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    The Maze Runner
    Director Wes Ball makes a solid feature film debut, without any noticeable video game envy to his action sequences.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    The Equalizer
    It's easy to see why neither Home Depot nor Lowe's chose to go the product placement route. Too many cleanups in the power tool department.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    She's So Lovely
    Nick Cassavetes, like his father, works out his movies through the instincts of the actors, not the camera lens. It's a fitting, and occasionally fitful, eulogy to an unheralded legend. [29 Aug 1997, p.3]
    • Tampa Bay Times
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    The Danish Girl
    Fortunately, Hooper has a pair of extraordinary actors on which to hang The Danish Girl, two of the finest performances of women this year.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Big Eyes
    Big Eyes is an entertaining take on a pop culture footnote, short on the bizarre flourishes Burton typically employs.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Tusk
    There are strange, midnight movie pleasures found in Smith's movie.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Edge of Tomorrow
    Edge of Tomorrow may be the best video game movie ever made. Which is strange since it isn't actually based on a video game.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    The Bourne Legacy
    The globetrotting is reined in, the mayhem at each stop just as exciting. Renner is a sturdy action hero, with an interesting face that unlike Damon's appears to have taken a punch or two.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
    Spurlock's meetings with skeptical corporate types are punctuated by comments from filmmakers about how product placement - or in Quentin Tarantino's case, being turned down by Denny's - influences creativity.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Black Swan
    Black Swan is a stage door melodrama putting new spins on cliches as old as "All About Eve" (and maybe Adam). Setting them among ballerinas as opposed to showgirls or movie stars doesn't make them any less familiar.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Youth
    Youth is a movie of dreamscapes and insinuated feelings, gorgeous and puzzling at once.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Lee Daniels' The Butler
    It's rare to wish a movie were an hour or two longer, when it already feels an hour longer than it is.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    The Fighter
    A boxing movie swinging in too many directions at once, as if someone sneaked a third clubber into the ring. All the emotional punches land solidly, to occasionally devastating effect, but at the conclusion you're not sure which competing cliche wins.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Mother and Child
    Mother and Child is depressively interesting, with characters constantly ruining their best chances at happiness.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Sin City: A Dame To Kill For
    Despite its unsavory aspects, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For is always a pleasure to observe, so artfully artificial with its green-screened backdrops and CGI props.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Moana
    We can now agree that Johnson is not only the Sexiest Man Alive but also our strongest, lifting Moana on his character's beefy shoulders, carrying it like other hits before. No movie left behind.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    The Three Stooges
    The Farrellys affectionately structure their movie to resemble the Stooges' one-reelers from the 1930s, while the modern setting shows how timeless their rapid-fire puns, insults and pratfalls truly are. Silliness never goes out of style.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Snowden
    Even with its flaws, Snowden is Stone's return to relevance, in subject and execution.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    A Fantastic Woman
    Director and co-writer Sebastian Lelio keeps the melodrama muted, allowing Vega’s expressive passivity to move viewers. She’s a tragically striking character, a face of abruptly lost love seldom seen in movies.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Rise of the Guardians
    Rise of the Guardians is an all-star addition to holiday movies lists but the real question is: Which holiday?
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    The Cable Guy
    Is Carrey funny? Of course, because Stiller and the script allow him to be funny, at the expense of tension. [14 June 1996, p.3]
    • Tampa Bay Times
    • 40 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    X-Men Origins: Wolverine
    Wolverine is a solid start to the ever-lengthening summer movie season, when all that matters is the bang and the bucks paid for it.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
    The latest incarnation of Bob Kane's classic comic book creation shares the same angular, menacing animation style of the Fox TV Network afternoon series that inspired it. [25 Dec 1993, p.7B]
    • Tampa Bay Times
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    The Tree of Life
    Ponderous and perplexing, a somberly audacious film to make viewers swoon or snore, take your pick. It is defiantly opaque, a free-form meditation on nature and nurture across millennia with a tinge of biblical grace.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    ParaNorman
    The movie's erratic pleasures are like its ghosts; now you see them, now you don't.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Christine
    Christine is a movie as bleak and withdrawn as its protagonist, with Hall making the most of her best role in years, a slow death spiral that's hard to look away from.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Tower Heist
    As far as sophisticated caper flicks go, Tower Heist is oceans away from George Clooney's crew. Compared to other recent comedies, it's pretty light on the laughs.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Steve Persall
    Lawless
    Kind of like Lawless, a movie about bootleggers more violently authentic than previous takes on the subject, from "Thunder Road" to the first half of "The Last American Hero." What Lawless has over those moonshine melodramas is a striking sense of period and setting.
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