Steven Rea

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Philadelphia Inquirer
For 2,033 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 72% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 26% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Steven Rea's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Touch of Evil
Lowest review score: 0 Isn't She Great
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,609 out of 2033
  2. Mixed: 278 out of 2033
  3. Negative: 146 out of 2033
2033 movie reviews
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    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Black Sheep
    Farley, with his bowl-cut of strawberry hair and grinning double chin, does have a certain airhead charm, but Spade and his slackeresque, snooty weenie shtick, is, at best, an acquired taste. Farley seems to enjoy Spade's company, and Spade seems to be enjoying his own company, and SNL kingpin and Black Sheep producer Lorne Michaels obviously believes these guys have a future together . . . but I don't know, give me Stan and Ollie, or Bud and Lou or Dean and Jerry. Or a nice big scoop of Ben and Jerry's, for that matter. [2 Feb 1996, p.13]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    RocknRolla
    If only RocknRolla's characters were at all believable - even in the context of its own cartoon universe.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Blow
    The real problem is that there's nothing to George but the movie's props.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Cassandra's Dream
    There's not a believable character, nor line of convincing dialogue to be found.
    • 27 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Fantastic Four
    It's overstating things to say the stars of Fantastic Four are Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, and Jamie Bell, because I can't remember the last time four actors appeared less invested in a movie for which they've teamed up.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Run All Night
    Run All Night isn't dull. The pace is breakneck, and necks get broken. But the violence is relentless, ugly, unredeemed by any real humanity.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Killer Elite
    Loaded with careening car chases and rooftop runs, glass-shattering shootouts and exploding fireballs, Killer Elite offers more than enough to keep action junkies happy.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Kill the Irishman
    Stevenson is big and swarthy and not altogether without credibility, but he's got as much charisma as a potato.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Da Vinci Code
    McKellen, Hanks and Tautou - and Alfred Molina, as a bishop with an agenda - are no slouches when it comes to emoting, but screenwriter Goldsman's rigorously faithful interpretation of Brown's flatfooted prose stylings is the filmic equivalent of putting big chewy baguettes in the actors' maws.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Big Eden
    Too cute by half (or maybe three-quarters).
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Ricki and the Flash
    Finally - and the news should really come as a relief - here is a role Streep should not have tried, in a movie that should not have been made.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Magic in the Moonlight
    For all its visual delights, Magic in the Moonlight, the 44th feature written and directed by the admirably industrious Woody Allen, has to be one of his bigger duds.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Expendables
    The trailers already have given away the "surprise" cameos in The Expendables, so try not to blink when Stallone goes into a church (shades of John Woo) to meet his mystery boss, played by a bald-pated, trademark smirking Bruce Willis.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Ref
    A loud, abrasive comedy that squanders the talents of its three stars, The Ref is the sort of project that stands or falls on its writing - it needs to be deep and deliciously dark. But as scripted by Richard LaGravenese and Marie Weiss (he penned The Fisher King, this is her first produced screenplay) and directed by Ted Demme (Jonathan's nephew, making his feature film debut), all we get is superficial rage. [11 Mar 1994, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    What's Eating Gilbert Grape
    DiCaprio provides one of those tailor-made Oscar turns - cocking his head at odd angles, twitching and gesticulating with childlike awkwardness, his face a mask of sweet innocence and uncontrollable tics. [4 Mar 1994, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Cars
    And did I mention that it's long? It's long.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Ceremony
    The offbeat comedy is not entirely devoid of charm, but its derivativeness is almost embarrassing.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Monuments Men
    Alas, it's a throwback that's thrown its back out - limping along, trailed by battalions of stereotypes and ammo rounds of cliche.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Watch
    Reality aside, The Watch is harmless enough - and even occasionally humorous, in a riffy, sketch-comedy kind of way.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Knockaround Guys
    It has its moments of swaggering camaraderie, but more often just feels generic, derivative and done to death.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Price of Milk
    Fairy-tale-like musing on true love in cynical times.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Asylum
    Alternately tedious, cliched and unintentionally funny.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    What Lies Beneath
    Dumb, dumb, dumb - borrowing scare tactics from Hitchcock and other suspense masters, but forgetting basic story.telling essentials such as character development and logical exposition.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Beowulf
    Zemeckis, who blazed trails mixing live-action with animation in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," blazes not even a footpath here.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Kid
    There's nothing Disneyesque about this bomb except the forced levity of its musical score.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    To the Wonder
    "There's nothing here!" screams Romina Mondello - Kurylenko's Euro gal pal, walking the deserted sidewalks of this Anytown, U.S.A. Boy, truer words . . ..
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Stuck on You
    Despite its penchant for the crude and lewd, is gooey in ways that have nothing to do with bodily fluids.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    xXx
    Less a movie than a collection of pretty cool action set-pieces, linked together with some seriously awful acting and dialogue that even Dr. Evil couldn't deliver with a straight face.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Weather Man
    The Weather Man belongs to a school of earnest, artsy Hollywood flicks that includes the Michael Douglas-goes-bonkers "Falling Down," and a lineage that goes back to revered 1970s pics like "Five Easy Pieces."
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Enough
    At this point in her career, Lopez can clearly bend the universe -- but no amount of bending can make Enough anything more than formulaic.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Bride of the Wind
    Stiff but handsome film, there's little sense of the conflict and complexities that drove Alma Mahler.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Machine Gun Preacher
    By the end of Machine Gun Preacher, its title character has become a cartoon.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    I Am Number Four
    With clunky dialogue...I Am Number Four puts the burden on its special effects (passable) and the chemistry between Pettyfer and Agron.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Restless
    If illuminating dawns and dusks had basked Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper in a rosy glow, the mopey cuteness of Restless would have been too much to bear.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Casanova
    Jeremy Irons slithers on board with a haughty sneer and papal vestments, playing Bishop Pucci.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    One Fine Day
    Michael Hoffman, whose credits include the far more lively Soapdish, directs this predictable business in a predictable fashion. [20 Dec 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Uncle Nino
    A creaky, cliched, feel-good family drama about learning to stop and smell the roses - and planting a vegetable garden while you're at it - Uncle Nino is shameless, sappy fare.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Southland Tales
    Dizzyingly incoherent and subversively surreal, this sophomore effort from the man who made the great, strange "Donnie Darko" is certain to have its fans. I'm not going to be one of them.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Watcher
    Has its compelling moments, and its playfully inventive ones, too.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Contraband
    A big comedown from "The Fighter," Contraband finds Wahlberg in default mode: With his Popeye biceps and broody stares, the actor can do a character like Chris without even thinking about it - and that's what he does here.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Fifty Shades of Grey
    There's real hypocrisy here. If a movie like Fifty Shades of Grey is supposed to offer a voyeuristic experience - and not a ridiculous experience - have some integrity about your nudity. Despite what the filmmakers may want to believe, there isn't a lot else going on here. Fifty Shades of Grey Matter, not so much.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Prestige
    Jonathan and Christopher Nolan's adaptation of this novel by Christopher Priest offers three acts of exasperating muddle.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Land of the Lost
    Not exactly a hundred million dollars' worth of classic comedy.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Romeo Is Bleeding
    Worse yet, Romeo Is Bleeding - which is extremely bloody - just isn't all that fun. [4 Feb 1994, p.12]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 24 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Godsend
    Unravels in a series of spooky dream sequences, dopey detective work, and a couple of richly hambone-ian De Niro soliloquies.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    G-Force
    Just about the only folks likely to find this humdrum hybrid of "Mission: Impossible" and "The Wind in the Willows" worthy for consideration are non-discriminating pip-squeaks.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Sherlock Holmes
    With a clamorous soundtrack and a whirl of elaborate chases and busily choreographed fight scenes, this is Sherlock Holmes with Attention Deficit Disorder.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Finding Neverland
    A sappy excursion to Edwardian days.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Wide Awake
    The problem with Wide Awake, which was shot by ace cinematographer Adam Holender in rich, autumnal tones, with interiors full of inspirational shafts of light, is that there isn't a genuine moment, or character, in the whole thing. [27 Mar 1998, p.14]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Malibu's Most Wanted
    Think Jerry Lewis doing Eminem, or maybe it's Eminem doing Jerry Lewis (or maybe it's Pauly Shore doing Vanilla Ice), and you've got B-Rad.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Sleepwalking
    A bummer.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Santa Clause 2
    Has the disjointed feel of a bunch of strung-together TV episodes.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Papa: Hemingway in Cuba
    Maybe the best reason to see Papa: Hemingway in Cuba is to catch a glimpse of the real Finca Vigia, the property, with its house and pool, gardens, and tree-lined drive, where Ernest Hemingway lived and wrote - and famously drank - from 1939 until 1960. Pages of For Whom the Bell Tolls were banged out here; so, too, The Old Man and the Sea.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Pink Panther 2
    Level of humor: subteen.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Hot Tub Time Machine 2
    In the future, in the past, at all points along the space-time continuum, the Theory of the Teenage Male Mind throws everything out of whack.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    All the King's Men
    In essence, a wild soap opera disguised as a political allegory, it's a movie, with its over-the-map performances, that is worth catching only for the inadvertent laugh or two.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Dangerous Beauty
    Dangerous Beauty, by any name, embodies no such thing. [27 Feb 1998, p.12]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Pride
    If only the screenplay had more going for it than hackneyed homilies and living-in-the-ghetto stereotypes. If only first-time director Sunu Gonera had a surer hand, a knack for something bolder, wilder, goofier.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Sitter
    While The Sitter isn't that dumb, or dreadful, there really isn't much going on here.
    • 16 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Urban Legends: Final Cut
    Has a dark, low-budget feel and an incongruous combination of self-consciously jokey patter and gross-out gore.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Weight of Water
    Shows glimmers of great drama, but jettisons too much essential cargo (character development, relationships, plot, common sense) in an effort to be lean and clean.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Vacancy
    Vacancy, in the end, simply offers a particularly aggressive brand of couples counseling.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Pride and Glory
    Gritty, jumpy and rife with cliches.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Possession
    The real problem isn't with the actors, it's with 1) the source material, a highfalutin romance novel with a clever literary conceit, and 2) LaBute's clumsy, uncomfortable efforts to telescope Byatt's book into a workable movie.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Campaign
    Relying on improv-y riffing and watch-them-coming-from-down-the-block-and-around-the-corner sight gags, The Campaign is intermittently amusing, but more often just interminable.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Bella
    What are you going to do when your lead actress offers a performance that's as unlikable as the woman she's portraying? Maybe it's the script (flimsy, formulaic), or filmmaker Alejandro Gomez Monteverde's conspicuous direction, but Tammy Blanchard's Nina, a waitress with a dour disposition and an unwanted pregnancy, pretty much sucks the life out of this well-meaning melodrama.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Twist
    There's nothing original, nor compelling, about Twist.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Die Another Day
    Not even Halle Berry, emerging from the blue Caribbean in an orange two-piece -- can bring this thing to life.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Revenge of the Electric Car
    Feels more like a postscript than a probing, provocative documentary.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Green Street Hooligans
    A silly melodrama.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Unbreakable
    Far-fetched and utterly humorless, with a literally tacked-on conclusion (yes, more text on the screen), the only thing that's surprising about Unbreakable is how lame it is.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    Cute, cloying and catastrophically predictable.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Tears of the Sun
    It's simplistic and reactionary and designed to get hearts pumping but not minds thinking.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Borstal Boy
    The film's intimations of bisexual romance have a certain innate drama that no amount of bad acting or cornball rugby matches can completely erase.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Taken 2
    The moral of Taken 2? If you're going on a family vacation, be sure that the human-trafficking ring you put out of business in that far more satisfying and suspenseful thriller from a few years ago doesn't know how to find you.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Death Sentence
    Death Sentence's message - that vengeance is ultimately futile, spinning out a vicious circle of rage and hate - may be commendable, but there's nothing noteworthy about the way Wan, Bacon and their troops go about delivering it.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Derailed
    Owen is all right as the harried husband whose relationship at home has turned frosty, but the essential heat between him and Aniston is missing. The actress succeeds in shedding her "Friends" persona, but there's something missing here, especially as things get knottier.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Grudge
    It isn't frightening. Sometimes, in fact, it's laughable.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
    Virtually every set-up and set-piece in this extravagantly tedious adventure is misleading, or worse, irrelevant.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Boys and Girls
    It's nothing if not predictable.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Junior
    As a commentary on gender roles, maternity, paternity and test-tube fertilization, Junior does manage to get in a few good yuks - but far fewer than you'd expect given the story's, um, fertile premise. [23 Nov 1994, p.E01]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
    If you want to see a Renaissance faire turned into an apocalyptic battlefield, this is the ticket.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Aloft
    Bleak and painfully earnest.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
    A long, tedious and convoluted follow-up to 2003's rollicking high-seas hit, The Curse of the Black Pearl, this second installment in the promised trilogy lacks the swash and buckle of the original. And then some.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Premonition
    Premonition is an odd little thing, with a protagonist in a protracted fugue state and a plot that doesn't know whether its coming or going. Or maybe it does.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Divergent Series: Allegiant
    Director Robert Schwentke and his writing team do their best to move things along. Actually, who knows if it's their best? Maybe they're suffering from Divergent fatigue along with the rest of us.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Flyboys
    Shot like a Disney period piece (prettily, with spiffy props, shiny vintage vehicles, and costumes just back from the cleaners), Flyboys introduces its squadron the old-fashioned way: with character-establishing setups.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Rock Star
    Rock Star sinks into a morass of melodrama.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Hangover Part III
    Most of it plays like Jackass.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Fighting Temptations
    A woefully thin and pointless musical comedy boasting the no-chemistry coupling of Cuba Gooding Jr. and Beyonc?
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Enemy at the Gates
    War is hell, war is cruelty, war is toil and trouble, war is just a shot away. But is war a snooze? Well, by the time Enemy at the Gates has run its course — it sure seems that way.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
    • 68 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    The Hateful Eight
    An epic work of self-indulgence and smug riffing, stringing together tropes from TV and screen westerns and closed-room whodunits, The Hateful Eight announces itself with all the pomp and circumstance of a mid-century cinema spectacle.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Planet 51
    An uninspired computer-animated feature that may satisfy undiscriminating pipsqueaks and nearly no one else, Planet 51 is a low-IQ E.T. in reverse.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Summer Catch
    Fuzzy, feel-good movie about baseball, babes and believing in yourself.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Promised Land
    Promised Land is a frustrating film to watch. It should be better than this, smarter than this.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Everybody Wants to Be Italian
    Full of clunky humor, battle-of-the-sexes musings and spicy accordion music, Everybody Wants to Be Italian is relentless - but not necessarily relentless fun.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Hide and Seek
    The movie's main purpose seems to be to make audiences squirm uncomfortably. Yelp and shriek in armchair-clawing glee? Not likely.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Eden
    Although its low-key realism is admirable, Eden doesn't really work: the long silences, the aching stares, the telling props, Breda's quivering blues, Billy's drunkenness, his distraction. There might as well be a sign stuck to the Farrells' front door: Dysfunctional family lives here.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Super
    Shot on the cheap, with cheesy animated credits and comic-panel "Bams!" and "Pows!" splashed across the screen, Super has a jokey, low-rent quality (or lack of quality) that could be endearing, if Wilson's performance weren't so nihilistically dull, and if there were somebody in the picture who had a soul.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Steven Rea
    Beautiful Creatures
    Cold and stylish, slick and violent.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
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