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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    • 64 Metascore
    • 88 Steven Rea
    We Have a Pope
    It's more of a character study, insightful and nuanced, about a man grappling with a profound sense of inadequacy, questioning himself. In many ways, We Have a Pope recalls last year's Oscar winner, "The King's Speech": Someone who doesn't feel up to the job fate has handed him, and then struggling to come to terms with it.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Sound of My Voice
    An economical thriller, both narratively and budgetarily, Sound of My Voice serves up moments of extreme dread and discomfort, but works a winning undercurrent of playful absurdity into the material as well.
    • 14 Metascore
    • 0 Steven Rea
    A Little Bit of Heaven
    As far as director Nicole Kassell and writer Gren Wells are concerned, the C in Big C must stand for cute. The film reaches into the pits of moviegoing hell when it finds Marley on a celestial white couch, ringed in billowing white curtains, communing with God. And God is embodied by Whoopi Goldberg.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 63 Steven Rea
    The Avengers
    The chaos and carnage here is just a pumped-up take on a tradition that harks back to Godzilla, and harks back, of course, to the Marvel comics from which all these heros originally sprang.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    The Five-Year Engagement
    It's not impossible to address grown-up issues of commitment, of responsibility, of love, and have some fun, and some profanity, while you're at it.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Marley
    Marley celebrates the fact that its subject is still among us in the way that perhaps matters most: His music not only survives, it thrives.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 63 Steven Rea
    The Lucky One
    Efron, who wears an "All glory is fleeting" tattoo on his back and a soulful look on his face, gets to be more of a grown-up in The Lucky One than in most of what he's done before.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 88 Steven Rea
    The Deep Blue Sea
    The beautiful misery of The Deep Blue Sea - Terence Davies' crushing adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1952 play - is almost too much.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 63 Steven Rea
    Lockout
    Lockout is genre all the way. The film wears its colors proudly, but it also, alas, wears out its welcome.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 63 Steven Rea
    American Reunion
    In some ways, American Reunion is the Charlize Theron indie "Young Adult" all over again: In both, a small-town high school reunion is the setting for a lot of nostalgia and narcissism and nasty behavior.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Boy
    Boy begins with an epigram from E.T.: "You could be happy here . . . . We could grow up together." That's what the film is about - finding happiness, growing up, feeling like a stranger in a strange world.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 88 Steven Rea
    Jiro Dreams of Sushi
    David Gelb's thoughtful and wonderful documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, explores the dedication of this humble, bespectacled man, and the Zen-like focus he has for his work - or, as many would claim, for his art.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Delicacy
    Tautou, who looks even smaller and more fragile alongside her towering leading man, conveys the hurt and hesitancy that are pulling at her character's heart - and does so with seeming effortlessness. It's as though she knows this woman, deep down.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Steven Rea
    The Hunger Games
    It also smells very much like a movie with money on its mind - not altogether successfully balancing its loftier ideas with a sense of superficial whimsy and Vegas-meets-Wizard of Oz production design.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Jeff Who Lives at Home
    Nothing in this quiet, quirky comedy from the brothers Duplass comes close to Jeff's inspired, bong-fueled deconstruction of "Signs," but it gives us a good idea of where this guy is coming from.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Casa de mi Padre
    Casa de Mi Padre is at its best (a relative term, mind you) when it's at its silliest and most surreal.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 63 Steven Rea
    We Need to Talk About Kevin
    Fragmented, dreamlike, a whir of memories and misery, We Need to Talk About Kevin is unsettling, but also somehow unnecessary.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 88 Steven Rea
    The Forgiveness of Blood
    While The Forgiveness of Blood lacks the narrative momentum of director Joshua Marston's previous film, "Maria Full of Grace" - it is nonetheless fascinating.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
    If all this sounds like too much whimsy to bear, be forwarned. There is whimsy everywhere.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 63 Steven Rea
    John Carter
    That's kind of the aesthetic that Stanton is going for: over-the-top pulp. But there's something generic about the digitally rendered Martians, and there's a corniness to the dialogue that keeps the audience from any kind of emotional attachment to the Tharks and Zodangans and their ilk.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 88 Steven Rea
    The Kid with a Bike
    It's the powerful emotional punch their films deliver - and this one is no exception - that elevate the game, that make them so satisfying, so worthwhile. The Kid With a Bike grabs at the heart.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    In Darkness
    The filmmaker, whose career took off with a very different sort of Holocaust film, 1990's Oscar-nominated "Europa Europa," understands that most of these stories arrive at a point of unspeakable, incomprehensible horror.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Undefeated
    Undefeated is undeniably inspirational stuff.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 25 Steven Rea
    Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie
    A lazy assemblage of sketch-comedy raunch, mock-schlock TV ads, and ideas that even the writers of "Mall Cop" and "Observe and Report" would have tossed.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 88 Steven Rea
    Coriolanus
    Brian Cox is especially good, and slippery, as Menenius, a Roman senator.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Thin Ice
    Writing with her sister, Karen, Jill Sprecher rigs up an elaborate cause-and-effect comedy of errors, with Kinnear's predatory protagonist as both perp and victim. I won't say more than that, but Thin Ice is deeper than it first appears.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Kinyarwanda
    By detailing the allegiance between Tutsi Muslims and Christian Hutus, and the fatwa issued by a Muslim leader forbidding his followers to participate in the massacres, the film is hopeful rather than horrific, even as it describes events of impossible savagery and hate.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 38 Steven Rea
    A Warrior's Heart
    The greatest lacrosse movie of the 21st century - and, unless I'm mistaken, the only lacrosse movie of the 21st century.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 88 Steven Rea
    Chronicle
    Chronicle is full of smart writing that isn't too smart.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Steven Rea
    Safe House
    Safe House rockets along, taking a familiar formula and making it work - hard.
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