Steve Davis
Steve Davis's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when
published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Austin Chronicle
| Publications: | Austin Chronicle, RopeofSilicon |
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5/5 | 35% | The Great Wall (2017) |
Whether it's a case of miscasting is unclear, but without a willing hero to anchor this already dubious movie from start to finish, The Great Wall hits a brick wall.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Feb 23, 2017
|
| 3/5 | 94% | The Red Turtle (La tortue rouge) (2017) |
Whatever your perspective, there's one thing for sure: The Red Turtle is unlike anything else you've seen in a while.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2017
|
| 3.5/5 | 91% | The Lego Batman Movie (2017) |
The future sure looks bright for the Lego movie franchise. As the Boy Wonder might say: "Holy Sequels, Batman! What next?"‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2017
|
| 2.5/5 | 25% | The Comedian (2017) |
They say dying is easy, comedy is hard. It's an observation that applies in more than one way to The Comedian.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Feb 2, 2017
|
| 2/5 | 43% | xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017) |
Diesel lacks the screen presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger, an actor of limited talents who nevertheless epitomized the contemporary action hero in American popcorn cinema for two decades through the power of his sheer will.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jan 26, 2017
|
| 4/5 | 84% | Julieta (2016) |
Straightforward and yet emotionally complex, the film is Almodóvar's most sobering work to date, a mystery about a daughter's abandonment of her mother without explanation.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jan 26, 2017
|
| 1.5/5 | 33% | Monster Trucks (2017) |
At times, Monster Trucks faintly echoes E.T., but it has all the grace of a jacked-up Ford F-150 with a four-link suspension and tractor tires crushing a row of cars by steamrolling atop them.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2017
|
| 2/5 | 23% | The Bye Bye Man (2017) |
The borderline campy The Bye Bye Man is a horror movie in search of an urban legend.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jan 12, 2017
|
| 3.5/5 | 87% | A Monster Calls (2017) |
Utterly heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2017
|
| 3/5 | 93% | The Eagle Huntress (2016) |
There's no doubt about the veracity of Aisholpan's inspirational story. She exists, and she's a champion in every sense. But many sequences in the film appear planned out, even staged.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Dec 31, 2016
|
| 1.5/5 | 62% | Allied (2016) |
Bombs away!‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Dec 31, 2016
|
| 3/5 | 39% | Why Him? (2016) |
Luckily for Franco, Cranston makes for the perfect comic foil in Why Him?. That craggy, lived-in face can launch a thousand laughs with a simple squint of the eye, cock of the brow, or clinch of the jaw.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Dec 22, 2016
|
| 1/5 | No Score Yet | A Winter Rose (2016) |
The wilted music drama A Winter Rose is a showbiz tale with a premise so improbable there's a good chance it might inspire a reality competition show.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2016
|
| 3/5 | 76% | A Street Cat Named Bob (2016) |
If you've ever felt the same about a Felis catus, you'll cut A Street Cat Named Bob some slack for the same reason I did. You won't be able to help yourself. And stock up on some Kleenex beforehand. You're gonna need them.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Nov 17, 2016
|
| 3.5/5 | 89% | Loving (2016) |
Loving (a title that works on more than one level) unhurriedly recounts this husband and wife's near decade-long ordeal in a manner commiserate with their quiet and unwavering commitment to each other.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2016
|
| 3/5 | 92% | A Man Called Ove (En man som heter Ove) (2016) |
A Man Called Ove deftly incorporates the seminal moments of its titular character's past in a series of flashbacks that inform, rather than intrude upon, the present.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2016
|
| 4.5/5 | 98% | Moonlight (2016) |
Truly, madly, deeply: There's magic in this Moonlight.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2016
|
| 3.5/5 | 94% | Miss Hokusai (Sarusuberi: Miss Hokusai) (2016) |
A sumptuous tapestry of color, shadow, and light.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Oct 27, 2016
|
| 2/5 | 19% | Keeping Up With The Joneses (2016) |
It's meant to be thrilling fun, but it never takes off in the way imagined. There's no merriment in the .357-caliber chaos, no mirth in the staccato of bullets.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2016
|
| 3/5 | 98% | Long Way North (Tout en haut du monde) (2016) |
The lovely Long Way North is an old-fashioned animated movie, but don't let its unfussy execution fool you.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2016
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| 1.5/5 | 33% | Beauty And The Beast (La belle et la bête) (2016) |
It's beastly.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Oct 6, 2016
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| 2/5 | 33% | Masterminds (2016) |
Galifianakis' cluelessness can tickle, but he's having a progressively difficult time making things feel fresh. ‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Oct 6, 2016
|
| 1.5/5 | 35% | Max Rose (2016) |
The script is replete with filler inserted in the name of "real life": bad jokes and silly riddles, spontaneous songs, and improvised scenes in which conversations go around in circles.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Sep 22, 2016
|
| 2.5/5 | 63% | Storks (2016) |
Storks flutters like a bird with a broken wing -- it never quite gets off the ground.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Sep 22, 2016
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| 3.5/5 | 65% | The Vessel (2016) |
A testament to the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Sep 15, 2016
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| 2/5 | 15% | The Wild Life (2016) |
Though hardly terrible, the movie is imminently forgettable. Once it's over, it feels as if it never happened.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2016
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| 3.5/5 | 96% | Nuts! (2016) |
Director Lane and screenwriter Thom Stylinski take a lighthearted, folksy approach to telling Brinkley's life story‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Sep 1, 2016
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| 1/5 | 40% | Morgan (2016) |
By the end, what it means to be human becomes a rhetorical question, and a stupid one at best. The depressingly relevant inquiry? Whether this insipidly contrived movie could survive a brain transplant.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Sep 1, 2016
|
| 3.5/5 | 91% | Southside With You (2016) |
As the one-day POTUS and first lady, Sawyers and Sumpter capture the familiar essence of this now well-known couple without impersonating them, imagining them with a fresh perspective about who they were long before becoming famous.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Aug 25, 2016
|
| 3.5/5 | 87% | Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) |
Try not to focus too much on the upbeat message, summarized in 25 words or less at the end, and instead enjoy the simple pleasure of [Jenkins'] company.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Aug 11, 2016
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| 0/5 | 11% | Nine Lives (2016) |
This cat-astrophe about a megalomaniacal New York City real estate developer and businessman (dingdingding!) who finds himself trapped inside the body of a fussy feline called "Mister Fuzzypants" is, paws down, the year's worst film.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Aug 11, 2016
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| 3.5/5 | 93% | The Innocents (Les innocentes) (2016) |
The humanism on display here is precise and unsentimental.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Aug 4, 2016
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| 3/5 | 66% | Nerve (2016) |
Up until now, Roberts and Franco have been second-tier actors in the industry food chain, but their first-rate performances in this better-than-average genre flick exude something called charisma.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jul 28, 2016
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| 2.5/5 | 59% | Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016) |
In this 90-minute movie, which runs twice the length of one of the Ab Fab episodes airing stateside since the mid-Nineties, this deliciously bad behavior is diminished by a silly plot.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jul 21, 2016
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| 3/5 | 83% | Captain Fantastic (2016) |
Viggo Mortensen may be the most taciturn actor in American movies today. His weatherworn, handsome face (with a cleft chin to rival Kirk Douglas) communicates character with only the slightest of movement.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jul 21, 2016
|
| 2.5/5 | 92% | Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words (2016) |
Trying to communicate the essence of musician Frank Zappa and his body of work in words is futile, even when the words are his own.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jul 14, 2016
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| 2/5 | 35% | Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) |
The ads proclaim the movie is "inspired by a true story," as if to give it street cred that it would otherwise lack. Let's break it down, shall we? Mike. And. Dave. Need. Wedding. Dates. What's inspired? What's true?‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jul 7, 2016
|
| 3/5 | 77% | Wiener-Dog (2016) |
In the end, trying to compartmentalize this movie in some neat fashion is folly. This is Todd Solondz and, refreshingly enough, you can't teach an old dog new tricks.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jun 30, 2016
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| 3/5 | 83% | Viva (2016) |
Even as the film's melodrama starts to lay on as thick as a La Lupe ballad, Medina's sensitive and luminous performance as a tarnished Latin angel who learns to spread his wings remains center stage, and rightly so. This young actor is good.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jun 16, 2016
|
| 4/5 | 97% | Weiner (2016) |
It's a movie from which you can't look away, no matter how hard you may try.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2016
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| 4/5 | 97% | Dark Horse (2016) |
Regardless of whether Dream Alliance wins, places, or shows, he and this lovely film are, without question, a sure bet.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted May 26, 2016
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| 1.5/5 | 4% | The Darkness (2016) |
A film woefully lacking in true fright.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted May 19, 2016
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| 3/5 | 84% | The Meddler (2016) |
Roles like this are regrettably rare for actresses of a certain age, and Sarandon makes the very best of this opportunity.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted May 12, 2016
|
| 2.5/5 | 79% | The Family Fang (2016) |
Bateman, the director, manages to bring out the two principals' anguish without resorting to sentimentality, until the unsatisfying last quarter of the film when things get gooey.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted May 5, 2016
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| 3/5 | 76% | Keanu (2016) |
You're gonna be smitten kittens over Keanu.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Apr 28, 2016
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| 3/5 | 90% | Barbershop: The Next Cut (2016) |
What most captivates is the rhythm of those scenes in which the characters mount the soapbox to share stinging observations on a variety of topics in an often hilarious back-and-forth battle of words.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Apr 21, 2016
|
| 3.5/5 | 95% | The Jungle Book (2016) |
This is a match made in movie heaven, given that the critters in Kipling's stories speak and behave like human beings, perfectly suited to Disney's anthropomorphic tradition of walking and talking animals, which began with Mickey Mouse.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Apr 14, 2016
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| 2/5 | 29% | My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016) |
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 loses its perspective about being a movie celebrating the familial ties that bind, even those that choke you. It turns into something else: a cash register in the guise of a sequel bearing gifts.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Mar 24, 2016
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| 3.5/5 | 83% | Hello, My Name is Doris (2016) |
This wonderful, silly old fool doesn't need your pity, doesn't require your sympathy. Once she gets under your skin, you understand her completely. And you like her. You really like her.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Mar 17, 2016
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| 2.5/5 | 43% | Miracles from Heaven (2016) |
The movie never allows [Garner] to truly plumb the depth of her character's despair, which would have made the uplift of its message all the more effective.‐ Austin Chronicle
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2016
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