Charles Taylor

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Salon
For 379 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 35% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 63% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 11.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Charles Taylor's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 54
Highest review score: 100 McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Lowest review score: 0 Speed 2: Cruise Control
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 141 out of 379
  2. Mixed: 141 out of 379
  3. Negative: 97 out of 379
379 movie reviews
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    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    There's Something About Mary
    The type of comedy the Farrellys love requires dizzy, pell-mell pacing. If There's Something About Mary were tightened up by about 20 minutes, it would be much funnier.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Shaft
    Lean, fast and undeniably entertaining.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Magnolia
    None of the characters in Magnolia feel as vividly imagined as the porn stars and filmmakers and hangers-on of "Boogie Nights."
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    The Time Machine
    The Time Machine is, for the most part, a handsome, pleasant entertainment.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Ratcatcher
    A large part of the movie's problem is that both the characters and the actors who portray them serve as vehicles for Ramsay's stylistic flourishes.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Sideways
    Alexander Payne's new movie, Sideways, makes you feel like you're trapped at dinner with a wiseass who's trying to convince you what a sensitive guy he is.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    G.I. Jane
    This hot-button picture isn't especially well thought-out, but it might be crafty and manipulative enough to rile up audiences.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    L.I.E.
    Though I admire much of what Cuesta does in L.I.E., the film didn't give me much pleasure. I didn't find it unpleasant or repulsive; it's just that I felt he was too much outside the story.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Dark Blue
    Shelton has directed Dark Blue in a jacked-up urban thriller style that simply does not play to his gifts. He's a sidewinder, the sort of writer-director who tells his stories through loopy character details and anecdotes.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Con Air
    How's the movie? Big, loud, brutal and stupid, that's how it is. But then, you don't need a critic to tell you that -- anyone with a grade-school education who's seen the previews can figure that out.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    The Human Stain
    It's melodrama that rises to the complexity of art. The Human Stain takes a complex work of literary art and reduces it to tasteful melodrama. Its smallness is simply crushing.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    The Game
    Fincher is still working on the assumption that he has better things to do than entertain an audience. Which would be fine if he weren't drawn to such schlocky material.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Show Me Love
    Isn't a good movie. It's drab, visually ugly and a little pokey...but the two heroines are so recognizable as real girls, and the young actresses who play them are so appealing, that you keep rooting for these kids.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Rush Hour
    The movie seems to proceed from somebody's notion that it would be hilarious to see a black guy and a Chinese guy working together.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    In the Company of Men
    A singularly unpleasant movie.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Aimee & Jaguar
    A consistently engrossing piece of work.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Catch Me If You Can
    Well-enough made and highly watchable, but it lacks the one thing that would put some swing in its step and some swagger in its attitude: a sense of jazz.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Better Luck Tomorrow
    Follows a consistently predictable arc. In some sequences, you can tell not just what's going to happen next, but what shot is coming next. And the movie's weird mixture of moralism and affectlessness cancel each other out.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Vera Drake
    When one of the young women Vera attends to nearly dies of complications, the police arrest her -- and the movie goes thud, taking Staunton's performance along with it.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Live Flesh
    Live Flesh isn't terrible. It's accomplished and watchable.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    State and Main
    At its best, State and Main is fast and sharp, but when a movie like this goes off the rails, it's more disappointing than when a bad movie does.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    A Civil Action
    Millions of people read Harr's gripping bestseller, but Steven Zaillian may be the only one who didn't understand it.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Enigma
    Director Michael Apted does a smooth, competent job, but like almost all his work, Enigma lacks excitement and a vivid personality.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Bean
    Whatever the reason, Bean saddles Atkinson with a story that hangs on him like a dead weight and a filmmaking style that surrounds him like dead air.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Girl with a Pearl Earring
    What's the point of setting up a historical fantasia around an invented character if you're only going to make her part of the scenery?
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    The Door in the Floor
    It's nearly impossible to tell whether Williams thought he was making a family tragedy or a sex farce.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Primary Colors
    A slack, tepid picture stuck in a no man's land between satire and drama.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Barbershop
    So often loose and funny that you'd have to be pretty stingy not to get some pleasure from it.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Better Than Sex
    It could be funnier, sharper, more probing, but at its best it is sexy, and that's always something to celebrate.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Charles Taylor
    Standing in the Shadows of Motown
    It's a noble undertaking. But why isn't it a better movie? Told in scattered fashion, the movie only intermittently lives up to the stories and faces and music of the men who are its subject. Part of the problem is the narration.
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