Janet Maslin

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The New York Times
For 1,350 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 59% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 38% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.6 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Janet Maslin's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Blue Velvet
Lowest review score: 0 Eye for an Eye
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 684 out of 1350
  2. Mixed: 556 out of 1350
  3. Negative: 110 out of 1350
1350 movie reviews
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    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Pecker
    Finding hilarity in John Waters's latest movie title is the basic pre requisite for enjoying the goofy ingenuity of his new film.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Cookie's Fortune
    Captivating.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    The Secret Garden
    Ms. Holland's film of The Secret Garden is elegantly expressive, a discreet and lovely rendering of the children's classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Birdy
    Mr. Modine's performance is exceptionally sweet and graceful; Mr. Cage very sympathetically captures Al's urgency and frustration. Together, these actors work miracles with what might have been unplayable.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Big Night
    The film is loaded with brotherly affection and with warm, funny and poignant evocations of a gentler time.[20 September 1996, p.C12]
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Natural Born Killers
    Natural Born Killers never digs deep enough. Mr. Stone's vision is impassioned, alarming, visually inventive, characteristically overpowering. But it's no match for the awful truth.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Sidewalk Stories
    Even more impressive than the tact, warmth and humor of Sidewalk Stories is the fact that it exists at all. Mr. Lane has flown quite fearlessly in the face of fashion, and done this so confidently that any comparisons with Chaplin deserve to be appreciative.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    The Big Lebowski
    Watching it amble along is enough of a treat, since the Coens populate this story with oddballs and bowling balls of such comic variety.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Beverly Hills Cop
    Beverly Hills Cop finds Eddie Murphy doing what he does best: playing the shrewdest, hippest, fastest-talking underdog in a rich man's world.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Children of the Revolution
    This comedy has less to do with narrative than with sheer chutzpah and a first-rate cast. It manages to be irreverently funny despite a subject that is no laughing matter.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Georgia
    The result is a film as maddening and unpredictable as the character herself, held together by a fierce, risk-taking performance and flashes of overwhelming honesty.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Groundhog Day
    That glimmer of recognition is what makes Groundhog Day a particularly witty and resonant comedy, even when its jokes are more apt to prompt gentle giggles than rolling in the aisles.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    The Mask of Zorro
    This is hot-weather escapism so earnestly retrograde that it seems new.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Against All Odds
    Against All Odds is so lively and enjoyable on its own terms that its genre problems, while real, are easily overlooked. Mr. Hackford's brand of glossy, romantic escapism doesn't have to work as an homage. It has a vitality of its own.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    3 Men and a Little Lady
    A sunny, exuberant confection and an enjoyably skillful one.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Enemy of the State
    It has a hurtling pace, nonstop intensity and a stylish, appealing performance by Will Smith in his first real starring role.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Mystic Pizza
    Though in essence this is little more than a girls' romance novel brought to life, it has been filled with heart and humor. The place, the people and even the largely predictable situations in which they find themselves are presented in an entirely winning way.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Pacific Heights
    Pacific Heights deserves a little credit for originality, and a little more for remaining within the realm of realism until a contrived, violent ending becomes overdue. Thanks to its three stars and a well-chosen supporting cast, the film remains sly fun even when its characters begin making silly mistakes.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Western
    A funny, romantic film filled with cozy intimacies and lovely, wide-screen images of the French countryside.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Edward Scissorhands
    Like a great chef concocting an exquisite peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, Mr. Burton invests awe-inspiring ingenuity into the process of reinventing something very small.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    The Apostle
    Duvall's unobtrusive direction moves the film at a leisurely pace that lets many scenes build the gentle, pleasing rhythms of small-town Southern life. A rare display of spiritual light on screen.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Enchanted April
    Miss Walker, who also plays a terrorist femme fatale in "Patriot Games," makes a mesmerizing impression as she holds her own against Miss Plowright without seeming remotely ruffled.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Mapantsula
    Mr. Mogotlane makes Panic much more than a symbol, treating him as a raffish, amusingly overconfident figure at first and a visibly shaken man as the film progresses, until at last he utters the single syllable that encapsulates the film's final point.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Surviving Picasso
    Freed from the slavishness of most authorized biography, the film makers try bold strokes.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    4 Little Girls
    Mr. Lee, whose lean, straightforward documentary style loses none of his usual clarity and fire (the film has been exceptionally well shot by Ellen Kuras), summons a powerful sense of Birmingham's past and a galvanizing sense of how this bombing would change its future.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Boogie Nights
    The movie's special gift happens to be Mark Wahlberg, who gives a terrifically appealing performance in this tricky role.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Frantic
    Frantic generates its suspense precisely because it appears so reasonable, because it takes such a calm, methodical approach to the maddening events that lure Dr. Walker into the maelstrom.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Little Voice
    Horrocks's phenomenal mimicry of musical grande dames...makes a splendid centerpiece for the otherwise more ordinary film built around it.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    Blue in the Face
    Good-humored, try-anything fun.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Janet Maslin
    A Little Princess
    Shaking off the solemnity that smothers many a well-meaning, high-minded family film, this one revels in an exuberant sense of play, drawing its audience into the wittily heightened reality of a fairy tale. The material, like the title, is a tad precious, but the finished film is much too spirited and pretty for that to matter.
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