Lawrence Toppman

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Charlotte Observer
For 1,622 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Lawrence Toppman's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Down in the Delta
Lowest review score: 0 Left Behind
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,064 out of 1622
  2. Mixed: 275 out of 1622
  3. Negative: 283 out of 1622
1622 movie reviews
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    • 58 Metascore
    • 63 Lawrence Toppman
    The Yards
    Won't startle or surprise you but will satisfy your need to see good actors at work.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Lawrence Toppman
    Monster House
    I was a little disappointed by the cop-out ending, in which debut director Gil Kenan gives up the film's frightening elements and comforts the audience with comedy and superficial emotion.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 63 Lawrence Toppman
    28 Days Later...
    I think Garland and Boyle just want to make our flesh creep by showing someone else's flesh decaying. If that's their aim, they achieved it.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 50 Lawrence Toppman
    The Butterfly Effect
    The film works best as an extended "Twilight Zone" episode.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 88 Lawrence Toppman
    Miracle
    This film reminds us you can have a miracle only when David slings a stone at Goliath, not when two Goliaths pummel each other with sticks.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 88 Lawrence Toppman
    Freaky Friday
    This is the first real family comedy I've seen in a long time: one honest enough to satisfy teens, wryly funny enough for adults and zany enough for little kids.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 75 Lawrence Toppman
    Stuck on You
    Someone in most Farrelly movies deserves the Good Sport Award; here it's split between Meryl Streep, who befriends Walt in a long cameo as herself, and Eva Mendes, who plays Walt's galpal in a way that mocks perceptions of her as a well-endowed ninny. Cher should get a share of this prize.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 38 Lawrence Toppman
    Full Frontal
    You could dismiss it, as I do, as an impenetrable and insufferable ball of pseudo-philosophic twaddle.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 50 Lawrence Toppman
    Enough
    Delivers the kind of vengeance fantasy women unhappy with their husbands may want: Vicarious satisfaction, however clumsily delivered, is better than no satisfaction at all. Just be sure to stop by the lobotomy clinic en route to the theater.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Lawrence Toppman
    Mystic River
    The grandest presence here is Eastwood. His directing, like his acting, is minimal: unhurried, spare, unforced, rather somber.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 63 Lawrence Toppman
    Evening
    It paints its world in pastels, but the subject cries out for vivid colors.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 25 Lawrence Toppman
    Quest for Camelot
    You may enjoy "Quest for Camelot" if you have no sense of animation history, no sense of movie musical history and no sense of mythical history, especially the Arthurian legend. Otherwise, you'll wish you could drink yourself under the Round Table. [15 May 1998, p.9E]
    • Charlotte Observer
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Lawrence Toppman
    Valkyrie
    It's slickly executed, handsomely acted for the most part and utterly easy to forget.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 75 Lawrence Toppman
    The Lake House
    Bullock and Reeves have an unusual kind of charisma, one that works best when they're apart. Though the filmmakers sometimes put them in the same frame for visual ease, they mostly occupy different times.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 63 Lawrence Toppman
    The Royal Tenenbaums
    Over the course of 108 minutes, The Royal Tenenbaums drops downward on the humor scale from hilarious to funny to quirky to pretentiously bizarre to chaotic.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 38 Lawrence Toppman
    The Truth About Charlie
    The Truth About Charlie...is that this "Charade" remake is a lumpen bore.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Lawrence Toppman
    Boiler Room
    Writer-director Ben Younger has sketched the foreground of this picture but never gets around to filling in the details.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Lawrence Toppman
    American Pie
    The story was primitive, the characters unmemorable, the direction unsophisticated, the writing cliched, the photography and music drab, the pacing uneven, the acting varying from adroitly funny to exaggerated.
    • Charlotte Observer
    • 30 Metascore
    • 38 Lawrence Toppman
    The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    What a riveting movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen might have been! And what a rickety mess it turned out to be when the people responsible lost faith in the origin of the material!
    • 44 Metascore
    • 63 Lawrence Toppman
    Committed
    Writer-director Lisa Krueger bends over backward to make everyone happy.
    • Charlotte Observer
    • 46 Metascore
    • 88 Lawrence Toppman
    The Da Vinci Code
    A crackling rendition of Dan Brown's novel, siphoning off unneeded fat and fancy and leaving us with a streamlined train of a picture that never stops moving.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 0 Lawrence Toppman
    Left Behind
    It's well-shot and well-edited by Hollywood standards, though special effects don't reach the top Hollywood level. The stars have their hearts in their work: Cameron and Johnson don't have great depth but give their all. Currie makes a subtle villain.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 63 Lawrence Toppman
    S.W.A.T.
    The strongest parts of the film aren't these money shots, but the buildup to the gunplay.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Lawrence Toppman
    Men in Black II
    On the positive side, the four Worm Guys haven't lost their squiggly charm, and Rip Torn is always welcome as MIB mastermind Zed. On the minus side, you get two Johnny Knoxvilles, one of them a tiny head that protrudes from the big one's shoulder.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Lawrence Toppman
    The Weather Man
    The movie gives actors many chances to shine, and they do. But I went away most impressed with Verbinski.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 38 Lawrence Toppman
    The Golden Compass
    The final sad joke is this: Weitz took a wonderful story about the danger of severing a soul from its otherwise empty body and did that very thing to his source.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 38 Lawrence Toppman
    Titan A.E.
    Visually compelling, relentlessly loud and so shallow you need just a fragment of your brain to follow it.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Lawrence Toppman
    Chrystal
    One of those movies that sticks to your mind like a briar to wool slacks. It has no revelations, no high drama, no heartbreaking tragedy. What it does have is bone-deep honesty, and that's enough for once.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 75 Lawrence Toppman
    Thr3e
    Could pass for any serial killer movie except for some pertinent philosophizing about the nature of evil and the operations of the soul.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Lawrence Toppman
    A Mighty Heart
    The title comes from the memoir by Mariane Pearl, wife of kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. It applies equally to Winterbottom, who has made the rarest movie among this summer's releases: a taut police procedural that examines all sides of an issue and forces us to re-think our own.
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