Peter Stack

Select another critic »
San Francisco Chronicle
For 424 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 62% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 0.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Peter Stack's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 The Wild Bunch
Lowest review score: 0 Baby Geniuses
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 241 out of 424
  2. Mixed: 130 out of 424
  3. Negative: 53 out of 424
424 movie reviews
view
per page
    • 64 Metascore
    • 63 Peter Stack
    Silverado
    As Westerns go, Silverado delivers elaborate gun-fighting scenes, legions of galloping horses, stampeding cattle, a box canyon, covered wagons, tons of creaking leather and even a High Noonish duel. How it manages to run the gamut of cowboy movie elements without getting smart-alecky is intriguing. But on the important issues, like real character development, Silverado flakes apart. [10 Jul 1985, p.52]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Stack
    The City of Lost Children
    Children, and adults with adventurous taste in movies, will find this among the most eye-popping big-screen experiences in ages.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Stack
    Beauty and the Beast
    Walt Disney Pictures' Beauty and the Beast is an enchanting feast of extraordinary animated film making that magically revives the classic Disney style with genial humor, memorable music, fluid grace in its drawings, and compelling romance. [15 Nov 1991, p.C1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Stack
    The Joy Luck Club
    A beautiful work that could easily have turned into a four-hour-long affair but, at just a tad over two, is enticingly rich and shines with humanity. [8 Sept 1993, p.D1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Stack
    Mousehunt
    Mouse Hunt is inane, antic cinema in the extreme. But even if half the gags don't quite work, the other half are inspired.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Stack
    Dinosaur
    For all the eyepopping splendor and in-your-face reality, this film leaves the viewer unsatisfied and feeling a little cheated out of compelling drama.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Stack
    El Cid
    El Cid goes for the big scenes as well as any Hollywood epic, but sometimes the smaller, more intimate ones work better, partly because the architecture is stunning. [17 Sep 1993, p.C3]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Stack
    The Wanderers
    The Wanderer can turn an anxious tone to creepy and phantasmagoric. Kaufman's brilliant camera work relies on the exaggerated style of comic books, and the visual energy throughout is gritty.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 38 Peter Stack
    The Goonies
    I would not take very young children to see The Goonies - too intense. I would also discourage any adults who are borderline in their liking of children from seeing this film. The Goonies could easily turn a lot of otherwise tolerant grownups against children, and I'm assuming that would be a terrible thing. [7 Jun 1985, p.75]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Stack
    Like Water for Chocolate
    Though much of Like Water For Chocolate simmers with humor and the stumbling plight of human life, the movie takes its soul from deeper strains -- unfulfilled longing, the tyranny of social customs in a macho-dominated world, and the final outrage that love and death are inseparable, often indistinguishable companions. [26 Mar 1993, p.C1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Stack
    Suzhou River
    The film is energized by the naturalness of its characters and the way in which it plays a game of mixed signals and double illusions.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Stack
    Aladdin
    Beautiful, romantic and frantically funny. In its brief, often frenetic 85-minute running time it manages to be a riot of entertainment, embracing the best of old-fashioned merriment as well as savvy, up-to-the-minute contemporary humor, thanks in large part to an extraordinary performance by Robin Williams. [25 Nov 1992, p.E1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Stack
    I.Q.
    As prim and dreamily romantic as an old Doris Day movie -- and a genuine eye-pleaser photographically -- the new romantic comedy I.Q. is one pokey little film that refuses to get up and dance. Or sing. Or do much of anything but be mildly pleasant. [23 Dec 1994, p.D1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Stack
    The Tigger Movie
    Fans have cause to cheer.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Stack
    Phenomenon
    But this soggy, sentimental tour through a rural dreamworld of salt-of- the-earth versus supercharged intelligence never quite gets deep enough to touch the soul -- or to make sense.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 25 Peter Stack
    Nine Months
    Good for a few laughs but soon turns tiresome, veering incongruously between slapstick antics and mushy sentimentality.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Stack
    The English Patient
    A mesmerizing film that is the most stunning, tempestuous love story in a decade or two of movie making.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Stack
    Anastasia
    A gorgeous piece of work. It pulls every heartstring a good romance should, yet bursts with G-rated fun, wonderfully human characters and several solid and hummable songs.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Stack
    Tumbleweeds
    Bound by mother-daughter ties that are complex, touching, ultimately so powerful they yield the kind of tearful joy rarely experienced at the movies.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 25 Peter Stack
    Always
    Always is such a lamentable production _ hardly a moment rings true _ that you almost feel like saying ''pardon me'' when you wonder why it apparently didn't occur to Spielberg or anyone else involved that no chemistry was taking place. Not only are the stars rather uninteresting people, they don't seem to like each other in any way that you can feel. [22 Dec. 1989, p.E1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Stack
    Richie Rich
    A solid bit of fun in the straight-arrow family entertainment genre, Richie Rich, starring Macaulay Culkin, doesn't pretend to be much more than pleasant matinee fodder.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Stack
    The Age of Innocence
    Best “performances,'' however, are given by the movie's almost agonizingly beautiful historical settings -- luxurious households, rich architecture, furnishings, ornaments, draperies, fineries and such are often more captivating than the hushed tones of the lovers. [17 Sept 1993, Daily Notebook, p.C1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Stack
    The Shawshank Redemption
    Some of "The Shawshank Redemption'' comes across as outrageously improbable. Yet the film keeps pulling you back with its sense of striving humanity slowly turning the tables against evil.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Peter Stack
    The Last Days
    It's impossible not to be moved and shocked by The Last Days, the haunting documentary about five Hungarian Jews who survived Hitler's "final solution" to exterminate the Jewish people.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 25 Peter Stack
    Gang Related
    A mess of a movie, veering constantly toward the laughable when it isn't being offensive. Its only claim to fame is that it's the last movie featuring the late Tupac Shakur.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Peter Stack
    The Swan Princess
    There's almost no violence in the film, which favors natural settings and, for weaponry, archery. Only one scene, when Rothbart appears as a bat, is strong enough to make kids shudder a little. The script chirps with funny interplay between the animals.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Stack
    Labyrinth
    I think mature pre-teens along with immature teens might relate to this overbearing showcase of bizarre rubber duckies. Adults are bound to find it a major yawn, and young children are likely to be scared out of their wits. [27 Jun 1986, p.82]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Stack
    Predator
    The movie, a rather pointless thing when you get down to it, has little of the provocative intelligence that was found in "Terminator." But at least it's self-propelling in terms of suspense and cheap thrills. [12 June 1987, Daily Datebook, p.78]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
    • 41 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Stack
    The Waterboy
    An unabashed wallow in the moronic humor of Adam Sandler.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Peter Stack
    Field of Dreams
    This movie reverie has an almost laughable '80s tone - a yuppified style and even language - that practically buries Costner. [21 Apr 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]
    • San Francisco Chronicle
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »