Charlotte Observer's Scores

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For 1,652 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 56% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 41% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Frost/Nixon
Lowest review score: 0 Waist Deep
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,085 out of 1652
  2. Mixed: 279 out of 1652
  3. Negative: 288 out of 1652
1652 movie reviews
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  1. Everest
    The mountain, grim and unforgiving, remains the star.
  2. X-Men
    Balances brains, brawn and heart in ideal proportions. The actors - some first-rate, all enjoyable - never get overshadowed by the special effects, which dazzle us without gory excess.
  3. Stage Beauty
    The wigs, hats and gowns look realistic, gorgeous and utterly right. In a vapid confection like Stage Beauty, perhaps that's what really counts.
  4. Wedding Crashers
    Watching Wedding Crashers is like stuffing yourself with raw cookie dough. It's a guilty pleasure that goes down easily, but you can't help wondering what it would've tasted like if someone had finished the job.
  5. Blood Diamond
    There's an extraordinary subplot in Blood Diamond, sandwiched between a main story meant to arouse outrage and a Hollywood-clumsy finale meant to provoke a standing ovation.
  6. Freedom Writers
    The movie is based on the life of California high school teacher Erin Gruwell, played with captivating honesty by Hilary Swank, yet it feels like the usual Hollywood exaggerations.
  7. Something New
    The stars have chemistry, which may be all that we can hope for in factory-line fluff. But why stack the deck so clumsily?
  8. Peter Pan
    It's gay in the old-fashioned sense, a giddy whirl for the senses, from chilly English drawing rooms to lush Neverland jungle. It's innocent in believing love banishes all ills, even physical ones, and inspires unthinkable heroism.
  9. Robots
    Jim Broadbent is the wild card in the cast; he screeches and growls his way through Madame Gasket's lines in the best traditions of British drag.
  10. Blood Work
    Eastwood has two knacks as a director/producer: He casts smaller roles well, as he did here, and he can establish an atmospheric mood, often an ominous one. But he hasn't much visual style -- for an action star.
  11. The Grey
    At times, the animatronic effects used to create the wolves are too obvious, and the one-by-one kill-off plotline employed in so many horror films gives The Grey a plodding predictability. At nearly two hours, it's also too long.
  12. Dancer in the Dark
    Can be unbearably moving or annoyingly mawkish, sometimes in the same scene.
  13. 16 Blocks
    16 Blocks is a burger movie, served by an old pro: 76-year-old director Richard Donner, who hasn't done work this interesting since the other Bush was president but who knows his way around a thriller.
  14. Unfaithful
    Heavy-handed symbolism permeates the picture, down to the leading lady's name.
  15. Kids
    Larry Clark's documentary-like direction and Harmony Korine's undeviatingly dull screenplay make it possible to believe these useless lumps of flesh exist. [1 Sept 1995, p.3F]
    • Charlotte Observer
  16. Secretary
    Director Steven Shainberg and writer Erin Cressida Wilson argue that everyone deserves the love that makes them happiest, and that these two will remain miserable until they stumble upon each other.
  17. Drumline
    The final drum-off (c'mon, you knew it would come down to that) resembles a combination of music, gymnastics and martial arts, and I don't think I've seen a more pulse-pounding scene this year.
  18. Out of Time
    Except for Sanaa Lathan, who sears the screen in a brief appearance, director Carl Franklin and his cast seem to realize they're making a second-tier thriller.
  19. The Patriot
    The best movie I've seen about the Revolutionary War.
  20. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
    The film is a saggy, oddly mean-spirited takeoff of "Walk the Line."
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Irma la Douce
    A fairly ordinary (for Wilder) adaptation of a play with a great performance by Lemmon as a French cop who falls for hooker Shirley MacLaine. [18 Jul 2003, p.11E]
    • Charlotte Observer
  22. Kingdom of Heaven
    Bloom finally comes into his own as a man here, somberly thoughtful and melancholic. The elfin archer of "The Lord of the Rings" and the trivial boy-toy of "Troy" have been forgotten.
  23. Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic
    The hot comic du jour wants to startle us but is merely startlingly dull.
  24. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    Except for the irritating Rockwell, the cast suits the characters.
  25. The Other Son
    The movie doesn't need to preach a "we're all equal" message. When we watch the boys bond with their new kin over food or music, then see the lines of Palestinians plodding through armed checkpoints to reach jobs or visit Israeli friends, we get the point.
  26. Dear Frankie
    The movie has been shot with love and wisdom, and its implausible premise doesn't get in the way of a sweetness and honesty too rarely seen.
  27. Vitus
    When the movie becomes pure fantasy, it's impossible to swallow. (No landlord rents an apartment to a 12-year-old with no adult in sight.)
  28. How She Move
    Choreographer Hi Hat and director Ian Iqbal Rashid kick the film into high gear every so often with dance sequences, climaxing with a dance-off in Detroit that seems too short.
  29. Anna Karenina
    The arc of the 800-page novel, crammed into 130 minutes, becomes a line as flat as the heart monitor of a dead patient. A story that ought to possess the mad grandeur of an opera acquires the tedious regularity of soap opera.
  30. Les Miserables
    Where the musical falls short is – well, music. Hooper's quest for realism leads singers to sob, choke off sentences or drop into inaudible whispers during grand melodies. A musical ought to convey emotions too large for speech: sorrow, joy, love that can't be expressed in ordinary ways. Turning songs into vocalized dramatic monologues misses the point.
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