Charlotte Observer's Scores

  • Movies
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 0.1 points higher 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:
1652 movie reviews
  1. Maybe this is a case of too many cooks spoiling a simple broth: The movie had four producers, five executive producers, three writers (credited ones, anyhow) and three editors.
  2. Examines Muslim family's religious warfare.
  3. Picks up steam from the ominous opening scene and ends as a quietly suspenseful thriller.
  4. A documentary that's as chaotic, rude and funny as the band could be.
  5. The setup doesn't make sense from the get-go.
  6. If you get past the preposterous hypothesis at the start of Return to Me, you'll find a passably pleasant, utterly bland romantic comedy without a surprise to its 110 minutes.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Heavy on cheap, dirty humor (Gordie and Sean clean septic tanks for a living, a fact that is milked frequently for laughs), but it's never substantial enough to truly offend or delight.
  7. A loosely woven crazy quilt of other, better movies.
  8. (Cusack) has never been more effective onscreen.
  9. Aspires to rise above the conventional drugs-and-action genre and succeeds about half the time.
  10. Trying to make sense of this shaggy dog story is like climbing a mountain with glass-smooth sides and quarter-inch toeholds.
  11. A taut, consistently surprising political thriller with a sting in its tail.
    • Charlotte Observer
  12. [Jarmusch's] most accessible film after "Night on Earth," yet it's still elliptical and enigmatic.
  13. Characters behave arbitrarily and incredibly, and a clumsy resolution brings the film to a thudding halt.
  14. Except for moments of labored symbolism and a too cozy ending, the movie stays sharply focused on its well-chosen targets.
  15. Affleck simply wasn't meant to play action heroes or tough guys. He's about as tough as tapioca pudding.
  16. Hank Greenberg was to Jews what Jackie Robinson was to African Americans: a great athlete, handsome and hard-working, who took the first line of abuse from bigots and proved that his people belonged at the highest level of professional sports.
  17. A sometimes clever, sometimes clumsy movie.
  18. Writer-director Ben Younger has sketched the foreground of this picture but never gets around to filling in the details.
  19. Offers an amusing break to the undemanding.
  20. DiCaprio is up to all but the heaviest emotional lifting; when he enters a maniacal phase, you wish for Martin Sheen, who did the "back to the jungle" thing better in "Apocalypse Now."
  21. Cowardice and cliché - not a tasty combination.
  22. Easy to like.
  23. It's gently funny, modestly scary in spots, full of valuable but low-key observations about life.
  24. It took four years to come up with this? Someone needed that long to assemble this patchy, recycled collection of gags about stinky butts, superfreaks, finger-wide blunts and racial cliches?
  25. State-of-the-art.
  26. The rest of this well-intentioned picture never reaches (Washington's) level of subtlety and intensity.
  27. A punch-drunk lightweight. Inside the ring, it lands some forceful punches. Outside the ring, it stumbles around, swinging wildly at nothing, until it collapses.
  28. The good-hearted Galaxy Quest delivers fun and confusion in equal measure, as it gently tweaks the fanaticism of "Star Trek"/"Star Wars" fans while validating it at the same time.
  29. It's ploddingly directed, indifferently acted and insufficiently frightening.

Top Trailers