Charlotte Observer's Scores

  • Movies
Select another publication »
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 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
view
per page
  1. Fat Girl
    Characters in Breillat's movies often make sex their god, lose faith in it, then find their lives hollow and grim. Bergman wouldn't have been so concerned with bodily woes, but he'd have understood.
  2. Grindhouse
    Cool. Stupid. Juiced-up. Feeble. Stripped-down. Self-indulgent. Clever. Sophomoric.
  3. Chi-Raq
    Chi-Raq is indeed interesting, challenging, provocative and consistently entertaining in its outrageous depiction of life in modern Chicago. And nobody in mainstream filmmaking today except Spike Lee could or would have done it.
  4. The House I Live In
    I've heard that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. By that standard, the U.S. "War on Drugs" seems crazy indeed in The House I Live In.
  5. Shanghai Noon
    This is one of the few recent westerns that requires you to keep your eyes open and memory engaged.
  6. Get Low
    Its main pleasure lies in watching Bush thaw under gentle emotional heat applied by the few people who haven't given up on him.
  7. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
    Writer Guillermo Arriaga earns most of the blame. He played similar games with narrative in the vastly better "Amores Perros" and "21 Grams," jumping back and forth in time to show relationships among subplots and characters. But "Burials" barely has one plot.
  8. The Edge of Seventeen
    I can’t think of a single situation where Kelly Fremon Craig, who makes her feature debut as a writer-director, takes us to a place we haven’t often been. Yet she lays out her heroine’s dilemmas with good humor and understanding.
  9. Water
    In an elemental way, though, the film always works. The acting can be basic, a cross between Bollywood directness and Western nuance, but it has weight.
  10. I Stand Alone
    This pretentious mediocrity from writer-director Gaspar Noe is "Taxi Driver" without depth or any humanizing of the main character. [25 Oct 1998, p.4F]
    • Charlotte Observer
  11. Career Girls
    Career Girls is a chamber piece: intimate and direct, two voices performing monologues and duets of irony, despair and hope. [29 Aug 1997, p.11E]
    • Charlotte Observer
  12. Kandahar
    Kandahar found itself in real-life controversy last December, when one of its actors was accused of murder.
  13. Adventureland
    Mottola also wrote the screenplay, which is most fresh and honest when dealing with supporting characters.
  14. Inside Man
    Go with the flow, and it remains a taut and well-engineered thriller. Poke at plot incongruities, as I was doing literally on the way to the parking lot, and it starts to unravel.
  15. Chico & Rita
    Every decade or so, someone proves animation can tell a serious adult story.
  16. Guardians of the Galaxy
    The film’s fast, amusing, good-looking and not overlong, which is all sensible non-geeks ask of such movies.
  17. In America
    The script expertly captures kids' behavior.
  18. 3:10 to Yuma
    Mangold has been smart or fortunate in casting, and personalities sustain interest even when the narrative flags.
  19. A Monster Calls
    Bayona understands the forces that bind families together and the ones that tear individuals apart. His real domain is childhood itself, and few storytellers summon its fears and fury so faithfully.
  20. Dreamgirls
    The film soars in the right places, especially when powerful newcomer Jennifer Hudson sings, and the charismatic supporting cast keeps it chugging forward.
  21. Chuck & Buck
    Chuck and Buck: A fungus among us.
    • Charlotte Observer
  22. Shine a Light
    Outdated before it opened today.
  23. Brothers
    The two male leads, bulwarks of the Danish film industry for more than a decade, play off each other like the veterans they are.
  24. The Last Station
    The movie seemed a disappointment at first, until I decided I was missing the point: It’s actually a drama about the way people treat a celebrity – with fear or reverence, as a source of income or reflected glory– and the way their own personalities change around him, while his stays the same. In that way, the film’s a small triumph.
  25. The Secret Lives of Dentists
    A rarely honest, funny movie.
  26. The Revenant
    However good DiCaprio may be, everything else feels overblown.
  27. Standing in the Shadows of Motown
    Impassioned concert sequences with Ben Harper, Chaka Khan, Gerald Levert and especially Joan Osborne prove the Brothers' balanced approach still works on Motown chestnuts.
  28. 10 Cloverfield Lane
    It’s like an amusement park ride that drags inexplicably for the last hundred feet – but until then, it’s a joltingly fine journey.
  29. Rabbit Hole
    Mitchell keeps the direction simple and well-behaved, usually just pointing the camera at the speaker, but you can see why this topic appealed to him.
  30. American Gangster
    Steven Zaillian never seems completely at home with these characters, not because he's white but because he's a cerebral screenwriter frustrated with a story that gives him little that's meaningful to say. Like Washington and Crowe, he's a chef functioning here as a short-order cook: The meal's perfectly edible but falls short of delicious.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »