Dallas Observer's Scores

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For 1,518 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 49% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 59
Highest review score: 100 Final Destination 3
Lowest review score: 0 How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 678 out of 1518
  2. Mixed: 604 out of 1518
  3. Negative: 236 out of 1518
1518 movie reviews
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  1. Twelve and Holding
    The trouble with 12 and Holding, which pits four young protagonists in intertwining battles for spiritual (and, well, literal) survival, is that it's just too much.
  2. Unknown White Male
    A fascinating documentary by Bruce's longtime friend Rupert Murray, uses footage taken by both Bruce and Murray to document Bruce's harrowing, enlightening and occasionally hilarious experience. It's a wild ride.
  3. Find Me Guilty
    The characters may be based on real people, with much of the dialogue culled directly from court transcripts, but Find Me Guilty plays the whole thing as comedy, and as everyone knows, putting a self-serious egomaniacal movie star in a bad hairpiece is comedy gold.
  4. Walk on Water
    Explores a wealth of issues and conflicting ideologies.
  5. Sleepy Hollow
    Hasty pacing makes for a rich and exciting movie, but not an especially spooky or spellbinding one.
  6. Grazia's Island
    A small but grand expression of the beauty of the feminine, which brings everyone together with revised and deepened appreciation.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Oliver Twist
    A disappointingly flat, disjointed affair.
  8. L'Auberge Espagnole
    Writer-director-actor Cedric Klapisch simultaneously shows great moviemaking flair and reveals a very peculiar worldview.
  9. Down in the Valley
    A psychotic we can't help falling for, Edward Norton's beautifully drawn and richly nuanced dreamer could, in time, prove to be one of the most memorable movie characters of recent years.
  10. Dr T and the Women
    Altman gladly admits there's not much of a story here; his movies are driven by characters.
  11. Napoleon Dynamite
    It's charming. It's hilarious. It is perhaps the most beautifully crafted, lovingly rendered portrait of extreme geekitude ever to grace the screen. It's Napoleon Dynamite.
  12. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    The filmmakers' investment in their weird visions is wildly unorthodox, but the payoff is oddly satisfying.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Prince of Egypt
    The producers of this glorified latter-day frieze have gone nuts for computer-generated extras without clinching the essentials of character and catharsis.
  14. The Beautiful Country
    Generous in spirit and fearlessly observant, this tale of an outcast Vietnamese man's journey to freedom deserves a place of honor among the great films portraying emigrant tenacity.
  15. Joe the King
    Whatever else is weak or indulgent in this fledgling effort -- self-consciousness and a certain grim solemnity come to mind -- it has the jolt of truth about it, like a lot of thinly veiled fiction.
  16. Herod's Law
    Smart, sassy and much more fun than most political diatribes.
  17. Cop Land
    Mangold never ventures beyond the obvious. We're set up with righteous anger against the liberal establishment and then fobbed off with goombah melodramatics. The film should be called Cop Out.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Notorious Bettie Page
    Neither a mock-heroic cockeyed success story like "Ed Wood" nor a "Walk the Line"-style hagiography, Mary Harron's facile but hugely entertaining black-and-white biopic seems most interested in its subject--a studious southern girl who became the world's most celebrated fetish pinup--as an object.
  19. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    This latest adventure proves to be a suitably sweet addition to Pooh's cinematic canon.
  20. Northfork
    Northfork may be doomed, but the Polish brothers and cinematographer M. David Mullen (who worked with the brothers on their previous features, "Twin Falls, Idaho" and "Jackpot") make the place feel like heaven on earth.
  21. Paper Clips
    Emotionally powerful.
  22. Eight Below
    Eight Below splits into two movies--the compelling tale of the dogs' struggle to pull together and survive and the much less interesting one about Jerry Shepard's emotional trauma and his search for redemption.
  23. Mondays in the Sun
    Neorealism it ain't, but if you have a sufficiently long attention span, there are moments of laugh-out-loud absurdity that are worth the price of admission.
  24. The Sixth Sense
    The flashy sensationalism of The Sixth Sense -- maybe the best thing about it -- is at war with its desire for contemplation.
  25. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
    Funnier when high -- what isn't? -- Harold and Kumar may also serve as the first infomercial for weed and burgers.
  26. Identity
    Identity is an outright blast, so fun it's--pardon--scary.
  27. American Psycho
    An ethereal, creepy, almost breathtaking meditation on the life of a mind snapped in two.
  28. Intermission
    Stupid camera shenanigans aside, theater veteran Crowley deftly directs his large, stellar cast, and playwright-cum-screenwriter Mark O'Rowe serves up a wild knot of character arcs pitched somewhere among the neighborhoods of Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Danny Boyle.
  29. Team America: World Police
    Bottom line: It's hilarious, vicious, offensive, thoroughly profane and a joy to watch, just like you'd expect. Be sure to sit through the end credits for a bonus song from Kim Jong-il to Alec Baldwin.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Bound
    The writing-directing team of brothers Larry and Andi Wachowski has chosen as its filmmaking debut a tightly constructed, stylishly (but rarely self-consciously) executed, gripping little noir parable that couldn't be more firmly grounded in American movie tradition if the filmmakers created a wacky romantic farce about mismatched paramours.
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