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 5.7 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. The Straight Story
    Indeed heartwarming, though not simplemindedly so.
  2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
    Spielberg can never top this. Period.
    • Dallas Observer
  3. Traffic
    It is a remarkable achievement in filmmaking, a beautiful and brutal work.
  4. Talk to Her
    No one can blend melodrama and heightened emotion with laugh-out-loud wackiness the way Almodóvar does.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Boys Don't Cry
    That's possibly Peirce's best trick of all, telling a true story so well that you can't remember how it ends. And when you remember, you hope that you were wrong.
  6. Sweet Sixteen
    There are no hearts and flowers in Loach's hard-edged world, no kindly interventions, no signs from heaven. Instead, he gives us the unvarnished facts about working-class exploitation and the failure of ambition in low places.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Before Night Falls
    Arenas' story is a downer that doesn't produce despair. That's because of the exceptional bravery of Arenas himself, and the understanding that both Schnabel and his extraordinary leading man, Javier Bardem, have of him, his world, and his time.
  8. You Can Count on Me
    In this modest but brilliant little movie, we find ourselves immersed in life itself.
  9. The Pianist
    There have been other films dealing with the Jewish ghettos during the Nazi occupation of Poland -- some very good -- but The Pianist, the latest feature from Roman Polanski, may be the best.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sling Blade
    Sling Blade is perhaps the year's most impressive debut because it is an uncompromisingly told tale with a minimum of frills.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
    This subtly entrancing paean to seasons earthly and emotional is to the developing male psyche what "Whale Rider" is to the female, and deserves equal acclaim.
  12. Festival Express
    A piece of rock-and-roll history--but it isn't perfect.
  13. The Insider
    The final product is great populist entertainment and may even leave audiences with a feeling of comfort, however fleeting, in the knowledge that corrupt corporations don't always win
  14. About Schmidt
    What makes About Schmidt so extraordinary is how ordinary its tale is; it's a gray picture about gray people looking for some kind of meaning in their gray lives.
  15. Hero
    Hero keeps its characters stiffly archetypal, like chess pieces sent whizzing through outrageous maneuvers. Unfortunately, this apparent choice of spectacle over intimacy put me at a slight remove.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Iron Giant
    An unpretentious, funky, fast-moving work every bit as enchanting as the book.
  17. American Movie
    Touching, frequently hilarious.
  18. American Beauty
    It gracefully defies the usual categories, gets under your skin in ways you cannot anticipate, then works its way straight toward the heart. It's far and away the bravest and best movie of the year.
  19. Far From Heaven
    When all is said and done, Far from Heaven proves an easier film to appreciate than to emotionally embrace. It fails the test of being, in the descriptive phrase of Pauline Kael, "compulsively watchable."
  20. Blood Simple
    Revelatory and disappointing.
  21. The Terminator
    The movie's scares are intense, but the notion that the Terminator would move on to politics is even more frightening.
    • Dallas Observer
  22. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    The film, from its deadpan start to its languorous finish, provides the most joyous moviegoing experience in years.
  23. The Quiet American
    Unsettling, morally complex and timely view of American power abroad. Many will find it courageous and some, no doubt, will absolutely revile it, but no one is likely to look away from the screen.
  24. Mystic River
    The performances are uniformly remarkable.
  25. Glengarry Glen Ross
    The directing's a bit obtrusive, but the script and the acting gets to the heart of Mamet's glorious obsession with macho B.S.
    • Dallas Observer
  26. Adaptation.
    The most overrated movie of the year (of all time?) by people who should know better.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Trainspotting
    Creates a sense of understanding that crystallizes the essence of the drug subculture with startling clarity.
  28. Bus 174
    This is provocative stuff--and not just for its searing indictment of Brazilian society.
  29. Osama
    For the most part the film is a miracle of accomplishment, elegant and bold and artful in a world devoid of resources.
  30. Raising Victor Vargas
    While Sollett provided cast members with a detailed breakdown of the story--a kind of narrative guide--he wanted them to improvise their own dialogue based on how they would react to a similar situation in their own lives....The result is quite extraordinary.
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