Dallas Observer's Scores

  • Movies
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 5.6 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:
1518 movie reviews
  1. Lee's pace is slow enough to try viewers' patience.
  2. Despite moments of gritty greatness that rival Scorsese's best, the movie is severely hampered by please-everyone syndrome, especially in the editing and choice of music.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    A work of hilarious, nearly Ed Wood-worthy ineptitude.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Snappily directed and edited, and there are moments of funny acting...but the script is all homiletic commonplaces, in quip form, and the wisdom is both stale and dubious.
  3. 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.
  4. Undeniably interesting, but not entirely successful.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    At times it's overly calculating, indulgent, amateurish, and, well, boring. Ultimately, a surprisingly personal memoir, and just maybe the best gift a father ever received from his daughter.
  5. Indeed heartwarming, though not simplemindedly so.
  6. Fight Club is to intelligent men what Catherine Breillat's "Romance" is to intelligent women -- an insult.
  7. You'll get that $8 nap you've been craving.
  8. More involving and intriguing than any by-the-numbers studio thriller. In large part, it holds our interest because of its stylistic boldness, not despite it.
  9. In Mary Katherine Gallagher's dogged perseverance, it's easy to find not only cheap laughs but real soul. In her way, she's a saint.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    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.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Screwball mistaken-identity crapfest...it's just utterly plain, a confection so bland you don't even care that it doesn't really make any sense at the end.
  10. Its loose-limbed sweetness and gruff irreverence are just right.
  11. Its greatest flaw is the casting of Miller ("Trainspotting," "Hackers"), who continues to have virtually no screen presence...For all that, Plunkett & Macleane is fun.
  12. Actually quite agreeable, but only because of a group of actors who are able to salvage the paper-thin material.
  13. A nifty little war movie that defies convenient categorization.
  14. A solo "Thelma and Louise" crossed with a gender-reversed "The Fugitive" with a dry twist of "Fletch."
  15. Comes straight out of the Forrest Gump School of Interpersonal Magic, and that's not necessarily a good thing.
  16. The supposedly funny quips and shrugs that fill Jakob the Liar are tepid at best and embarrassingly shticky at worst. Some are simply in bad taste.
  17. Rea hits just the right balance of sympathy and self-interest.
  18. Sugar Town's tunes are terrific, and the writing is sharp. But the typecasting is a work of genius.
  19. The fact that Romance was written and directed by a woman doesn't make the film any better; it simply makes it objectionable on other grounds.
  20. The game is cool to watch, and the love story is assertive enough to hook even the stodgiest ESPN man.
  21. While the idea may be good, its execution is awful.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Berri's film lacks both suspense and a heroine who actually breaks a sweat while hurling herself in the path of one of the 20th century's most merciless juggernauts.
  22. An adaptation that can rightfully be called brilliant.
  23. 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.
  24. Doesn't show us much of anything we haven't seen better already.

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