Empire's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 6,818 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Oppenheimer
Lowest review score: 20 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Score distribution:
6818 movie reviews
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A unexpected pleasure to watch, disturbing for new parents, slightly silly but ever so enjoyable.
  1. This doesn't have the high style that made Taxi Driver or American Gigolo instant cultural icons - although Schrader shows more than a few traces of Scorsese as his camera creeps- perhaps because it's concerned with a chilly 90s that looks back with a sort of nostalgia on the cocaine-fuelled craziness of earlier years. But it does develop powerfully the themes of Schrader's earlier work and will not disappoint his fans.
  2. It's solid Miyazaki, although he has reached greater heights both before and since.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cronenberg's attempt to meld his style with an established writer didnít exactly pan out.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Graced with fine performances and commendably biting off more than it can ever hope to chew, The Prince Of Tides is a rare slice of romantic moviemaking for all those grown-ups feeling ignored since Kramer Vs. Kramer last rattled their value systems. Best to take along your mother, a large box of hankies, and a hefty dose of salt.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    We get a mother-daughter murder melodrama even more farfetched than the Joan Crawford classic, Mildred Pierce, on which this would appear to be loosely based.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The film does work, but not quite as well as the Hepburn-Tracy classic that it seeks to replace. Mildly amusing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    JFK
    Truth or not, this is an exceptional piece of cinema, deeply provoking and audacious.
  3. If you can overlook the smarm and the historical airbrushing there's much to enjoy here.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This is a movie for the boys who like watching men being real men - cursing, shooting and fighting - and anyone who likes this kind of wham-bam entertainment will certainly get more than their money's worth.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Jarmusch leaves us with a highly entertaining and thoroughly oddball collage celebrating the typically inconsequential nature of most daily encounters.
  4. How did such a dream project on paper turn out so wrong. It should remain one of the great mysteries of cinema. The less said about this one, the better. For Spielberg completists only.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Despite being an entirely formulaic heartstring-tugger with some finger-gag­ging moments, the performances are appealing, particularly the endearing Chlumsky.
  5. Although not all the loose ends are tied up in the telling of this bizarre and absorbing tale of love, grief and goose-bumps, one scarcely minds at all, since the fourth-dimensional doings on offer, (underlined with a marvellously moody, haunting score by Zbigniew Preisner) are like an erotic trip into The Twilight Zone.
  6. With its strong characters and lively storytelling, animated or not, this deserves its place alongside the cinema greats.
  7. Deliciously sick and delightfully cast.
  8. No plot, no real story, no point really.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This movie-movie gem scores on levels few horror films ever have. Not just a disturbing ride but also a hard-hitting political statement.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Leigh has the skill to inspire with the everyday.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    With a more accomplished script and an actor of rather more technical prowess than Reeves (nabbing the Prince Hal role), this may just have worked. Here, it is just squirmingly embarrassing stuff.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Former teen idol and sometime rap artist Vanilla Ice made his movie debut in this lightweight tale of young love that serves best as a cinematic interpretation of the photo romances much revered by pre-pubescent pinup magazines.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Frankie & Johnny is a salutary reminder of what happens when two Hollywood stars, no matter what firmament they may inhabit, are lumped together without any real storyline, subtlety or sex.
  9. As a psychological drama, it's a sophisticated, gripping piece that unusually leaves you wanting to go on past its unsettling conclusion.
  10. Dynamite action. This is a good bet for a night with the lads. And weedy girlies can at least wake up every ten minutes when Denz takes his top off.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Fans of the Say Anything/ Running On Empty school of drama could do a lot worse that give this one a go.
  11. Although adequately put together, this is entirely unnecessary as a movie, with nothing to add to its limited interest sub-genre, no surprises at all in its by-the-numbers script, and no credit at all to the various servicable members of the cast.
  12. A reminder of the astonishingly kinetic talent that John Woo maybe still possesses, this at times is on the verge of melodrama, but rescues itself from the brink with some fine gunplay.
  13. While [Penn] has all the heavyweight America-gone-sour themes and confused characters found in roadside movies like Five Easy Pieces, Electra Glide In Blue or Thieves Like Us, he misses the eccentric and exciting spikiness that made them more than just gloomfests.
  14. You know Freddy may or may not be finally dead, but he's looking pretty damn tired.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is an infectious musical story of rise-and-fall.
  15. No award winner, but at least it delivers the rubbishy goods.
  16. The ambitious, initially intriguing Dead Again fails so spectacularly it may well become the fetish of a camp cult.
  17. For a while, its crassness is amusing, but as the plot sets in, it gradually turns into a stultifying bore.
  18. The allusions and illusions are just a treat until about two-thirds of the way in, when a genuinely shocking development takes the film off into psycho-horror that is almost as baffling as it is unsatisfying.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Van Damme's doubling up merely tends to make this movie, co-written and co-produced by the self-styled Muscles From Brussels, twice as avoidable as it would otherwise be.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    While this combination of Michael J. Fox, light comedy and uncomplicated values must’ve looked fine on paper, on screen it doesn'’t quite make the grade.
  19. Life stinks, Brooks' character stinks and the film, after all the Brooks magic in the past, stinks.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One of the most worthwhile sequels of recent years, maybe funnier than the original as it intelligently expands the potential for the surreal and it ties up all the loose ends managing, quite remarkably, to give pointlessness a purpose.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The film not only lives up to its "Increase The Peace" subtitle but by refusing to overtly moralise puts its concerns across with astonishing impact.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Regarding Henry is ultimately just about bearable thanks to Ford's sheer presence and the occasional reminder, the first 20 minutes in particular, of what might and should have been.
  20. This unconventional film will offend anyone looking for a plot, but Linklater's smart observations speak volumes.
  21. Because it is a sequel, it's less satisfying than the more idea-driven original, but this is still top-flight kick-ass entertainment
  22. Take an uncharismatic leading man (Bill Campbell), an obviously pre-Oscar Jennifer Connelly, a scene-chewing Timothy Dalton and action that doesn't start until halfway through the film and what you have is one of 1991's more disappointing summer flicks.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    With so much money and talent at work here, though, this latest incarnation of the legend is considerably smaller than the sum of its parts.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Witty one-liners one-liners crackle and cowboy cliches are given a good kicking as the three stars give excellent accounts of themselves.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Amusing fluff.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Not quite the classic that Spike Lee had been threatening to make for so long, but, after a return to form after Mo' Better Blues which proved a huge disappointment.
  23. The trouble with spoofing soap opera is that its dramatically deranged conventions - dead characters resurrected, hitherto unknown progeny claiming birthrights and bedrooms, characters metamorphosed into new actors - are already so absurd they are hard to send up any further.
    • 17 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What director Lehmann has made is essentially a multi-million dollar cult movie with great effects, a witty script and some good performances, but although some of the eccentric (and occasionally slapstick) humour may not appeal to a mass audience, it is certainly one of the more original blockbusters coming out this summer.
  24. A divisive film - too overwrought for some, perfectly emotionally pitched for others - how much it will appeal will depend on how romantically inclined the viewer is feeling.
  25. There is scarcely a laugh to be had unless you are six years old or immoderately fond of such wheezes as depositing dog poop on a white carpet.
  26. By the time everyone's done their darnedest to undermine this romance and the tirelessly selfless St. Danny has begun to contemplate cutting the apron strings, they've all nearly worn out their welcome. It's simple, sweet and uninspired.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    What makes the film work is the double act between the two actors, and some great one-liners that pepper the script and cover up the fact there isn’t a great deal of originality in the plot.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Despite the presence of four credited screenwriters, the plot is a rehash of cliches and tired jokes.
  27. It's all totally farfetched and skates imperturbably over several questions of logic that will spring unbidden to the most accepting mind. But it's entertaining, inconsequential fun.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Certainly crude and unrefined are among the adjectives that apply to this sex farce, along with derivative and shallow. Most important - and perhaps, sad -of all, is unfunny.
  28. The execution could be improved, but the sheer zip of the real life story just about carries this wartime tale along.
  29. What's missing here though is the novel's trick of being a wonderfully contrived mystery on the surface while underneath lurks an angry and upsetting analysis of class injustice in the USA.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    After the global success of Ghost, Demi Moore consolidates here with a diametrically-opposed follow-up, not only proving her willingness to eschew the many Ghost-alikes that have inevitably come her way, but also allowing her to show genuine versatility in the thespian-prowess department.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    This looks lustrous (thanks to cinematographer David Watkin) but it's bankrupt in terms of ideas and execution and both leads seem uninspired.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    The three stories do not make a whole in this disappointing arthouse film.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The movie is lavishly designed and assembled. However, the sometimes muddled, sometimes boring, and definitely overlong screenplay, lacking subtlety and definition, disappoints the expectations of enjoyment that are set up in the first 15 minutes.
  30. Slow and foreboding with a memorably creepy Christopher Walken. If you're looking for fun, this ain't it.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This lacks the darkness and subtlety that makes the first film so good, and so adult, but its simplified plot and gags will appeal to the under tens.
  31. Class Action, which becomes unbearable whenever the lead characters talk about their relationship, has precisely two and a half things going for it, the half being Mastrantonio's Italian grin.
  32. The pace drags terribly, however, and the period detail is distractingly off in small ways that become annoying. Thankfully, though, things perk up with a bravura finale, when Merrill finally takes the witness stand before the dreaded inquisitors.
  33. Spader and Cusack go through the motions as political sparring partners in this coming of age drama.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One of the most cinematic movies to come along in a while, with sparse dialogue, top-notch action and plenty of visual razzamatazz.
  34. Val Kilmer is extraordinary as Morrison, holding the centre with a demonic charisma, while Stone recreates the late '60s milieu with vibrant versimilitude.
    • 13 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Unfortunately this isn't even half as fun as the shortest bumper-car ride, with the cast lost in a sea of unfunny situations and badly executed antique jokes on loan from The Munsters all obviously puzzled about why they are actually there.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Interesting father-and-son dynamic, though not particularly memorable in the long-term.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Dump thriller which trivialises the subject matter.
  35. A totally unneeded sequel which does nothing whatsoever for the legacy of the original tale.
  36. It's in the animal capers that Disney's skill really comes into play, as stunning wildlife photography combines with an Incredible Journey-type treat-animals-as-furry-people attitude to the narrative, transforming an average adventure film into a humorous, dangerous and immensely watchable movie.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Better than Ghost but not as good as When Harry Met Sally, here's a dating movie where the other woman really should have got her man.
  37. While not wishing to be facetious about women and children held against their will in any country, this tearjerker is strictly TV movie for a wet Wednesday stuff.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This is a hoot, the kind of hammy horror romp you wouldn't kick out of the video on a wet Wednesday night.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A dreadful disappointment.
  38. As a one-off this could have inoffensively scraped by on thin charm alone. But don't forget kids, it gave rise to such monstrosities as Last Action Hero, Junior and Jingle all the Way…
  39. Like Driving Miss Daisy this deals with a white employer and a black servant in the times of revolution, not only that but in both films it's a jaded view with the servant being loyal and not a 'friend'. Besides that small problem, it's a moving film with a steady performance from Spacek, but by the end it has definitely become Goldberg's film.
  40. A spectacular misfire from a director who should have known better.
  41. Despite some smart, brittle dialogue and the classy cast, this seldom rises above the routine and is basically a bittired and terribly 60's.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Plucks at the heart-strings in a far too push-button way.
  42. All three leads are genuinely appealing here, with Ryder once again acting her bobby sox off and giving yet further reminder of just how sorely she was missed in Godfather III.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An ambitious and quite beautifully conceived fairy tale for the 90s.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The simmering implication of incestuous emotions between Lili and Roy, leading to the shocking denouement, is badly underdeveloped and mishandled, leaving a lingering sense of anti-climax.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    An epic film brimming over with life, romance, humour, comedy and the sheer panache of Depardieu's Cyrano.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There are a few holes in the plot, mainly towards the end, but from start to harrowing finish, it is blissfully apparent that Rob Reiner can indeed turn his hand to virtually anything.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's hard to imagine that even a documentary on the apparently harmonious marriage of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward -a union established in 1958 and still going strong - could be duller than this stodgy addition to the Merchant-Ivory menu of good taste.
  43. More story-led than the original with a high enough body count to make it a satisfying action movie.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This sequel is still considerably funnier than the original, with the male leads excelling in their roles.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Bemused out of the ring and brutal in it, Rocky has always been an uncomfortable hero, and it says something for Stallone's skill as a writer that he's been able to keep him going this long. Given the restrictions of the formula, Rocky V is a fitting — even graceful — way to finally hang up the gloves.
  44. So it may not be Citizen Kane, but it is a hilarious comedy (although not a very believable one — there can be no eight-year-olds this ingenious) that kids will love and adults won’t mind sitting through either.
  45. A worthy diversion for the very young, but against their more venerable stablemates - notably DuckTales - The Rescuers's identification/memorableness factor remains second division.
  46. Of sentiment there is too much and the final sequence when the white men inevitably rear their heads and raise their rifles so fraught with tears and peril as to be exhaustingly melodramatic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unable to strike enough fear in an audience, this brave foray nevertheless takes a hatchet to the notion that it had gone soft.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    A waste of space.
  47. Despite all the confusion, it's a simple case of the script being too ambitious. It may emulate a man experiencing flashbacks, but it doesn't help the audience.
  48. Beautifully presented but over-long and best appreciated if you already have an idea of van Gogh's life and work.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    All told, a fairly shameful enterprise, displaying a breathtaking paucity of imagination.

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