NPR's Scores
- Movies
- Games
For 1,073 reviews, this publication has graded:
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60% higher than the average critic
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3% same as the average critic
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37% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.2 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 67
| Highest review score: | Amour | |
|---|---|---|
| Lowest review score: | This Means War |
Score distribution:
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Positive: 694 out of 1073
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Mixed: 317 out of 1073
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Negative: 62 out of 1073
1073
movie
reviews
- By Date
- By Critic Score
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Reviewed by
Mark Jenkins
The movie's first word is oishi, Japanese for "delicious," and what follows is a treat for sushi veterans. First-timers, however, may wish for a little more context.- NPR
- Posted Mar 9, 2012
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Ian Buckwalter
Effective scares, respectful nods to its inspiration and a few new twists make the question of whether this new Evil Dead succeeds in matching its inspiration superfluous. This is one remake that succeeds on its own blood-soaked terms.- NPR
- Posted Apr 4, 2013
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If it aims to be an inside story of life in Georgia, a kind of people's history of Georgian youth, this documentary sometimes feels like scattershot vox-pop journalism. Its individual threads resonate strongly, but the larger pattern never comes together; the social tapestry meant to be on display seems, to the end, to have holes in it.- NPR
- Posted Aug 9, 2013
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Reviewed by
Mark Jenkins
Quietly, the film makes the case that "enhanced interrogation techniques" were no enhancement. Interviewing jihadis "by the book," one interrogator testifies, yielded better information than violence and deprivation.- NPR
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Jeannette Catsoulis
A highly respectable piece of genre entertainment, one with a little more class than most.- NPR
- Posted Feb 18, 2011
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Bob Mondello
Claude Miller's ravishingly shot drama A Secret gives up its titular mystery early, so it may seem odd to speak of the suspense it generates.- NPR
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Mark Jenkins
Canner's eye-opening, entertaining account of the search for the little pill that supplies the Big O is looney-tunes enough without the cartoon asides.- NPR
- Posted Feb 15, 2011
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Mark Jenkins
Strange and uncompromisingly personal. It's also vivid and unforgettable.- NPR
- Posted Jan 18, 2013
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Mark Jenkins
Back in Canada, Dallaire tells a psychiatrist that he remembers Rwanda in flashbacks that are "not like memories at all." Shake Hands with the Devil captures something of that sensation; it's a depiction of events that are too painful to remember, too essential to forget.- NPR
- Posted Oct 28, 2010
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Jeannette Catsoulis
A creaky, sometimes forced drama that burrows under your skin if you let it, Welcome to the Rileys lurches along like Lois' car as she tries to exit her garage for the first time in years.- NPR
- Posted Oct 28, 2010
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Mark Jenkins
The semi-autobiographical, microbudgeted Breaking Upwards is indeed precious. But it's also smart, witty and less self-absorbed than you might reasonably expect.- NPR
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Mark Jenkins
Before settling into such comfortable territory, however, the movie is propulsive and involving. If The Company You Keep is far from radical, it's pretty audacious by the standards of counterrevolutionary Hollywood.- NPR
- Posted Apr 4, 2013
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Mark Jenkins
Kore-eda is himself a father now, which may explain why his work has gotten sunnier.- NPR
- Posted Jan 16, 2014
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Ian Buckwalter
He's hardly a cuddly figure, but neither does he come across as an intimidating presence. After all, it's hard to think of anyone in cantankerous terms after they've just lovingly described the history of the beloved old hand-knitted stuffed animal that is their oldest possession.- NPR
- Posted Oct 28, 2010
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Ella Taylor
Inescapable is Nadda's first foray into thriller territory, and her inexperience shows in awkwardly mounted fight scenes and clumsy car chases, not to mention an almost fatally explanatory script.- NPR
- Posted Feb 22, 2013
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Reviewed by
Bob Mondello
The filmmakers tried to get him to tell his side of the story, but he's unwilling to appear on camera. Which leaves them in documentary limbo, since they've gone to great lengths to raise questions in the audience's mind about the case. The answers they've found are questions, their conclusion, inconclusive.- NPR
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Bob Mondello
This is a world of dinner jackets and evening gowns, casual jaunts to Venice and Morocco; it's about elegance, style, money and perhaps too heady a mix of drink, religion and intrigue.- NPR
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Mark Jenkins
Overly long and occasionally clumsy, Air Doll can't be counted among Kore-eda's best. But much of it is lovely and expressive, and it's one of those films that can haunt viewers long after they've left the theater.- NPR
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Scott Tobias
It would be charitable to say Lost In Rio picks up right where "Cairo, Nest Of Spies" left off; in reality all it does is rinse and repeat. Hazanavicius does, however, get the most out of the new backdrop.- NPR
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Ian Buckwalter
It's also a testament to the strength of Claude-Michel Schonberg's music that everything after the show-stopping lament of Fantine's "I Dreamed a Dream" doesn't come across as so much padding.- NPR
- Posted Dec 27, 2012
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Mark Jenkins
The Pirogue spends only about an hour on open water, but that's enough to convey the risks that make the trip foolish, and the desperation that makes it inevitable.- NPR
- Posted Jan 24, 2013
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Jeannette Catsoulis
Don McKay is a curious hybrid of warring tones that occasionally make peace. When they do, it's quite magical.- NPR
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Jeannette Catsoulis
A tight, anxious little film that plays like a call to arms for senior citizens, Harry Brown could be "Gran Torino" reimagined as a subdued episode of "Prime Suspect."- NPR
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Bob Mondello
A fine family drama...Though the film is marked by overtones of "Beloved," the Jonathan Demme film of Toni Morrison's book, it's worth seeing on its own merits.- NPR
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Jeannette Catsoulis
Photographed with bare-bones simplicity by longtime Herzog collaborator Peter Zeitlinger, My Son presents yet another Herzogian hero who views insanity as the only logical response to an insane world.- NPR
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Bob Mondello
All of which makes the film Noah psychologically credible — his behavior is very much what you might expect of a man who has just condemned millions of screaming souls to watery graves. And it makes the film unpredictably suspenseful, which is dramatically the most welcome thing you could ask of a biblical epic.- NPR
- Posted Mar 28, 2014
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Mark Jenkins
Film Socialisme, his (Godard) latest intellectual assault, includes grating noise, scruffy camera-phone video and subtitles in fractured "Navajo English."- NPR
- Posted Jun 3, 2011
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Mark Jenkins
The story is carefully constructed, with moments that seem offhand initially, but are later revealed as crucial.- NPR
- Posted Oct 25, 2012
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Bob Mondello
Credit Kondracki and Kirwan with having endowed their picture with considerable, if blunt, force. Their filmmaking suits the real-life atrocities they're exposing.- NPR
- Posted Aug 5, 2011
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Ian Buckwalter
It's impossible for all of them to work, but the sheer volume of material, delivered by a cast dedicated to the absolute absurdity of the setups — Fantana's new career as a kitten photographer, Kind's side business running a fast-food chain with a specialty in fried bat, Burgundy nursing and training a live shark while blind and living in a lighthouse — is a kind of comedy carpet-bombing. All it takes is a certain percentage of hits for things to detonate.- NPR
- Posted Dec 18, 2013
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