NPR's Scores

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For 1,073 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 60% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 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: 100 Amour
Lowest review score: 0 This Means War
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 694 out of 1073
  2. Mixed: 317 out of 1073
  3. Negative: 62 out of 1073
1073 movie reviews
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  1. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
    The most terrifying thing about the movie, really, is that plural: Originsssss. So many mutants, so much time. Thank God we can leave that for another summer.
  2. The Good Heart
    The movie's two bright spots are Cox and Dano, who perform excellently despite the dull inevitabilities the script forces on them.
  3. Is Anybody There?
    All of this is at once predictable and implausible -- a two-hander of a story so overplotted and overpopulated that by the time it's winding up, the question isn't so much Is Anybody There? as it is, "Why on earth are so many bodies here?"
  4. The Call
    The shoddy attention to character, plausibility and detail is particularly surprising coming from Anderson, a director of smart indie thrillers like "The Machinist," "Session 9" and "Transsiberian." He's been a gifted filmmaker with a talent for creating chilling tension through meticulous control of just these elements.
  5. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
    There are some funny bits and characters around the edges of The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, but its core is empty of humor. In fact, this purported satire of Las Vegas magicians is a three-void circus: the script, the central character and the main performance.
  6. 30 Minutes or Less
    This slackers-go-gangsta comedy demonstrates that less than 90 minutes can be a very long time.
  7. 2012
    Say this for Roland Emmerich's latest movie: It IS a disaster.
  8. The Other End of the Line
    Now, it's not fair to ask that a romantic comedy be entirely realistic, but some level of plausibility would make the jokes go down easier, as would a touch of delicacy in the writing.
  9. I Give It a Year
    A raucously funny comic romance that's deaf and blind to the blithe spirit of romantic comedy.
  10. Closed Circuit
    Even as a fantasy about where a lack of transparency might go, left unchecked, it's storytelling informed by sloppy, absolutist thinking, and it lends one more uncritical voice to the many who seem unable to distinguish between kinds and degrees of evil.
  11. Eagle Eye
    Idiotic, if reasonably kinetic, Eagle Eye -- in which Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan spend the better part of two hours urgently answering phone calls and dodging hurtling machinery -- is every bit as over-edited as it is under-thunk.
  12. Knife Fight
    Playing like a mashup of tropes from far superior small- and large-screen entertainments (Scandal, House of Lies, Ides of March), this clunky feature from Bill Guttentag is satire at its most soft-bellied and toadying.
  13. Righteous Kill
    Slack, morally ambiguous, decidedly sub-Dexter serial-killer-cop story that's been cooked up for them (De Niro/Pacino).
  14. Cloud Atlas
    The directors can make it fluid, comprehensible and gorgeous to look at, but they can't keep what struck many readers as profound on the page, from seeming profoundly obvious on screen, especially when every point gets reiterated six times.
  15. Arthur Newman
    In the real world or a realer movie, the deceitful Arthur and the larcenous Mike would eventually get in big trouble. Yet this road movie is headed not toward serious consequences, but toward docile acceptance. In spirit, it turns out, Arthur Newman is a pretty much a Wallace Avery.
    • 22 Metascore
    • 45 Critic Score
    That's What She Said
    The road to hell is paved not just with good intentions, but with movies that attempt to capture the way women really talk.
  17. Parkland
    Awkward, incoherent and plodding.
  18. The Perfect Family
    Renton's approach is, to its benefit, fair and never strident. But it's also gentle and cautious, often to a fault.
  19. Divergent
    Director Neil Burger, whose last divergent character was the smart-drugged protagonist of Limitless, allocates more than enough of this overlong movie to details of life and society in future-Chicagoland. But he fails to make any aspect of the premise persuasive.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 45 Critic Score
    Stolen
    Stolen is less shameless than "Taken" - which featured evil Albanians and other assorted politically incorrect appurtenances - which also makes it less effective.
  21. Machete Kills
    At times, to be blunt, he (Trejo) comes off like a silent film star who's accidentally lumbered onto the set of a bloody, violent, thoroughly ridiculous talkie: reluctant to speak, sometimes a little confused by his surroundings.
  22. Jumping the Broom
    Director Salim Akil deserves credit for keeping the film from falling apart completely. He sets a the brisk pace, and uses the picturesque oceanside setting to give the movie an inviting gloss even as the overstuffed narrative threatens to push viewers away.
  23. Horrible Bosses
    When faced with the choice of which gag to go for, Horrible Bosses generally selects the raunchiest laugh possible, all other considerations be damned.
  24. The Hangover Part II
    It's not that Part II is bad, exactly. If "The Hangover" had never existed, this movie might feel funnier than it does, if not quite as freshly hilarious.
  25. Identity Thief
    Such a catalog of missed opportunities, it probably makes sense just to list them.
  26. Cowboys & Aliens
    Based on a graphic novel, Cowboys & Aliens never quite transcends the flat dimensions of its source material.
  27. Great Directors
    But more often, the film jumps around in dizzying disorganization, illustrating the fact that part of what a director provides to a film is not just vision and leadership, but also, as the word suggests, a narrative direction.
  28. Raze
    The entertainment value of the violence trumps most of the larger meaning, and the film exploits its characters just as they do their prisoners.
  29. In Secret
    If the movie fails to conjure soiled 19th-century Paris, that's not primarily because it was shot in Hungary and Serbia. More problematic are the English-language dialogue and actors who speak in a variety of accents and perform in a range of styles.
  30. The Lone Ranger
    There's a couple of hundred million dollars' worth of technical wizardry up there on screen, and nothing is at stake. Except, maybe, for some future amusement park ride, and the sequels, and toys and hats and masks. And piles and piles of silver, if enough people lay down their hard-earned dollars to hear Hammer's hearty "Hi-yo."
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