Philadelphia Inquirer's Scores

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For 4,176 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 70% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 27% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Hell or High Water
Lowest review score: 0 The Mangler
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,145 out of 4176
  2. Mixed: 682 out of 4176
  3. Negative: 349 out of 4176
4176 movie reviews
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  1. Reservation Road
    George, director of "Hotel Rwanda," is better at directing actors than visual storytelling. Every time the camera tilted to suggest a character's shaken world or distorted worldview I didn't feel heartache, I felt headache.
  2. Anesthesia
    The irony of Anesthesia is that, while it uses interconnectivity as a storytelling mechanism, the characters do not really connect.
  3. Fame
    So little time is devoted to developing characters that it's hard to share their hopes and fears.
  4. The Great Gatsby
    There are so many things wrong with Luhrmann's Great Gatsby - the filmmaker's attention-deficit-disorder approach, the anachronistic convergence of hip-hop and swing, the choppy elision of Fitzgerald's plot, the jarring collision of Jazz Age cool and Millennial cluelessness. But at the crux of things, the problem is that it's impossible to care.
  5. The Wild
    Kids under 6 will dig it - though the alligators and wildebeests might scare them. Certainly they scared this groan-up.
  6. Running with Scissors
    Alas, something happened on the book-to-screen operating table: Yes, Running With Scissors is rich, twisted, insane, mordant and ridiculous, but it is not funny. Not at all.
  7. The Time Traveler's Wife
    A syrupy and extraordinarily ridiculous adaptation.
  8. Love's Labour's Lost
    Has its moments of charm, but it's ultimately a fascinating failure that surely looked better on paper than it does on the screen.
  9. Turbo
    Let's face it: Kids aren't a very demanding audience. If there's color, movement, and a high quotient of silliness, they're happy.
  10. Sugar Hill
    Their apartments are chic, the architecture is impressive, the restaurants richly appointed. And yet, while the atmosphere and cinematography of director Leon Ichaso's grandly conceived movie evoke The Godfather series (as does its theme of brother vs. brother in a criminal underworld), Barry Michael Cooper's screenplay falls short of any such epic design. [25 Feb 1994, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  11. The Love Guru
    Piles dumb gag upon dumb gag - it's like benign pummeling. Occasionally, you just have to laugh.
  12. Non-Stop
    Non-Stop gets increasingly far-fetched as the jet makes its way across the Atlantic. Certainly, there are more red herrings on the plane than there are in the sea below. And Neeson has to stare down every last one of them.
  13. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
    There's little of the seen-it-all, wise-guy acerbity that made his character in the X-Men trilogy stand apart from his fellow mutants. Here, he just glowers.
  14. Rock the Kasbah
    Some projects are just too misguided for the star to mug and shrug his way out of. Consider Rock the Kasbah at the top, or the bottom, of that list.
  15. The Choice
    If you're looking for a reason to watch pretty people and cry, then, by all means, head to the theater. But it pales in comparison to other Sparks works, especially when it gets into medical-ethics territory.
  16. Bruno
    A crude, cringe-worthy, and intermittently funny affair that triggers the gag reflex. I sincerely can't tell you whether I was choking with laughter or keeping from choking.
  17. Pirate Radio
    Awash in nostalgia and amped-up male camaraderie, Richard Curtis' Pirate Radio takes a great story - the hugely popular offshore radio stations that illegally broadcast pop and rock in 1960s Britain - and turns it into an aggressively irritating floating frat-party romp.
  18. The Angry Birds Movie
    Don't get me wrong. Angry Birds doesn't depict any on-camera violence against person, bird, or pig. But there's a darkness at the heart of this movie that's hard to reconcile.
  19. Riddick
    Purely as an action film, Riddick is passable, if grueling. The problem is tonal.
  20. Night at the Museum
    If the filmmakers had a script half as good as their special effects, Night at the Museum would be a must-see.
  21. The Matrix Revolutions
    There are, to be sure, some impressive special effects here, and whoever Warner Bros. hires to make the new Superman movie should take notes.
  22. Back to School
    A comedy that belongs back on the drawing board.
  23. 44 Inch Chest
    Ultimately, 44 Inch Chest has very little on its mind.
  24. Crossroads
    This is a star vehicle that stalls.
  25. The Bridesmaid
    A merrily macabre things-we-do-for-love yarn.
  26. Necessary Roughness
    The muddled huddle that is Necessary Roughness is one long fumble strewn with offensive lines.
  27. The Other Guys
    There's a fine line between stupid comedy that's actually pretty smart and stupid comedy that's just dumb, and The Other Guys crosses the line - into realms of unredeeming dunderheadedness - more often than it should.
  28. Couples Retreat
    The story and the humor get progressively skimpier than an Ipanema bikini.
  29. Hall Pass
    Most gaspworthy is that this raunchy, transgressive comedy about would-be adulterers turns out to be a hot, wet reaffirmation of marriage.
  30. A Walk in the Clouds
    With its themes of family tradition, heated passion and parent-daughter conflict - not to mention lots of splendid preparing-the-meals sequences in the Aragon kitchen, and not to mention the contents of Keanu's case - A Walk in the Clouds could just as easily been called Like Wine for Chocolate. But anyone hoping for a second helping of the sensual romance of Like Water for Chocolate will come away disappointed. The movie's glinting incandescence is oppressive. [11 Aug 1995, p.14]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
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