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. Scream 4
    For genre geeks, this can be fun - although nothing in Scream 4 is quite as clever as the filmmakers seem to think it is.
  2. Nell
    Under Michael Apted's direction, Nell is a pleasingly tranquil experience, its epiphanies as understated as Richardson's and Neeson's low-key performances. [25 Dec 1994, p.G01]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  3. Innocent Voices
    It's a harrowing tale, but one that gets phonied up with unnecessary slo-mos, manipulative soundtrack cues, and unrestrained thespianism.
  4. Dan in Real Life
    Almost reflexively, the filmmakers skirt Dan's messier conflicts. But it is the moments when they don't dance around the awkward issue of a brother falling for his brother's girl that Dan is the most poignant.
  5. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
    The Night at the Museum tent pole has played fast and loose with history, and with our knowledge, or lack of knowledge, of the past. But I'm pretty sure a capuchin monkey never urinated on teensy-weensy figures of a cowboy and a Roman emperor as they ran for their lives from a lava flow in ancient Pompeii. That happens in Secret of the Tomb, and it seems like a fitting way to retire the show.
  6. ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
    Where My Wife was offbeat and original, Happily Ever After gets bogged down in midlife-crisis cliches.
  7. Collateral Damage
    The best that can be said about Collateral Damage is that it offers a fleeting fantasy of American invincibility at a time when we desperately crave the reality. It functions as a movie narcotic.
  8. Little Miss Sunshine
    Family. Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em. Little Miss Sunshine, a stormy quasi-comedy destined to polarize audiences, is a perfect specimen of this unsentimental attitude.
  9. Pay It Forward
    It's a pretty nice movie until, like a Ponzi plan, it collapses.
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  10. This Means War
    The film's focus on the contest between the two agents does throw the film off-balance.
  11. A Prairie Home Companion
    I'm not sure that the endearing charms of the assorted fogeys and whelps add up to a movie. But I always enjoy how Altman weaves the warp of professional life with the weft of the personal.
  12. Dracula Untold
    Dracula Untold is a movie that gives good trailer. That's not surprising because it's a visually arresting saga. Unfortunately, the story in the final, full version is thicker than blood.
  13. Hot Tub Time Machine
    If time and space hooked up and got so hammered that they staggered beyond inebriation into delirium, the result would be Hot Tub Time Machine.
  14. The Hunger Games
    It also smells very much like a movie with money on its mind - not altogether successfully balancing its loftier ideas with a sense of superficial whimsy and Vegas-meets-Wizard of Oz production design.
  15. Harry Brown
    Gritty and compelling up to a point, but cheaply exploitive as well.
  16. Babel
    I was shaken, but not stirred, by Babel, a globalist melodrama that careens from Morocco to Mexico like a revved-up "Crash."
  17. Tower Heist
    Devoting more time to the setup than to the follow-through, Tower Heist doesn't really build suspense so much as it builds impatience - for the thing to be over.
  18. 9
    In 50 years, film lovers will look back on 9 as the debut feature of an original talent.
  19. The Clearing
    Classy but ultimately unsatisfying film.
  20. The Polar Express
    Visually, taking its cues (mostly) from Van Allsburg's Hopperesque art, The Polar Express is eye-popping. Storywise, however, it can be eyelid-drooping.
  21. Eragon
    I wish Eragon's cinematography were crisper, the music less Wagnerian, and the acting more consistent. But this movie isn't for me. It's for my 10-year-old, for whom the subtleties of narrative, photography and acting mean nothing.
  22. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    Think of it as"Airplane"! with controlled substances.
  23. Spun
    Rourke and Roberts! Dueling kings of B-movie excess and cable-TV schlock, together again on the big screen! Talk about chemistry!
  24. Chasing Liberty
    Boasts exceedingly high levels of improbability and an embarrassment of continuity and character shortfalls, but still has a certain bubbleheaded charm.
  25. Star Trek: Generations
    Three things make the film worthwhile: Shatner's performance; the sequence involving Data getting his "emotion chip" implant; and John Alonzo's crystalline cinematography, which makes Generations the most beautiful Trek ever. [18 Nov. 1994, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  26. Up at the Villa
    It's low-grade Casablanca - an ill-fated love affair, rife with murder and deceit, with World War II as a backdrop and a farewell scene that has something to do with getting to Paris.
  27. Jackass Number Two
    The sequel is a dizzying succession of pranks, Candid Camera-like sketches, and, that old crowd-pleaser, the boys actively courting their own grievous harm. This is what you get when a generation grows up watching far too many "Roadrunner" cartoons while sitting on the couch eating bowl after bowl of Lucky Charms.
  28. Paranoid Park
    The fluid film cinematography of Christopher Doyle and Rain Kathy Li, intercut with grainy Super-8 shots of park regulars, tracks the skaters in their free-flying, free-styling and free-falling grace. In these privileged moments, the film is close to transcendence, defying time, space and gravity.
  29. Drillbit Taylor
    There are winning scenes between Wilson and the three teens as they train in various martial arts (like Mexican Judo - "as in Ju-don't know who you're messing with!") and get tips from clips of "Fight Club" and "The Untouchables."
  30. To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar
    As a mainstream Hollywood film about men in skirts, the assumption here is that drag queens Make Accessories, Not Love. Even if you're offended by this, or by the attitude that all of life's problems can be solved by a change in decor or lipstick color, or off-put by the assumption that every town in America between the two coasts is populated by rednecks, there are things to like about Wong Foo. [08 Sep 1995, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
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