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. Gray's Anatomy
    What threatens to be 80 minutes of hypochondria turns into an inspired travelogue of nontraditional remedies. [13 June 1997, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  2. Love Jones
    Witcher makes a remarkably confident filmmaking debut, eliciting excellent performances from his leads and underscoring their romance with a sound track that flavors, rather than overwhelms, the story. [14 Mar 1997, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  3. Jungle 2 Jungle
    There's nothing in Jungle 2 Jungle that hasn't been treated with more flair and imagination in dozens of other movies. [07 Mar 1997, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  4. The Watermelon Woman
    The Watermelon Woman is a thoughtful, charming movie that takes its audience along on a journey of self-discovery - without ever taking itself too seriously.
  5. Touch
    Although Schrader is an otherwise accomplished director and screenwriter, Touch's two moods combat rather than complement each other. [14 Feb 1997, p.04]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  6. Mother
    Bravo to Brooks for conceiving Mother and for giving Reynolds a role that required her to do something more than merely effervesce. Here Reynolds bubbles, she boils, she exhibits a complex geology of human emotions. Her Mrs. Henderson is the mother of all mothers, and Mother is the mother lode of all comedies. [10 Jan 1997, p.05]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  7. Metro
    The stiff banalities and trite dialogue of the genre hardly suit his flamboyant comic style. And whatever life Murphy manages to bring to the few moments between crashes and explosions are done in by the lifeless, if beautiful, presence of Ejogo and the completely wasted talent of Michael Rapaport as his partner. Ejogo's London accent is gratingly out of place on the streets of San Francisco. So, too, is Murphy. [17 Jan 1997, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  8. Ghosts of Mississippi
    In focusing on the courtroom drama that finally culminated in a guilty verdict for murderer Byron De La Beckwith, Reiner and screenwriter Lewis Colick miss the potent human drama. [03 Jan 1997, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  9. My Fellow Americans
    Surely there is a good comedy to be framed around that strange limbo of powerless celebrity we reserve for our ex-presidents. My Fellow Americans merely proves that it has yet to be made. [20 Dec 1996, p.45]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  10. One Fine Day
    Michael Hoffman, whose credits include the far more lively Soapdish, directs this predictable business in a predictable fashion. [20 Dec 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  11. Daylight
    A disaster of a disaster movie that veers from the parodic to the preposterous. [6 Dec 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  12. The Crucible
    So electric are the performances in The Crucible, so breathtaking is director Nicholas Hytner's darting camera, that it was fully halfway into Arthur Miller's screen adaptation of his legendary drama before I noticed something missing. Namely, a subtext. [20 Dec 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  13. Jingle All the Way
    Loaded with cartoon violence (exploding mail-bombs, children hanging perilously from rooftops), numerous groin-kicks and a few mild expletives, Jingle All the Way isn't exactly heartwarming, egg-noggy holiday fare. [22 Nov 1996, p.04]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  14. Ridicule
    Brevity is the soul of wit, lingerie and Ridicule, a keen and silky costume drama set circa 1783 in Versailles. [06 Dec 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  15. Space Jam
    The kids will relish flying Air Jordan, but it's Bugs who makes the trip worth it. [15 Nov 1996, p.3]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  16. Set It Off
    There is a sequence where his four felons parody a sitdown from The Godfather that is both inept and painfully out of place. But there's enough in Set It Off to set it apart and to argue that, when it comes to putting a new spin on the inner-city heist, you're better off with the ladies. [06 Nov 1996, p.E01]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  17. Larger Than Life
    Vera retains her dignity throughout, which is more than can be said for human company, and she seems to be having more fun. That's as it should be in an elephant comedy one soon forgets. [04 Nov 1996, p.D06]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  18. Get on the Bus
    A film that returns the director to the blunt and cutting honesty, pungent observation, and sharply targeted humor that made him so appealing in the first place. [16 Oct 1996, p.D01]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  19. Trees Lounge
    Buscemi has pulled off a deft feat: He doesn't romanticize his characters, but he doesn't condemn them as losers either. They're just people. [25 Oct 1996, p.12]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  20. The Ghost and the Darkness
    The Ghost and the Darkness is beautifuly photographed and produced with an immaculate sense of period. Stephen Hopkins directs the action with a sure hand, but he is understandably at a loss in the film's subtext, which is as dense and often as impenetrable as jungle undergrowth. [11 Oct 1996, p.14]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  21. Microcosmos
    Microcosmos is a Zen version of an old Disney True-Life feature: the hokum and phony palaver of those '50s pics supplanted by a wide-eyed sense of wonder. [08 Nov 1996, p.05]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  22. The Glimmer Man
    In Glimmer Man, Steven Seagal shows not a glimmer of acting range. [07 Oct 1996, p.E07]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  23. 2 Days in the Valley
    2 Days in the Valley has a real sense of place, and a pace that allows time to discover its characters' twisted troubles and fears. They may be a mess, but the movie, happily, isn't. [27 Sept 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  24. Extreme Measures
    Apted's movie puts flesh - and a considerable amount of blood - on problems that usually get lost in the winds of empty political rhetoric. [27 Sept 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  25. Last Man Standing
    Willis is always on target, but Last Man Standing is an aimless excuse for the kind of action at which Hill undeniably excels. [20 Sep 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  26. Fly Away Home
    Fly Away Home falls a little short of classic status, but it is easily one of the more appealing family films to come flying this way in quite some time. [13 Sep 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  27. Bulletproof
    The homoerotic subtext of the whole buddy movie oeuvre has never received quite the explicit lampooning it gets in this quirky, crash-and-burn action-comedy. [6 Sept 1996, p.8]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  28. The Trigger Effect
    The Trigger Effect asks some important questions about society's increasing reliance on technology (and how we take the high-tech infrastructure of daily life for granted), but the questions are wrapped in a bleak, humorless allegory about alienation and rage. [30 Aug 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  29. First Kid
    First Kid is a surprisingly apolitical comedy that settles for general purpose humor aimed unabashedly - and pretty lamely - at kids. [30 Aug 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
  30. A Very Brady Sequel
    A Very Brady Sequel isn't quite as successful as its big-screen forerunner. The contrast between the time-warped Bradys and the '90s world around them seems a little forced here, and the sexual double entendres - and there are lots of them - are almost painfully arch. But the cast is dead-on in its impersonations of the original Brady gang, great pains have been taken to re-create the cheesy pop furnishings and fashions of the 1970s, and the writers have crafted some inspired bits of lunacy, even if more than a few of the gags are destined to rocket right over the heads of non-aficionados. [23 Aug 1996, p.03]
    • Philadelphia Inquirer
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