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. I've Loved You So Long
    This is a picture of quiet observation, contained emotion, the hush before the cathartic scream.
  2. Let the Right One In
    Funny, fear-inducing, with periods of voyeuristic gore and an undercurrent of anxiety and dread, Let the Right One In is up there with the bloodsucking classics.
  3. Synecdoche, New York
    In Synecdoche, Kaufman the screenwriter is not well-served by Kaufman the filmmaker. As a director, his propensity for heavyosity leadens rather than leavens this affair.
  4. Fear(s) of the Dark
    Fear(s) of the Dark, a French production, interweaves the shorts, linking the segments together thematically, and narratively.
  5. Stranded: I've Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains
    A tale of horror, heroism, unimaginable physical challenges, and, yes, cannibalism, Stranded offers the kind of real-life drama that can't help but bring up notions of God, fate, and nature's imposing will.
  6. W.
    Unlike the filmmaker's previous stabs at presidential biopic-ing and conspiracy theorizing - "JFK" and "Nixon" - this one doesn't have the luxury of historical perspective.
  7. Filth and Wisdom
    Impossibly arty and, at times, narratively incoherent, Filth and Wisdom still has its goofy charms.
  8. Morning Light
    An OK sports doc that owes as much to reality TV competitions as it does to the genre of nautical cinema.
  9. The Secret Life of Bees
    The filmmakers give Latifah and Fanning room to create characters that breathe in the sweet smell of clover and breathe out the contented sigh of independence.
  10. Sex Drive
    A testosterone-fueled road movie that displays the same Apatow-ian obsessions, and raunch, as "Pineapple Express," "Superbad," and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin."
  11. Frontrunners
    Sure, it's a skewed view through adolescent eyes, but it's one that still speaks to the aspirations, agendas, image-making and spin control behind a real, grown-up political election.
  12. Body of Lies
    Fascinating and flawed spy thriller.
  13. The Express
    The Express eventually reaches its triumph-of-the-human-spirit climax, but it yanks too hard on the heart strings during the long journey there.
  14. Dung che sai duk
    Windblown, with a sage and playful Zen vibe, Wong Kar Wai's Ashes of Time Redux is a color-saturated, slo-mo martial arts piece about time, memory, love, regret, betrayal.
  15. City of Ember
    All the running, the hiding, the escaping (from giant moles, from giant Murray) are decidedly less exciting, and compelling, than City of Ember wants to be.
  16. Good Dick
    At its best, the film is undeniably tender. Sweet, even.
  17. Happy-Go-Lucky
    Stays with you like great movies tend to do. It asks you to examine the inner mechanisms of human beings, cheerful and miserable alike. It's not about looking at a glass half empty or a glass half full. It's about drinking down what's in that glass and letting it fill your soul.
  18. RocknRolla
    If only RocknRolla's characters were at all believable - even in the context of its own cartoon universe.
  19. Religulous
    While even believers can support Maher's skepticism, when he denounces the faithful in sweeping absolutes at film's end, he sounds as absolutely certain as those he has mocked for the previous 100 minutes.
  20. How to Lose Friends & Alienate People
    An embarassingly unfunny, stumblebum adaptation of Toby Young's memoir.
  21. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    Some movies skate by fast on slick action. Others snap with crisp dialogue. Nick and Norah springs high on the bounce of its hugely likable leads, Michael Cera and Kat Dennings.
  22. An American Carol
    About as not-funny as a comedy can get.
  23. Beverly Hills Chihuahua
    Graced with unusually expressive and seamless voice work by Drew Barrymore and George Lopez, the best of its kind since "Babe."
  24. Blindness
    Murky and grainy, and showing human beings at their grimmest - thievery, rape, betrayal, murder - Blindness is no barrel of laughs. But it IS a barrel of pretentious metaphorical musings.
  25. Flash of Genius
    Kinnear does what he's done in the past: You underestimate the guy's acting chops, and suddenly, strikingly, he floors you.
  26. Rachel Getting Married
    Jonathan Demme's superb rule-bending, heartrending and family-mending drama - ends with a wedding, it resists conventions as brazenly as does the bride's sister.
  27. Ballast
    What this unclassifiable story may lack in decibels, it has in emotional depth. At once a mystery, a family drama, a snapshot of children at risk, Ballast is an unusually perceptive character study more eloquent in action than in dialogue.
  28. Eagle Eye
    What Eagle Eye wants to do is show us technology's dark side: all the stuff that's there to make our lives easier - ATMs, PDAs, iPods, GPS, cell phones, PCs, "smart" houses - turned against us in a vast conspiracy.
  29. Nights in Rodanthe
    Rodanthe is a reliably steamy stormy sultry story.
  30. Miracle at St. Anna
    Man, oh, man, much of the dialogue is so heavy, and heavy-handed, that you can see fine actors such as Derek Luke and Michael Ealy buckle under the weight. Clearly, Lee fell in love with McBride's words and couldn't bear to cut them, even when the visuals made those words redundant.
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