Portland Oregonian's Scores

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For 3,654 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 34% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Caesar Must Die
Lowest review score: 0 Summer Catch
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,408 out of 3654
  2. Mixed: 966 out of 3654
  3. Negative: 280 out of 3654
3654 movie reviews
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  1. Hocus Pocus
    A good comedy contains at least one of two vital ingredients: sharp, swift writing or terrific comic shtick by the actors. Unfortunately, Hocus Pocus -- like most Hollywood comedies these days -- has neither. That doesn't mean it's a terrible movie. It's not, though it loses focus and momentum two-thirds of the way through and limps home with unsurprising special effects. It's just not all that funny. [16 July 1993, p.17]
    • Portland Oregonian
  2. The Wolfman
    Deeply phony, strangely static, disengaged, flaccid and, quite often, silly, it’s a film that tries to bully you into emotions with flourishes of music, contorted camera angles, screams of special effects, smears of gore, and earnest close-ups of its woefully miscast star.
  3. Youth Without Youth
    Tt is a comeback, and if it leads the director to better work, it can be forgiven as a warm-up.
  4. 360
    As the action moves from Vienna to Paris to London to Denver to Phoenix and then back again, the vignettes blur into one another.
  5. The Three Musketeers
    Maybe that Hollywood thinks young moviegoers will settle for something not too special -- and so that's all they're going to get. [12 Nov 1993, p.AE15]
    • Portland Oregonian
  6. Freedomland
    Freedomland is the worst kind of bad movie: one that thinks it's important.
  7. Love in the Time of Cholera
    When characters are required to grow old over the course of a decades-spanning story, as in Love in the Time of Cholera, it's still a hit-or-miss proposition whether the combination of makeup and performance skills will convince us that a character is 40 years older than the actor.
  8. For Love of the Game
    More of a bunt than a home run.
    • Portland Oregonian
  9. The Young Unknowns
    The Young Unknowns flails about, sometimes realistically, but the cumulative effect is "so what?" These characters may be young and unknown, but they feel old and in the way.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    American Wedding
    Junk this is and ever was, but this is well-acted junk.
  11. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
    The film is competent without being spectacular or thrilling.
  12. Basic Instinct
    One suspects that [Verhoeven's] produced exactly the movie he wanted to produce: fast, cynical and profitable. Cha-ching. [20 Mar 1992, p.AE17]
    • Portland Oregonian
  13. Unaccompanied Minors
    When it works, it's decent family fun; the kids are incredibly sharp. But the script's not as sharp as they are, and not everyone brings his A-game.
  14. Wonderland
    This film disappointingly feels like a sometimes brilliantly acted, often gorgeously filmed re-enactment of the television show "Unsolved Mysteries."
  15. The Forgotten
    The movie works reasonably well at this for its first half, but by then we've pretty much figured everything out.
  16. Trust the Man
    Has some good laughs courtesy of its cast -- but they're basically papering over a script that's masquerading as urbane and trenchant, when it's really self-involved and didactic and more than a little foolish.
  17. Miss Congeniality
    Bullock maintains a luster and comic naturalness that most actresses couldn't pull off in such mediocrity.
  18. Brooklyn's Finest
    Fine moments, images and performances stand cheek-by-jowl with the clichéd, the on-the-nose and the slightly dopey.
  19. M. Butterfly
    Director David Cronenberg has made a movie about a man who apparently needs to get his eyes checked. [08 Oct 1993]
    • Portland Oregonian
  20. America: Freedom to Fascism
    Mostly it's about taxes -- namely, the argument that the Federal Income Tax, enacted in 1913, is unconstitutional and has been ruled as such by the Supreme Court, and that no law exists today requiring Americans to pay it.
  21. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
    Quite simply, the "Tomb Raider" series has been flat-out boring, even with the talented and fun Jolie -- who needs to take off those harnesses and get back to real movies. She deserves better.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
    Panders to the worst traits in the target audience of spoiled third-grade girls.
  23. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
    Jumping repeatedly and randomly from present-day Shanghai to 1997 to 1829 and periods in between, the film has a pace that seems almost willfully tedious.
  24. The Lovely Bones
    As someone new to the material, I found Jackson’s film soulful, respectful, masterful, horrifying, rending and emotionally true. It may not be the Lovely Bones that you have in mind, but it’s a fine and powerful one.
  25. The Time Machine
    While there are some glittery bits in it, the film is frustrating, cluttered, inelegant and garish.
  26. The Family Man
    You can't just rework a beloved Christmas classic, set it in reverse and expect it to run smoothly.
    • Portland Oregonian
  27. The Big Bounce
    At 80 minutes, it feels truncated and abandoned -- a sketch of a comic thriller rather than the real thing.
  28. The Divergent Series: Insurgent
    If you think you've seen this movie, you have. Once it had a male protagonist and was called "Harry Potter." Then it starred Jennifer Lawrence and was called "The Hunger Games." Now it stars Shailene Woodley and goes by "The Divergent Series." Same thing, only worse.
  29. Raising Cain
    Contrivances grow so outlandish as Cain grinds on that De Palma seems to be parodying himself. His intent is seldom humor, but Cain ends up being more inadvertent comedy than thriller. [07 Aug 1992, p.D01]
    • Portland Oregonian
    • 42 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Phantasm II
    Individual scenes are OK for bogus suspense and special effects. The acting is as good as it has to be. But on the whole, the film feels like a 90-minute version of something that was many hours longer. [13 July 1988, p.D4]
    • Portland Oregonian
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