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 2.7 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. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
    Kids will enjoy the experience overall: It's a little messy and undercooked, but still vastly more imaginative and entertaining than junk like "Fred Claus."
  2. Redacted
    As a manipulator of images and emotions, De Palma has few equals, and this is his most gripping film in at least a decade. Viewed simply as cinema and not as political rhetoric, it's often a kick in the guts -- even when it makes you roll your eyes.
  3. 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.
  4. Holly
    A fairly good movie about an evil subject.
  5. Lions for Lambs
    Talky, didactic and essentially free of any real narrative, it views Iraq through the lens of Vietnam, which is fair enough, but ends up making the whole polemic seem like a condescending effort from aging baby boomers to get the younger generation to step up to the plate.
  6. No Country for Old Men
    In the main this is a muscular, exact and thrillingly cool movie.
  7. War Dance
    Isn't meant to be a depressing experience, as each of these unfortunate souls recovers a sense of pride in themselves and their tribe through music.
  8. American Gangster
    This impressive film feels more like a display, if an often dazzling one, than a genuine experience.
  9. Bee Movie
    If an animated movie isn't competing with Pixar to dazzle the eye, it had darn well better hit the heart or the funny bone. With its wee little stinger, Bee Movie misses both.
  10. Darfur Now
    If the presence of Cheadle and his handsome pal George Clooney can entice otherwise resistant viewers to learn about the ongoing travesty in western Sudan, then Darfur Now has done its job.
  11. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    That rarest of movie biographies: a warts-and-all exploration of the life and times of its subject.
  12. Martian Child
    At the end of Martian Child, we're told the movie is "inspired by actual events." But the movie isn't even fully inspired by David Gerrold's source novel that was inspired by actual events.
  13. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    Emotionally brutal, ferociously acted, crafted with unflagging expertise and relentlessly locked in its vision of human darkness, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is as grim and despairing as any tragedy by Sophocles or Shakespeare.
  14. Dan in Real Life
    I could see people enjoying Dan in Real Life, I guess -- the scenery is nice and the people are pretty and the songs are cute little emotion substitutes. But Dan? Buddy? It's not all about you.
  15. Jimmy Carter Man from Plains
    It's a remarkably intimate look at the man and his thinking, and you wish for more history to flesh out the biographical aspects of his life.
  16. Music Within
    It gives me no pleasure to report that the Pimentel biopic Music Within plays like a well-intentioned TV movie.
  17. 30 Days of Night
    It's not perfect or "Shining"-level inspired, but it's solid.
  18. Gone Baby Gone
    It's a fine debut, far more grounded, plausible and engrossing than most Hollywood thrillers.
  19. Rendition
    Overheated claptrap that takes an issue of vital national importance and turns it into an inept cartoon that emboldens the worst instincts in our national character.
  20. Reservation Road
    Serious Acting Opportunities abound! Unfortunately, sharp dialogue and characters who keep you riveted do not.
  21. Things We Lost in the Fire
    The result is a film that's more credible in its building blocks than in its whole.
  22. Wristcutters: A Love Story
    The film has a spry quality, but the jokes are neither funny nor dark enough, the quirky roadside episodes aren't sufficiently outlandish or imaginative, the romantic sparks don't convince and the plotting becomes increasingly silly and tedious. Dukic conjures an air of play and naughtiness, but that's about as deep as he cuts.
  23. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    It says a lot about this movie that the most arresting character in it is Mary, whom Morton unsurprisingly endows with a fanatical combination of narcissism and rage.
  24. Lars and the Real Girl
    Gosling is excellent playing a character who's fundamentally unknowable.
  25. Sleuth
    It's not a disaster: Branagh is an actor's director, and there are biting moments throughout and solid performances from Caine and Law.
  26. We Own the Night
    This is a perfectly serviceable thriller. It's just not the New York family crime saga it clearly wants to be.
  27. King Corn
    The film always teaches and entertains in equal, ample measure. It's a treat -- and it's good for you.
  28. Control
    Can a movie about such a fellow and such a fate be lovely? And can it uplift? Control is and, in its artfulness, does.
  29. For the Bible Tells Me So
    In this involving if slightly unfocused documentary, director Daniel Karslake takes a two-pronged approach in examining how religion has been interpreted -- some would say twisted -- into, at its worst, monomaniacal homophobia.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The Heartbreak Kid
    The results are not endearing. Eddie comes off not as a beleaguered Everyman but a heedless, dishonest knob trying to undo a deal that gave him exactly what he deserved. The real surprise is Carlos Mencia, playing an exuberant clerk at the resort hotel. But when Carlos Mencia is the funniest thing in your movie, you've got serious problems.
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