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For 1,070 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 58% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 40% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 65
Highest review score: 100 Frost/Nixon
Lowest review score: 0 Gigli
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 709 out of 1070
  2. Mixed: 172 out of 1070
  3. Negative: 189 out of 1070
1070 movie reviews
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  1. Dig!
    DiG! never delves deep enough to act as a true cautionary tale. It's an amusingly drunken PBS-worthy human-interest doc, unless you're too old or not cool enough to have played in the embarrassing hipster zoo, in which case DiG! may be the closest you'll ever get to the uncaged animals.
  2. Infernal Affairs
    This is a real grabber.
  3. Shaun of the Dead
    Whatever you want to label this quick-paced crowd-pleaser, it is definitely one of the year's must-sees.
  4. The Motorcycle Diaries
    Some might not even notice what's going on when director Walter Salles finally shows his hand, and ends the film with documentary footage of the real-life Granado, now aged 81, romping in the earthly paradise that is present-day Cuba.
  5. A Dirty Shame
    Shame is a welcome reminder that sex is sometimes too ridiculous to take so seriously.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Wimbledon
    It's capable and strong direction that hold the audience through the final match, but in the end, it's Paul Bettany's world, and the rest of us are just happy to visit for an hour and a half.
  7. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    Conran's Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a pastiche of everything from "King Kong" to "The Wizard of Oz," a movie that escalates to a breathless cliff-hanger every 20 minutes or so and reinvents itself with every reel.
  8. Head in the Clouds
    The story is a vapid "Casablanca"-lite.
  9. Criminal
    Subtly gaining momentum as it dexterously glides through pages of good-time, snappy dialogue, Criminal offers no time to catch your breath, let alone enough to think through its reality-stretching story flaws and subtext-lacking motives.
  10. Paparazzi
    In the age of reality television, Paparazzi feels desperately out-of-touch, the jaded grousings of an industry burnout.
  11. Wicker Park
    What begins as a pleasantly utilitarian thriller gradually decays into a mediocre suspense drama and ends as an irritatingly feeble love story.
  12. Vanity Fair
    I don’t quite cherish Thackeray’s novel, but a can-do feminist, multicultural contemporization of it strikes me as, well, unnecessary.
  13. The Brown Bunny
    The film stubbornly refuses to fill empty space with dialogue or adhere to any structure other than its own downbeat atmosphere, forcing viewers to be intensely patient or squirm. It's the best film I’ve seen in a while that I wouldn't recommend to anyone.
  14. Hero
    Hero is one of the most beautiful and involving films of the year.
  15. Exorcist: The Beginning
    It’s terrible enough to torture the damned.
  16. Mean Creek
    Exceptionally strong performances from the entire cast draw you into the movie's deliberately provocative world, a "Lord of the Flies"–like realm where parents are noticeably absent.
  17. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
    Threadbare sequel.
  18. Collateral
    If there was ever an example of a movie's visual language leaving its verbal and narrative components in the dust, this, unfortunately, is it.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Little Black Book
    Overall, Little Black Book is the cinematic equivalent of chic lit--mildly amusing, but completely forgettable once you're done with it.
  20. Code 46
    Provocative, quietly erotic, deeply romantic, and slyly witty (a cameo by a giant of punk rock is funny at first sight, and funnier still when you figure out the joke it's making), Code 46 is a very effective antidote to summer blockbuster bloat.
  21. Open Water
    Open Water may not be a pristine or complex suspense thriller, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anything else as terrifyingly potent in such a tiny package.
  22. Stander
    The action is great, the story line unpredictable, the ending satisfying. Stander is crackling. Really.
  23. The Manchurian Candidate
    Demme here shows off both the mastery of suspense that made "The Silence of the Lambs" a classic, and the humane understanding and appreciation of character that not just deepens but energizes this film.
  24. The Village
    When the secret is finally divulged, it’s such a letdown that it feels unfairly manipulative to have sat through such agonizing tedium.
  25. Garden State
    Garden State gets it. Not since "The Graduate" has a movie nailed the beautiful terror of standing on the brink of adulthood with such satisfying precision.
  26. The Bourne Supremacy
    What’s missing here is the amnesiac hook that made "The Bourne Identity" such a sleeper hit.
  27. Catwoman
    Berry is giving a performance much too earnest to have been intentionally campy, setting herself up as a veritable shoo-in for this year's "Worst Actress" Razzie. Me-ouch!
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    A Home at the End of the World
    Home is a difficult film for its viewer, because none of the leads fall into the comfortable categories of film characters played by movie stars.
  29. I, Robot
    If you subtracted from the story and style components recycled from landmark sci-fi films of Hollywood past, you’d be left with Will Smith wisecracking over a box of unformatted floppies. I, Unimpressed.
  30. Maria Full of Grace
    In his first feature, director Joshua Marston passes no judgments. He doesn't condemn drugs. He merely depicts the system that has arisen to support this illicit trade.
  31. The Door in the Floor
    There are more than a couple of moments in this film, adapted by writer-director Tod Williams from a big swatch of Irving’s multigenerational quilt "A Widow for One Year," that get Irving’s sense of grotesque tragedy and tragic grotesquerie just right
  32. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
    Anchorman is the kind of wonderful, cotton-candy escapism that should leave you with the right kind of stomachache.
  33. King Arthur
    I'd gladly take the legend over this dreary pseudo-historical mumbo jumbo.
  34. De-Lovely
    Though director Irwin Winkler takes pains to accurately present Cole's life (unlike "Night and Day," the 1946 biopic starring Cary Grant), the film has its shortcomings. First of which is pushing the love story, when it's clear Linda's feelings aren't reciprocated.
  35. Before Sunset
    Yep, this movie is basically a yakfest, but an incredibly fluid and involving one, and if you have any kind of affinity for either of the characters, you’re bound to find the picture a kind of miracle.
  36. The Clearing
    Wants to be at any given moment--wrenching, thought-provoking, surprising, heartbreaking--all it ever is is tastefully lifeless. It’s been beaten into a coma by its own scruples.
  37. Spider-Man 2
    Fantastic news, true believers: Spider-Man 2 is smarter, hipper, faster, funnier, and flat-out more electrifying than the original, swinging to new summer-movie heights as the greatest comic-book adaptation yet made.
  38. White Chicks
    Despite the attempts of the Academy Award-winning makeup artist behind Mrs. Doubtfire, these doubtful misfires can't pass as white or as chicks.
  39. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
    Take it from someone who can still feel the hollow rubber tang! of old dodgeball scars: It feels great to be blindsided by a little movie like this.
  40. Around the World in 80 Days
    Kids deserve an adventure movie like this, one that might inspire them to become junior inventors and ignite their interest in the world's many wonders.
  41. The Chronicles of Riddick
    With his latest, the sci-fi–action–adventure The Chronicles of Riddick, Vin Diesel has established himself as the new face of morally ambiguous anti-heroes.
  42. The Stepford Wives
    Close is the best and worst thing about the film, delivering a performance that upstages even Christopher Walken (!), taking her over-the-top Cruella de Vil turn to its saccharine-sweet opposite.
  43. Napoleon Dynamite
    While Solondz's world is a hell hole and Anderson's "Rushmore" is a place of high-toned and often poignant whimsy, Napoleon Dynamite's unceasing burlesque creates a world that is pretty much a cartoon--and it's a damn funny cartoon to boot.
  44. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
    Soars gloriously into fluency and magic.
  45. The Corporation
    Over the course of almost two and a half fascinating hours, they make a cogent, compelling, powerful argument, and they also make a terrific movie.
  46. The Day After Tomorrow
    The real top billing, what audience-goers are obviously shelling out to see, is the computer-generated chaos, and as they should: Digital technology has caught up with our collective imaginations Now More Than Ever.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Soul Plane
    Snoop's subtle performance in the captain's chair flips all the right switches, and Ryan Pinkston's timing as Arnold's "straight out of Malibu" son is perfect, but these two aren't enough to salvage the film.
  48. Baadasssss!
    The mood never droops, however, saved by Mario’s well-studied ability to channel his father, a performance as delicately nuanced and polished as the film is frenetic and raw.
  49. Bukowski: Born into This
    Dullaghan's film is a bit too straightforward and introductory to be declared a definitive portraiture. The gold nuggets worth sifting for lie in the anecdotal minutiae.
  50. Saved!
    Boasts both wicked satire and a big heart, and as a result, is nothing short of brilliant.
  51. Raising Helen
    It's really rather dull, lacking in any originality or flair that might draw attention to the cause. It's lightly comedic, lightly dramatic, lightly tragic, and, therefore, lightly entertaining.
  52. Shrek 2
    The humor is so satisfying in its moment-to-moment pleasures that it's almost unsportsmanlike to criticize the bigger picture.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Troy
    Wolfgang Petersen's Troy recalls an age when Hollywood not only gambled on but flourished with grandiose epics and casts of thousands, and brings megawatt star power to what is, at root, a brilliantly told story.
  54. Carandiru
    Stylistically, Carandiru is definitely less monochromatic than an "Oz" rerun.
  55. Coffee and Cigarettes
    By the end the movie has pretty much ceased taking itself at all seriously, devolving into a nonchalant giggliness of the stoned variety that's completely apropos.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    New York Minute
    Despite a lavish budget and one of the most expensive movie sets in the world--the island of Manhattan—they (Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) can’t buy love, talent, or a decent script.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Van Helsing
    Horror classicists may be upset at his tampering with monster mythologies, but everyone else will just be going along for the ride, and they’ll have a terrific time.
  58. Super Size Me
    Made with obvious passion and humor (and a side of fries), Super Size Me is a mostly entertaining look at fast food, the billion-dollar businesses behind it, and its warped effect on our culture.
  59. Godsend
    With its cheap scares, its defiant lack of special effects, and the most blatant usage of a red coat as a stand-out prop since Schindler’s List, Godsend is as much an experiment-gone-wrong as its Frankensteinesque plot.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Laws of Attraction
    A subtly hilarious supporting performance from Frances Fisher, as Moore's mother, and a latter-day Sid and Nancy (Michael Sheen and Parker Posey, seeming deliriously inebriated the entire time) round out the thoroughly diverting cast.
  61. Mean Girls
    Mean Girls depicts the kind of traumatic high school experience that might await spoiled rich girls who grow up in two-parent households with designer clothes and Escalades.
  62. 13 Going on 30
    Nearly perfect in its own cotton-candy way.
  63. Man on Fire
    Not even within earshot of a masterpiece, Man on Fire, based on its ratio of production costs to quality alone, may prove to be the worst movie of 2004.
  64. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    This is a movie of head-spinning richness.
  65. The Punisher
    From an audience perspective, the title’s fairly apt as well.
  66. Gypsy 83
    Films like this have a way of finding their own devoted fan base, and Gypsy 83 deserves to be discovered not only by Goth and gay crowds, but by anyone who runs screaming from all things average.
  67. Young Adam
    It’s rich enough in atmosphere to make you almost buy the quasi-allegorical absurdities.
  68. The Alamo
    The studio wimped out, and the result is a lesser production on every level: talent, script, content, and purpose.
  69. Ella Enchanted
    Ella Enchanted seems squarely aimed at 12-year-old girls, or, I don't know, maybe 8-year-old girls.
  70. The Girl Next Door
    The film's lack of focus leaves most, if not all, of the characters just a hair less developed than they should have been; the plot holes just a bit more conspicuous than they might have been; and the ending just a touch less poignant than it could have been.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Whole Ten Yards
    The gags are flat, and the plot twists aren’t enough to keep the film moving.
  72. I'm Not Scared
    Think of how M. Night Shyamalan redefined the ghost story (The Sixth Sense), the superhero creation myth (Unbreakable), and the alien-invasion epic (Signs)--and you may get a sense of the genius behind this fascinating new horror film.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hellboy
    If the film's love triangle feels a little silly and the arch-villains a little over the top, it's all secondary to del Toro's passionate immersion in Hellboy.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 12 Critic Score
    Home on the Range
    Suffocatingly boring.
  75. The Prince and Me
    Feels more practical than whimsical, more politically correct than sweep-you-off-your-feet romantic.
  76. Walking Tall
    Short on story, character, and attempts to win viewers' emotional investment, the film only seems to take a breath when The Rock is making the baddies lose theirs.
  77. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
    Beautiful, lyrical, but not in the least bit wimpy. [May 2004, p. 18]
    • Premiere
  78. The United States of Leland
    Absence of motive makes the movie provocative; the explanation renders it irrelevant and defuses any interesting debate the film might have inspired.
  79. Jersey Girl
    Jersey Girl may have come from his soul, but it contradicts the charm of a Kevin Smith movie.
  80. Dogville
    It really is a masterpiece--von Trier's first, as it happens.
  81. Mayor of the Sunset Strip
    I wonder if there was a point in the making of this film at which Hickenlooper might have realized he picked the wrong subject. [May 2004, p. 18]
    • Premiere
  82. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
    A wildly imaginative, hugely entertaining tour de force that asks big questions about life and love and fate while never ceasing to fully engage the viewer.
  83. Taking Lives
    Sexy, stylish, and legitimately suspenseful.
  84. Dawn of the Dead
    An amply entertaining tale of survival terror, fully realizing the epicness of Romero's vision by infecting every wide-angled overhead shot with as many computer-generated cadavers as possible, and bridging tense moments with a laugh-aloud, plucky wit.
  85. Intermission
    It’s tempting to summarize this Irish picture as a working-class version of "Love Actually," and indeed, the hardscrabble lives of most of its amorously unfulfilled characters go a long way in making it a whole lot less emetic than Richard Curtis’s hugfest.
  86. Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London
    While the canine is a scene stealer, the movie is a dog.
  87. Secret Window
    Secret Window's premise is certainly new, even if King appears to be plagiarizing themes from himself.
  88. Knafayim Shvurot
    Bergman wants the viewer to empathize more with the characters’ perseverance than their pain, and he pulls it off, thanks to his sharp eye, compassion, and humor, and of course to the performances. [March 2004, p. 26]
    • Premiere
  89. Starsky & Hutch
    Vince Vaughn is terrific as the baddie.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Hidalgo
    Mortensen proves once again that he’s an able, even intuitive performer, more compelling speaking Lakota Sioux than many others in plain English.
  91. Club Dread
    The Broken Lizard guys don't so much send up a genre as inhabit it, and subvert it from the inside.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 38 Critic Score
    Twisted
    Laughably clichéd, abominably written, astonishingly dreadful attempt at a psycho-sexual thriller.
  93. Goodbye Lenin!
    Reveals more about the German people through sentimental comedy than such overtly political films as "The Nasty Girl" or "The Marriage of Maria Braun."
  94. Greendale
    As a meditation of American life, Greendale is anything but coherent, but it is fluidly free-associative and shows bizarre wit, as when Young himself shows up to play Wayne Newton. [March 2004, p. 27]
    • Premiere
  95. The Passion of the Christ
    From my perspective, the film's anti-Semitism is implicit rather than programmatic, and, in the film's current form, a little sneaky.
  96. Kitchen Stories
    In the end, it's not the answer to the kitchen mystery that matters but the revelation that there's ultimately no difference between this bachelor scientist and his bachelor subject.
  97. EuroTrip
    The premise of the film is serviceable, but the execution is flawed and entirely underwhelming.
  98. Welcome to Mooseport
    Offers a charming distraction from the current campaign season by sidestepping real issues and making light of the process.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    50 First Dates
    The film feels like a natural successor to "The Wedding Singer's" strange blend of humor and humanity, a gently silly comedy that's actually romantic without making anyone sick in the process. And that just might be a first.
  100. Barbershop 2: Back in Business
    The sequel to 2003's unexpected and rousing hit offers a lot of the same elements that made the original so enjoyable, but the humor doesn't have the same freshness.
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