San Francisco Examiner's Scores

  • Movies
Select another publication »
For 927 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 47% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Big Night
Lowest review score: 0 Luminarias
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 524 out of 927
  2. Mixed: 227 out of 927
  3. Negative: 176 out of 927
927 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. The Great Beauty
    If you know Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," you'll be unable to watch The Great Beauty without thinking about it. This gorgeous Italian movie, like its predecessor, balances pungent satire and a more melancholy mood in portraying the dissolute world of the upper crust in contemporary Rome.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Second Skin
    An excellent human-interest documentary that unlike so many others has a genuine appeal beyond someone already interested in the subject matter.
  3. Dead Snow
    This splatter film is set in Norway, but rest assured, it sticks with the formula. The young people to be killed off are just as obnoxious as their counterparts in American gorefests.
  4. Stephanie Daley
    This is grim material, but director Hilary Brougher -- working from her own script that won a Sundance award -- examines the lives of these two suffering women without sensationalism or preaching.
  5. Starter for 10
    Some nice performances and modest laughs highlight this amiable British comedy.
  6. The Good Shepherd
    A remarkable study of the corrosive effects of fear and power on an establishment insider who puts duty above all else.
  7. Flyboys
    Besides some fine dogfight sequences, it often feels threadbare, just an exercise in recycling.
  8. My Country, My Country
    A sobering documentary.
  9. The Beautiful Country
    Quiet, moving and beautifully shot.
  10. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
    Leave it to Ron Howard to turn a plaintive Dr. Seuss ditty into a C-grade Tim Burton psychodrama.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  11. Bounce
    If I wanted a Nora Ephron cuddle-ganza, I'd rent one.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  12. The 6th Day
    Modestly better than last year's awful "End of Days," though it falls well short of Arnold's "Terminator" peak period.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  13. Rugrats in Paris: The Movie - Rugrats II
    The journey's a kick.
  14. Little Nicky
    Little Nicky is but a meek gross-out cousin of "The Waterboy."
  15. Non-Stop
    Simply an endurance contest, one almost worth staying the 82 minutes to see who wins.
  16. Red Planet
    Good-looking and empty.
  17. Men of Honor
    It's hard not to like a movie like Men of Honor, but it's entirely possible.
  18. The Legend of Bagger Vance
    As entertaining, charming and conceited as other Robert Redford joints, but it's also insufferably obvious.
  19. Charlie's Angels
    So phenomenal that Bill Murray can't even steal it. And he tries. So excellent that Murray's MTV progeny Tom Green can't sink it.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  20. Lucky Numbers
    An unsteady stab at noir.
  21. A Time for Drunken Horses
    The welcome hints at emotional excess are compromised by the blunt force of the movie's political point-making.
  22. Loving Jezebel
    There's more gymnastic yammering in Loving Jezebel than in a season of "Dawson's Creek."
  23. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
    Cult shocker has been turned into throwaway megaplex fodder.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  24. Kirikou and the Sorceress
    Set in a vivid two-dimensional African village, the animated fable is jerky, odd but redolent somehow of Saturday morning and the night's sleep before.
  25. Sound and Fury
    In 80 minutes, the film accumulates a staggering gravity.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  26. Bedazzled
    The ending is a disappointment, a perfunctory upbeat gesture.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  27. The Yards
    Classic in feel and loaded with sumptuous performances.
  28. The Wolves of Kromer
    Has no intention of taking a more sophisticated path to make its point.
  29. Just One Time
    Feels like an interminable pilot for a show to fill that deadly 8:30 slot between "Friends" and "Will and Grace."
  30. Pay It Forward
    There's the world-alteringly scary possibility that (Leder) might be trying to kill us with a star-studded "After School Special."
    • San Francisco Examiner
  31. Dr T and the Women
    A finely coiffed, cream-cheese "8 1/2" remix with Gere, a Marcello Mastroianni for Oprah Winfrey times.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  32. The Ladies Man
    As movies about relic sex machines go, this one lacks mojo.
  33. Cleopatra's Second Husband
    A weakly performed rehash of master-slave role-reversal tales.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  34. Billy Elliot
    An adrenaline-pumping, post-musical musical.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  35. Just Looking
    Too smitten with the Eisenhower-era nostalgia.
  36. Lost Souls
    Another "Exorcist" bastard -- one with a chick-flick pedigree.
  37. The Contender
    The sort of smutty scandalmongering the average moviegoer can really get behind.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  38. Two Family House
    De Felitta has taken potentially overripe material and given it real heart.
  39. CyberWorld
    Some delightful surprises, but the sort of heavy-metal, high-definition sci-fi look that dominates the proceedings, plus the relentless pace and endless morphing, are somewhat tiring.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  40. Bamboozled
    Collapses under its own contempt.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  41. Meet the Parents
    What begins as unassumingly dull wanders into disarming chaos.
  42. Requiem for a Dream
    It's one of the most beautifully unpleasant movies ever made - its reverse charge being that it is no fun at all.
  43. Girlfight
    There's a sense of genuineness throughout Girlfight.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  44. Remember the Titans
    A proudly unsophisticated demonstration of racial progress.
  45. Beautiful
    SORRY, SALLY. I didn't like it. I really didn't like it.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  46. Best in Show
    Gets blue-ribbon results from its thoroughbred cast of improvisational comics.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  47. The Fantasticks
    It seems like another misstep - the story just doesn't hold up to Ritchie's treatment.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  48. Urban Legends: Final Cut
    You're smarter than this, but occasionally it tricks you into thinking it might be up to something you haven't considered, like an above-average, extra-bloody episode of "Scooby Doo."
  49. Woman on Top
    Not the sweaty midnight stroll through the garden of carnal delights that its title wants you to believe.
  50. Dancer in the Dark
    A movie too smart and too urgent to be categorically awful. Clinically insane may be another matter altogether.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  51. Chutney Popcorn
    The film is alt-schmaltz, and it'll do.
  52. Human Resources
    At its best when it's hovering around the muted dysfunction between a father and a son, who never understood each other to begin with.
  53. Goya in Bordeaux
    Dreamy and elegantly filmed.
  54. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
    Misses some creative opportunities to really drive this story home, but it's a naturally haunting story nonetheless.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  55. Bait
    Too much of nothing and far from the potentially star-making material that Foxx deserves.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  56. Urbania
    Quickly degenerates into a grueling piece of unpleasantness.
  57. Duets
    Miserable as it crawls for two eternal hours toward being "life-affirming."
    • San Francisco Examiner
  58. Paragraph 175
    Soberly, deeply effective.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  59. Almost Famous
    More often than not the film casts an infectious, evocative spell.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  60. The Way of the Gun
    A misfire.
  61. Pola X
    A less confrontational, though positively gushing modernization of "Pierre, or the Ambiguities."
  62. Backstage
    Mildly satisfying.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  63. Nurse Betty
    Groovy.
  64. Whipped
    Breaks new ground both as an abominable enterprise in guy-talk and as no-budget hackwork.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  65. Titanic Town
    Capably made but simplistic story.
  66. Madadayo
    It is an important work, and a very good one.
  67. Wildflowers
    Timely in that it joins an already mammoth list of bad movies about post-hippie static, including the recent "Steal This Movie."
  68. The Art of War
    Wesley Snipes runs around a lot shooting people in plotless film.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  69. Bring It On
    An army of rolled abs and their owners give the state of American race relations a beginner's workout.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  70. Solomon & Gaenor
    The film is in the key of "Romeo and Juliet," and it's a one-note tune.
  71. Waga jinsei saiaku no toki
    Kaizo Hayashi's homage to noir B movies, both Japanese and American, is successful as a true labor of love.
  72. Bittersweet Motel
    A crafty, sometimes craven, but hardly worshipful snapshot of an unlikely candidate for biggest rock act on earth.
    • San Francisco Examiner
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Chalk
    An impressive low-whistle, hardscrabble look at the world of pool sharks and the people who crisscross their lives.
  74. Love & Sex
    The dialogue is hip, natural and observational.
  75. The Crew
    Tired comedy.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  76. Place Vendôme
    Overall a well-played chess match of a movie.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  77. The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack
    The ballad as it turns out is a duet between a dad and his girl, who'd often rather accentuate the positive than exploit pain, quietly proving that she is her father's daughter.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  78. The Original Kings of Comedy
    Crassly funny passages.
  79. Steal This Movie
    It's often a lapsed, under-informed documentary with restagings.
  80. The Cell
    It's mesmerizing nonetheless for its flagrant disregard for narrative, character, pacing, performance and good lighting.
  81. Cecil B. DeMented
    The shenanigans have been pared into 84 minutes of transgressive, potty-minded farce, that is often Waters at his most cheerful and most thematically focused.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  82. The Replacements
    Like two hours of outtakes in search of a studio audience.
  83. The Opportunists
    An engaging, well-written film that is surprisingly gentle in tone and easily paced.
  84. Autumn in New York
    Fails to be the histrionic bubble bath that you want to carry you away.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  85. Aimee & Jaguar
    A guilty pleasure and one of the best films of the year.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  86. The Tao of Steve
    The vibe is acoustic-cafe: cute, catchy and ironic given its wimpy point of view.
  87. Saving Grace
    Determined to be inoffensively tidy and cute above all else.
  88. The Tic Code
    Not entirely persuasive, not entirely schmaltzy, "The Tic Code" is one of those well-meant dramatizations... that mysteriously made it all the way to a theater near you.
  89. Psycho Beach Party
    Overstays its welcome until the jokes curdle and the satire becomes a blunt instrument, but not before Busch throws some priceless one-liners.
  90. Space Cowboys
    From both sides of the camera, Eastwood works the crowd better than he has in years.
  91. Coyote Ugly
    Doesn't have what it takes to be truly terrible.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  92. Hollow Man
    A terribly bad movie, one of the worst of its kind in recent years.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  93. Nutty Professor II: The Klumps
    It's a half-life better than Martin Lawrence treading similar, simpler water in "Big Momma's House."
  94. Girl on the Bridge
    Has a silly, insouciant glamour often employed to sell hair conditioners and perfume.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  95. Catfish in Black Bean Sauce
    Determined to try your patience, asking you to fall in love with it.
  96. The Wind Will Carry Us
    Kiarostami's genius is elusive. His films may be unknowable, but they are undeniably hypnotic, charismatic.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  97. Thomas and the Magic Railroad
    An archaic rail-ride into the heart of boredom.
  98. Loser
    An arthritic failure, genuine only when the two outcast lovers' eyes dart toward each other, then retreat.
  99. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    A runny intimate portrait that doesn't trust Tammy Faye Messner and her story to enthrall you. So they've all but spelled it out: k-i-t-s-c-h.
    • San Francisco Examiner
  100. Alice et Martin
    Binoche is the ideal creature for that kind of cosmetic expansion, and, here, her thorough modernity takes on an almost cruddy, Italian sadness.
    • San Francisco Examiner
prev
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »