San Francisco Examiner's Scores

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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 5 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
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  1. The Substance of Fire
    In the case of Jon Robin Baitz's script, adapted from his play, in spite of the fact that he made considerable alterations in the text to open it up to cinematic possibilities, the movie disappoints in much the same way the play did.
  2. Love Jones
    There is a point of view here, a rather strong one. It may sound like slight praise, but Love Jones is a movie that is exactly what it wants to be, and that's an achievement in a homogenized, test-marketed vanilla-movie landscape.
  3. Private Parts
    Private Parts is a sparkling, nonstop entertainment written by Len Blum and Michael Kalesniko and directed by Betty Thomas, but sometimes it gives the impression that Stern is nothing short of Nobel Peace Prize material.
  4. Jungle 2 Jungle
    Trash is trash, even if it used to be in French.
  5. The Daytrippers
    There is something nicely matter-of-fact about Greg Mottola's family comedy-trauma, The Daytrippers. This first-time writer-director has a breezy way of persuading us that seemingly unrealistic behavior is the most natural in the world.
  6. Smilla's Sense of Snow
    This is the kind of story that might have been interesting had it not been populated with dreary characters played by actors who were clearly coached to be as dull as possible.
  7. Rosewood
    Voight's Wright is one of many examples of how Singleton and Poirier succeed in suggesting the ambivalence and shadings that make movie characters believable.
  8. Absolute Power
    Eastwood is perfect as the bad guy (a thief) you root for.
  9. Fools Rush In
    Perhaps a bit miscast, and with a penchant for too many double-takes, Perry nonetheless is game.
  10. Touch
    I'm not sure someone with Shrader's pessimistic outlook ought to be making comedies. I think the strain is too much for him.
  11. That Darn Cat
    The new version has been speeded up and dumbed down, which does not reflect well on the mouse factory's view of its audience these days.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    SubUrbia
    Then there are times when the humor and the pathos of these losers catch you off-guard. Those moments are nearly profound, and elevate the film above the slacker cliches in which it wallows.
  13. Dante's Peak
    Dante's Peak expands the concept of badness in movies.
  14. Hotel de Love
    Now and then the script reaches admirable heights of humor.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Waiting for Guffman
    Nowhere near as funny as "Spinal Tap," but fans of this kind of deadpan humor are guaranteed to get a few chuckles out of this one. All of the actors are marvelously horrible, and in this movie, bad equals good.
  16. Fierce Creatures
    Amazing comic performances...give this comedy its lovely manic pace, kept just within the realm of sanity.
  17. Prefontaine
    But then, just when it appears the race is lost, Steve James' love for his character and art form kicks in and wins the day, and, though flawed, Prefontaine is an engrossing portrait of a complex figure.
  18. Mother
    With this marvelous premise to launch it, the film fails nevertheless. The trouble is that none of the dialogue is funny enough to fulfill the expectations that Brooks' full-bodied stand-up comedian delivery promises every time he opens his mouth.
  19. Albino Alligator
    A workmanlike effort. It's not startling and it's not incompetent.
  20. Metro
    A lot of noise and nothing to justify it.
  21. The Relic
    It took four people to write the screenplay for The Relic. All I can say is that I hope these people have not quit their day jobs.
  22. Ghosts of Mississippi
    This flashy aloofness puts it in a league with the John Grisham racism-courtroom movie "A Time to Kill" rather than the more moving - and far superior - Harper Lee one, "To Kill a Mockingbird."
  23. The People vs. Larry Flynt
    With its fine courtroom scenes, excellent performances, great writing and superb direction it reminds me more than anything else of Barbet Schroeder's "Reversal of Fortune."
  24. Evita
    Unfortunately, this movie needed an attractive, irresistibly charismatic performer to give us some reason for watching. Madonna is made up to look like Eva, but this is hardly enough to carry the movie.
  25. Michael
    The best movie she ever directed was "This Is My Life," a biting comedy she also wrote that was soundly defeated by both critics and audiences. I think she's lost her nerve and her edge ever since.
  26. Thieves
    Like many French movies, in the retelling this one boils down to an unremittingly silly set of characters and situations.
  27. The Portrait of a Lady
    A harmeless concoction.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Scream
    An artificial and hypocritical effort to escape the artistic limitations of teenage slasher flicks.
  29. My Fellow Americans
    The picture seems to have been intended as a political satire, but only a Hollywood executive could mistake it for the real thing.
  30. One Fine Day
    Here and there, a good idea or scene erupts, as when the antagonists accidentally switch cellular telephones and start taking each other's emergency calls. And Jack keeps his shrink appointment but must speak in code so his daughter won't understand. But these are anomalies and subside just as suddenly as they appear.
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