St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 1,847 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 66% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 32% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.6 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Asteroid City
Lowest review score: 0 The Divergent Series: Insurgent
Score distribution:
1847 movie reviews
  1. An enthralling lament for an era in which beauty is in danger of becoming extinct.
  2. Easy to watch but hard to pin down, like a creature with eight legs going in different directions.
  3. Colin Firth is an Academy Award winner, so perhaps his lack of chemistry with fellow honoree Nicole Kidman is a carefully laid clue that his middle-aged newlywed Eric Lomax is damaged goods. Yet to the drama’s detriment, Lomax is about as poisonous as a week-old crumpet.
  4. One part personal mystery and one part art-appreciation class.
  5. This send-up of current horror movies is a go-for-broke hoot, a hot mess of a comedy that doesn’t have a lick of sense. And knowing that going in adds to the often knee-slapping laughs.
  6. The movie is best enjoyed as a minor-key operatic, not a coherent story. While Law bellows blasphemous poetry, his director orchestrates a noirish light show with a cockeyed rhythm.
  7. An ambitious movie, but ultimately there’s too much “artificial” and not enough “intelligence.”
  8. Written, directed and acted by Hollywood pros, Heaven Is For Real is a polished little movie with a hopeful message, but when it literalizes the divine mysteries, it opens the door to a Doubting Thomas.
  9. The plot is murky, the acting is melodramatic and the movie is way too long, but the target audience will salivate over the inventively choreographed set-pieces.
  10. For better or worse, the whole exercise in lurid leg-pulling goes out with a bang.
  11. Joe
    While Green is force-feeding us this hard-boiled hokum, he doesn’t distract us with many memorable images, as he did in his earliest films.
  12. This hand-drawn French import is fresh evidence that you don’t need computers and singing princesses to make a charming animated movie.
  13. The flashbacks, which get almost as much screen time as the present day story, are far more compelling.
  14. Draft Day isn’t quite a comedy, but it’s got a similar kind of flow that makes it as easily consumable as lite beer.
  15. The debut creation of director Ritesh Batra, it’s a lovely little film from a place where the little things linger.
  16. Presented as a stand-alone film, but without an explanation for the protagonist’s physical and emotional injuries, it’s a head-scratcher. As with Joe’s sexual compulsion, scratching can’t cure the itch.
  17. With his glorified Frisbee and good-guy smile, Evans is engaging, but “The Winter Soldier” might be stronger with a little less Captain and a little more America.
  18. If we want a bigger picture, we’ll have to wait for God to green-light “Noah: The Next Generation.”
  19. This is an extremely gory flick, with autopsy scenes to complement Schwarzenegger’s usual shoot-first sensibilities. After 30 years, it’s pointless to complain about the collateral damage in his movies, but here Schwarzenegger is taking vigilante justice to dark new levels that can only be reached via plot holes big enough for a Hummer.
  20. The way that Muppets Most Wanted grabs for the green is criminal.
  21. After feeding on this sweet buffet, sated cinephiles will want to call the front desk to extend their stay.
  22. Bad Words is often very funny, thanks to Bateman’s brick-wall malevolence and screenwriter Andrew Dodge’s inventively rude dialogue.
  23. What about those who haven’t read the book? Divergent, the movie, still offers a smart, spunky, sympathetic heroine, a hunky love interest and a sobering if rather obvious message about the value of being true to oneself rather than mindlessly conforming.
  24. Periodically deviating from its fly-on-the-wall aesthetic, the film does a noticeably better job than the Joan Rivers movie of incorporating old footage and photos to underscore its subject’s importance.
  25. What the movie crucially lacks is the clockwork complications that produce a payoff.
  26. Jenison, who had never painted a thing in his life, does indeed produce a beautiful work, but we should never forget that Penn and Teller are professional bamboozlers, and their attempt to re-frame the definition of genius might be nothing but smoke and mirrors.
  27. Typically lovely to look at, with big-eyed young people espousing high ideals amid natural splendor. But outside of their bubble, a prickly history looms, and Miyazaki’s dubious attitude toward the wartime role of his hero makes the movie a mixed blessing.
  28. Non-Stop: It is what it is.
  29. In Secret is so stifled, it makes “Les Misérables” look like “Amélie.”
  30. The four leads are entirely engaging including the manic Hart.

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