The Hollywood Reporter's Scores

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For 12,897 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 51% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Lowest review score: 0 Dirty Love
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6,604 out of 12897
  2. Mixed: 5,128 out of 12897
  3. Negative: 1,165 out of 12897
12897 movie reviews
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  1. Garbage Dreams
    An evocative examination of the clash between tradition and modernism in the handling of an age-old problem.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The White Ribbon
    It's a superb cinematic work and an appropriately serious one, given its subject matter and its intentions.
  3. The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond
    The story is a sketchy, dramatically muddled rumination on familiar Williams themes about the Old South and its brave, beautiful, rebellion women always on the brink of love, suicide or madness.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Chaser
    The tight time-frame gives the excellent cast a chance to play with intensity, making even old genre hands hold their breath and feel their minds sufficiently shaken up.
  5. Sherlock Holmes
    Sherlock Holmes goes wrong in many ways except for one -- at the boxoffice.
  6. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
    The film is neither intelligent enough nor silly or grotesque enough to become a lasting favorite.
  7. It's Complicated
    What Meyers doesn't do is take chances. She sticks to formula and predictability. In "Complicated," this is as much a matter of casting as writing.
  8. Sita Sings the Blues
    Arriving amidst a tidal wave of overblown and frequently charmless big studio efforts, Sita Sings the Blues is a welcome reminder that when it comes to animation bigger isn't necessarily better.
  9. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
    Charmless sequel.
  10. Did You Hear About the Morgans?
    Not even the estimable comic chops of Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker can lift it above the level of ordinary.
  11. Avatar
    A fully believable, flesh-and-blood (albeit not human flesh and blood) romance is the beating heart of "Avatar." Cameron has never made a movie just to show off visual pyrotechnics: Every bit of technology in "Avatar" serves the greater purpose of a deeply felt love story.
  12. Nine
    The disappointments here are many, from a starry cast the film ill-uses to flat musical numbers that never fully integrate into the dramatic story. The only easy prediction is that Nine is not going to revive the slumbering musical-film genre.
  13. The Young Victoria
    Emily Blunt, one of the best and most glamorous actresses to come out of England in recent years, makes an unusual but highly successful choice for the young Victoria.
  14. Crazy Heart
    Crazy Heart lacks that spark of originality. So what Fox Searchlight has salvaged essentially is a highly watchable performance by Bridges, one of many he has furnished throughout a long career.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A Town Called Panic
    There's really very little to say about this film beyond that it's absolutely brilliant.
  16. Ricky
    Ricky is a bold, ambitious hybrid that only intermittently reaches the heights toward which it audaciously aims.
  17. Invictus
    A temperate, evenhanded perhaps overly timid film about an intemperate time in South Africa.
  18. The Lovely Bones
    Jackson and his team tell a fundamentally different story. It's one that is not without its tension, humor and compelling details. But it's also a simpler, more button-pushing tale that misses the joy and heartbreak of the original.
  19. A Single Man
    Sensitive and stylish.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Slammin' Salmon
    The movie offers enough solid laughs to ensure a decent audience on DVD and cable. That audience could have been even larger, however, were the proceedings just a little smarter and a whole lot funnier.
  21. The Vicious Kind
    Reveals writer-director Lee Toland Krieger as a talent worth watching.
  22. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
    The story is riddled with salutes to executive producer David Lynch and the film seems pointed hopefully in the direction of Lynch's audiences.
  23. Up in the Air
    It's rare for a movie to be at once so biting and so moving. If Ryan's future seems bleak, there's something exhilarating about a movie made with such clear-eyed intelligence.
  24. The Last Station
    Three superb performances by Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer and James McAvoy should have Oscar handicappers drooling.
  25. Transylmania
    The lame gags, ineptly staged, don't produce anything in the way of genuine laughs, though there is the occasional funny line.
  26. Brothers
    Irish director Jim Sheridan, who has made his films in America in recent years, now delivers an American remake that hues closely to the original but loses some of its true grit.
  27. Armored
    An initially intriguing plot line makes a messy getaway in this throwback heist movie.
  28. Everybody's Fine
    A cloyingly sentimental story that rings false in every moment.
  29. Giant
    The film is impeccable but distant, lacking in spontaneity and not very original.
  30. Breaking Point
    Berenger uses his weathered visage and trademark intensity to good effect, but his efforts are undercut by the overwhelmingly cliched script.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Serious Moonlight
    Overall, "Moonlight" is a nuttily engaging tale of betrayal and, perhaps, redemption.
  32. Loot
    The impact of the quietly observant film builds until the unlikeliest of elements - an old Broadway tune, an empty garage, a conversation about fenders - detonate with long-buried emotion, anguished and tender.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Paa
    This would-be tearjerker without the musical numbers of typical Bollywood fare is for die-hard Amitabh Bachchan fans only.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
    Unfortunately, writer-director Rebecca Miller's script tries so hard to be nervous and edgy that it ultimately succeeds only in making its viewers nervous and edgy.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Home
    A provocative parable about individuals at war with development and the global economy.
  36. The Road
    Director John Hillcoat has performed an admirable job of bringing Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel to the screen as an intact and haunting tale, even at the cost of sacrificing color, big scenes and standard Hollywood imagery of post-apocalyptic America.
  37. The Princess and the Frog
    Marks Disney's rediscovery of a strong narrative loaded with vibrant characters and mind-bending, hilarious situations.
  38. Old Dogs
    Insipid, predictable, broad comedy mixed with Disney Family Values makes for one exasperating sit.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ninja Assassin
    Ninja isn't a great movie, but if you're in the right frame of mind, it is a bloody good time.
  40. Me and Orson Welles
    Christian McKay's impersonation of young Orson Welles is sensational in this enjoyable, though slight, historical fiction about a teen who spends a memorable week with the legendary wonder.
  41. The Blind Side
    Bullock is an irrepressible hoot in writer-director John Lee Hancock's otherwise thoroughly conventional take on Michael Lewis' fact-based book "The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game."
  42. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans
    There is a lot of very black humor; and it develops, somewhat surprisingly, into something suggesting a kind of cheerful pessimism.
  43. Broken Embraces
    This is a pretty minor film from the filmmaker. It feels like more of an exercise in plotting and movie nostalgia than a story about real people.
  44. The Twilight Saga: New Moon
    Once again, the three young leads give committed performances, with Lautner's character allowed a larger share of the spotlight this time around.
  45. Planet 51
    A perky though not terribly imaginative feature aimed primarily at youngsters.
  46. Defamation
    The most affecting scenes, however, involve the class of Israeli teenagers visiting Auschwitz.
  47. Fix
    The sole redeeming factor is the presence of Olivia Wilde (Fox's "House"), who manages to keep the proceedings watchable for at least a portion of the running time.
  48. The Sun
    This precision-controlled film once again highlights Alexander Sokurov's mastery of the medium. The third entry in his Men in Power series employs refined performances, a controlled script, excellent sound and fluid camerawork.
  49. Mammoth
    If one thinks of "Babel" minus the melodrama and histrionics, you get a clearer picture of what Moodysson has done here.
  50. The Missing Person
    A low-key mystery that's initially engaging but ultimately lacks sufficient intrigue to sustain interest.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Red Cliff
    A prelude that provides the beams and columns for the narrative framework, but with a few decisive and spot-on action spectacles, it sufficiently kindles expectations for the climactic clash in Part 2.
  52. Fantastic Mr. Fox
    Anderson has created a world as stylized and inventive as anything he's done... "Fox" is a visual delight.
  53. 2012
    Eye-popping special effects ensure that this movie will be a smash hit, and while it's entertaining for most of its excessive running time, the cheesy script fails to live up to the grandeur of the physical production.
  54. The Messenger
    Moverman adopts a functional directing style that gives full rein to the actors' impressive performances.
  55. Pirate Radio
    The real pirate radio ships, whose days ended in 1967, wound up being towed away for salvage but the film avoids that fate -- like the best rock songs -- with a rousing finish and a pleasing climax.
  56. Dare
    A smart and well-observed entry in the genre, is a cut above the usual hijinks.
  57. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
    Compelling portrait of famed radical lawyer by his daughters.
  58. Uncertainty
    In a way, the film ultimately gets snagged in its own contraption.
  59. Women in Trouble
    Gutierrez's script can't supply female characters as believable as Almodovar's, but in the director's chair he gives his cast room to compensate with funny, self-aware performances.
  60. Love Hurts
    The acting is overly broad, so even the dimmest light bulb in the audience gets the gags.
  61. Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
    As Precious, Sidibe is superb, allowing us to see the inner warmth and beauty of a young woman who, to her world's cruel eyes, might seem monstrous.
  62. The Men Who Stare at Goats
    Even if The Men Who Stare at Goats is not worth comparing to "Dr. Strangelove," it should satisfy audiences with its great cast and patent absurdities, coated in quaint nostalgia for the happy hippie days of yore.
  63. The Box
    An artistic fiasco that cuts across genre lines and all logic to become, perhaps, an instant midnight movie.
  64. The Fourth Kind
    Combines purported raw case study footage with dramatic "recreations" to unsuccessful effect.
  65. A Christmas Carol
    Zemeckis' A Christmas Carol is, in its essence, a product reel, a showy, exuberant demonstration of the glories of motion capture, computer animation and 3D technology. On that level, it's a wow. On any emotional level, it's as cold as Marley's Ghost.
  66. Endgame
    The result is something like an old-fashioned Costa-Gavras film but without the leftist sentimentality.
  67. That Evening Sun
    A moving if too-leisurely paced effort that benefits immeasurably from the superb performance by its 84-year-old star.
  68. Turning Green
    An odd little comedy drama set in Ireland that boasts more onscreen talent than it deserves.
  69. The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
    Although the Tarantino influence still is tangible, this time around Duffy reveals himself to also be a big Francis Ford Coppola fan, but the cartoonish end result plays like "Godfather III" meets the Three Stooges.
  70. Gentlemen Broncos
    Has little to offer besides unrelenting strangeness.
  71. The House of the Devil
    This is the perfect illustration of the banality of most scare movies.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Looking for Palladin
    Krakowski's heavy-handed overreaching is the fatal problem: It's impossible to believe this character, even as he softens late in the game, as a forgiving and familiar victim of awful parenting.
  73. Skin
    The fact that it's actually based on a true story adds an extra layer of poignancy, heightened further by another superb Sophie Okonedo performance.
  74. This Is It
    What this strange yet strangely beguiling film does is capture one of pop culture's great entertainers in the feverish grips of pure creativity.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Antichrist
    Visually gorgeous to a fault and teeming with grandiose if often fascinating ideas that overwhelm the modest story that serves as their vehicle, this may be the least artistically successful film von Trier has ever made.
  76. Amelia
    Most of all, Earhart wanted to be able to fly free as a bird above the clouds, and director Nair and star Swank make her quest not only understandable but truly impressive.
  77. Astro Boy
    Derivative bits aside, the pint-sized Japanese icon takes flight in vibrant CG animation -- no 3D glasses required.
  78. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
    Making a vampire movie without any bite is like removing guns from a Western.
  79. Saw VI
    It might well be time for a creative rebooting; the freshness, if not the viscera, has begun to strongly diminish.
  80. (Untitled)
    (Untitled) assembles a collection of vivid character-types, sometimes a breath short of caricature. But for all its sharp comic angles, Jonathan Parker's film takes its central questions seriously and avoids the pat follow-your-bliss answers Hollywood prefers.
  81. Motherhood
    Neither earth-shaking nor profound, but it has considerable charm, thanks to an appealing cast and some sharply witty observations about the pressures of child-rearing in Manhattan.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ong Bak 2
    You are not likely to see a better display of martial arts combat on screen for some time, even if you have to put up with some excruciating contrivances to get to it.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bam gua nat
    Regardless of critics' assertion of a change in style, Hong core group of intellectual admirers will still find pleasure in his cerebral film language, nuanced dialogue, and droll observations of a Korean abroad.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Killing Kasztner
    Biased as journalism but engrossing as a movie, this documentary about a controversial Holocaust figure should be taken with a grain of kosher salt.
  85. Rembrandt's J'Accuse...!
    Greenaway is first and foremost a deft storyteller and filmmaker -- and a cheeky art historian. An appreciation of art isn't necessary to enjoy Rembrandt's J'Accuse, and Greenaway goes to great lengths to draw the artistically illiterate into the story.
  86. Where the Wild Things Are
    Where the film falters is Jonze and novelist Dave Eggers' adaptation, which fails to invest this world with strong emotions.
  87. Law Abiding Citizen
    The script does create sufficient tension and intrigue to hook viewers along with a photogenic, hardworking cast.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    New York, I Love You
    Most of these linked "shorts" succeed remarkably in nailing the serendipitous flavor of love, New York-style.
  89. The Stepfather
    This remake turns a fondly remembered horror/thriller into a mild and tedious suspense film.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Little Traitor
    Despite this promising subject matter, the film runs out of steam two-thirds of the way through and becomes a sort of Palestinian "Porky's," ending with a fast-forward 30 years into the future that is confusing and abrupt.
  91. The Maid
    This is strikingly talented cinema from a notable international filmmaker.
  92. An Education
    Topped by a fine cast, a first-rate script by Nick Hornby and tight direction by Lone Scherfig, the film is a smart, moving but not inaccessible entry in the coming-of-age canon.
  93. The Damned United
    Director Tom Hooper ("John Adams") ably balances the games (surprisingly little football footage, actually), the personalities and the drama.
  94. Couples Retreat
    A good idea for a sophisticated comedy lurks within the latest Jon Favreau-Vince Vaughn collaboration, Couples Retreat, but the filmmakers lack the courage of their convictions. So the payoff is mixed at best.
  95. Bronson
    Despite the artistic flourishes, this is still an utterly repellent look at a psychopath who does not deserve the attention of the filmmakers or the audience.
  96. Good Hair
    Entertaining and substantive enough to be interesting even for those completely unfamiliar with weaves and relaxers.
  97. Trucker
    Although Trucker doesn't have the social import that made "Norma Rae" a hit, it's an affecting, small film that could catch on with sophisticated audiences as well as more down-home types.
  98. Visual Acoustics
    A really terrific, intensely focused documentary on a fascinating personality.
  99. Adventures of Power
    As a spoof of against-all-odds sports movies, "Power" has its moments. But for most of its running time, it buys into the feel-good formula, aiming to blend silliness and social issues into an inspirational tale
  100. Peter and Vandy
    The greatest romantic movie to jumble its time structure, Stanley Donen's "Two for the Road," is a touchstone that DiPietro must have had in mind. While this low-budget indie doesn't have the gloss or the depth of that romantic classic, the highest compliment I can pay Peter and Vandy is that it belongs in the same company.
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