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For 7,979 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 51% 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 Badlands
Lowest review score: 0 Terror Firmer
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,504 out of 7979
  2. Mixed: 3,561 out of 7979
  3. Negative: 914 out of 7979
7979 movie reviews
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    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Indian Summer
    Throughout, Binder doesn't seem wholly committed either to character exploration or broad comedy; the film veers back and forth between the two. Despite its weaknesses, however, SUMMER is another promising film for Binder, who manages a fair enough share of privileged moments to make it worthwhile, if not outstanding. He's put together a terrific cast and has directed them well, down to Raimi, who puts his longtime devotion to The Three Stooges to good work by stealing some of the film's best laughs.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Death Hunt
    A few moments of good, visual storytelling aren't enough to save this frustrating film.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Proposal
    Bullock playing against type is the only original thing going on in the whole film.
  4. Around the Bend
    An awkward amalgam of road movie, buddy comedy and melodramatic conventions, first-time writer-director Jordan Roberts' male weepie ricochets between affecting scenes and insufferably maudlin ones.
  5. Kate & Leopold
    Once it settles down, it becomes a star-making vehicle for Jackman, and a supremely polished example of the sort of swoony love story cherished by women who secretly hope that some day their prince will come.
  6. The General's Daughter
    The whole lurid business is undeniably entertaining, but it leaves a bad taste.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Lady Vanishes
    This remake of the classic Hitchcock mystery is a far cry from its predecessor, lacking the style and subtle humor of the master.
  8. The Bank
    Though the script's twists and turns are fairly conventional and the Davis subplot is handled in an awkwardly obvious way, first-time feature filmmaker Robert Connolly understands the power of style.
  9. Agent Cody Banks
    The young stars have considerable natural chemistry and do their best to make the rehashed material approachable and entertaining while maintaining their kid-friendly images.
  10. In Good Company
    If the movie overall had the bitter brio of Malcolm McDowell's brief turn as Globecom guru Teddy K, a Franken-mogul stitched together from bits of Richard Branson, Barry Diller and Rupert Murdoch, it would be a pointed black comedy.
    • 32 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Aspen Extreme
    The film continually leans towards intelligence and even poignancy but then gives way to pretty pictures and nonsensical fluff.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Terminator Salvation
    With the exception of one breathtaking sequence in a helicopter, the action in Terminator Salvation is astonishingly dull.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Champagne
    Though a minor work, this worldly comedy is handsomely staged, and Hitchcock's dry wit is already in evidence.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Poltergeist II: The Other Side
    Although an improvement thematically over the first film (the childlike awe of the original has been replaced by a very adult fear of impotence), Poltergeist II is terribly disjointed and dramatically unfulfilling.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Lost in America
    Just when it seemed Albert Brooks had gotten his creative energies under control, along comes this intermittently funny, often overdone comedy that could have been a classic.
  16. Swimming Upstream
    Fingleton turned his own story into a feel-good fable; neither Martin McGrath's gorgeous cinematography nor the hypnotic score by Run Lola Run(1998) composers Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil's can compensate.
  17. What Planet Are You From?
    Unfortunately the whole thing is less than the sum of its parts, despite a frequently droll script and a great performance from Shandling.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Until the End of the World
    Once the film gets bogged down in the outback, however, it comes to a virtual stop. Wenders seems to be saying something pretty banal about the emotional emptiness of the recorded image as opposed to the "real thing." If that's the point, why make a film at all?
  19. Reykjavík
    Characters find themselves in absurdly complicated situations, but respond with sardonic cool rather than hot-blooded hysteria.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Lord of the Rings
    Animator Ralph Bakshi's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord Of The Rings"trilogy is an entertaining film, but in attempting to remain faithful to the source material, Bakshi tries to cover too much ground.
  21. Kalifornia
    Unrelenting and predictable, this pretentious collaboration between a music video director and the writer of "Revenge of the Nerds" covers all of the bases now required in a road movie thriller, to precious little dramatic effect.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Saw IV
    The trouble is that if you haven't seen the other entries in the cycle, or don't have all the characters committed to memory, you'll have trouble figuring out who anybody is or, in the end, what any of it is supposed to mean.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    No Man of Her Own
    A deft blend of comedy, action, and romance.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hard Target
    Though working on a Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle can be seen as a comedown for Woo, he rises to the occasion to create an often rousing entertainment that is almost inarguably Van Damme's best film to date.
  25. Maze
    The love story is pretty conventional stuff, but Linney's finely calibrated, low-key performance as Callie goes a long way towards making it more interesting than it might otherwise be.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mystic Pizza
    A feel-good movie with a gentle melancholic undercurrent.
    • 19 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    All the Queen's Men
    Good-natured fun; it doesn't always work, but it's not for want of trying.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Cet amour-là
    Pretentious but gorgeously photographed.
  29. Joe Dirt
    This sentimental comedy is generally sweet natured.
  30. Unfaithful
    If ever a movie cried out to be French, it's this one, and not just because it's a remake of Claude Chabrol's notoriously icy La Femme Infidele (1968).
    • 26 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mac and Me
    In addition to its lack of originality, MAC AND ME is also blatantly commercial, selling everything from candy to soft drinks to fast-food restaurants--the film includes a "special guest appearance" by Ronald MacDonald.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Phantom
    Essentially, this is RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK without the narrative savvy and self-referential cleverness.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Some Body
    In a film in which the star talks graphically about the size of her vagina and ex-lovers appear as themselves to call her a whore, there might be such a thing as too much honesty.
  34. Dahmer
    Renner's performance as Dahmer is unimpeachable, fascinating without being charismatic, and Kayaru's Rodney is a marvel of complicated characterization under difficult circumstances.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Total Eclipse
    Polish director Agnieska Holland paid no mind to the actors' accents during casting, and the melange of British, French and American speech helps sink a film that's already foundering under the weight of its pretentions.
  36. Small Time Crooks
    This thin, clichéd comedy of crime and social climbing contains some scattered laughs and whole lot of padding.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mermaids
    Sadly, the film had all the elements to be a very captivating experience, but it fails to bring those elements together into a strong whole.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Rush Hour 3
    Strangest of all, Roman Polanski shows up to torture our heroes with a Paris phone book, then subject them to a full-cavity search. A gratuitous nod to "Chinatown"? Who knows? Who cares?
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    Thirty years down the line, not everyone looks as they once did, so even fans will have trouble putting names to aged faces. Newcomers, meanwhile, will feel hopelessly shut out.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Quantum of Solace
    This rare direct follow-up hopefully will put to rest the leftover emotional baggage of the character and leave Bond open to a bit more familiar interpretation in the future.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Jesus Christ Superstar
    Yvonne Elliman is electrifying as Mary Magdalene, and Carl Anderson couldn't have been better as Judas; but Ted Neeley as Jesus is more whiny than heroic.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Operation Dumbo Drop
    An exceptionally sturdy cast -- especially Danny Glover as a stern but sensitive captain and Denis Leary as a wisecracking supply sergeant -- manages to keep the one-joke scenario airborne most of the time.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Cut Sleeve Boys
    There's nothing particularly original about art-director-turned-filmmaker Ray Yeung's good-natured look at a pair of aging gay men in London, other than the fact that these men happen to be of Chinese descent. Beyond that, it's pretty much gay business as usual.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Heartbreak Kid
    Although engagingly played, the film cannot find a voice or climax.
  45. Evergreen
    While the film has striking moments, it feels padded with events that seem freighted with narrative weight but end up not mattering at all to the story.
  46. The Jackal
    Though consistently handsome, the film never quite achieves the shallow but hugely seductive intensity of its MTV-style opening credits sequence.
  47. Film Geek
    Westby's sympathy for the Scottys of the world is evident, but like them he doesn't always know how to put his best face forward.
  48. The Siege
    Zwick frequently sacrifices dramatic urgency in the name of sobriety.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Grease 2
    Most conspicuously absent is John Travolta, replaced here by Maxwell Caulfield, who can't lift the original greaser's comb. Michelle Pfeiffer (MARRIED TO THE MOB; DANGEROUS LIAISONS) fares better as Olivia Newton-John's replacement, but the whole movie looks as if it has been slapped together to capitalize on its predecessor's success, and no doubt, it was.
  50. The Invasion
    There's little room for ideas when there are flaming cars to be crashed, and overall the film is an infelicitous hodgepodge that lifts as liberally from "The Quatermass Experiment" (1956) and "28 Weeks Later" (2007) as "Body Snatchers" while leaving all the best bits behind -- even the iconic pods are gone.
  51. The Darjeeling Limited
    The trouble with this precious fable isn't that the Whitmans are self-absorbed ninnies: It's that they aren't characters at all.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Leviathan
    Scientists in an underwater lab are picked off by a monster of the deep in this cheesy hybrid of Alien, The Thing, and The Abyss.
  53. Team America: World Police
    The result is undeniably offensive and occasionally very funny, but the gags fall flat as often as they hit their mark.
  54. The Ladies Man
    The film is a harmless extension of the skit, aimed at fans and best viewed as a showcase for Meadows's considerable talents.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Basic Instinct
    The worst things about Basic Instinct, though, are the explicit "love" scenes. They're supposed to contribute to a heady equation in which sex, violence and psychology are fused; instead, they're gratuitous, exploitative, and entirely unerotic.
  56. Goya's Ghosts
    The film's seriousness of intent is unimpeachable – Forman and Carriere see disturbing echoes of the modern world in 18th-century Spain -- but the execution borders on farce.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cherry 2000
    Once Griffith and Andrews enter the lawless zone attempts at quirky humor fall flat and the film settles into a fairly conventional action yarn
  58. Two Men Went to War
    Shot in the warm sepia tones of bittersweet memories, this whimsical, unpretentious shaggy war story is the sort of film that looks like a small gem when you accidentally stumble across it on TV or at the video store. But it feels a little unsatisfying when its small virtues are stretched to cover a big screen.
  59. The Art of War
    The winning cast makes the twist-heavy plot plausible.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    The Great Raid
    This is a creditable but disappointingly draggy war epic. It should sizzle like a fuse, but instead plods along with methodical deliberation.
  61. Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope
    The breakout star is retired English bouncer Lenny McLean, 49, who memorably declares, "I f***ing hate violence."
  62. Holes
    Its real liability is on the special effects front: The sub-par digital effects — particularly in the scenes featuring poisonous lizards — detract noticeably from the overall atmosphere.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Octagon
    Lee Van Cleef (master of the menacing grin) makes the most of his role as the leader of a vengeful group of antiterrorists.
  64. Warrior of Light
    De Mello's dedication is inspiring enough to speak for itself.
  65. Walking Tall
    Although inspired by actual events, the film proceeds along formulaic wish-fulfillment lines, its dynamics unaltered by the casting of a mixed-race actor in what was originally a redneck role; it's a sign of some sort of social progress that justified ass-kicking trumps race.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Escape from L.A.
    Good, dirty, escapist fun.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Slutty Summer
    Andreas' cast and crew, however, have done an admirable job of backing up that hilarious title with an intelligent little film that knows its limitations and makes the most of a shoestring budget.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The End
    The film veers wildly from decent black comedy to dumb slapstick, and director Reynolds seems unsure of his own intentions. In a few places this film is quite funny, however, although De Luise and all the scenes he's in are unbearable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Arachnophobia
    It may be a seamless tongue-in-cheek thriller, but it lacks the superbly developed psychological tension of its illustrious predecessors. Director Marshall's film is nothing more than a diversion, and if you personally have no fear of spiders, you might wonder what all the fuss is about.
  70. Flakes
    Freakies fans will swoon.
  71. The Man Who Cried
    Ricci brings her trademark gravity to the wary Suzie, but Blanchett's role is the dazzler.
  72. Dawn of the Dead
    A buzzed-up gloss on the original, it's entertaining -- if fundamentally shallow.
  73. Tomorrow Never Dies
    Ultimately, though, the film is forgettable even by the standards of prefabricated pop ephemera.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg (re-release)
    A refreshingly straightforward, conventional approach to the documentary form. (Review of Original Release)
    • 50 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Star Trek: The Motion Picture
    Unfortunately, director Robert Wise has no feeling for Trek's pop insouciance, and the movie unfolds ponderously.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Exorcist II: The Heretic
    Not as awful as its notorious reputation would indicate, but certainly not the neglected masterpiece its small cult of supporters has claimed, Boorman's gorgeously shot sequel to The Exorcist has isolated moments of breathtaking imagery, but its parts do not add up to a satisfying whole.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    When Worlds Collide
    If the naive dramatic situations and trite idealism can be ignored, the viewer is in for an amazing spectacle of special effects in WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE.
  78. The Last Castle
    While the film is shot in shades of gray, the drama is played out in black and white.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Blaze
    Blaze may be the least sleazy movie about whoring since The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Paul Newman stars as Louisiana governor Earl K. Long in this sanitized romance adapted by director Ron Shelton from the autobiography of Blaze Starr, the Bourbon Street stripper who supposedly stole Long's heart.
  80. The Messengers
    The trouble isn't just that this haunted-house story, written by Mark Wheaton and directed by Hong Kong filmmakers Danny and Oxide Pang, is both formulaic and derivative. It's that it's completely free of atmosphere, the very thing that their 2002 "The Eye" had in such creepy abundance.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Wing Commander: Space Will Never Be the Same
    The script too often sounds like an encrypted communique itself, and it's tiring trying to keep all the nonsensical space-jargon straight. The effort is more demanding than hanging onto a joystick, and not entirely worth the effort.
  82. Teeth
    The film's mix of cheap gags, macabre coming-of-age story, social satire and Cronenbergian body horror is apparently meant to gel into black comedy, but it never quite does.
  83. Mean Machine
    This amiable picture talks tough, but it's all bluster -- in the end it's as sweet as "Greenfingers."
    • 34 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Into My Heart
    The results are only so-so.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    The Monkey's Mask
    The plot itself isn't really strong enough to stand alone. And that leaves the film an essentially conventional whodunit, if one with a rather unconventional sleuth at its center.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Humanité
    This curiously empty film was awarded the Jury Prize at the 1997 Cannes film festival.
  87. Miss Congeniality
    William Shatner's comic timing helps him nearly steal the picture.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    One Missed Call
    The result is yet another tired, ultimately incoherent horror movie that undoes the promise of its pretty good premise and potentially interesting story structure with dull scares, sloppy ending and a pair of unconvincing, leaden lead performances.
  89. Open My Heart
    fans of this venerable Eurotrash form will welcome any evidence that it's still alive and writhing lasciviously.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Next Karate Kid
    Overlong and utterly predictable, The Next Karate Kid offers little excitement, even in its culminating fight sequence.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Windtalkers
    The movie deals superficially with Native American pride and racism in the ranks, but it's hardly about the codetalkers at all: Neither Woo nor the screenwriting team of Joe Batteer and John Rice seem to appreciate the bitter irony in a Native American soldier protecting his land by serving the very government that took most of it from him in the first place.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Henry & June
    Kaufman tries to project a kind of professorial sobriety, hoping his film will seem classy and serious instead of raunchy. We think it could've used more raunch, and we're sure Henry Miller (whose favorite film was L'AGE D'OR) would have agreed.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Eating
    Unfortunately, EATING lacks a main plot or any truly involving developments, and the film, after a promising beginning, loses steam.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Program
    THE PROGRAM was a surprisingly thoughtful entry in a season glutted with sports films. (RUDY; BLUE CHIPS; THE AIR UP THERE; ABOVE THE RIM; D2; and MAJOR LEAGUE 2.) The game sequences, in particular, are deftly choreographed and charged with a real sense of drama.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Surviving Picasso
    This movie is a dreary endurance test.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pink Floyd: The Wall
    Thematically the film is banal, and even its simple themes of alienation, loneliness, and paranoia are muddled and sapped of relevancy by the overblown treatment. Geldof is effective in the lead, and the animation sequences by political cartoonist Gerald Scarfe are interesting and well executed, though too long.
  97. Johnny Suede
    Johnny Suede's stylish, dreamlike mood and abstract dialogue cannot compensate for its unsatisfying storyline and characters.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Trouble in Mind
    TROUBLE IN MIND is offbeat, unique, and interesting, and for that alone it should be noted. It is a shame that none of the elements ever come together, so this film winds up being a beautiful, atmospheric mess.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alone in the Dark
    This black sense of humor, combined with the playful performances of its excellent cast (especially Donald Pleasance, as the head of the asylum), raises Alone In The Dark a cut above the average maniacs-on-the-loose entry.
  100. Malevolence
    Mena's characters rarely do the sort of spectacularly stupid things that provoke derisive laughter from seasoned horror-moviegoers.
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