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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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  1. Youth Without Youth
    Coppola's awkward screenplay never finds its tone -- or perhaps it deliberately evokes the pulp conventions of WWII adventures, horror films, weepy melodrama, psychological mysteries and superhero origin stories as a way of evoking the fundamental artificiality of the cinema. Either way, it never comes together into a cohesive whole, and is seriously undermined by Roth's morose performance.
  2. Lost in Space
    The whole thing is fun for 11-year-olds of all ages.
  3. Automatons
    The acting is flat, and the scientist's ideological speeches too bluntly designed to mirror post-9/11 rhetoric. But there's a dreamy fascination to the iconic images of machines fighting a perpetual war for the human creators they'll inevitably outlast.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Russkies
    All the characters are cardboard, and the actors fail to bring anything extra to their roles. Simply put, this is just a bad film.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Three Musketeers
    The film's greatest incidental pleasures are its supporting players. From Curry, who plays the loathsome Richelieu with his usual gusto, to De Mornay, who clearly relishes her role as one of history's great femmes fatales, to the dryly menacing Wincott and the luminous Anwar and Delpy, there's always someone or something of interest to watch in this passably entertaining remake.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Trail of the Pink Panther
    While the master is at work, there are laughs galore, but the film nonetheless constitutes cheap exploitation of the memory of a man who convulsed audiences for years.
  7. Freedomland
    Hugely ambitious and driven by Julianne Moore, Samuel L. Jackson and Edie Falco's fine, intense performances, Richard Price's adaptation of his own sprawling novel about a racially charged kidnapping that turns a volatile New Jersey town into a powder keg tries to tell too many stories in too little time.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 37 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Final Destination 3
    The downtime between deaths has never been duller, and the Rube Goldberg-type death scenes are so poorly staged that it's difficult to figure out what's about to happen and to whom.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Home Room
    Distinguishes itself from other such projects by dealing less with the event itself than its devastating aftershocks.
  10. MVP: Most Valuable Primate
    Sweet and sort of cute -- watch and see if it doesn't kind of sneak up on you.
  11. Dante's Peak
    These lessons are driven home via silly dialogue ("Her name was Marion and she loved volcanoes...") and painfully predictable plot complications, repeated often enough that there's no need to take notes, except for the benefit of friends who fall asleep.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Meet Dave
    Aside from some unnecessarily crude stereotypes, Eddie Murphy's least-painful comedy in years has a certain peculiar charm.
  13. Malevolence
    Mena's characters rarely do the sort of spectacularly stupid things that provoke derisive laughter from seasoned horror-moviegoers.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Needful Things
    As with many Stephen King adaptations, the problem no doubt partially lies in the necessity to condense the lengthy source novel, with material that might have given the story more depth lost in favor of packing in the horrific highlights
    • 43 Metascore
    • 38 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Love in the Time of Cholera
    Huge in scope and beautifully shot on location in South America, this ambitious production is undone by terrible casting choices.
  16. Meet Joe Black
    It doesn't pay to look too closely at this sumptuous fantasy, but if you're in the right mood to let it wash over you it's very warm and fizzy indeed.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    The Final Season
    Yes it's as corny as Kansas in August, but this admittedly formulaic sports drama is base on a true story and has something important to say about the fate of many small Midwestern American towns whose popular sports teams fall victim to school consolidation.
  18. Cleopatra's Second Husband
    Things take an unexpected turn into far grimmer territory when the wormy Robert finally turns.
  19. For Love of the Game
    The weighty themes of loss, regret and abdication of personal responsibility are undermined by the reverential use of baseball as a symbol of mankind's potential for selfless greatness.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    BookWars
    Rosette's film takes on a seriously Orwellian cast when the sellers mobilize to wage a civil war of words against the Big Brotherly NYC bureaucrats and academics trying to sweep them off the street.
  21. The Young Unknowns
    Jelski's screenplay, a finalist in the fiercely competitive Walt Disney Screenwriting Fellowship competition, is repetitive and stagy.
  22. The Very Thought of You
    The cast is aces, and Peter Morgan's screenplay is both very sharp on male sexual politics and crammed with enough comic twists and turns to keep you interested.
  23. American Wedding
    Is this sophisticated humor? No. But it is pretty entertaining.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Twentynine Palms
    Even adventurous moviegoers who are familiar with Bruno Dumont's previous features...may be taken aback by the intensity of this shocker.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Master of the Game
    The pacing is suspenseful and acting is actually pretty good, even if accents are no one's strong suit.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Man with the Golden Gun
    Screenwriters Maibaum and Mankiewicz attempted to downplay the gadgetry this time around, but their attempts at adding more humor hinder plot development. The film's pace lags until the climactic finale.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Elvira: Mistress of the Dark
    Despite its mildly raunchy tone and obsession with Peterson's considerable cleavage, the film is a decent, good-hearted comedy that never takes itself seriously.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Uninvited
    It's best to line The Uninvited right up on the soon-to-be-forgotten shelves next to the now third-generation Asian remakes and wait for the next effective foreign genre fare for Hollywood to butcher and rehash.
    • 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.
  30. Unaccompanied Minors
    There isn't an original moment in the mix, but it's not as crass or vulgar as much of what passes for "family friendly" entertainment, and it keeps the precocious pop-culture references to a blessed minimum.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 60 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Steal Me
    The film's real star is the stunning Montana landscape, beautifully captured by cinematographer Paul Ryan.
  32. The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam
    While sumptuously beautiful, the film is often stilted and undermined by some painfully amateurish performances that no good intentions can smooth over.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Skin Deep
    Ritter lacks the charisma to bring his role off, the slapstick is tiresome, and Edwards' script fails to generate sympathy for Zach or to develop characters.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    True Colors
    As with many Hollywood films before it, TRUE COLORS is a film with no discernable reason for existence, apart from the sheer joy of the filmmaking process itself. Far from being its own reward, however, the film is a dull, unreasonable cypher.
  35. Wonderland
    F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong: there are second acts in American lives. But all too many of them are sad, sordid or both, as this fact-based story of sex, drugs and murder featuring adult-movie superstar John Holmes aptly demonstrates.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Still of the Night
    Although Benton's plentiful homages to Alfred Hitchcock are well handled, the major problem with this talky picture is that there's plenty of suspense but not enough mystery.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Death Race
    It honestly delivers the goods without all the preachy moralizing about violent entertainment and cultural ruin.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Not Easily Broken
    Those looking for genuine drama should probably look elsewhere.
  39. Instinct
    In search of inspiration and the human spirit triumphant, they managed to cook up a pot of sanctimonious, reductive claptrap (which the credits confess was only "inspired" by Quinn's book) that's not in the least instructive or entertaining.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Hey, Happy!
    Clearly, it's not for everyone. Extra points for a great electronic soundtrack, striking widescreen cinematography and an unapologetically freaky attitude.
  41. Segunda piel
    Despite some strong performances, never rises above the level of a telanovela.
  42. The Forgotten
    Director Joseph Ruben's best efforts can't keep Gerald Di Pego's puzzle-picture script from toppling into absurdity as it lurches from melodrama to psychological thriller with supernatural overtones to full-blown exercise in X-Files-style nuttiness.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Missing in Action
    As an action picture, Missing In Action works fairly well. Norris is a worthy hero, shooting and kicking Asian enemies right and left, and the film is blessed with production values that make it quite watchable.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Eternal
    The ending doesn't really work, and Pla tends to overplay what's already a larger-than-life character, but Neron is perfect as the striking and cucumber-cool countess.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Conan the Barbarian
    A series of meaningless adventures punctuated with a lot of clanky, very bloody swordplay, Conan the Barbarian is best remembered for a scene in which Schwarzenegger punches out a camel.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Trust the Man
    The cast, however, is great -- Crudup and Duchovny in particular share a fun chemistry that's just toilet-obsessed enough to be absolutely believable.
  47. Miss Congeniality
    William Shatner's comic timing helps him nearly steal the picture.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    M. Butterfly
    Though carefully cast and set in the most exotic of locales, the drama lacks any real excitement, the director's glacial style aligning itself all too patly with Hwang's arid rhetoric.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    America: Freedom to Fascism
    Law-abiding Americans who hand off a solid chunk of their salaries to the IRS might be interested in what filmmaker Aaron Russo has to say on the subject of income tax.
  50. The Peacemaker
    Ruthlessly efficient and utterly predictable.
  51. Recess: School's Out
    The movie's uninspired animation (including primitive, blocky computer imagery) doesn't help, nor do its astonishingly stereotyped characters.
  52. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
    Simply a series of set pieces designed to insure Angelina Jolie's status as action-babe pin-up.
  53. The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
    Good-natured but overstuffed sequel.
  54. The Final Cut
    Naim's potential is evident, but his debut is a frustrating exercise in missed opportunities.
  55. Exhuming Mr. Rice
    Aimed at youngsters, this odd mix of fantasy and disease-of-the-week conventions doesn't really gel, though its ambitions are laudable.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
    This sequel to 1994's surprise blockbuster is shamelessly stupid, willfully juvenile and generally just plain gross -- which is, after all, the point.
  57. Feast
    John Gulager's directing debut is horror at its most reductive and least resonant.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge
    A worthy successor to the original movie, NIGHTMARE PART 2 is surprisingly optimistic and moral. The power of love and kindness wins out over evil and violence--something not often seen in modern horror films.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ticks
    Tony Randel, confirming himself as one of the more talented directors on the '90s low-budget horror scene, orchestrates the buggy mayhem with a good deal of skill.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Flipper
    Even on a purely sentimental level, Free Willy this ain't: The product placements are the most promiscuous in recent memory --perhaps in history -- and all but the smallest children will sense the cynicism underlying this superficially noble shaggy fish story.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Cruising
    Viewers are spared nothing as Steve Burns undergoes degrading brutality after brutality; virtually nobody is portrayed sympathetically.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    D.E.B.S.
    The terrific soundtrack, which includes the Only Ones' "Another Girl, Another Planet" and New Order's most excellent "Temptation," is heavily weighted towards the '80s, which is exactly as it should be.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
    Hooper took the easy path and went for out-and-out gore, rather than making a carefully constructed horror film. The film feels as if Hooper himself has nothing but contempt for the original and went out of his way to tear it down.
  64. G
    A hip-hop reimagining of "The Great Gatsby" that fails both as an update of F. Scott Fitzgerald's dissection of American aspirations and class barriers and on its own boorish terms.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    My Father the Hero
    Its real star is the picturesque tropical scenery.
  66. Bones
    With his spidery fingers and his velvet eyes, the lean, languid Snoop Dogg was born to be an undead player, and clearly relishes the role of Jimmy Bones.
  67. The Time Machine
    They STILL didn't get it right this TIME.
  68. The Family Man
    A surprisingly charming fable.
  69. Drive Me Crazy
    Smarter and more engaging than it has to be.
  70. Wet Hot American Summer
    Most of the scenes fall flatter than a lead soufflé, and the film's sight gags -- Andy dumping campers' bodies by the roadside, Gene humping the refrigerator -- are outrageous without actually being funny.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    The Big Bounce
    Gutierrez keeps some of Leonard's tart dialogue, but not enough to hide the fact that the story has no momentum -- those gratuitous shots of pro-sufers shooting curls don't compensate -- and there's zero chemistry between the whiny Wilson and Foster, who has yet to make the transition from model to actress.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Scumrock
    Moritsugu's film is really just a loose collection of encounters between characters that at times barely hangs together.
  73. Went to Coney Island on a Mission from God... Be Back by Five
    Ambles to a surprisingly affecting conclusion, almost despite itself.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    J.D.'s Revenge
    This film, with an all-black cast, is a cut above most black -exploitation films of the period, despite the regulation blood and gore.
  75. Joe Somebody
    The picture is nearly stolen, however, by co-star Greg Germann (of TV's Ally McBeal) in the role of Joe's company's resident corporate weasel. Germann's squinty-eyed insincerity is truly a marvel to behold, and it's an astringent corrective to the film's rather too frequent feel-good passages.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Raising Cain
    Every so often, a neat little moment will appear and RAISING CAIN will appear to be getting back on track, but like his schizophrenic villain, De Palma always winds up letting his worst instincts get the better of him.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Force 10 from Navarone
    The action sequences, especially the climax, are painfully deficient, one of the many demerits of Hamilton's dull direction. Only the cast makes this worth catching for less demanding fans of the war genre.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Home of the Brave
    Starts with a bang and ends in a long, protracted whimper.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Phantasm II
    The original Phantasm was an inventive fever-dream, but the sequel, unfortunately, lacks that delirious youthful imagination. There are some memorable moments along the way--fleeting images scattered throughout the film that have a cumulative effect--but when the shocks do come, they are mostly retreads of highlights from the first movie.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    Love the Hard Way
    This solid, if familiar, neo-noir premise is nevertheless given a fresh spin by the funky NYC locales, the dubwise hip-hop soundtrack, the terrific chemistry between Brody and the underrated Seda and the one and only Pam Grier.
  81. Daredevil
    The movie's physical violence isn't gratuitous -- it's the emotional violence that makes this a movie for grown-ups, not kids.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Big Top Pee-wee
    Director Kleiser fails to bring the kind of loopy energy that Pee-Wee's Big Adventure director Burton brought to the first film.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ken Fox
    The Abandoned
    By the film's downbeat climax, Cerda's dread of death and uncertainty about digging too deeply into what's better left buried have become palpable, and The Abandoned lingers beneath the skin as any decent horror movie should.
  84. Midnight Eagle
    This is pure big-budget formula filmmaking.
  85. Trade
    The story's incredible coincidences, lazy cynicism and easy ironies recast a real-life horror story as easy-to-dismiss melodrama, complete with sequential "happy" endings.
  86. Gun Shy
    The big trouble here is that there seem to be pieces of three different films rubbing up against each other without ever fitting together.
  87. The Intended
    Although phenomenally well-acted, the film's leisurely pace ultimately makes it feel as oppressive as the tropical heat and humidity that gradually turn the characters into slow-moving heaps of damp, dirty rags.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Stone Cold
    Stone Cold is a stupid, no-stakes movie, and no manner of high jinks can hide that fact.
    • 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.
  90. Pizza
    Embry and first-time actress Sparks have charming chemistry, but Christopher's slight screenplay wears out its welcome long before the film - which runs a scant 80 minutes - is over.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    High Road to China
    Armstrong gives an annoying, strident performance of her complaining character. The film is devoid of wit, excitement, or interesting characterization.
    • 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.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Children of the Damned
    It seems the children's grim purpose on earth is to be destroyed in a violent manner, enabling fearful, warlike, and ignorant modern man to learn a valuable lesson about himself.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic)
    The first film by director David Cronenberg, the black and white, hour-long feature Stereo is more self-consciously avant-garde, and less visceral, than his later work. Nevertheless, many of the usual Cronenberg concerns are present: a futuristic setting, bizarre scientific experimentation, and an obsessive exploration of perverse forms of sexuality.
  95. Superstar
    A delightful surprise, a tightly written, savvy slapstick comedy with genuine heart.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Lawnmower Man
    Virtual reality aside, THE LAWNMOWER MAN suffers all the usual problems: the cliched story is further undermined by wooden performances (Fahey, his naturally dark hair stripped to the consistency of a Harpo Marx fright wig, is particularly excruciating) and the inevitable [spoiler omitted] ending.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Phenomenon
    In time-honored Hollywood fashion, PHENOMENON suggests that smart people are friendless freaks who'd be far better off if only they were just as dumb as the rest of us.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Renegades
    Director Jack Sholder is a whiz at coordinating the traffic in the many catch-me-if-you-can-or-explode sequences, which provide a visceral thrill to appeal to the six year old in everyone, but which must be balanced against the lame story, offensive ethnic stereotypes, and perfunctory acting.
  99. Holy Man
    The movie's tone fluctuates wildly, suggesting that no one was exactly sure what kind of movie they were making.
  100. The 13th Warrior
    McTiernan's extensive action background is nowhere evident in the murky, all-but-impossible to follow battle sequences.
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