USA Today's Scores

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For 4,670 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 61% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 36% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 Fruitvale Station
Lowest review score: 0 Amos & Andrew
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,963 out of 4670
  2. Mixed: 1,021 out of 4670
  3. Negative: 686 out of 4670
4670 movie reviews
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  1. After Dark, My Sweet
    Nothing works in this over-elaborate let's-kidnap-a-kid melodrama. [24 Aug 1990]
    • USA Today
  2. Jing Ke ci Qin Wang
    A quagmire that reportedly has undergone multiple edits to reach its current incomprehensible state.
    • USA Today
  3. Casualties of War
    Brian De Palma's Casualties of War, with a script by playwright David Rabe, is the most overwrought (and likely to be overrated) Vietnam movie since The Deer Hunter. Or maybe since Robert Altman's film of Rabe's Streamers. Or maybe (why split hairs?) ever. [18 Aug 1989, p.4D]
    • USA Today
  4. Apocalypto
    The movie is so impressionistic, it obfuscates any sense of history. We expect at least a hint at the causes of the Mayan Empire's demise, but instead we get Mesoamerican Rambo.
  5. The Homesman
    The Homesman aims for a story that's poignant and told sparely, but comes across as mawkish, tedious and self-indulgent.
  6. John Wick
    John Wick serves up a noxious, clashing blend of hyper-realistic and cartoonish violence. Too bad there's no cinema decontaminating service that can wash our memories clean of such useless gore.
  7. Synecdoche, New York
    The film disappoints terribly, too. The directorial debut of such an imaginative and clever screenwriter was a highly anticipated event. His "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" are two of the most innovative and intriguing movies of the past decade. Synecdoche is one of the most maddening.
  8. Moulin Rouge!
    May be a spectacularly awful movie, but it's also spectacularly drenched in color, décor and other visual oh-la-la.
  9. Miami Vice
    All this movie has in common with its ancestor are speedboats, shotguns and drug-dealing Colombians.
  10. You're Next
    A film of repetition, a bloody dance consisting of three steps: stab, scream, repeat.
  11. Coffee and Cigarettes
    Too slight and pointless.
  12. I Love You Phillip Morris
    Barrels around in manic fashion much like Carrey does in most of his movies. He's meant to be a fool for love, but mostly he's just bonkers.
  13. Mortal Thoughts
    Mortal Thoughts is a mystery that any halfway-OK hack might turn into a halfway-OK movie by bagging all pretense to art and simply telling a story. But that isn't the style of Alan Rudolph, whose last space shot was Love at Large; the result is a quirky boo-boo I suspect is already halfway out of theaters. [19 Apr 1991, p.2D]
    • USA Today
  14. Pacific Rim
    The story's appeal is lost in all the fights between the monsters and robots.
  15. Interview
    Director Steve Buscemi is not to be faulted for his filmmaking or acting skills, but as co-writer he could have done better than the false-sounding dialogue.
  16. Wes Craven's New Nightmare
    It sounds like fun, but this quasi-continuation of the Nightmare on Elm Street series is a half-hour too long, running 112 minutes when less than 90 would suffice. [14 Oct 1994, p.4D]
    • USA Today
  17. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
    Cradle settles for saying ''boo'' when it could have said a lot more about parental fears. [10 Jan 1992, p.4D]
    • USA Today
  18. Blood Work
    Usually, I'm as slow as the pacing of a movie in figuring out who's done it. If you can't solve this mystery with an hour to go (as I did), better call for a transfusion so a better type of blood will start flowing to your brain.
  19. Happy, Texas
    Neither the actors nor their characters engender much affection.
    • USA Today
  20. Dead Man
    Coy to a fault, the movie collapses under its own weight with 90 minutes to go, despite Robby Muller's impressive black-and-white photography, which puts the film on a higher artistic plane than other equally unbearable movies. [16 May 1996, Pg.06.D]
    • USA Today
  21. She's So Lovely
    A movie that only a father could love -- father being the late John Cassavetes, credited with Lovely's script. [29 Aug 1997]
    • USA Today
  22. Fighting
    Fighting seriously lacks punch.
  23. The New Age
    The movie is what it is, a deadeningly literal look at ozone spiritualists and s-&-m purveyors (possibly one and the same) who toss some very spirited pool parties. A better title than the current marquee anonymity might be Naked Brunch. [16 Sept 1994, p.5D]
    • USA Today
  24. The Comfort of Strangers
    Given its complete lack of suspense, eroticism, ensemble acting, and other mere tangibles, Paul Schrader's The Comfort of Strangers (with a Harold Pinter script) is destined to wind up lacking even a modest theatrical run. [29 Mar 1991, p.5D]
    • USA Today
  25. Femme Fatale
    It tries hard to be sexy, mysterious and dangerous, but ends up laughably inscrutable.
  26. Waking the Dead
    Spanning the counterculture '70s to the more career-oriented '80s and doing justice to neither decade, this event-heavy adaptation of Scott Spencer's novel may give viewers whiplash.
  27. Army of Darkness
    The movie runs just 80 minutes, but it's enough time for doldrums to set in when nifty special effects and funny verbal exchanges are out grabbing a smoke. [19 Feb 1993, Life, p.5D]
    • USA Today
  28. To the Wonder
    Never was a film so visually stunning and so intolerable as To the Wonder.
  29. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning
    The latest undead-soldier story carries on the franchise tradition of graphic violence and bad acting.
  30. Thunderheart
    Thunderheart, which concerns tragic in-fighting between factions of the Oglala Sioux, lands with a sound that duplicates the name of the Indian chief who harassed Howdy Doody in less ethnically sensitive times. Thunderthud. The movie is so dramatically stillborn that it may be unfair to single out Val Kilmer, but that is Kilmer's name atop an acting lineup that includes Sam Shepard, Fred Ward and Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves). [3 Apr 1992, p.8D]
    • USA Today
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