Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor
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For 1,294 reviews, this critic has graded:
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61% higher than the average critic
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2% same as the average critic
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37% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 8.3 points higher than other critics.
(0-100 point scale)
Peter Rainer's Scores
- Movies
| Average review score: | 68 |
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| Highest review score: |
Critic Score
100
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| Lowest review score: |
Critic Score
0
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 867 out of 1294
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Mixed: 362 out of 1294
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Negative: 65 out of 1294
1,294
movie reviews
- By critic score
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Peter Rainer 83
What Alfred Hitchcock once said about thrillers also applies to Westerns: The stronger the bad guy, the better the film. By that measure, 3:10 to Yuma is excellent. -
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Peter Rainer 83
I wish this movie wasn't so purposefully elegiac and attenuated – at times it's like a middling Terrence Malick fantasia – but it's well worth sitting through. -
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Peter Rainer 83
It's awfully difficult at this point in film history to come up with a car chase that's startlingly new, but Gray pulls it off. It's the best of its kind since "The French Connection." -
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Peter Rainer 83
The filmmaking style is annoyingly slick, but the testimonies of these children are excruciatingly moving. -
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Peter Rainer 83
It may sound like faint praise to say that Enchanted is the movie of the year for smart and spirited 11-year-old girls. But a movie that genuinely respects that audience is not to be belittled. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Director Andrew Wagner, adapting a novel by Brian Morton, is sometimes understated to a fault, but his work with the actors, who also include Lili Taylor as Leonard's daughter, is impeccable. -
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Peter Rainer 83
At its best, the movie makes you feel like a kindred spirit. -
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Peter Rainer 83
While this may seem like an apologia for randy older men, it doesn't come off that way, and Cruz gives her best performance to date. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Vanessa Redgrave, as the adult Briony, appears at the very end in a monologue that rounds out the film with heartbreaking force. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Nanking, directed by Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, does justice to this tragedy even though it makes the mistake of mixing the testimony of actual participants with staged readings from actors subbing for real people. -
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Peter Rainer 83
A considerable achievement even if, on balance, it's more of a Tim Burton phantasmagoria than a Sondheim fantasia. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Based on the 1938 novel by Winifred Watson, it's a deluxe romance that most of the time plays like farce. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Too much of this film is attenuated and vague, but it has moments of deep melancholy. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Shine A Light is essentially just an expertly made concert film. But what a concert! (And what a camera team.) -
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Peter Rainer 83
It radiates intelligence. Of how many historical epics can that be said these days? -
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Peter Rainer 83
The animation is consistently sporty and there are some choice comic riffs on martial arts movies. -
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Peter Rainer 83
As hig concepts go, You Don't Mess With the Zohan" takes the cake. -
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Peter Rainer 83
The film's parallels between Mohmed's travails and the Iraq war are forced, but overall this is a fascinating odyssey that never plays out in ways you would expect. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Family home movies and photos and archival clips round out the film, which holds its hero-worshiping to fairly tolerable levels. -
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Peter Rainer 83
It's a great piece of work in a movie that, whatever its failings, deserves to be seen even if you swear undying allegiance to the BBC mini-series. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Melissa Leo is startlingly good...You feel like you're watching a life, not a performance. -
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Peter Rainer 83
There's something inherently funny about the romantic predicament of Harry and Ron and Hermione. As if it wasn't bad enough having to deal with the Dark Lord and the Death Eaters and all the rest, now they have to square off against... raging hormones. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Wilson is pretty much the whole show. With nobody else around to steal from, he ends up stealing scenes from himself. -
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Peter Rainer 83
The film suffers at times from biopic-itis – the narrative unfolds with the requisite heartbreak carefully apportioned – but it's always eye-catching. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Although the film, for the most part, is told from the perspective of the IRA, it does not blithely take its side. -
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Peter Rainer 83
Along with its disappointments and its narrowness of intellectual focus, Doubt offers up the crackling pleasures of performance and a narrative that snaps shut like a mousetrap. It's the movie equivalent of a rousing night at the theater. -
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Peter Rainer 83
The overfamiliarity of What Doesn't Kill You is redeemed by a full-scale performance from Mark Ruffalo. -
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Peter Rainer 83
As a piece of poetic compression, it ranks with the opening of Orson Welles's "The Magnificent Ambersons." -
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Peter Rainer 83
Garrone's messy storytelling compounds an already messy history. He's a powerful filmmaker, though, and a fearless one. -
