New York Observer's Scores

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For 363 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 6.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 55
Highest review score:
Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
Critic Score 100
Lowest review score:
The Best and the Brightest
Critic Score 0
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 175 out of 363
  2. Mixed: 93 out of 363
  3. Negative: 95 out of 363
363 movie reviews
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    • Metascore: 52
    • Critic Score 38
    The Next Three Days
    Speaking of afterthoughts, Olivia Wilde has a bit part as a single mom who unwittingly aids and abets the Brennans in their escape, and Brian Dennehy lurches silently through a number of scenes as John's working-class father. It's jarring to see such big-name actors in such thankless roles.
    • Metascore: 26
    • Critic Score 38
    Waiting for Forever
    I'm not sure what went wrong with this picture. It could just be bad judgment on the part of screenwriter Steve Adams, who for all we know finds stalking adorable.
    • Metascore: 56
    • Critic Score 38
    Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
    It just goes to show, no matter how burnished your backdrop or splendiferous your setting, if your script is crap, you're stuck with a total dud.
    • Metascore: 53
    • Critic Score 25
    Alice in Wonderland
    It might be time for Johnny Depp and Tim Burton to start thinking about seeing other people. Alice in Wonderland, their seventh film together, is so thoroughly soul-deadening and laborious that the prospect of an eighth collaboration feels like the sword of Damocles.
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  5. Valentine's Day
    It’s a romantic piffle stuffed with so much candy that your skin could break out.
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  6. Happy Tears
    A vulgar, happy-as-cancer aberration that takes the dysfunctional family idea to a new low. Whimsical, yes. Happy, never.
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  7. The Exploding Girl
    There is no hope on the horizon for movies as leaden as The Exploding Girl.
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  8. Don McKay
    A ludicrously pretentious train wreck masquerading as a movie.
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  9. After.Life
    After.Life, with a pretentious point between the two words in the title for no explainable reason, is a horror film with a macabre style but few of the creepy chills of cheaper, cliché-riddled thrillers that are a dime a dozen these days.
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  10. The Losers
    Staying awake during this ordeal of incompetent, incomprehensible stupidity is not difficult. It’s so noisy that you can hear it in the next town. Staying interested is something else entirely.
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  11. Paper Man
    Instead of the feel-good comedy they intended, you are left with the suspicion that the movie is really about a man suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness for which there is no cure.
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  12. Please Give
    At a time when every penny counts, where do they come up with the money to finance a movie this boring?
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  13. Happiness Runs
    As the film builds to a feverish hysteria, you have to work hard to keep from laughing.
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  14. Cyrus
    It still has a long way to go before the term Mumblecore (which sounds like a Harry Potter major at Hogwart's) can be confused with the term Class Act.
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  15. Salt
    Salt is about as believable as a secret training program for military pilots consisting entirely of kangaroos in flight helmets. But it must be said that the star carries her load admirably.
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  16. Inception
    I'd like to tell you just how bad Inception really is, but since it is barely even remotely lucid, no sane description is possible.
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  17. Love Ranch
    Even Helen Mirren on a bad day is better than nine out of ten American film queens polluting movie screens on any given Sunday, but really, this is one time she should have stayed in bed.
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  18. Valhalla Rising
    Valhalla Rising is nothing more than an updated version of the kind of time-honored Hollywood Viking movie Kirk Douglas used to do in his sleep, which means lots of inhuman, bone-crunching violence and no plot.
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  19. The Extra Man
    The film knocks itself unconscious trying to be whimsical and offbeat, but is so contrived that it is as embarrassing as it is unfunny.
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  20. The Romantics
    Instead of originality, The Romantics recycles the same material with a lot of noise masquerading as style, and no substance whatsoever, producing a grotesquerie of caricatures from central casting that are dead on arrival.
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  21. Burlesque
    Burlesque is the celluloid equivalent to a Big Mac attack, and any resemblance to a plot is purely coincidental.
  22. True Grit
    The original western won John Wayne a puzzling and undeserved Oscar for finally falling off his horse. Don't expect the same miracle for Jeff Bridges. In the numbing hands of pretentious filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, history does not repeat itself in any way whatsoever.
    • Metascore: 38
    • Critic Score 25
    The Rite
    The bottom line is, whether you worship God, Satan, Xenu or Ron Paul, The Rite gets it wrong.
  24. Unknown
    Unknown makes no sense at all, so you not only worry about Liam Neeson's judgment in movies, but you begin to wonder if he's forgotten how to read.
  25. Meek's Cutoff
    Who goes to the movies for 104 minutes of punishment? Where is John Wayne, now that we need him?
  26. Hanna
    Contrived, pretentious and not worth seeing even for the perverse pleasure of watching first-rate talents make second-rate fools of themselves.
  27. Hesher
    Only the great Piper Laurie delivers dollar value. Otherwise, Hesher is to movies what graffiti is to a rotting fence.
  28. Submarine
    The movie knocks itself unconscious trying to be offbeat, but instead of cinematic heart, the director self-indulges in cinematic art, drowning the whole thing in freeze frames, slow-motion and color-coding, owing everything he knows to the worst of Jean-Luc Godard and Wes Anderson.
  29. Trollhunter
    The Trollhunter writers either have an abundance of imagination or they've been smoking a controlled substance.
  30. Green Lantern
    Even as a prime example of rotten summer silliness, this is a paralyzing experience.
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