Dallas Observer's Scores

  • Movies
For 1,518 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 47% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 50% 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: 58
Highest review score: 100 Welcome to Sarajevo
Lowest review score: 0 How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Score distribution:
1518 movie reviews
  1. It's a thoroughly delightful throwaway--the kind of movie for which cable television was made, from the maker of "Music & Lyrics" (Marc Lawrence), who knows his way 'round a snappy tune.
  2. If Steven Soderbergh taught Clooney how to act in "Out of Sight," then Reitman has taught him how to stop acting. This is the most vulnerable, the most playful, the most human performance of his career.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    More bonkers Jackson-at-work moments would’ve helped, but mostly we just see the kid from Gary, Indiana, dispensing hugs and God-bless-you's to an awed cast and crew. Watching various dancers and guitarists grin irrepressibly during their one-on-one run-throughs with the man is one of This Is It’s few pleasures.
  3. The jokes in Extract play almost like afterthoughts, the last-second add-ons of a former animator who, until now, has always treated his flesh-and-blood characters a bit like cartoon caricatures and vice versa.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Heigl and Butler have genuine chemistry, and the writers have given the duo some bitchy, snappy dialogue. They probably had in mind such workplace comedies as "Desk Set," starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, but in this day and age, witty banter and stars with chemistry aren't enough to catch an audience's attention.
  4. Yes, the "Taxi Driver" parallels are intentional: Hill spells them out in the press notes, all but branding Observe and Report a Scorsesefied remake that reeks of stale Cinnabon.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Biblically classical, tastefully vintage with aerial shots of wet umbrellas and Homburg hats and not a little staid considering its sensational source material, Changeling isn't so much dull as it is an open book.
  5. Mostly dumb, no matter how desperately and even valiantly it aims for "thinky."
  6. Rare is the star vehicle that is as poorly matched to its star as Drillbit Taylor, which casts Owen Wilson as a homeless Army deserter and con man, able to fool people into believing he's both a substitute teacher and a master of hand-to-hand combat.
  7. Statham's totally believable. He might yet become Bruce Willis.
  8. A muddle—not amiably ambling, not affably shaggy, just a mess that gets messier till, at times, the whole thing looks improvised by amateurs more concerned with being clever than something resembling affectionate.
  9. My Kid Could Paint That's about art—and it IS art, among the best documentaries ever made about that elusive process of manufacturing something out of nothing. But it's also a must-see for every single parent who believes their children are special, when all they want to be is your children.
  10. The Kingdom is essentially "C.S.I.: Riyadh," starring Jamie Foxx in yet another movie his Oscar statue will watch with shame.
  11. Overstuffed (three villains), overlong (at more than two hours and 20 minutes) and undercooked (plot points include amnesia and alien goo).
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    This Film Is Not Yet Rated has a refreshingly snotty sense of humor.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    There's something almost refreshingly venal about a movie with no purpose other than to meet intentions this cheesy.
  12. Without being too glib about it, World Trade Center is a most improbable thing: an upbeat film about September 11, one of the few stories to emerge from that day to come with a happy ending.
  13. Whatever goodwill one harbored toward the first Pirates film is quickly dashed by its sneering successor, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which is less a film than a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for the final installment in this accidental trilogy.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    What a breath of fresh air this stifling, claustrophobic, boldly uningratiating vision of an American subculture's last gasp imparts to its contrarian core audience. (Call me a hopeless addict: I've seen it three times.)
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    More "Pretty Woman" than "Working Girl," The Devil Wears Prada really lives to give its angel a high-class makeover.
  14. The fanboy in me loves it, being wrapped in the warm projected glow of nostalgia for a movie I've memorized since age 9.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Here, jokes are just as likely to end not in punch lines, but in uncomfortable silence, impenetrable irony or stomach flips.
  15. Not everything jells, but Click is funnier and more elaborately clever than anything Sandler's done in years.
  16. Mostly it's just a sweet and lightly funny piece of highbrow piffle, as enjoyable as it is forgettable. There's no harm done, but there's not much else either.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    There's a fascinating movie buried inside this story, but it's not the one the filmmakers decided to make. This Omen is simply too big for its britches.
  17. Is The Break-Up worth your time? Let's put it this way: Whenever Vaughn is onscreen, it is. When he's not, it ain't. The movie's a comedy, but it's also about a breakup, so it gets a bit maudlin toward the end.
  18. If this really is the last stand, it's a stylish farewell indeed.
  19. All in all, a respectable and predictable adaptation.
  20. By all accounts, Marsh has absorbed classic crazy-killer thrillers like "Psycho," "The Night of the Hunter" and "Badlands," but The King isn't likely to join such esteemed company.
  21. The trouble with 12 and Holding, which pits four young protagonists in intertwining battles for spiritual (and, well, literal) survival, is that it's just too much.

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