For 1,358 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 50% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Ann Hornaday's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 The Descendants
Lowest review score: 0 Splice
Score distribution:
1,358 movie reviews
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Still, it's difficult to hold his whoppers against him. In creating characters of such spirit and life, and in imagining such a vibrant, imaginative homage to the transformative powers of love, Kramer, more than most, has earned the right to push his luck.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    After delivering scene-stealing turns in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up" Rudd claims the much-deserved spotlight in I Love You, Man, which in its own endearing way tweaks the very same male-bonding pieties that those movies made a fortune celebrating.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    That rare, genuinely transporting movie that creates an alternate universe, invites the audience in and lets them sink ever deeper into its particular, sublime reverie.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    For its flaws, Blood Diamond is a gem, if only for being an unusually smart, engaged popcorn flick.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    For filmgoers whose idea of a good time is getting the stuffing scared out of them (who are you guys, anyway?), Signs should prove to be time well spent.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    What makes Wilbur worth watching are its smaller bits: Mads Mikkelsen's hilarious performance as a taciturn psychiatrist and Julia Davis's equally funny portrayal of a needy group therapy counselor.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Efficient, precise, carefully calibrated and terrifically entertaining.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Not to be missed, if only for an unforgettable leading performance by Kevin Bacon.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Although the dogs have surely been Disney-fied to some extent, the sequences of them trying to survive are magnificent and deeply moving. Bring the Kleenex, and hug your pups when you get home.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    A fascinating experiment that, if the viewer is willing to surrender to Haynes's sometimes hermetic meditations on Dylan's life, heartily rewards the investment.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Even the uninitiated will be hard-pressed to resist the movie's charms, from its likable leading players and its charming Dublin setting to its wistful take on modern love.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    An absorbing and inspiring portrait of two musicians whose unerring sense of what's right -- both artistically and ethically -- has not just held them in good stead but driven their particular brand of success.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    If the zombie genre steadfastly refuses to die, we can be grateful to Shaun of the Dead for breathing fresh, diverting life into the form, with subtle visual humor and a smart, impish sense of fun.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    A wise, funny film about the little leaps of faith it takes to just get through the day.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Kristin Scott Thomas delivers an unnervingly smooth performance as Auteuil's suspicious wife.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    May well wind up being the smartest bonehead comedy of the summer.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Isn't everyone's cup of tea -- as the Polishes admit in a clever bit of critical preemption -- but it possesses an undeniable, haunting grandeur.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    A killer concert film, an ecstatic testament to the joys of fandom and a tribute to the democratizing potential of moviemaking technology.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Engaging, witty and touching film, one that defies categories to become a romantic comedy, historical biopic and philosophical rumination, all in one.
    • Washington Post
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Terrific family entertainment, an action comedy on a par with "Night at the Museum" and "National Treasure."
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Cinema at its most intellectually honest and morally necessary.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Nader haters may not be mollified, but An Unreasonable Man, like its subject itself, is a one-stop civics lesson no one should miss.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    An extravagant and thoroughly irresistible story of intrigue, romance, comedy and artistic inspiration.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    As portrayed by William Moseley, Skandar Keynes, Georgie Henley and especially Anna Popplewell as Susan, the Pevensies still make for terrific tween protagonists, and Aslan, the majestic mythical lion voiced by Liam Neeson, is still a breathtaking manifestation of the Cat Upstairs.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Stands as a valuable chronicle of a brief and snarling musical movement.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    It doesn't take a screenwriter, for example, to point out the uncanny fact that, when two parent penguins perform a neck-curving pas de deux above their tiny chick, they resemble nothing so much as a perfect heart.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Clerks II finds Smith up to the profane, raunchy, profoundly humanist mischief of which he alone is the master. This is a lewd, lascivious, exhilaratingly life-affirming celebration of misfits and the misfits who love them.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    This is documentary-making at its best, not pretending to be journalism, but still playing a crucial role in telling stories that otherwise wouldn't make the front page.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Combines nonstop action with an absorbing story to become a classic on par with "Hoosiers" and "Hoop Dreams."
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    A sweet and hilarious romantic comedy featuring a breakout performance by British comic genius Ricky Gervais, inspires viewers to pause, reflect and praise one of the most rare and wondrous occurrences in contemporary cinema: the Good Movie.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Combining the best of fantasy and somber reflection, The Water Horse is a lovely ride.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    With composure so out of fashion these days in the public square, Steven Soderbergh's adamantly restrained The Informant! arrives like a cleansing tonic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Belongs, wholly and completely, to Clarkson, who delivers Joy's mordant asides and withering observations with a flawless balance of tartness and vulnerability.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    For all the pain and loss that The Kite Runner depicts, it is still a film of exhilarating, redemptive humanity, conveying an enduring sense of hope.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Blessedly free of the self-righteous histrionics and sentimentality that so often cheapen powerful personal stories.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Given the current heightened tenor of religious rhetoric and paranoia, it may well wind up pushing brand-new buttons today. To quote Michael Palin quoting Jesus, "There's just no pleasing some people."
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    It's a gentle, surprising little movie whose rewards lie in what its characters don't say as much as in what they do.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Nearly every scene rings with its own ragged truth, which becomes increasingly painful as Dan's addiction becomes more unmanageable and as he refuses to confront the untenable politics of his own behavior.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Beautifully shot and edited with swift efficiency, Black Gold joins a cadre of recent films that shine a welcome light on how the stuff we buy gets to us and, more to the point, how the price of that stuff often has little to do with its real cost.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Along with such colleagues as Abbas Kiarostami and Moshen Makhmalbaf, Panahi has perfected the art of realist filmmaking,
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Tells Yuri's story with the same bravado and stylishness as Scorsese at his finest, with bigger-than-life characters and situations splashing across the screen in breathtaking scale.
    • Washington Post
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    If the setting is claustrophobic, it's also bracingly beautiful, a contradiction that is every bit in keeping with Sokurov's preference for ambiguity over clarity.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Imbued with a greater degree of psychological darkness than before.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Like all the Dardennes' films, L'Enfant is a vivid, Dickensian report from the most dispossessed precincts of society. But the film concludes on an optimistic note, at least for the Dardennes. It's still the worst of times, the filmmakers seem to suggest, but we're still capable of humanity, if not hope.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Engaging entertainment and a great work of art.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    A crafty, swift, subtly stylish thriller.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    With one foot planted in the world of comic book fantasy and the other firmly stuck in the grim realities of high school, this is one of those rare family films that truly work for the whole family, even if Mom and Pop might find themselves needing earplugs during some exceedingly long and loud passages.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    The Cortez family flies into action with the same testy family dynamics, silly humor and cool gadgetry that animated the first Spy Kids.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Jarmusch manages to imbue banality with surprising beauty and humor.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    It testifies to art's vitality and endurance, despite its marketers' -- and sometimes even its makers' -- efforts to the contrary.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    A bummer, but one that manages to stick to its depraved convictions until the strange and bitter end.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    This is an exceptionally assured debut, and Montiel exhibits rare care with editing and sound design. His real forte, though, is casting, to which a brief scene featuring Downey and the incandescent Rosario Dawson powerfully attests.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Ravishing, often entrancing paean to a pastime that has hooked more than its share of hard-core addicts.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Thanks to Rock's running monologue, combining scathing humor with trenchant observations, the film manages to be side-splitting even while making its most poignant points.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Somersault faces the difficulty of representing a girl's unspoken desires and anxieties, a challenge Shortland rises to with terrific skill and aplomb.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Lee has created that rarity in filmmaking: a movie we need, right now.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    An engrossing piece of social history, a lively, astonishingly well-documented excavation of that period.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Ann Hornaday
    Smith makes it look easy, but underneath the physical high jinks and slick veneer of I, Robot lies a performance of real discipline and intelligence.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    That Detropia won't be just another well-reported urban obituary is clear from the film's arresting opening moments.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    May not achieve the transcendent heights of "Neil Young: Heart of Gold," but it has its own pleasures.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Even at its most troubling, Cyrus is powered by a deep vein of humanism, one that offers hope to even the weirdest among us.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Elmo graciously shares the stage with a cast of players who will not only delight youngsters but will come as sweet relief to grown-ups.
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Like Marilyn Monroe and Judy Holliday before him, Tatum is sublime at playing dumb (as a dim pretty boy, he seems to be channeling Brad Pitt in "Burn After Reading"), just as Hill shrewdly deploys his body mass for maximum physical comedy (even slimmed down, with an Oscar nomination under that tightened belt, he carries himself with a fat man's comically elephantine grace).
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    In the taut, emotionally gripping documentary Dinosaur 13, filmmaker Todd Douglas Miller meticulously re-creates seven eventful, tense and finally heartbreaking years.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    First Class happily delivers on the escapism and rich narrative texture the best of its predecessors have promised.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    With warmth, unsparing self-awareness and that ineffable Everyman appeal sometimes called "relatability," Birbiglia proves to be as engaging a presence on the screen as he has been all these years onstage and over the radio waves.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    While its themes of revenge, mutual resentment and grim fatalism offer little hope for a ready solutions, the movie itself testifies to the power of creative collaboration in finding common ground.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Through vivid archival material and voice-overs, the filmmakers create moving vignettes that, taken together, form a fascinating primer on nonviolence as a political force and discipline.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    A wonderfully complex character at the center of a gratifyingly satisfying yarn.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    What does The Future hold? Wonders, each of them weirder and more unnerving than the last.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Lasseter and his team plunge the audience into a collective case of empty- nest syndrome, with a dash of mortal terror thrown in for grins. And again, they make it work.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Provides a welcome seasonal dash of wholesomeness and humor.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Spielberg has created an appropriate showcase for the magnificent creature that emerges, one that recalls the great movie horses of yore in a story guaranteed to pluck, grab and wring viewers' hearts, but thankfully not break them.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    The wittiest jokes and cameo appearances are designed to soar far over the heads of young filmgoers and into the atavistic pop consciousness of their adult companions.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    It's popcorn pulp that collided -- at 100 mph, natch -- with a far more sober and crafty grown-up movie.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Aside from Lillard, the stand-out here is Cook, who plays a new breed of post-feminist Cinderella with a convincing mix of seriousness and vulnerability (although just once, it would be nice if Cinderella could keep her glasses on and still be beautiful). With her doe eyes and peaches-and-organic-yogurt complexion, Cook resembles a young Winona Ryder (if that's possible), right down to the appealing blend of sweetness and self-assurance. [29 Jan 1999: 1E]
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Filled with so much heartbreaking beauty, Bringing Out the Dead might be best described as an artist's sketchbook, a series of tableaux and ideas that provide a telling glimpse of a director whose work is always evolving.
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Admittedly, Top Five suffers from its share of too-convenient contrivances and clunky passages... But Top Five is also buoyantly self- sustaining, thanks in part to Rock and Dawson’s easy, convincingly seductive chemistry and some genuinely hilarious surprises.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Depp possesses one of the finest speaking voices in the business - a nimble, mellifluous instrument that can go from sexy growl to fey warble in no seconds flat.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Like a seductively lambent hall of mirrors, The Bling Ring lays bare the venality of train-wreck celebrity culture, striving and self-deception by dramatizing a fact that’s as delicious as it is depressing.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    The new Karate Kid brings fresh life and perspective to the classic tale of perseverance and cross-generational friendship, thanks to Harald Zwart's sensitive direction and two exceptionally appealing stars.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    With Much Ado About Nothing, Whedon has crafted an endearing bagatelle, made with equal parts brio and love, ambition and pared-down modesty.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    As a stylistic and narrative throwback, Alfredson's adamantly un-thrilling procedural reminds viewers of an era when viewers allowed themselves to be entertained by a good yarn about a few colorful or at least colorlessly compelling characters.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    By presenting Avatar in 3-D, Cameron is staking his claim and building a fence around his own precious resource, making it unobtainable on any but his own terms to increasingly emboldened and technologically savvy natives.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    What might have been just another anodyne promo piece or solipsistic valentine instead becomes a funny, eccentric and finally deeply poignant depiction of art, family, ­self-sabotage and the prickly intricacies of brotherly love.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Builds slowly but passionately, not dancing to some Hollywood tune, but finding its characters where they are and letting them be who they are.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Mortensen has called A Dangerous Method Cronenberg's "Merchant-Ivory picture," but it just as often resembles a Woody Allen movie - literate, sophisticated and deeply concerned with sex and manners. (It's even mordantly funny, as an early scene at the Freud family dinner table attests.)
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    But even appreciated simply as a little-known chapter of European history, it proves consistently engrossing, edifying and affecting.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Wiig has the natural beauty and self-deprecating expressiveness it takes to be a star comedienne; she spends much of Bridesmaids looking like a slightly girlier version of Lucinda Williams.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Saving Mr. Banks doesn’t always straddle its stories and time periods with the utmost grace. But the film — which John Lee Hancock directed from a script by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith — more than makes up for its occasionally unwieldy structure in telling a fascinating and ultimately deeply affecting story.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Grounded in the direct, disarming truth of their experience, the movie has a straightforward lack of cheap sentiment that saves it from being either too maudlin or saccharine-sweet.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Of Miyazaki’s many gifts as a filmmaker, perhaps the most subtle is the way he honors time and silence and stillness, values that are in lamentably short supply in most modern-day productions.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    There is undeniable power in Magnolia, in which small moments of truth are given epic gravitas, not just by Anderson's adroit cinematic style (no one's camera is more restless or inquisitive), but by the wisdom and compassion of the characters he creates.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Nostalgia trips are fun, but when they intersect with genius, virtuosity and genuine revelatory insight, they take viewers to a higher place.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    A quietly resonant movie about the painful alliance between single mothers and their daughters, and the complicated drama of separation.
    • Baltimore Sun
    • 79 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    In a World . . . is a lot of fun, reflecting Bell’s own obvious love of piquant paradox and the music of the spoken word. But it also has a sharply observant streak that makes it as nourishing as it is endearingly nutty.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    A soaring, sympathetic ode to the outlaws, subversives and insurgents who occupy the edges of popular culture, making them safe for everyone else's dreams.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    Howl mixes a number of story lines and aesthetic approaches: We get glimpses of Ginsberg's early days as a poet, including his relationships with Kerouac and Neal Cassady, as well as a depiction of the trial, where a parade of critics and professors pronounced Ginsberg's creation either a work of genius or irredeemable filth.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    The performances are consistently first-rate from a cast of appealing actors who slip effortlessly into Farhadi’s naturalistic aesthetic scheme, which seems utterly unforced even at its most intricately staged.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 75 Ann Hornaday
    The weakest link in Unknown - okay, other than the utter preposterousness of its entire premise - is Jones, who as a modern-day version of Hitch's ice queens can't hold her own with the likes of Kim Novak, Grace Kelly and Eva Marie Saint.

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