Entertainment Weekly's Scores

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For 7,797 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 68% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 30% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 13th
Lowest review score: 0 Wide Awake
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 4,958 out of 7797
  2. Mixed: 2,079 out of 7797
  3. Negative: 760 out of 7797
7797 movie reviews
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  1. The Secret World of Arrietty
    The lyrical animation, with its meditative attention to nature, bears the unique stamp of Japan's Studio Ghibli, cofounded by the great ­"Spirited Away" animator Hayao Miyazaki.
  2. The Avengers
    In terms of storytelling, The Avengers is for the most part a highly functional, banged-together vehicle that runs on synthetic franchise fuel. Yet the grand finale of CGI action, set in the streets of New York, is - in every sense - smashing.
  3. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
    The story in Madagascar 3 is functional, but the antically civilized spirit is infectious.
  4. Prometheus
    This is jumbo-size science fiction, with a handsome, impermeable titanium gleam - and a thick coating of creationism lite.
  5. Our Idiot Brother
    I do wish the movie's ending weren't so squishy. It's been changed from the finale that Sundance audiences saw earlier this year and now reeks of focus-group testing.
  6. Wreck-It Ralph
    There are more videogame cameos and winks than you can shake a Wiimote at - even the Konami Code, the gamer's paternoster, makes an appearance - but the real success of the film is its emotional core and the relationship between the two misfits.
  7. Bellflower
    Bellflower is stylishly watchable - even when it's preposterous.
  8. Project Nim
    A fascinating and in many ways tragic documentary, takes us back to one of the high-water marks of the apes-are-people-too era.
  9. The Devil's Double
    I'm not sure what it all adds up to, but The Devil's Double puts its hooks in you and keeps them there.
  10. Higher Ground
    Higher Ground breaks crucial, sacred ground in American moviemaking.
  11. Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest
    Beats is a welcome blast of '90s nostalgia, taking us back to a time - and a sound - that pulsates with optimism.
  12. A Better Life
    A Better Life was directed by the eclectic Chris Weitz (The Twilight Saga: New Moon, About a Boy), who weaves the torpor and anxiety of immigrant life into something dramatically true, if at moments a bit draggy.
  13. Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times
    It's not quite the same thrill as glimpsing the man behind the curtain of the great and powerful Oz, but for journalism junkies, the fascination of Page One: Inside The New York Times is something like that.
  14. Martha Marcy May Marlene
    Martha Marcy May Marlene leaves a viewer hanging, quite literally, lost in an enveloping fog of mood without resolution. Olsen, meanwhile, definitely marks her arrival.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Life in a Day
    It's our equivalent of that '80s art-film kaleidoscope "Koyaanisqatsi."
  16. Forks Over Knives
    So scrupulously researched and argued that only a fool would ignore its findings.
  17. Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
    Harper Lee hasn't been interviewed in 47 years, but this meditation on her only novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," puts you inside her skin.
  18. The Five-Year Engagement
    A lively, original, and scattershot-hilarious ramble of a Judd Apatow production.
  19. Dark Shadows
    Depp's performance is more than just funny - it's ghoulishly endearing.
  20. The Pirates! Band of Misfits
    You can almost smell the brine in the boat helmed by Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) on his quest to win Pirate of the Year.
  21. Elysium
    I wish that the film had more of the tasty futuristic detail promised by that dummy parole officer. I also wish that Blomkamp took us deeper into the world of Elysium.
  22. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
    I'm holding the filmmaker responsible for getting us all back again - to feelings of excitement and delight. Vital as they are, Gollum and Bilbo can only do so much to keep us enchanted. Is Jackson able to sustain the magic in two more installments? I peer into Tolkien's Misty Mountains and embrace the journey.
  23. Looper
    The time swivels in Looper evoke some of Inception's fancy temporal tricks... But it's the glimpses of Children of Men-like societal dystopia that give the movie its real weight, and distinguish Johnson's third feature as a marked step forward.
  24. The Names of Love
    For those who wish to decode The Names of Love, there's a sharp commentary on French prejudices, character types, history, and culture embedded in Michel Leclerc's droll autobiographical French comedy.
  25. Attack the Block
    There could be a few more scares and laughs, but it's a blast to be drawn into this urban ecosystem that is, to us Yanks, itself a bit alien.
  26. Savages
    Savages is Oliver Stone doing what he should have done a long time ago: making a tricky, amoral, down-and-dirty crime thriller that's blessedly free of any social, topical, or political relevance.
  27. The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
    A tangy raw stew of history, even if it never begins to confront the contradictions that bedeviled black militancy.
  28. Bully
    As long as the MPAA is issuing its cavalier decrees, though, they're the ones acting like bullies.
  29. Halloween
    Long live Michael Myers, so maybe someone can finally kill him — in a big, funny, scary, squishy, super-meta sequel that brings it all back to the iconic 1978 original.
  30. Fast & Furious 6
    Check your brain at the door and fasten your seat belt.
  31. Dredd
    Paul Leonard-Morgan's thumping techno soundtrack is thrilling. And Urban manages to give a credibly wry performance using little more than his gravelly, imitation-Eastwood voice - and his chin.
  32. Epic
    Epic isn't quite destined for the “Again, again!” re-watchability of some of the Pixar classics, but for a satisfying explosion of color on a lazy summer day, it does the trick.
  33. The Way
    There's a contemplative loveliness to The Way, an affecting personal project both for Emilio Estevez, who wrote, directed, and plays a small role, and for his father, Martin Sheen.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
    Though often self-centered and conniving, Greg remains a likable kid, and the movie entertains by pulling off over-the-top scenarios that set up digestible life lessons for youngsters.
  35. Chasing Madoff
    Jeff Prosserman's riveting documentary takes a question that haunted the Bernie Madoff scandal - how did he fool everyone for so long? - and answers it with a decisive "He didn't."
  36. Undefeated
    For a documentary that's almost engineered to lift your heart, Undefeated is very well done.
  37. Hope Springs
    Hope Springs dares viewers to look closely at the remarkable sight of naked adult intimacy and its discontents.
  38. Wuthering Heights
    Willful, meandering, and intriguing, this Wuthering Heights is similarly headstrong.
  39. The Innkeepers
    Wide-eyed Sara Paxton and hipster-bespectacled Pat Healy play the joint's only two employees, working each other into a lather of what turns out to be well-founded hysteria. Kelly McGillis is a surprise treat as a grouchy medium.
  40. Perfect Sense
    Ewan McGregor and Eva Green are easy on the eyes as lovers in Perfect Sense, an intriguing apocalyptic romance with a multi-purpose title.
  41. The Forgiveness of Blood
    This gripping if tamped-down drama is steeped in ancient Albanian culture, where the real, tragic consequences of blood feuds can keep families trapped in their homes for generations.
  42. Captain Phillips
    A great many filmmakers — too many — use handheld cameras to evoke a sensation of raw, this is really happening immediacy. But director Paul Greengrass is unique. At a glance, his live-wire, ragged-camera method may seem overly familiar, but the way he employs it, that method is as expressive as the style of a superb novelist.
  43. Evil Dead
    The new Evil Dead's delirious gross-out scenes spoke to me, and they go further than any mainstream picture I can think of.
  44. Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
    In our summertime-movie world of aliens and superheroes who look all too familiar, Dodge and Penny look all the rarer in their precious humanity.
  45. Won't Back Down
    Won't Back Down says that whatever your feelings about the subject, lack of change cannot be the answer to our public-education crisis. Trying to cram an informational exposé and a vintage inspirational awards-bait weeper into one movie, Won't Back Down is awkward at times, yet it's also passionate in a surprisingly smart way. It makes a genuine drama out of impossible issues.
  46. Thin Ice
    Throw in a nagging divorce settlement, an unplanned murder, and Billy Crudup - hilarious! - as a raging security man, and Jill Sprecher's film enjoyably fuses cleverness and sheer desperation.
  47. Silent House
    A denouement more textbook than thrilling stalls some of the movie's power. But the early chills are potent, intense.
  48. The Front Line
    This strong, assured Band of Brothers-style drama from director Jang Hun makes universal points about bonding, misery, loyalty, and the senselessness of war through a portfolio of soldiers.
  49. Sound of My Voice
    Sound of My Voice doesn't follow through on everything it sets up, yet it has a hushed and revealing psycho-intensity. It also has an oh-wow Twilight Zone ending that truly made me go, ''Oh, wow.''
  50. Jiro Dreams of Sushi
    Director David Gelb pulls back the curtain on the kitchen rituals of sushi, inviting us to experience the savory-smooth sensation of ''umami,'' roughly translated as ''Ahhh!''
  51. Middle of Nowhere
    This is a tough-minded story of change that happens in almost imperceptibly tiny increments - as true growth so often does in reality.
  52. Seven Psychopaths
    An energetically demented psycho-killer comedy set in faux-noir L.A., Seven Psychopaths rollicks along to the unique narrative beat and language stylings of Anglo-Irish writer-director Martin McDonagh (In Bruges), channeling Quentin Tarantino.
  53. Ruby Sparks
    Ruby Sparks is a romantic comedy that takes off from a premise so fanciful it needs every bit of the freshness that Dano brings it.
  54. Frozen
    Frozen is a squarely enchanting fairy tale that shows you how the definition of what's fresh in animation can shift.
  55. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
    The creators of Captain America: The Winter ­Soldier have brought off something fresh and bold.
  56. 42
    Helgeland works in what I think of as a conservative — or maybe it's just really, really basic — neoclassical Hollywood style, spelling everything out, letting the story unfold in a plainspoken and deliberate fashion, with a big, wide, open pictorial camera eye. It's like the latter-day Clint Eastwood style, applied to material that's as traditional as can be.
  57. Side Effects
    Side Effects is mostly a good Saturday-night movie, but by the end, it's caused a few unintended side effects of its own: a bit of head-scratching, and a giggle or two of disbelief.
  58. Robot and Frank
    Robot & Frank is sentimental high-concept fluff that works.
  59. Mansome
    The best thing about the movie is that it keeps drawing conclusions in opposite directions.
  60. The Sessions
    The Sessions is first and foremost about Hawkes' virtuoso performance, one of those "My Left Foot"-y transformations that make audiences verklemmt and generate awards talk.
  61. The Invisible War
    The intense interviews and damning statistics (20 percent of all female personnel have experienced sexual assault) do the work of whipping up outrage.
  62. X-Men: Days of Future Past
    Not surprisingly, the best thing about Days of Future Past is that it's heavier on the days past than future.
  63. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    A sequel that easily tops its 2011 predecessor.
  64. Paul Williams Still Alive
    The movie is fascinating, though it smacks its own lips a bit too much at the tackiness of freak '70s stardom.
  65. 2 Days in New York
    It's a pleasure to meet up again with Marion, the distractible, acerbic, New York-based French photographer played once more by Julie Delpy in 2 Days in New York. This bouncy hand-knitted comedy of cross-cultural relationships, also directed and co-written by Delpy, makes a jaunty sequel to "2 Days in Paris."
  66. Cloud Atlas
    Cloud Atlas is certainly out to be a ''visionary'' mindbender, but the film's secret is that it's a nimbly entertaining and light-on-its-feet Hollywood contraption, with the actors cast in multiple roles as if playing a game of dress-up.
  67. Hello I Must Be Going
    Working from a script by his wife, Sarah Koskoff, "High Fidelity" actor-turned-director Todd Louiso shapes the movie to Lynskey's rhythms.
  68. Unforgivable
    In his elliptical and somewhat loopy drama about the slipperiness of love at any age, French filmmaker André Téchiné uses the sight of scudding motorboats on the waterways around workaday Venice as a visual reinforcement of time as a river.
  69. The Do-Deca-Pentathlon
    These movie guys specialize in snapping vignettes of human inconsistency - no fancy lighting required.
  70. Little Birds
    An alienated-teen movie that surfs along on the whims and casual cruelties of its central character runs a risk: It can wind up as random and undisciplined as she is. Instead, Little Birds is a touching and distinctive achievement.
  71. The World's End
    As in their previous comedies, Pegg and Frost play men who refuse to stop acting like boys. But these pint-swilling Peter Pans also know how to work the heart and the brain for belly laughs.
  72. The Impossible
    It's agony, in a rewarding way, to squirm and cringe and groan through an ordeal so realistically re-created.
  73. Chicken with Plums
    Adapting Satrapi's graphic novel about a violinist (Mathieu Amalric) in late-1950s Tehran who's got a broken fiddle and a broken heart and takes to his bed, willing himself to die, the filmmakers rely on expressive eyes to carry a narrative style suitable for a silent movie.
  74. 2 Guns
    2 Guns is a much-needed reminder that the best summer surprises can come when you least expect them.
  75. 10 Years
    There's a relaxed, unforced, melancholy sweetness and swing to this modest iteration of the "Big Chill/Return of the Secaucus 7" formula, a pleasing directorial debut for screenwriter Jamie Linden (We Are Marshall).
  76. Chasing Ice
    When we finally see the time-lapse images his cameras took, they're awesome and terrifying - a meltdown out of a poetic horror film.
  77. Promised Land
    Urgent, heartfelt, and not-quite-as-predictable-as-you-think environmental rabble-rouser.
  78. The To Do List
    A summer-adventure comedy, and its tone is fairly synthetic, yet it gets major props for giving us the first movie heroine who is clueless and easy in such a hardcore way.
  79. Trolls
    Trolls doesn’t reach for the emotional resonance of DreamWorks’ more ambitious efforts; its lessons of loyalty and kindness are standard-issue, and tear ducts remain untapped. Still, the movie’s serotonin pumps like a fire hose. It’s almost impossible not to surrender to the bliss.
  80. Divergent
    Woodley, through the delicate power of her acting, does something compelling: She shows you what a prickly, fearful, yet daring personality looks like when it's nestled deep within the kind of modest, bookish girl who shouldn't even like gym class.
  81. You're Next
    It's so deliciously twisted, it will make you walk out of the theater feeling like you just endured a grueling, giddy workout.
  82. Hitchcock
    It's a perfect summation of why he was the ultimate filmmaker.
  83. The Central Park Five
    This patient, righteous documentary by Ken Burns, David McMahon, and Sarah Burns recounts the story of justice undone (a serial rapist confessed) with extensive interviews, a thorough use of archival footage, and a less-than felicitous use of ominous-rumble music that unnecessarily insists, Isn't this an outrage?
  84. Edge of Tomorrow
    Despite its terribly unimaginative title, Edge of Tomorrow is a surprisingly imaginative summer action movie.
  85. Saving Mr. Banks
    Saving Mr. Banks is a wholesomely square film about a wholesomely square film. But damned if its sugar doesn't go down like honey.
  86. Bears
    There's an elemental appeal to watching these animals hunt and play in the Alaskan wildnerness, and the Disneynature team has mastered the art of capturing it.
  87. Ginger & Rosa
    A touching drama from British art-house filmmaker Sally Potter, who broke through to wider audiences with 1992's "Orlando" and has now made her most mainstream movie yet.
  88. Price Check
    Posey, her attention divided up into slivers, is funny as hell, but she's also terrifying in her evocation of a kind of moment-to-moment PowerPoint existence.
  89. Beware of Mr. Baker
    Spitting obscenities at the film's director, Jay Bulger, Baker recalls his days as: the '60s thrash caveman who gave Cream and Blind Faith their transcendent power surge; the pioneer of druggy hotel-room rampages; and the damaged purist who left the pop world for Africa. The movie salutes the rhythms and the wreckage.
  90. Frances Ha
    Gerwig, who previously starred in Baumbach's "Greenberg," is charmingly awkward. And Sumner (Sting's daughter) is an ace with deadpan one-liners.
  91. Like Someone in Love
    The movie is playful and makes no easy moral judgments.
  92. Heleno
    Rodrigo Santoro (Paulo on Lost, Xerxes in 300, and even better, Raúl Castro in Che) is mighty matinee-idol charismatic himself in the title role, alternating between swaggering lady-killer and ravaged victim of self-destruction.
  93. Hors Satan (Outside Satan)
    Dumont's rigorous, serious attention to the mysteries of good, evil, and faith rewards those willing to be confounded.
  94. Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwives
    Highlights Gaskin's down-home gumption as an advocate for the glory of natural childbirth.
  95. Mud
    There's something old-fashioned about Mud, but if you allow yourself to settle into its leisurely pace, it will reward you. If he were alive today, Mark Twain would approve.
  96. Machete Kills
    Machete Kills is gruesomely baroque trash staged with a kinetic freedom that is truly eye-popping, so you can forgive its lapses, like how it goes on a little too long. Rodriguez's only real sin as a filmmaker is that he wants to give you way too much of a crazy ultraviolent good time.
  97. Jurassic World
    Jurassic World is a blockbuster of its moment. It’s not deep. There aren’t new lessons to be learned. And the film’s flesh-and-blood actors are basically glamorized extras. But when it comes to serving up a smorgasbord of bloody dino mayhem, it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do beautifully.
  98. The Fifth Estate
    The Fifth Estate is flawed (it grips the brain but not the heart), yet it feverishly exposes the tenor of whistle-blowing in the brave new world, with the Internet as a billboard for anyone out to spill secrets. Call it the anti-social network.
  99. Lee Daniels' The Butler
    As Cecil, Whitaker is mesmerizing. The actor seems to shrink into his imposing frame, summoning a performance of quiet, bottled-up force.
  100. Lore
    This striking, slow-building drama from Cate Shortland uses fractured, impressionistic imagery as a mirror of moral dislocation as the children make their way through an unfamiliar landscape.
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