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 2.2 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. Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston
    The film's darkly bedazzled view of the '70s is spurred by great dish from André Leon Talley, Liza Minnelli, and Nile Rodgers, who set the stage for Halston's triumphs - and his jaw-dropping fall.
  2. 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.
  3. Contraband
    Contraband, while often grungy and far-fetched, does keep you watching. And in January, that's recommendation enough.
  4. Joyful Noise
    The movie's musical numbers are catchy and rollicking and, in their bright sunshiny way, rather soulful.
  5. The Devil Inside
    While this religio-horror effort does contain some nice scares, and a memorably unnerving turn from Crowley, The Devil Inside's biggest shock arrives when it abruptly ends - just as it hits its stride. The result is a found-footage movie whose third act remains missing.
  6. Pina
    The result, in Pina, is...wow.
  7. Pariah
    Rees presents this vivid, hidden culture with raw honesty.
  8. In the Land of Blood and Honey
    In the Land of Blood and Honey captures the sickening way the war in Bosnia became a gray zone of genocide. Yet that, unfortunately, is not enough to make it a good movie.
  9. Albert Nobbs
    Close's passion for the character she plays - 
a role, she has explained in interviews, that has absorbed her since she first played Nobbs on stage 30 years ago - contains its own intrigue.
  10. A Separation
    Farhadi is no mere formalist. His film is a spiritual investigation into the rise of women and the descent of male privilege in Iran, and a look at the toll that has taken. In a movie of flawless acting, it is Moadi - terse, proud, angry, haunted - who shows us that rare thing: a soul in transition.
  11. The Darkest Hour
    You should be rooting for the humans, but you might as well be rooting for the blobs. Most likely, though, you'll just be rooting for the credits.
  12. The Iron Lady
    Streep is a pleasure to behold; less so the rest of The Iron Lady.
  13. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
    A polarizing load of quirkiness in Extremely Loud gunks up (at least for this hometown mourner; your results may vary) what is at heart a piercing story.
  14. War Horse
    This is a beautifully built, classically framed movie, shot with the unshowy natural expressiveness of a John Ford Western by Spielberg's great cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski.
  15. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
    Ghost Protocol brims with scenes that are exciting and amazing at the same time; they're brought off with such casual aplomb that they're funny, too.
  16. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
    Good news: The shrill CG rodents, who last infested theaters in 2009's Squeakquel, are stranded on a jungle island with little hope of survival. Bad news: They've brought us along.
  17. Carnage
    In such an audience stroker, where casting is everything (on Broadway, James Gandolfini brought exciting menace to the role of Mr. Longstreet), Winslet and Waltz jell while Foster and Reilly flounder, unable to make sense of what kind of people they're supposed to be.
  18. We Bought a Zoo
    The movie is like Doctor Dolittle remade as a therapeutic sudser. By the end, it got to me.
  19. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
    Yet here, as before, part of the movie's perversely cheeky design is that it throws away its own cleverness.
  20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
    Fincher has made The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo into an electrifying movie by turning the audience into addicts of the forbidden, looking for the sick and twisted things we can't see.
  21. The Adventures of Tintin
    Even a filmmaker as dazzling as Steven Spielberg has to create characters who lure us into their point of view, and the trouble with Tintin is that we're always on the outside, looking in. What all that motion can't capture is our hearts.
  22. The Sitter
    A needlessly frenzied, pseudo-raunch comedy that whips up a whole lot of R-rated antics only to arrive at crunchy PG-13 lessons in love and tolerance.
  23. We Need to Talk About Kevin
    The movie is creepy, but it has no texture or depth. It's like "The Omen" directed by Miranda July.
  24. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    A puzzle of a highly rarefied order. At times it's enthrallingly clever and subtle; at others it's borderline incomprehensible.
  25. Coriolanus
    With its warring factions, citizen uprisings, guerrilla insurgencies, political intrigue, bloody warfare, family tensions, and homoerotic subtext, Coriolanus is one of the year's best political thrillers.
  26. New Year's Eve
    New Year's Eve is dunderheaded kitsch, but it's the kind of marzipan movie that can sweetly soak up a holiday evening.
  27. Young Adult
    Young Adult bumps along with nasty swerves, middle finger proudly in the air, toward an ending blessedly free of anything warm, fuzzy, or optimistic. Now that's adult entertainment.
  28. A Dangerous Method
    Intelligent conversation about the interplay of erotic and destructive urges takes place over cups of tea in fine bone china. Yet the movie is a radically modern story about sex.
  29. Shame
    The biggest surprise in Shame is how distanced, passionless, and merely skin-deep the director's attention is - how little he cares about the subject of his own movie.
  30. Rampart
    Oren Moverman's Rampart is a terrific film: tense, shocking, complex, mesmerizing.
  31. The Artist
    Days after I saw The Artist, I was still thinking (and grinning) about it, because the movie's real romance is the one between us, the jaded 21st-century audience, and the mechanical innocence of old movies, which here becomes new again.
  32. My Week with Marilyn
    Michelle Williams plays Monroe, and she's a wonder. Working opposite a suitably florid Kenneth Branagh as that high thespian Sir Larry.
  33. Arthur Christmas
    The resulting adventure, like most of Aardman's work (Chicken Run, Flushed Away), is more clever than outright funny, but it's also genuinely sweet, and the complicated relations among Santa's clan are surprisingly believable.
  34. Hugo
    Hugo both ticks and flies by, a marvel meant to be pulled from the cabinet and enjoyed again and again.
  35. The Muppets
    For kids, blessedly unironic by nature until wised up by nurture, the movie is just shiny, funny, and filled with songs.
  36. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1
    What we learn in this all-pain/no-pleasure episode is that marriage feels like a life sentence, weddings are miserable events, honeymoon sex is dangerous and leaves a bride covered in bruises, and pregnancy is a torment that leads to death in exchange for birth.
  37. Tomboy
    The startling power of Tomboy, a beautiful, matter-of-fact French drama about a young girl who wants to be a boy - and for one singular summer around her 10th birthday passes as one - begins with the one-of-a-kind natural performance by Zoé Héran as Laure.
  38. Another Happy Day
    As the groom's brassy-babe stepmother, Demi Moore does her own share of scenery chewing, but at least she looks like she's having fun.
  39. Happy Feet Two
    Earnest messages about bad climate change and good parenting skills have been replaced by a we-all-share-a-planet sense of fun that's more "Finding Nemo" than National Geographic.
  40. The Descendants
    Another beautifully chiseled piece of filmmaking - sharp, funny, generous, and moving.
  41. Immortals
    What saves Immortals as a moviegoing experience is the exuberant, kid-in-a-candy-store virtuosity of its director, former music-video wunderkind Tarsem Singh (The Cell).
  42. Jack and Jill
    In one form or another, you get exactly what you pay for at an Adam Sandler comedy. Otherwise the man wouldn't have earned zillions.
  43. Into the Abyss
    The film has the same moral design as "Dead Man Walking," but since it never gets inside the darkness of the killers' minds, it's really just a rambling episode of "A Current Affair."
  44. Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
    The pace is quick, the violence is rough, and the visual style is documentary as Padilha hammers home his point: Someone is forever in the pocket of someone else as The System constantly adapts to protect itself.
  45. J. Edgar
    DiCaprio does more than disappear behind steely glasses and prosthetic old-age makeup. He transforms himself, in a feat of acting, from the inside out.
  46. A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas
    Merrily outrageous, over-the-top fun.
  47. Le Havre
    The setting is somewhere between a post-WWII Brigadoon and the environs of Marcel Carn classic "Children of Paradise," but the story is as timely as this morning's news from Europe.
  48. The Son of No One
    The more that secret comes out, the more incoherent (and ludicrous) the film gets.
  49. Janie Jones
    With Ethan and Janie sharing folkie duets, it has a certain small, wan charm, like a father-daughter gloss on "Once." Breslin is a clear-eyed delight.
  50. Dragonslayer
    With its propulsive punk-rock soundtrack and beautifully rough cinematography, Dragonslayer makes you care about this scrawny young man, skating to nowhere.
  51. Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
    A marvelous movie.
  52. Tower Heist
    Tower Heist is the cinematic version of a Trump property: overblinged, eye-catching, and essentially tacky.
  53. In Time
    The movie, I'm sad to report, has a majorly disappointing follow-through. It turns into a noisy, squalling chase movie.
  54. The Double
    The twist in The Double slack mystery-thriller is revealed with a shrug about a third of the way in. After that, it's all about Gere looking grim, and Grace looking stricken as he learns what we already know.
  55. Like Crazy
    Like Crazy tells the truth, simply: Love is thrilling. And - just because of the way life happens - sometimes love hurts.
  56. Anonymous
    Thumpingly silly yet self-serious period-piece what-if.
  57. The Rum Diary
    To the audience, this stuff seems like awfully old news. We're supposed to be witnessing the birth of a great journalist, but Hunter S. Thompson, as his career went on, got swallowed up by his mystique as an outlaw of excess. In The Rum Diary, that myth becomes an excuse for a movie to go slumming.
  58. Puss in Boots
    Puss in Boots is beautifully animated (with 3-D that adds nothing), but the film is so mindlessly busy that it seems to be trying to distract you from the likable, one-note feline swashbuckler at its center.
  59. The Three Musketeers
    It floats, but it's mainly filled with hot air.
  60. The Skin I Live In
    Allusions to "Vertigo," "Rebecca," and Georges Franju's great 1960 French horror movie "Eyes Without a Face" are intentional: The Skin I Live In is, above all, the creation of a movie fanatic who loves to look.
  61. Fireflies in the Garden
    The resentments acted out at the dining table by the rest of this miserable family - gathered for a graduation celebration that turns into a wake - are so oppressive that Eugene O'Neill might ask, ''Too much?''
  62. Margin Call
    You could describe Margin Call as a thriller (it's wired with suspense), yet the tension all comes from words.
  63. Melancholia
    A movie masterpiece...is Lars von Trier's ecstatic magnum opus on the themes of depression, cataclysm, and the way the world might end.
  64. Johnny English Reborn
    Fans of sophisticated humor may feel empathy with, if not sympathy for, the lead character on those many occasions he is kicked in the nuts.
  65. 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.
  66. Paranormal Activity 3
    The bottom line, for me, is this: I don't scare easily at horror films, but I watched Paranormal Activity 3 in a state of high anxiety.
  67. The Thing
    The other thing The Thing has got going for it is a welcome hint of dour Scandinavian sensibility sneaked in by director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. whenever there's a pause in the unexceptional antics of aliens consuming humans.
  68. The Big Year
    The more I sat through it, the more it won me over in its very benign high-concept way. It's like "City Slickers" remade for the Discovery Channel.
  69. 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.
  70. The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)
    Far more grotesque than the first Human Centipede - in fact, The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) could be the sickest B movie ever made.
  71. Footloose
    Stepping into sacred shoes once worn by Kevin Bacon, Wormald handily owns the role for a new audience. Same goes for a terrific Miles Teller (Rabbit Hole) in the sidekick role of Willard so memorably originated by the late Chris Penn.
  72. Real Steel
    Real Steel is directed by "Night at the Museum's" Shawn Levy, who makes good use of his specialized skill in blending people and computer-made imaginary things into one lively, emotionally satisfying story.
  73. The Ides of March
    Clooney certainly brings out the best in his actors, but his driving trait as a filmmaker is that he knows what plays - he has an uncanny sense of how to uncork a scene and let it bubble and flow.
  74. Courageous
    How you like Courageous - an overtly Christian-targeted production about four police officers learning lessons about God and family - will likely mirror how you view church: It's either an overlong ordeal filled with talky sermonizing or an uplifting communion with your deity and values.
  75. Benda Bilili!
    This unsentimental, smartly assembled film is equally attentive to the cacophony of African poverty and the balm of harmony provided by these pied pipers of hope.
  76. Dream House
    This suburban gothic is a logy, convoluted mess.
  77. What's Your Number?
    Under the direction of Entourage's Mark Mylod, the movie not only makes cheap sex jokes but looks skanky, too. Lighting, camerawork, and editing are all a slapdash mess, one that further hinders the actors trying their best to get through this failed hookup of a comedy.
  78. Margaret
    Lonergan's dialogue can sweep you up in a whoosh of personality and ideas, but it's hard to see what, apart from ego, convinced him that this story was so epic.
  79. Sarah Palin: You Betcha!
    Though a great deal of this material (e.g., Troopergate) seems like old news, Broomfield is so dogged that he makes 
 a case, in a deeper way than we've seen, that there's a 
 terrifying remorselessness to Palin's feuding nature.
  80. Take Shelter
    Writer-director Jeff Nichols builds his elegantly shot, weather-sensitive horror story in waves of tension that crest as if pulled by tempests.
  81. 50/50
    The result is a duet of outstanding loveliness between Kendrick and Gordon-Levitt, also an actor of nuanced control.
  82. Puncture
    Out from behind his Captain America shield, Chris Evans proves a quirky and compelling actor as Mike Weiss, a personal-injury lawyer who spends most of his time doing drugs.
  83. Abduction
    Director John Singleton offers bits of suspense, but Abduction is less a movie than a piece of engineering, a glumly ludicrous cat-and-mouse blowout designed to win Lautner male fans along with his girl demo.
  84. Weekend
    British filmmaker Andrew Haigh's background in editing (from Gladiator to Mister Lonely) is evident in the casual beauty of moments that only appear "found," giving Weekend an engrossing documentary feel.
  85. Machine Gun Preacher
    The title, Machine Gun Preacher, makes it sound like a piece of grindhouse kitsch - and by the time it's over, you'll be thinking, ''If only!''
  86. Killer Elite
    Killing looks ridiculously easy in this dispensable exploitation picture, directed for maximum impact of head-cracking pain by ad-trained Irish director Gary McKendry in his first feature.
  87. Dolphin Tale
    While the plot occasionally feels like "Free Willy" without the drama, it's a cute story if you don't mind temporarily trading in your cynicism for a bag of popcorn.
  88. Moneyball
    The supersmart and rousing Moneyball, which may be the best baseball movie since "Bull Durham," is also about talk, but in a coolly heady and original inside-the-front-office way.
  89. Straw Dogs
    The original "Straw Dogs," at least to me, isn't close to being one of Peckinpah's masterpieces, but it's a movie that the people who first saw it still remember 40 years later. I doubt that anyone will remember the new one by next month.
  90. Restless
    Annabel and Enoch learn from each other, even as time ticks away and the end draws near. Weeping is invited, but by no means required.
  91. 3
    German filmmaker Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run) noodles around with form, composition, and sexuality in 3, a playfully pieced-together, beautifully shot, and secretly ridiculous drama about a triangular relationship among blasé Berliners.
  92. I Don't Know How She Does It
    The second insurmountable problem is the difference between Parker's performance as a fortysomething banker, wife, and mother musing (in voice-over) at her computer and her previous performance as a single, thirtysomething girl-about-town in "Sex and the City": There is none. I don't know why she does it.
  93. Drive
    Among Gosling's many star-making qualities is his nuanced mastery, since "The Believer," of a facial expression of infinitely adaptable, imperturbable, sustained calm that can read as chilling or ardent, hard or soft, as the role demands.
  94. Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star
    Bucky Larson is a one-note joke played over and over and over.
  95. Contagion
    Here's a scare-the-crap-out-of-you medical thriller about a viral pandemic that will have the immediate post-screening effect of causing a handwashing stampede.
  96. 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.
  97. Warrior
    Mostly, Warrior is a showcase for its up-and-coming stars. Edgerton, from last year's "Animal Kingdom," and Hardy, who stole scenes as the identity forger in "Inception."
  98. Shark Night 3D
    A ho-hum series of kills and lulls so predictable that it doesn't even look like much fun for the sharks; when they open wide, they might as well be yawning.
  99. Apollo 18
    Apollo 18 fails to stay with you because, like the cratered satellite on which it's set, it has no atmosphere.
  100. Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
    At once overly episodic and playfully arty, like a TV movie made by Fellini.
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