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. A Good Old Fashioned Orgy
    In essence, this is an indie Adam Sandler comedy, and when its heroes are psyching themselves up for the big event, it's kind of funny. But the orgy doesn't make you laugh - it makes you cringe.
  2. The Debt
    The Debt is basically an entertaining riff on "Munich." It's about a (fictional) operation of top secret Israeli revenge, carried out by three highly trained agents whose plan goes off the rails in ways that are more fascinating than the mission itself.
  3. Colombiana
    Colombiana is silly fun at first, but as her break-ins and escapes grow absurdly complex - and her motivations increasingly muddy - it turns into the same silly stuff we've seen before, a dish of revenge served not so much cold as reheated.
  4. 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."
  5. Circumstance
    Here, love and attraction between two teenage girls put them on a collision course with Tehran society in general and one girl's troubled, increasingly religious brother in particular.
  6. Higher Ground
    Higher Ground breaks crucial, sacred ground in American moviemaking.
  7. 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.
  8. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
    Neither colorfully brutal nor especially fun. It's a plodding, derivative gothic potboiler: "The Shining" meets "Coraline," with a touch of "Gremlins" played (boringly) straight.
  9. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World
    The fourth installment of Robert Rodriguez's franchise that keeps adding dimensions even as it loses charm would have been better titled "Spy Kids: All the Time Puns in the World."
  10. Fright Night
    It ends up getting a surprising number of things right.
  11. Conan the Barbarian
    There's something and nothing for everyone in Conan the Barbarian 3D.
  12. One Day
    A drippy, uninvolving movie adaptation.
  13. Final Destination 5
    In Final Destination 5, Death makes the point yet again that it will not be cheated. And happily for those of us who enjoy the FD series' grotesquely clever premise beyond reason, unfortunate folks still refuse to pay attention, with inventively dire consequences.
  14. Glee: The 3D Concert Movie
    As for the concert itself, it's a generically big, loud, overchoreographed, over-mic'ed, post-Madonna production.
  15. Senna
    With exemplary use of archival footage, director Asif Kapadia expertly contrasts episodes of adrenaline-rush speed with moments of reflective slow motion to capture the addictive thrill and danger of the sport, as well as the personal values of the humble, spiritual sportsman.
  16. El Bulli: Cooking in Progress
    El Bulli becomes a haunting celebration of the human desire to turn food into art - even if the results are consciously insane.
  17. 30 Minutes or Less
    There's nothing nice about 30 Minutes or Less. It's got no redeeming social value. It just ticks away, exploding all notions of where you think it's going to go. It blew me sideways.
  18. The Help
    The Help has a saucy, humorous side.
  19. Mysteries of Lisbon
    This enveloping dream of an epic narrative experiment comes from the great Chilean-born, France-based filmmaker Raúl Ruiz (Time Regained).
  20. Magic Trip
    It's like seeing the birth of the '60s, with great moments (including Neal Cassady doing speed-freak monologues).
  21. Bellflower
    Bellflower is stylishly watchable - even when it's preposterous.
  22. The Whistleblower
    Rarely has a movie captured the obscene violence of sex trafficking with such unvarnished grubbiness. In the end, though, The Whistleblower is a corporate thriller.
  23. The Future
    As she did in her striking 2005 debut, "Me and You and Everyone We Know," July creates a fluid cinematic universe.
  24. The Change-Up
    Soon enough it's back to stale jokes about spousal date nights.
  25. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
    The movie is zippier than Tim Burton's oddly lifeless 2001 "Planet of the Apes" remake, but unlike good sci-fi, it doesn't signify anything, or really even try to.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Life in a Day
    It's our equivalent of that '80s art-film kaleidoscope "Koyaanisqatsi."
  27. The Guard
    In this offbeat buddy-cop comedy, Don Cheadle, as an FBI agent trying to stop a drug ring, makes the perfect foil.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. The Smurfs
    The Smurfs may be blue, but their movie is decidedly green, recycling discarded bits from other celluloid Happy Meals like "Alvin and the Chipmunks," "Garfield," and "Hop" into something half animated, half live action, and all careful studio calculation.
  31. Crazy, Stupid, Love
    Nothing more (or less) than an enchanting light comedy of romantic confusion... It's a movie that understands love because it understands pain.
  32. Cowboys & Aliens
    Cowboys & Aliens has fun moments, but it's a plodding entertainment because it mostly tastes like leftovers.
  33. Friends with Benefits
    I'm not exactly sure this is a situation that a lot of people are going to identify with. More to the point, it gives the movie a faulty design. Dylan and Jamie sleep together and get along famously. Where's the dramatic motor?
  34. Another Earth
    It's one of those stultifying aftermath-of-
a-car-crash movies.
  35. Sarah's Key
    The Holocaust scenes are wrenching, the past-meets-present dialectics less so.
  36. A Little Help
    Fischer's performance is sweet and subtle, but the film can be so understated in tone and plot that it's hard to tell if it's actually saying anything.
  37. The Tree
    A symbol of the lost father, it looms, protects, and also wreaks havoc when a big branch collapses onto the house. Mostly, it's the expression of a movie that's content to stand still.
  38. The Myth of the American Sleepover
    The Myth of the American Sleepover has fresh, lovely moments, but it could have used more psychological heft.
  39. Captain America: The First Avenger
    Stolidly corny, old-fashioned pulp fun.
  40. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
    Sadly, rather than melding the best of two worlds, the film only takes the worst of their soap operas.
  41. Salvation Boulevard
    The comedic slaps are too limp to leave a mark. Director George Ratliff applied a much clearer eye to "Hell House," his chilling 2001 documentary about a real church.
  42. Lucky
    It is fun, though, 
 to see the younger Hanks play a murderer - it's like seeing Justin Bieber work blue.
  43. Tabloid
    At 88 minutes, Tabloid is short and sweet (it's pure movie candy), but by the end we've forged an emotional connection to Joyce McKinney at the deep core of her unapologetic fearless/nutty valor. And that's what really makes a great tabloid story: It's a vortex that's also a mirror.
  44. Winnie the Pooh
    In execution, it is charming...and also a little monotonous.
  45. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
    The thrilling conclusion to a phenomenal cinematic story 10 years in the telling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 is proof that authentic movie excitement is its own form of magic.
  46. Zookeeper
    Zookeeper (I can't believe I'm even writing this) is a dumbed-down "Paul Blart."
  47. Horrible Bosses
    A bouncy, well-built, delightfully nasty tale of resentment, desperation, and amoral revenge that does for employer-employee relations what Danny DeVito and Bette Midler did for the bonds of matrimony in the great 1986 Zucker brothers comedy "Ruthless People."
  48. The Sleeping Beauty
    Following 2009's "Bluebeard," French filmmaker Catherine Breillat continues her unique and psychologically, erotically daring deconstruction of classic fairy tales and the female condition.
  49. The Ward
    At least Carpenter the spook-meister knows how to goose you.
  50. 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.
  51. 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.
  52. Monte Carlo
    Undoubtedly a trifle, but it's still kind of nice for a summer movie to try charming us instead of just bludgeoning us into submission.
  53. The Perfect Host
    For a while, the movie has a cat-and-mouse appeal - it's like "Hard Candy" crossed with a smaller-scale "Deathtrap." Pierce acts with an enjoyably testy flamboyance, but by the time he starts to imagine that his guests have arrived even though dinner's been canceled, the film has given him one loose screw too many.
  54. Larry Crowne
    It's easy enough to accept the romantic-comedy luck of the two finding each another. It's much tougher, and ultimately useless, to buy everything else about this fairy tale of self-reinvention in a stalled economy.
  55. Transformers: Dark of the Moon
    Dark of the Moon is hardly a fleet production, but here Bay makes his best, most flexible use yet of all the flamboyant bigness at his command: Computer-drawn characters and human actors seem to occupy the same narrative for once.
  56. Jig
    They're all fascinating 
 subjects - or would be if Jig didn't dance around their personal stories in favor of overheated waiting-for-the-scores suspense.
  57. Buck
    The result is a portrait that expertly mirrors its subject: Buck is shaped with the same economy, restraint, and unfussiness as the man, to unexpectedly inspiring effect.
  58. The Art of Getting By
    Old Holden would call the whole movie phony, and I agree, if you want to know the truth.
  59. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front
    The film sweeps us up like a thriller, forcing us to at least ask whether terrorism like the ELF's (which targeted property, never human lives) might ever be justified.
  60. 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.
  61. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop
    An 
unexpectedly revealing, disconcerting documentary that benefits from the filmmaker's unmediated approach, his home-movie-
quality visual style, and his controlled use of on-the-fly moments.
  62. 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.
  63. Cars 2
    Not to get all Dorothy about it, but when it comes to Cars, there's no place like home. The emotional punch of the original is inextricably rooted in the movie's appreciation of off-the-beaten-track America, and all that homegrown vintage car culture signifies.
  64. Bad Teacher
    We're just watching a film try to pass off misanthropic blunt-wittedness as "edge."
  65. 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.
  66. Green Lantern
    Reynolds makes Hal a perfectly functional comic-book hero, but there's a big difference between functional and super.
  67. Mr. Popper's Penguins
    If you can watch Popper's most trusted penguin finally get to fly and feel like you're soaring right up there with her, then you may just let this likable trifle whisk you back to childhood.
  68. Rejoice and Shout
    The film is a bit too chronological, but its historical reverence is true to gospel's joyful insistence on locating the spiritual in the everyday.
  69. The Last Mountain
    The movie's power is undercut by the overemphasized presence of celebrity traveling environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
  70. Trollhunter
    It was an effective choice to shoot these majestic creatures vérité-style, with a jittery camera, but Trollhunter, unfortunately, is such an under-imagined knockoff of The Blair Witch Project that whenever the trolls aren't on screen, it verges on tedium.
  71. The Trip
    The Trip looks like a lark - and is - yet there's a sneaky resonance to the way it celebrates what acting means to these two rogue cutups.
  72. Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer
    The lesson is that fun can't be planned, but the film is so airless (think iCarly as a videogame) that there isn't a truly playful moment in it.
  73. Super 8
    Loving, Playful, and spectacularly well made, Super 8 is easily the best summer movie of the year - of many years.
  74. X-Men: First Class
    McAvoy and Fassbender are a casting triumph. These two have, yes, real star magnetism, both individually and together: They're both cool and intense, suave and unaffected, playful and dead serious about their grand comic-book work.
  75. Beautiful Boy
    Michael Sheen and Maria Bello both have wrenching moments in this quiet, oblique drama. Yet the movie isn't really convincing.
  76. Beginners
    The movie darts, dreams, and sometimes seems to dance. The great Plummer, meanwhile, creates an inspiring, fully rounded man in late bloom, and McGregor responds with a performance to match.
  77. Love, Wedding, Marriage
    Though it doesn't work as entertainment, this numbingly chipper rom-com (directed by Dermot Mulroney) might be of historical value someday as an A-to-Z guide to the genre's most overworked clichés.
  78. Submarine
    The film is so self-conscious it seems to be dictating your every reaction.
  79. 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.
  80. The Tree of Life
    Malick clings to the promise of grace: His vision of the afterlife is a dreamy beach, enhanced by an excellent playlist of fine classical music, and promising the peace that surpasses all understanding. Plus a beautiful sky.
  81. Kung Fu Panda 2
    At times, Kung Fu Panda 2 suggests "Bambi" redone as an episode of Oprah. Yet it's a more-than-worthy sequel.
  82. The Hangover Part II
    Here, as in "The Hangover," the laughs aren't just staged, they're superlatively engineered.
  83. Midnight in Paris
    Allen has fun in his imaginary French capital, turning his star-studded cast loose to interpret their characters as they wish.
  84. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
    On Stranger Tides isn't nearly strange enough. Its one real act of piracy is stealing away your excitement.
  85. Priest
    Its B-movie sins are many, worst among them an icy hero and a plot that feels like it was built from relics of other, better films.
  86. The Double Hour
    Nothing in this enjoyably twisty, cool/ hot, genre-grafting Italian psychological thriller by Giuseppe Capotondi is what it seems. And the more you try to solve the narrative puzzle, the more you may want to watch it again - or at least argue about what's real.
  87. The First Grader
    Plays more like a teaching tool than a dynamic drama.
  88. Passion Play
    This underworld fairy tale is so soggy and sentimental it's like a new genre: Hallmark noir.
  89. Skateland
    The film hinges on too many conventional crises (a car accident, a divorce), but the fact that Burns is better at atmosphere than story isn't all bad.
  90. Hesher
    As the checkout girl everyone's got a crush on, Natalie Portman makes a winsome return to her "Garden State" gawkiness.
  91. Everything Must Go
    Like Bill Murray and Greg Kinnear before him, this funnyman reveals serious acting chops.
  92. Bridesmaids
    She's an Everywoman you can believe in, showcased in the kind of deft comedy of feminine passion - where deep despair meets Wilson Phillips - that a great many people have been waiting for. Now that Wiig and company have built it, will they come?
  93. There Be Dragons
    Florid, convoluted historical drama.
  94. Last Night
    Last Night is on to something fascinating. It meditates on the meaning of adultery: the purposes it serves, beyond sex.
  95. Forks Over Knives
    So scrupulously researched and argued that only a fool would ignore its findings.
  96. Hobo with a Shotgun
    There's a pomo twist to the whole overeager enterprise, in all its theoretical, film-school charm: Similar to 2010's "Machete," the movie was born from a fake 
 trailer commissioned by Grindhouse directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.
  97. Jumping the Broom
    You'll laugh - a lot - but you'll also shed tears of recognition at this funny, salty, strife-torn look at the agony and ecstasy of family.
  98. The Beaver
    This is high-quality work from a professional (Gibson) who, news reports have suggested, has recently sunk to terrible lows in his nonprofessional life.
  99. Something Borrowed
    Soul-sucking romantic comedy.
  100. Thor
    It's not art, but it's mighty fun.
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