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. Planet 51
    Delivers a few pleasant surprises, including a smart story -- a reverse-E.T. riff that plops an American astronaut down in a world of just-like-us-only-green creatures -- and clever characters.
  2. Defamation
    This brave documentary takes on the topic of anti-Semitism in a relentlessly probing and original way.
  3. The Missing Person
    Overly fussy and self-conscious in its noir details. But in The Missing Person, Buschel makes striking use of the Mike Hammer/Philip Marlowe tradition.
  4. Red Cliff
    The spectacular battle scenes are the engorged heart of the delirious adventure. But Woo also gets maximum romantic value from Tony Leung as a war hero married to Chiling Lin as the tea-pouring beauty.
  5. Fantastic Mr. Fox
    With its virtuoso tomfoolery, Fantastic Mr. Fox is like a homegrown Wallace and Gromit caper. To Wes Anderson: More, please!
  6. 2012
    God forgive me, but I enjoyed the nerve-racking silliness of this newest, loudest exercise in destruction.
  7. The Messenger
    There's nothing drab about the tormented place these men take each other to. You'll want to go along.
  8. Pirate Radio
    Pirate Radio is, in the end, about as rock-revolutionary as a tea break. But the choppy production floats on a great soundtrack (the real pirates are the Rolling Stones) and is buoyed by an inviting cast.
  9. Dare
    Dare, a sweetly sexed-up high school triangle movie, is like a John Hughes comedy trying to pass itself off as ''transgressive.''
  10. William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
    His pluck and chutzpah shine through.
  11. Oh My God
    The answers he strings together are babble in this superficial vanity documentary. Nice shots of awesome, God-approved scenery, though.
  12. Uncertainty
    Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lynn Collins are so interesting that it's easy to put up with the decision-making dithering that goes along with the title.
  13. Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
    It's a potent and moving experience, because by the end you feel you've witnessed nothing less than the birth of a soul.
  14. The Men Who Stare at Goats
    A magical-realist sitcom war farce that ends up being about nothing but its own slovenly smugness.
  15. The Box
    It's no coincidence that The Box plays like the world's murkiest Twilight Zone episode. It's loosely based on ''Button, Button,'' a short story by Richard Matheson, who wrote some of the series' greatest scripts.
  16. The Fourth Kind
    Too often, The Fourth Kind makes the paranormal look disappointingly normal.
  17. A Christmas Carol
    A marvelous and touching yuletide toy of a movie.
  18. Collapse
    You may want to dispute Ruppert, but more than that you'll want to hear him, because what he says -- right or wrong, prophecy or paranoia -- takes up residence in your mind.
  19. Splinterheads
    Splinterheads, which aims to be a quirkier "Adventureland," never rises above mildly amusing.
  20. That Evening Sun
    Holbrook makes Abner a shining-eyed, noble crank.
  21. The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
    Earns points only for being remarkably unself-conscious about its across-the-board ineptitude.
  22. Gentlemen Broncos
    The audience may have bought the act in "Napoleon Dynamite." But this time, the act bombs.
  23. The House of the Devil
    There's wit but never a wink in this smartly shot production, which pays homage to the 1980s without fetishizing the era.
  24. Skin
    A tragic, enraging, and uplifting tale.
  25. This Is It
    This Is It offers a raw and endearing sketch of a genius at work.
  26. Antichrist
    The trouble is, it's all too exhibitionistic to ring true. The impotent folly of Antichrist is that von Trier has made it his mission to shock the bourgeoisie in an era when they can no longer be shocked.
  27. Amelia
    A frustratingly old-school, Hollywood-style, inspirational biopic about Amelia Earhart that doesn't trust a viewer's independent assessment of the famous woman pictured on the screen.
  28. Astro Boy
    A marvelously designed piece of cartoon kinetics.
  29. Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
    Subplots go nowhere, and characters -- many played by well-known actors -- barely get screen time. Willem Dafoe, Salma Hayek, and Jane Krakowski are among those who are there and gone.
  30. Saw VI
    The thinnest, draggiest, and most tediously preachy of the Saw films.
  31. (Untitled)
    The whole cast is museum quality, and the ''music'' performances are pitch-perfect in their dissonance.
  32. Motherhood
    Parenthood seems only half aware of Eliza's REAL problem: that she thinks she's superior to the choices she's made.
  33. Ong Bak 2
    Jaa, mesmerizing as ever to behold with his pinwheel moves, also (co)directs for the first time.
  34. The Wedding Song
    Has a sensuous, intimate filmmaking style that overrides The Wedding Song's more precariously loaded plot parallels.
  35. Where the Wild Things Are
    This is one of the year's best. To paraphrase the Wild Thing named KW, I could eat it up, I love it so.
  36. Law Abiding Citizen
    Clyde is meant to be nuts, but too often it's Law Abiding Citizen that checks rationality at the door.
  37. New York, I Love You
    These tales are as highly designed as fashion layouts. But they're as relaxing to thumb through as those NYT Magazine trend pieces.
  38. The Stepfather
    The trouble with the movie, apart from its rather monotonous dourness of tone, is that everyone in the family, especially the reformed-delinquent high school son (Penn Badgley), comes off as tougher, smarter, and quicker on the draw than the stepfather who's supposed to be outfoxing them.
  39. The Maid
    Raquel's devotion to her employer is barbed with hatred, need, and an insecurity she manifests through constant tiny acts of sabotage that would be funny if they weren't also so chilling -- bordering on psychotic.
  40. An Education
    Afterward, you'll want to listen to the Beatles sing ''She's Leaving Home.'' It might be a girl like Jenny the lads had in mind.
  41. The Damned United
    What's lost in translation is recovered easily enough in Michael Sheen's astonishing performance as Clough.
  42. Couples Retreat
    Thanks to Vaughn, Favreau, and the stray sharp lines that pop out of everyone else, the film at least offers the lively sound of egos that still know how to swing.
  43. Good Hair
    Rock gives Good Hair a rousing message: Where African-Americans in the '60s adopted a ''natural'' look, they now feel free to coif their heads any way they want. That's cultural power.
  44. Trucker
    Whenever an actress takes on a gritty working-class role, the audience does a gut check of authenticity. Either the actress gets it, like Melissa Leo did in "Frozen River," or she doesn't, like Michelle Monaghan as the spoilin'-for-a-fight truck-driver heroine of the inert indie dud Trucker
  45. Peter and Vandy
    More naturalistic -- and as a result, more believable.
  46. A Serious Man
    Working with affectionate mockery, the Coens take the cinder-block-synagogue banality of American Jewish life in 1967 and make it look as archly exotic as the loopy Scandinavian-American winterscape of "Fargo."
  47. Whip It
    The movie is Drew Barrymore's directorial debut (she also plays fellow Hurl Scout Smashley Simpson), and it's clear she's more attuned to grrrlishness than real athletic power.
  48. Zombieland
    At the bone, Zombieland is a polished, very funny road picture shaped by wisenheimer cable-TV sensibilities and starring four likable actors, each with an influential following.
  49. The Invention of Lying
    The performances are razor sharp. And the ideas in this movie are, no kidding, big.
  50. More Than a Game
    It's the die-hard camaraderie that undergirded this squad and lifted it to the top.
  51. Afterschool
    Campos (who was 24 when he made this jolting pic) captures the numbing psychic scramble that just might cause the YouTube generation to go morally haywire. Or become filmmakers.
  52. The Horse Boy
    Turns into a lyrical and stirring meditation on the mystery of autism.
  53. Surrogates
    There's fun robot stuff, some good philosophical ideas, and a brief, nutty Willis-Ving Rhames reunion 15 years after "Pulp Fiction."
  54. Paranormal Activity
    With its this-is-really-happening vibe, Paranormal Activity scrapes away 30 years of encrusted nightmare clichés. The fear is real, all right, because the fear is really in you.
  55. Pandorum
    How brazenly can one film rip off "Alien," "I Am Legend," and, somewhat oddly, "The Poseidon Adventure"?
  56. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
    The film is consistently fun, and Tucker's comeuppance ? will leave you gasping (if not gagging) with laughter.
  57. Coco Before Chanel
    Tautou is a fascinating, unsmiling, petite presence with a severe brow and an androgynous appeal, so much so that I wish Alessandro Nivola (Junebug) were a more robust beau as Arthur ''Boy'' Capel, the love of Chanel's life.
  58. The Boys Are Back
    With those piercing eyes, Owen makes a lovely, soulful Joe, of course. But it's not the nice papa we want to understand here, it's the unapologetically naughty one.
  59. Fame
    The teachers (including original cast member Debbie Allen as school principal) turn out to be the best part of the show.
  60. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
    At times, the movie could have been called "Me and You and Every One of the Bastards We Know," but Krasinski preserves Wallace's whooshing roller coasters of words, powered by the fuel of confession.
  61. Capitalism: A Love Story
    At its best, Capitalism: A Love Story is a searing outcry against the excesses of a cutthroat time. At its worst, it's dorm-room Marxism.
  62. The Informant!
    In The Informant!, that brain -- screwy and yet capable of doing important undercover work -- free-associates like Ellen DeGeneres on a swing through Walmart. Cute, but as even Agent 86 would say in "Get Smart": Missed it by that much.
  63. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
    Goes down easy enough at first. But even at a svelte 81 minutes, this meal drags on too long.
  64. Love Happens
    No authentic emotion of any kind happens in this damp, Seattle-based romance, a fizzle for both stars.
  65. Paris
    There are too many secondhand characters roving through Paris.
  66. The Burning Plain
    The scenery (prettily captured by There Will Be Blood cinematographer Robert Elswit) is littered with heavy symbolism (fire! rain! dead birds!); the performances are merely heavy.
  67. Disgrace
    Newcomer Jessica Haines is transparent and heartbreaking as the prof's unorthodox daughter, a victim of violence as the old ways crumble.
  68. Bright Star
    Campion's big-sisterly encouragement of Cornish's lovely, openhearted performance -- and Whishaw's well-matched response -- results in a character instantly, intimately recognizable to anyone remembering her own first love.
  69. I Can Do Bad All by Myself
    It's probably the impresario's best-made movie yet, his most joyful, and his most moving.
  70. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
    He squeezes a bit of suspenseful juice out of the old plot, and Douglas makes smarm a chewy pleasure, but this is a noir in search of a hero we can root for because we actually buy what he’s doing.
    • 24 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    Sorority Row
    The tedious flick offers little more than a few scares, and plenty of boobs. And we're not just talking about the cast.
  72. The Other Man
    The Other Man is self-conscious, overproduced, overacted Euro-marital hoo-ha.
  73. 9
    Storyboarded with precision, and enhanced with a resonant score by Deborah Lurie, Acker’s handsome, feature-length 9 is, for all its visual flights of fancy, grounded in an apocalypse-proof message graspable by any schoolchild.
  74. Crude
    It's a David-and-Goliath tale, full of anger and disturbing accusation, but it's also inspiring.
  75. Gamer
    As the brutish Kable, Gerard Butler must find out who's pulling his strings, but it's the audience whose chain gets yanked by this headache-inducing techno-violent mishmash.
  76. All About Steve
    A creepy, humiliating ''comedy,'' playing to Bullock's worst instincts for demonstrating the lovability of women who don’t fit in.
  77. Black Dynamite
    Along the way, Black Dynamite blends satire, nostalgia, and cinema deconstruction into a one-of-a-kind comedy high.
  78. Extract
    Couldn't Mike Judge, with his acid wit, have come up with a better title for a suburban-schlub comedy than ?Extract?
  79. Amreeka
    Amreeka is strategically inviting and carefully mild even when making unsubtle points about Palestinian suffering and American insensitivity.
  80. The Final Destination
    It's no exaggeration to say that the actors have less personality than the pipes, nail guns, grinding gears, decaying beams, and slowly spreading oil spills that are fused, with a kind of empty-dread technical precision, into Rube Goldberg torture devices.
  81. The September Issue
    Lusciously revealing fly-on-the-wall portrait of Anna Wintour.
  82. Big Fan
    The movie is an unblinking look at the hidden (or perhaps not so hidden) pathology of American sports mania.
  83. Halloween II (2009)
    What Halloween II does have, though, is Zombie’s claustrophobic visual style; he half-drowns his actors in shadow, then tracks them through windows and around corners like a focused predator. If only we cared about the prey.
  84. Taking Woodstock
    Lee captures the fractious, joyful, monstrously evolving mass it all was.
  85. Inglourious Basterds
    In Tarantino's besotted historical reverie, real-life villains Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels are played as grotesque jokes. The Basterds are played as exaggeratedly tough Jews. The women are femmes fatales.?
  86. World's Greatest Dad
    Williams hasn't been this sympathetic in years.
  87. Post Grad
    Dismayingly conservative dramedy.
  88. Shorts
    More like a summer-camp theater project than a studio movie.
  89. The Baader Meinhof Complex
    For two and a half hours, Edel lays out the bombings, kidnappings, and murders committed by the Baader-Meinhof group, which mutated into the RAF. He catches the violently delusional self-righteousness of their antifascist fervor, but as individuals these cultish guerrillas remain opaque.
  90. Fifty Dead Men Walking
    Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) makes a believable cocky lad who signs on for the con; an oddly bewigged Ben Kingsley is fussier and too actorly as his handler.
  91. Five Minutes of Heaven
    A forceful Neeson and an even more intense Nesbitt (Bloody Sunday) both show their stuff and obscure the unrelieved pain endured by the men they portray.
  92. X Games 3D: The Movie
    Mostly an overlong demo reel of increasingly gutsy tricks.
  93. Art & Copy
    An entertaining but also oddly naive documentary about American advertising.
  94. My One and Only
    A weightless movie as cheerily artificial as the Old Navy pitchman's bronze skin tones.
  95. Still Walking
    A film of droll and dry observational precision, its emotional minimalism is almost fetishistic -- and, by the end, a tad frustrating.
  96. District 9
    Madly original, cheekily political, altogether exciting District 9.
  97. Ponyo
    Don't tell Walt Disney, but Hayao Miyazaki really holds the keys to the magic kingdom.
  98. The Time Traveler's Wife
    Bana and McAdams are sweet together, with matching dimples and starry eyes, and we grow eager to see them remain in the same place. In the end, that's all there is to the movie, really. It's a time-travel fantasy in search of a cozy love seat.
  99. Bandslam
    Misfit teens in the process of forming a high school band learn life lessons and raise their goblets of rock. But there's enough of a strong filmmaking backbeat in Bandslam to carry the movie's light tune.
  100. The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard
    Ed Helms and Ving Rhames score laughs. But the breakout is "Step Brothers'" Kathryn Hahn as the tough (sales)girl who keeps up with the boys.
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