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. There Will Be Blood
    For bleakness, the movie can't be beat -- nor for brilliance.
  2. AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem
    Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem is a B movie that truly earns its B.
  3. Persepolis
    The movie sparkles with witty self-awareness.
  4. The Bucket List
    The first thing to say about The Bucket List is that Rob Reiner is the rare director who can take all the wonder out of one of the seven wonders of the world.
  5. The Great Debaters
    The Great Debaters is like one of those sentimentally revved youth-sports-team crowd-pleasers. This time, though, the sport is debating, and the setting is an elite black college in Marshall, Tex., in 1935
  6. The Water Horse
    Parents can trust that none of their wee ones will ask for a stuffed water horse for Christmas. The star of this Scottish fable, about the mythical Loch Ness monster, looks like a raw chicken breast with teeth when he hatches.
  7. P.S. I Love You
    FYI, there's zero chemistry between P.S. I Love You's two commodified headliners. P.S.: The plus in the harsh grade goes solely to the divine Lisa Kudrow, delivering desperately needed laughs as the twitchy widow's husband-hunting best friend.
  8. Charlie Wilson's War
    It's all about a likable scoundrel who discovers what it means to act out of conviction. The film's underlying twist, though, is tartly ironic.
  9. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
    Director Jon Turteltaub has fun with Indian glyphs, giant stone pulleys, and an Indy Jones-worthy City of Gold located beneath the rocky shoals of Mount Rushmore.
  10. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    The movie is so finely minced a mixture of Sondheim's original melodrama and Burton's signature spicing that it's difficult to think of any other filmmaker so naturally suited for the job.
  11. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
    The movie walks the line of surreal vulgarity (you will not, repeat not, expect the penis), yet most of it, intentionally, is less nutzoid than your average megaplex genre parody.
  12. I Am Legend
    In spirit, I Am Legend is caught in some abstractly doom-laden sci-fi past. For what it is, though, the film is well-done, a case of suspenseful competence trumping questionable relevance.
  13. The Kite Runner
    In making a movie about the hot mess of Afghan history, a sense of reserve turns out to be a useful tool for peace.
  14. Youth Without Youth
    The movie is one soporific, depressed, deadeningly vague scene after another.
  15. The Perfect Holiday
    Why throw in a bizarre device involving Queen Latifah as a narrating angel and a creepy, sallow Terrence Howard as her adversary? Their A-list names may be a draw, but it's too bad no one thought the endearing performances in this charming (if cliché) family romance would be enough.
  16. Nanking
    Nanking, a carefully nonpunitive documentary of remembrance, is emotionally draining, as it should be, but it's also overstructured, as it needn't be; the actors are intrusive in a story that isn't theirs.
  17. Atonement
    In the end -- an ending of such power and narrative originality (in both book and movie) that those who know it ought never breathe a word to those who don't.
  18. The Golden Compass
    The Golden Compass is a snowbound mystical-whizbang kiddie ride that hovers somewhere between the loopy and the lugubrious.
  19. Grace Is Gone
    Grace Is Gone grabs on to a name, a war, and the metaphor-come-to-life of a theme park with rides going nowhere. And we, the people, are spun around and shaken for tears.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Revolver
    The movie butts up against the director's newfound pretensions -- pseudo-philosophical voice-over, psychobabble, faux-art-film plotting -- and turns incomprehensible.
  21. The Walker
    The brittle, very ''written'' catty quips meant to characterize Washington hypocrisy sound perfunctory; the story of an aging, self-hating homosexual who goes home alone to his lacquered town house feels ancient as well as uncomfortable for the writer-director. (Harrelson seems both game and ill at ease.)
  22. Juno
    A blithe charmer balanced somewhere between a life-should-be-so-neat fairy tale and a life's-a-real-bitch tragicomedy, leaves political debate at the ticket counter and focuses solely on what it's like for Juno MacGuff to be Juno MacGuff.
  23. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    The most beautiful movie ever made about a man who could only move one eyelid -- almost dangerously beautiful.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Awake
    Too bad, because until it essentially turns into a medical-thriller version of "Look Who's Talking," the movie hums along comfortably enough as slick B fare.
  25. Oswald's Ghost
    In Oswald's Ghost, his vast chronicle of the JFK assassination and its cultural aftermath, Stone uses little-seen footage to assemble the events of Nov. 22, 1963, with a fascinating present-tense density.
  26. Protagonist
    If all this sounds awfully classroom-bound, it isn't -- far from it. Each man's story as he tells it is riveting, truly stranger than fiction, and awesome, too, in the way of unfathomable humans.
  27. The Savages
    The Savages is terrific -- a movie of uncommon appreciation for the nature and nurture that go into making us who we are, a perfectly calibrated drama both compassionate and unsentimental.
  28. Starting Out in the Evening
    Andrew Wagner has made a lovely comedy of death and rebirth.
  29. REC
    Shot in shaky handheld style, [REC] is a bit like George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, but, you know, actually scary.
  30. August Rush
    Robin Williams (yes, I'm afraid so) plays a kind of Manhattan-based Fagin with a touch of Midnight Cowboy to his wardrobe. And ants will play havoc in any cynic's pants as this loopy, goopy fairy tale about a kid looking for his parents oozes to its predictable finish.
  31. Enchanted
    Enchanted is festooned with extravagant set pieces -- there's a great number in praise of romantic gestures, and a ballroom scene to make even grown-up girls swoon.
  32. Hitman
    Based on a videogame, Hitman could be the year's dumbest movie.
  33. I'm Not There.
    I'm Not There lets you hear it again, more majestically than ever.
  34. The Mist
    There's a grim modern parable to be read into the dangerous effects of the gospel-preaching local crazy lady Mrs. Carmody (brilliantly played by a hellfire Marcia Gay Harden) on a congregation of the fearful.
  35. This Christmas
    Everyone in this madly good-looking clan has got soapy problems as befits an aspirational, say-amen holiday movie.
  36. Beowulf
    Beowulf is a solemnly gorgeous, at times borderline stolid piece of Tolkien-with-a-joystick mythology.
  37. Love in the Time of Cholera
    As for the splendid Spaniard Javier Bardem, now knocking socks off in "No Country for Old Men," his lot is worst of all. He's miscast as the romantic Florentino.
  38. Margot at the Wedding
    Which brings us back to Kidman, who really IS sensational here.
  39. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
    Mr. Magorium, who is 243 years old (so are his jokes), is a cross between Willy Wonka and Geppetto, but Hoffman plays him with little more than a goofy dumb lisp, achieved by tucking his lower lip under his upper teeth, so that he looks just as rabbity-stoopid as he sounds.
  40. Redacted
    For all of De Palma's studious multimedia trickery -- a valid, even inspired idea -- Redacted is so naive it's an embarrassment.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    What Would Jesus Buy?
    The movie has a sharp point -- Americans shop too much -- but it's a problem that its bellowing hero, always accompanied by his red-robed Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, is so off-putting; a crazy guy who wouldn't sound so crazy if he just didn't act so crazy.
  42. Southland Tales
    Southland Tales has a mood unlike anything I've seen: dread that morphs into kitsch and then back again. It's a film that tried my patience, and one I couldn't shake off.
  43. No Country for Old Men
    The breath of cinematic life, though, the sensibility, the energy, belong to Joel and Ethan Coen, and this is their stirring success.
  44. Fred Claus
    The surprisingly puny haul comes from the jolly, usually sparkling comedy workshop of David Dobkin, who directed "Wedding Crashers," and Dan Fogelman, who wrote "Cars" -- two great movies that both make better stocking stuffers.
  45. Lions for Lambs
    The tiny scale and armchair talkiness mark the movie as a bit of a folly, an act of idealistic hubris in today's commercial marketplace, yet that's its (minor) fascination too.
  46. Holly
    A dawdling, myopic drama.
  47. The Life of Reilly
    Reilly, in his 70s, takes us through his hilariously awful childhood: Eugene O'Neill as toxic high camp.
  48. Steal a Pencil for Me
    Gentle study in human resilience and luck.
  49. American Gangster
    Meticulous and detailed, a drug-world epic that holds you from moment to moment, immersing you in the intricate and sleazy logistics of crime. Yet the movie isn't quite enthralling; it's more like the ghost version of a '70s classic.
  50. Bee Movie
    Agreeably skewed fun.
  51. Darfur Now
    The film gets a little ''We can fix this!'' inspirational for a chronicle of such staggering darkness.
  52. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    Captures the Joe Strummer who, in the late 1970s, just about firebombed the rock establishment with his fury.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 58 Critic Score
    Martian Child
    The problem with Martian Child is that it wants to be a story about outcasts, but Dennis doesn't come off as a cute little rebel.
  54. Sharkwater
    This beautiful and urgent eco-doc takes a bite out of the shark mythology made indelible by "Jaws."
  55. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    Mesmerizing.
  56. Bella
    In stories like this defiantly unsubtle, structurally clunky specimen, causes women who are considering abortion to think again, and self-selecting audiences to enjoy a light, luxurious weep.
  57. Dan in Real Life
    A nimble and supple and moving comedy.
  58. Jimmy Carter Man from Plains
    It's galvanizing to see it played out through the furious contradiction of Carter's personality. He is pious, stubborn, compassionate, testy, moral, unreasonable, and wise.
  59. Rails & Ties
    Rails & Ties is like one bad TV movie that slammed into another.
  60. Saw IV
    He now imparts so many life lessons via his Rube Goldberg thresher devices that he's starting to turn into the Rod Serling of severed body parts. Now that's torture.
  61. Lynch
    As skewed, prismatic, and free of fluff as the man himself.
  62. 30 Days of Night
    You can expect a lot of shredding and gurgling. 30 Days of Night is relentless, but it's also relentlessly one-note.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    The Comebacks
    Probably the worst movie that's sludged across my professional eyeballs -- worse than "Daddy Day Camp," "Baby Geniuses 2," and "BloodRayne."
  64. Gone Baby Gone
    Affleck the director shows excellent instincts, not least of which is letting his younger brother, Casey, hold the center as a young guy not as smaht as he thinks he is.
  65. Rendition
    Rendition certainly makes the case that torture, whatever name it goes under, is indefensible, yet one can agree with that view entirely and still feel that the movie is just a borderline exploitation of what anyone who reads the papers already knows.
  66. Reservation Road
    There's a kind of tough beauty to this deft, satisfying thriller.
  67. Things We Lost in the Fire
    No matter what panache Bier adds, Things We Lost is still a TV-scaled tear-duct drama about a beautiful woman who pushes past sadness in her House & Garden home.
  68. Wristcutters: A Love Story
    The whole film is cracked, but in a stylish, downtown way.
  69. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    Too bad Kapur's new, glittering sequel also shows up feeling prematurely old, square, and cautious. A production of exquisitely complicated wigs and expensively grand wide shots, it pauses often to admire its own beauty, leery of messing with previous success.
  70. Lars and the Real Girl
    Really, I think we put up with Lars at all only because Gosling has such an affinity for the wounded boy birds he tends to play that it's easy to watch him do his thing.
  71. Sleuth
    It's like "Deathtrap" crossed with "Cribs" as staged by Stanley Kubrick.
  72. Terror's Advocate
    The title Terror's Advocate is both a statement of fact and a worrisome understatement in a documentary as slippery as its subject.
  73. Why Did I Get Married?
    Perry is of the spell-everything-in-capital-letters and act-it-out-loudly schools. Yet his sensitivity to women is a tonic.
  74. We Own the Night
    The story is too patterned and too contrived.
  75. King Corn
    Aaron Woolf's we-are-what-we-eat documentary King Corn is a lively introduction to the corn industrial complex.
  76. Control
    Control goes past the clichés of punk rock-god gloom to offer a snapshot of alienation that's shockingly humane.
  77. Finishing the Game: The Search for a New Bruce Lee
    The film completely misses what should have been its real target -- the filming of Game of Death, a martial-arts campfest worthy of Edward D. Wood Jr.
  78. For the Bible Tells Me So
    The film's argument against overly literal Bible readings may not preach to anyone but the converted, and when For the Bible Tells Me So strays from scripture, its ardent plea for sexual freedom within modern Christian life grows a bit too late-night PBS generic.
  79. The Good Night
    The filmmaker's got good taste -- and luck -- in casting.
  80. The Heartbreak Kid
    Grodin always seems like a real guy, whereas Stiller, even working it, is just the designated loser-clown of the megaplex era. He's too harmless to break any hearts.
  81. Michael Clayton
    It's better than good; it's such a crackling and mature and accomplished movie that it just about restores your faith.
  82. My Kid Could Paint That
    Amir Bar-Lev's engrossing film is as much about the stubborn ambiguities of art, truth, meaning, and relationships as it is about the authenticity of the Olmstead oeuvre.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
    A movie that should've been made shortly after its source material -- Susan Cooper's Newbery winner -- debuted in 1973. As is, it feels entirely too generic to work today.
  84. Lake of Fire
    It's impossible to watch Tony Kaye's theatrically supercharged, equal-opportunity button-pusher without experiencing a welter of emotions -- which is just what the filmmaker planned.
  85. The Darjeeling Limited
    This is familiar psychological as well as stylistic territory for Anderson after "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums." But there's a startling new maturity in Darjeeling, a compassion for the larger world that busts the confines of the filmmaker's miniaturist instincts.
  86. Trade
    As a movie, Trade is so-so, but as an exposé of how the new globalized industry of sex trafficking really works, it's a disquieting, eye-opening bulletin.
  87. Feast of Love
    Far too cloyingly pleased with its own humanity.
  88. The Game Plan
    Having tamed one muscled man-child (Vin Diesel in The Pacifier), Disney sets its sights on The Rock. He preens winningly in The Game Plan.
  89. The Kingdom
    So shameless is The Kingdom, ignoring consequence and treating its audience like cash-dispensing machines with buttons to be pushed rather than thinking individuals willing to consider the reality of America's entanglement with the Middle East.
  90. Lust, Caution
    Lust, Caution wants us to feel the erotic ping of buttoned-up people ripping open those buttons, but too often it's the film's drama that's under wraps.
  91. Into the Wild
    The beauty of Into the Wild, which Penn has written and directed with magnificent precision and imaginative grace, is that what Christopher is running from is never as important as what he's running TO.
  92. The Last Winter
    Who said that an environmental horror film couldn't be didactic and spooky at the same time?
  93. Good Luck Chuck
    Can we finally just admit that Dane Cook isn't funny? In a comedy so lame its plot could've been swiped from a Bazooka Joe wrapper.
  94. Resident Evil: Extinction
    The title gives one hope.
  95. Sydney White
    "Revenge of the Nerds" is way cooler in its proud defense of geekosity, no question. But anti-ditz role model Amanda Bynes just happens to be cute.
  96. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
    The nervy style of this newfangled Western, with its eerie, insinuating score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, is so effective that long after Pitt and Affleck have left the screen, emotional disturbance lingers like gun smoke.
  97. The Jane Austen Book Club
    For a visual bonus, Hugh Dancy appears in bike shorts as the lone male Jane-ite.
  98. Across the Universe
    Goofy, pompous, annoyingly boomer-myopic Fab Four musical.
  99. December Boys
    The filmmakers can't decide whether to trust the period innocence of the book (and play down their casting coup) or let the young man rip as a preteen-babe magnet... So December Boys splits the difference -- safely, dully.
  100. Eastern Promises
    It's an academic meditation in underworld-thriller drag -- a movie that looks about as close to a straight-ahead, down-and-dirty genre entertainment as anything the director has made since his exploding-head horror days.
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