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. Phoebe in Wonderland
    As the school drama teacher who tries to unlock ''the real,'' Patricia Clarkson makes high theatrical solemnity funny.
  2. Fast X
    Fast X wants all the grandiosity of finality while not actually ending anything.
  3. Maleficent
    The characters are boiled down to their essentials, the humor is timelessly broad, and Jolie's at her best when she's curling her claws and elongating her vowels like a black-sabbath Tallulah Bankhead.
  4. One Fine Day
    Clooney proves himself to be a true movie star and romantic leading man. His charm, his energy, even his ease with children (one of any adult actor’s most terrifying challenges) carry One Fine Day into irresistibility.
  5. 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.
  6. Then She Found Me
    Hunt's movie-directing debut frequently crackles with nice gags.
  7. The Pale Blue Eye
    Until [Cooper] loses his way in the cascading absurdity of the final twists, though, the movie is mostly a study in how good its two main actors can be: Bale's soulful, hollow-eyed conviction, and his odd-couple chemistry with Melling, isn't quite enough to sell The Pale Blue Eye's loopy improbabilities in the end, but it's still a pleasure to watch them try.
  8. The Man Who Knew Infinity
    Unfortunately, the film is nowhere near as innovative as its subject.
  9. My Girl
    My Girl has some sweet, funny moments (the cast is uniformly appealing), yet it unfolds in a landscape of paralyzing, pop-psych banality.
  10. Dinner for Schmucks
    No schmucks were harmed in the making of Dinner for Schmucks. That's the problem.
  11. The Recruit
    From the get-go, The Recruit is one of those thrillers that delights in pulling the rug out from under you, only to find another rug below that.
  12. Dinosaur
    Doesn't offer anything to adult viewers as thrilling, as shivery, as satisfyingly primal as Steven Spielberg's intricate predator choreography in the original ''Jurassic Park.''
  13. Ned Kelly
    A boggy mix of fact, fiction, and changeable wigs and beards worn by Heath Ledger in the title role, manages to shrink the grandness of the myth without clarifying our understanding of the man.
  14. The Cable Guy
    The movie flirts with a darker Carrey, but, ironically, most of it gives us a safer Carrey, an anarchist caught in routines too patterned to let him break loose.
  15. Alive
    Alive is an unsettling contradiction: a well-intentioned gross-out movie. It may be the first film in history to say that cannibalism is good for you.
  16. 2 Days in the Valley
    Writer-director John Herzfeld blends violence and top-heavy absurdism, creating a self-conscious muddle of indie-style hackery. Strip away the goofball nihilism, though, and what’s left is as formulaic as any straight-to-tape opus with a title like "Dangerous Instinct."
  17. The Fluffy Movie
    Fluffy isn't awful, just disappointingly lightweight.
  18. Joy
    If only Russell trusted Mangano’s true story. Instead, he’s turned her life into a over-staged mess of awkward exposition, contrived dialogue, and characters so willfully unreal they feel acrylic.
  19. The Three Stooges
    All three of the leads get very close to the Stooges' old looks and personalities, but they do more than impersonate; they inhabit.
  20. Wassup Rockers
    The sexy, scruffy, neo-Warriors pageantry of ghetto teen hunger would have been a lot more vital if Clark didn't have such a class-war chip on his shoulder.
  21. The Extra Man
    What feels enjoyably outré in the 1998 coming-of-age novel by Jonathan Ames (creator of HBO's Bored to Death) feels oppressively outré in this deadened, literal adaptation.
  22. Monsters vs Aliens
    The movie works hard -- desperately hard -- to be all things to all audience segments. And the visible effort erodes the sense of gaiety, of unfettered fun.
  23. Mr. Bean's Vacation
    Atkinson's goofball grotesquerie never lets up -- right through to the inspired finale.
  24. W.
    The intrepid one is the outstanding Josh Brolin, who does such a phenomenal job in the title role that he carries every scene he's in to a place of subtlety and integrity far beyond what Stone needs to make his attention-grabbing noise.
  25. Going Shopping
    Going Shopping is sharp and funny about all the things that shopping can mean to the women who live to do it, and even to those who don't.
  26. Kamikaze Girls
    For the Western viewer, the cultural divide acts as a saccharine filter, and Kamikaze, a cult hit in Japan, becomes a mesmerizing lesson in otherness.
  27. Zack and Miri Make a Porno
    A Smith production is always noisy, shambling, and liberally smutty on the outside while conservatively gooey on the inside.
  28. Twilight
    On screen, Twilight is repetitive and a tad sodden, too prosaic to really soar. But Hardwicke stirs this teen pulp to a pleasing simmer.
  29. Bokeh
    There’s a seed of an interesting, Twilight Zone premise here — what would you do if you were the last two people on earth? But Bokeh doesn’t seem to know what to do with it besides have its photogenic Adam-and-Eve leads take long nature walks, play board games, and upgrade their living conditions.
  30. Max
    It challenges, this nervy oddity, like modern art should.
  31. The Manson Family
    The film evokes how homicide became the ultimate orgasm for kids who had turned themselves into zombies of flesh.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Strauss' Great Waltz
    Decently crafted, but somewhat stiff and unremarkable.
  33. Concussion
    Director Peter Landesman, who also helmed last year’s political thriller "Kill the Messenger", doesn’t color much outside the lines of conventional drama. But his straightforward telling actually serves the strong cast and taut script — and a story that would be deemed too outrageous to believe if it wasn’t true.
  34. Edge of Darkness
    His (Gibson) slow-burn fury keeps the movie going, but not enough to invest us in any justice beyond payback.
  35. The Merry Gentleman
    This Debbie Downer of a drama is a bitter slog.
  36. The Beach Bum
    Hard on the heels of January’s god-awful "Serenity," we’re now treated to The Beach Bum — a shambling, self-indulgent inside joke about a perpetually stoned holy fool from the Florida Keys named Moondog. I’ll give you one guess who plays him.
  37. Touchy Feely
    Touchy Feely is minor, but these people are good company.
  38. Dom Hemingway
    If ever there were an actor ripe to ''McConaughnesize'' his career, it's Jude Law — and guess what, he has done it, spectacularly, in Dom Hemingway.
  39. A Jihad for Love
    Noble in intention but crude in execution.
  40. Love Affair
    If An Affair to Remember worked for you, Love Affair may do the same. It resurrects the earlier film’s sodden masochism with meticulous fidelity, right down to the awful final scene, which always felt — and still feels — as if another 20 minutes of movie were yet to come. Then again, what moved viewers in the ’50s seems almost luridly manipulative and unconvincing now.
  41. The Foreigner
    Chan has a bit of Clint Eastwood’s "Unforgiven" aura about him here, with the costs of his violent life visible in the weary lines of his face. I’m not sure anyone has plans to turn this into a franchise, but I certainly want to see more from this Chan-aissance.
  42. Pacific Heights
    You can’t make a good thriller when the most pressing issue is whether the protagonists will have to default on their mortgage payments.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Hot Spot
    It's also supposed to be atmospheric, noirish, and touched with nihilism. But the director, Hollywood bad boy Dennis Hopper, lays it all on so thick that the film verges on self-parody.
  44. Prefontaine
    But in this standard athlete-dies-young presentation, we never do catch the magic that made Steve Prefontaine a towering figure. Instead, this Pre is a shaggy-haired, sentimental favorite -- a teen angel rather than an Olympian.
  45. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
    Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! is seamlessly crafted yet too self-conscious to be much fun.
  46. I'm So Excited
    The actors are charming, but the movie is like a helium balloon with a leak in it.
  47. A Tale of Love and Darkness
    Portman’s evocation of this world has a strange, captivating pull. Assisted by the great Polish cinematographer Slawomir Idziak (Gattaca, Black Hawk Down, The Double Life of Veronique), she has created a visual landscape filled with nightmares.
  48. Back to the Future Part III
    Back to the Future Part III has that same sort of studio back-lot clunkiness. Only this time it's the audience that gets conked — by the sheer desperation of the whole enterprise.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    America's Heart and Soul
    The travelogue cinematography is often gorgeous, and the movie's folks, however hastily presented, are winning.
  50. Series 7: The Contenders
    The murder as entertainment premise of Series 7 is proof that even the blackest of humor is no longer particularly outrageous.
  51. The Terminal
    I didn't mind The Terminal, but I didn't really buy it, either. Spielberg has crafted the film with a proficiency as seamless, and impersonal, as the setting, and you may feel, after a while, that you're longing for your departure time.
  52. Friends with Kids
    The observations about parenthood, pro and con, are quick and smart, and Scott effortlessly steals the show, softening Westfeldt's brittle cuteness.
  53. Man of Steel
    The local multiplex is lousy with celluloid crime fighters. So what turf is left for good old Clark Kent? That's the nagging question that director Zack Snyder's Man of Steel tries — and ultimately fails — to answer.
  54. For a Good Time, Call...
    For a Good Time, Call... tells the tender tale of two roommates who team up to launch a phone-sex line. Whatever their virtues or flaws, each of these movies makes the dirtiest episode of "Sex and the City" look like Doris Day fluff.
  55. A Christmas Carol
    A marvelous and touching yuletide toy of a movie.
  56. Desperado
    The camera loves Banderas -- a velvet stud -- as much as it did the young Clint Eastwood.
  57. Yes
    Parse the philosophy behind the spill of words, though, and you'll find intellectual jumble, junk. Better to nod to Yes as a drowsing chant than take it seriously as a statement of global concerns.
  58. Almost Christmas
    In all, it’s a pleasant enough way to spend two quiet hours with the extended family, but Almost Christmas probably won’t be your next holiday tradition.
  59. Becoming Jane
    Becoming Jane has a burnished feminine sadness, and the director, Julian Jarrold, gives it a creamy-dark visual flow.
  60. Taking Woodstock
    Lee captures the fractious, joyful, monstrously evolving mass it all was.
  61. The Third Miracle
    Suggests that finding one good priest is a feasibility, but it takes a miracle to meet one as hubba-hubba as Ed Harris.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 58 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Relic
    If you can stagger around the plot holes (how'd a Brazilian cargo ship with a dead crew get to Lake Michigan?), the last 30 minutes are pure, dumb monster-movie fun.
  63. La Bare
    Like the guys who gyrate on La Bare’s stage every night, the movie is luggish, good-hearted, and a little bit sad.
  64. The Eagle
    The story and setting may be ancient, but under the direction of Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland), and with a nicely textured screenplay by Macdonald's Scotland coscreenwriter Jeremy Brock, the vigor is fully modern.
  65. The Devil All the Time
    With a cast so large and so consistently good, it's nearly impossible to single out more than a few players, though it's maybe most gratifying to see Holland so far from Peter Parker mode; his performance is delicately underplayed, which is not a claim Pattinson can probably make with a straight face.
  66. The Brothers Bloom
    This time we expect to be played, but the twist is that we're also touched -- which, the film implies, is the cinema's own form of deception.
  67. 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.
  68. Hitchcock
    It's a perfect summation of why he was the ultimate filmmaker.
  69. Resurrecting the Champ
    The gooey sanctity of the bond between fathers and sons all but nullify Jackson's zesty performance.
  70. Hyde Park on Hudson
    It's tastelessness like this, served up as fair-game dish to a Downton Abbey-loving audience, that sours the flavor of this tittery production.
  71. Turn the River
    An only-in-the-movies mother hustles pool to raise the money to abduct the son she's been forbidden to see since her divorce.
  72. Old
    Old comes close to seeing its metaphysical mystery through. In the end, though, it settles for something more like supernatural camp, with telegraphed twists and jump scares.
  73. Dark Shadows
    Depp's performance is more than just funny - it's ghoulishly endearing.
  74. Purple Rain
    The film is like East of Eden replayed as a hyperbolic rock fever dream. There are a few sour, juvenile moments, but this is the rare pop movie that works the way a great rock & roll song does: It tells a simple, almost elemental tale and uses the music to set it aflame.
  75. Eagle vs Shark
    It's a tale that reduces angst, not to mention love, to a generational tic.
  76. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
    Scott gets into the zip and rush of urban energy with an enthusiasm bordering on hilarity.
  77. Below
    In the handsome, haunting submarine thriller Below, the usual perils of deep-sea maneuvers are heightened by psychic unraveling.
  78. Camp
    The sum is no greater than the ''Fame''-style saga of any one of them, and Graff, an actor and screenwriter making his directing debut, is less successful at developing each story than at conveying his general affection for the curtain-call species.
  79. Dreaming of Joseph Lees
    Let loose in a plot that's surprisingly modern about sex and relationships, Morton gives Eva's torn longings an immediacy that transcends a lot of damp, 1950s rusticated preciousness.
  80. Street Kings
    Every so often, Keanu Reeves' robo-voiced blankness serves him well, but when he has to play a pulpy, tormented demon-saint, scraping up insults and spitting them out like bullets, he's like the host of an infomercial doing an impersonation of a badass.
  81. Money Monster
    As a solid B-movie elevated by A-list talent and pushed along by a brisk running time — it’s only 98 minutes—Money has its own rewards.
  82. Yesterday
    Fairy tales edge toward strangeness, and the sanded edges of Yesterday ultimately feel more like a flashy commercial — one of those recent music documentaries commissioned by the people on screen, propaganda with feels. The music’s good, duh, and it’ll be just as good when your local high school performs Yesterday. Which lucky kid gets to play Ed Sheeran?
  83. Ambulance
    The violence is cartoonishly casual and the ending pure Hollywood corn. The absurdity, though, is the point: They're just two brothers on the run, and escape is what we came for.
  84. The Purge: Election Year
    If, on the other hand, it’s sleazy kicks you’re after, you’ll be in exploitation heaven. Because writer-director James DeMonaco’s third chapter in the thrill-kill vigilante franchise is the best and pulpiest Purge yet.
  85. Seven Years in Tibet
    French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, who brought his interest in self-discovery and untamed places to Quest for Fire, The Lover, and the IMAX 3-D film Wings of Courage, is at his best re-creating the serene exoticism of the Dalai Lama's Tibet. But the spark of the holy that the Dalai Lama lights in Harrer flickers only fitfully in all the wind in this production.
  86. Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist
    Schrader, in Auto Focus, displayed a devious sense of sin, but in Dominion the Calvinist schoolboy in him insists on trumping sin with guilt.
  87. Wendy
    Zeitlin has a gift for casting vivid new talent, and for creating images that read like fevered visual poetry: gorgeously saturated tableaus of the natural world, all luminous light and color. But he also tends to strip away nearly every necessary aspect of plot and character development in his strenuous pursuit of whimsy.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Greatest Game Ever Played
    An inert family golf movie.
  89. The Craft
    The Craft should please teenage girls at malls everywhere. But the film ends up descending into moralizing blahness. Most of the special effects are routine (the girls levitate like Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice), though there is one memorable bit: a nightmare featuring enough snakes, bugs, and slithery maggots to make Indiana Jones go gulp.
  90. Hellion
    Despair is not quiet for a broken father (Aaron Paul) and his troublemaker sons in Kat Candler’s brisk, transfixing drama, which takes place in blue-collar southeast Texas.
  91. I Can Do Bad All by Myself
    It's probably the impresario's best-made movie yet, his most joyful, and his most moving.
  92. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
    An appalling, jaw-dropping movie that will cause serious nightmares.
  93. The Truth About Charlie
    The trouble with The Truth About Charlie is that it really is after the truth about Charlie, a character we could hardly give a damn about. The only charade is the illusion that we might actually be entertained.
  94. Veronica Guerin
    Her death was shocking; this well-made telling of her life is inspiring.
  95. P.S.
    The movie implodes, with each actor less vivid than he or she ought to be and each character less connected to the others than necessary for such an arbitrary plot.
  96. Dhobi Ghat (Mumbai Diaries)
    This shot-on-film-and-video trifle reveals a Bombay (that's what all the characters call it) that "Slumdog Millionaire" didn't: a delicate metropolis sunk in torpor.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 0 Critic Score
    Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
    The first movie from the cult television comedy troupe doesn’t have a single good laugh.
  98. 8: The Mormon Proposition
    Filmmaker Reed Cowan (himself gay and raised Mormon) documents the church's considerable financial influence on Prop 8's passage. Then he expands his sad and furious homegrown film to record the misery of gay Mormons sometimes driven to suicide over being rejected by their church and families.
  99. 2 Guns
    2 Guns is a much-needed reminder that the best summer surprises can come when you least expect them.
  100. Legend
    The film’s saving grace is Hardy, who is as ferocious and watchable as ever, acting smooth and brooding as Reggie and unhinged as Ronnie.
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