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. The Cooler
    A lot of fun early in the evening, when the Rat Pack ambiance is novel, but gets bleary by 4 a.m. in the story.
  2. The Haunted Mansion
    Tame and witless enough to make me long for the ancient, dusty fright kitsch of ''The Munsters.''
  3. The Triplets of Belleville
    If ''Finding Nemo'' is an awesome Pixar superpower, The Triplets of Belleville is a charming, idiosyncratic, self-governing duchy with huge tourism potential on the other side of the animated-movie planet.
  4. In America
    Has moments of biting tenderness, yet the movie made me wish that Sheridan had let in more of America.
  5. Bad Santa
    Isn't up to much of anything besides pretending that swearwords and snot-nosed insults, served up by Santa with an almost institutional monotony, aren't just naughty. They're -- big joke! -- incorrect.
  6. 21 Grams
    Paradoxically, a movie that loses power the more you perceive what's actually going on in it. Laid end to end, the story is, to put it mildly, overwrought, fusing several cataclysms too many.
  7. Gothika
    Comes from the same jolly homage-to-schlock-shock producers who remade ''House on Haunted Hill,'' and the emphasis is shamelessly on ornate scares. But with its high-gloss cast and French art-house actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz (''Hate'') in charge, the movie also shoots for class.
  8. The Barbarian Invasions
    I kept wondering how Arcand could have chosen as his generational representative a man not just flawed in his hedonism but one so fundamentally lacking in tenderness for others.
  9. The Cat in the Hat
    Someone (Myers?) came up with the bright idea of turning the Cat in the Hat into the worst Vegas nightclub spritzer of 1958. He's become a furry version of Rip Taylor: a walking, talking vaudeville idiot box.
  10. The Missing
    What's missing in The Missing -- despite throwing in The Everything, from magic trinkets to group hugs -- is soul.
  11. The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John
    Altogether too faithful to its source. The makers of this ponderously middlebrow Canadian production have re-created the Gospel of John in its pristine entirety -- word for word, miracle for miracle.
  12. Tupac: Resurrection
    It's no insult to Tupac to say that he was gangsta rap's greatest matinee idol, or that he lived the part only too well.
  13. Looney Tunes: Back in Action
    There are flashes of wit -- Speedy Gonzales muttering about political correctness and an arty chase through the Louvre. But there is also random flatulence, a.k.a. the stink of desperation.
  14. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
    A story in full billow; it sails through stretches of bloody battle, anxious waiting, wine-soaked relaxation, and marvelous scientific discoveries by the remarkable Maturin (Paul Bettany, well matched again with his ''A Beautiful Mind'' costar).
  15. Anything But Love
    The frustration of this good-hearted, off-key warble of an indie, written by Rose with Robert Cary, who directed, is that the filmmaking pales when compared with the classic elements of 1950s and early '60s romantic musicals to which it pays homage.
  16. My Architect
    The son is obsessive and petulant, punishing and self-pitying, and by the time he gets to a talk with his hurt old mother, we understand why.
  17. In My Skin
    An experience you won't easily shake.
  18. Elf
    The disarming comedic tone -- silly and novel in its lack of cynicism -- is driven by the fearless, cheerful unself-consciousness of Will Ferrell, a big man last seen streaking (all too unself-consciously) through ''Old School.''
  19. Love Actually
    It's a toasty, star-packed ensemble comedy in which a handful of lonelyhearts attempt, with some success, to come out of their shells, and it's going to make a lot of holiday romantics feel very, very good; watching it, I felt cozy and charmed myself.
  20. The Matrix Revolutions
    Among its better tricks, Matrix Revolutions finally gets the love-story subplot of Neo and Trinity in the right proportion.
  21. Suspended Animation
    Describing what's bad about this movie is like describing what's orange about an orange, but suffice it to say that the best performance is given by a crucified raccoon.
  22. Die, Mommie, Die!
    Busch, looking like a depressed Stockard Channing, throws his tantrums with breathy ''aristocratic'' hauteur. Yet the movie winds up walking a line between put-on pastiche and kitsch passion, and Jason Priestley is perfect as a brooding lunkhead of Tab Hunter gigolo-osity.
  23. Shattered Glass
    Presents Glass as a masterfully corrupt fabulist who convinced himself of the ultimate seductive lie, which is that there can't be anything wrong with telling people what they want to hear.
  24. The Human Stain
    The Human Stain is, contradictorily, drained of color by the spotlight turned on its charismatic leads. Between the labors of simplifying the story for the screen and accommodating the stardust of world-class actors, an essentially, uniquely American tragic hero and heroine are bleached of real American tragedy.
  25. The Singing Detective
    Robert Downey Jr. is great in a role no one less magnetically reckless would dare approach.
  26. Radio
    Radio is assembled from small, hard stones of ignorance and intolerance paved over by large, mushy examples of community goodness.
  27. Brother Bear
    Mark it: Phil Collins officially has nothing more to teach us. The tunes he's composed for Brother Bear are so generic, they're modular.
  28. Elephant
    Beauty competes with vacuity in Elephant, and for a good stretch of writer-director Gus Van Sant's maddeningly passive ode to high school innocence and Columbine-age youthful evil, beauty wins.
  29. Scary Movie 3
    Like its two predecessors, Scary Movie 3 is a hit-or-miss affair, but the gags that connect really connect.
  30. Beyond Borders
    Jolie, in this movie at least, has exactly two expressions: blank wistfulness and blank dismay. She reduces the tides of history to one more raided tomb.
  31. In the Cut
    Ryan radiates neither desire nor terror. She's freeze-dried in a world of lifelessly abstract feminine fear, and so is the movie.
  32. Morning Sun
    Using newsreel footage, clips of artistic propaganda (e.g., joyful proletarian farm ballets), and interviews with survivors, the movie draws us into the annihilating fervor of an era in which purge followed upon purge, in escalating waves of terror and control.
  33. Sylvia
    This is the richest role Paltrow has had since ''Shakespeare in Love,'' and she rises to the challenge. She digs deep into Plath's mercurial nature, giving us a Sylvia who's fiercely independent and alive yet burdened with demons of insecurity that bubble up in a rage.
  34. Veronica Guerin
    Her death was shocking; this well-made telling of her life is inspiring.
  35. Runaway Jury
    The already heavy-footed clomp of Grisham's declamatory storytelling style has been given an extra-thick-soled, wing-tipped, liberal-leaning, reality-tampering kick thanks to a screenplay credited to four writers.
  36. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
    The gruesomely unnecessary remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is such a smorgasbord of slimy grunge that to call the movie gross wouldn't do it justice -- it's downright sticky.
  37. Returner
    With his tousled mane and wispy facial hair, Asian pop star/ Prada model Kaneshiro suggests a Japanese Johnny Depp, but even his charisma can't carry Returner through its interminable longueurs. Blame it on Yamazaki.
  38. Pieces of April
    The quaint racial blinders are really on the eyes of the filmmaker, Peter Hedges, who shoves his characters into the narrowest of sitcom slots and seals them there.
  39. Dopamine
    A melancholy romance that has the distinction of being the first film set among San Francisco dotcommers that knows it's about the end of the boom.
  40. The Flower of Evil
    The discreet stink of the bourgeoisie perfumes the wonderfully mordant, dry-eyed family saga, The Flower of Evil.
  41. Good Boy!
    Little is asked of talking-animal movies, save charm, heart, and at least one scene where said animal wears a lampshade. Good Boy! has all those things, plus a winning story line.
  42. Intolerable Cruelty
    With Intolerable Cruelty, though, something scares me: I cannot detect a heartbeat of feeling, no matter how close I press a stethoscope against the star machinery of George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
  43. House of the Dead
    To properly convey the jaw-dropping shoddiness of this videogame-based ''horror'' ''movie,'' one must approach what scientists call Absolute Stupid, a state previously thought to exist only under highly controlled laboratory conditions or at the highest levels of government.
  44. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
    The film may be bloody, but it's also bloody gorgeous: a grandly fetishized epic of cinematic aggression. It's a tale of vengeance that hinges on Tarantino's love of ferocity as spectacle -- his immersion in action and exploitation, his addiction to the jazzy catharsis of junk-film kicks.
  45. Bus 174
    Although it shares a bitter interest in slum desperation with last year's Brazilian-underbelly docudrama ''City of God,'' Bus 174 pulls ahead, I think, by not confusing cinematic pizzazz with the content of misery.
  46. Mystic River
    Eastwood directs Mystic River with an invigorated grace and gravitas. This is a true American beauty of a movie, a tale of men and their bonds told by and for adults who value the old-fashioned Hollywood-studio notion of narrative.
  47. The Event
    Aggressively drab and granular, the movie feels like a late-'80s AIDS passion play given an ill-fitting post-Sept. 11 makeover.
  48. Out of Time
    Entertainingly deft sleight-of-hand thriller.
  49. The Station Agent
    That his (writer-director Tom McCarthy) strange, often funny film is so well-disciplined and deadpan refreshing is an achievement.
  50. Wonderland
    When we finally do see what happened, it's a genuine shock, a nightmare vision of a hedonist who forged his own hell.
  51. School of Rock
    The School of Rock was made by gifted veterans of the American indie scene, but it's still the most unlikely great movie of the year.
  52. My Life Without Me
    This hankie-yanker is an emotional cheat.
  53. Prey for Rock & Roll
    An ingratiatingly scrappy little movie. It's been cobbled together out of a great many conventional crises (drugs, abusive boyfriends, heartless girlfriends, a looming record deal), yet there's a tough and appealing vitality to the way that it embraces the petty ego-tripping and party-down squalor of the rock lifestyle and stands apart from it at the same time.
  54. Duplex
    Runs into construction problems, maybe from too many foremen. DeVito favors pushy slapstick; Stiller prefers hotshot sarcasm. Barrymore's comic talents are wasted; she's there for decoration.
  55. The Rundown
    The Rundown is actually a lot of fun, mostly because The Rock, simply by standing there and being The Rock, cancels out Scott entirely.
  56. Under the Tuscan Sun
    The author was able to compensate for the book's plotlessness by contemplating other people leading full lives quite as important as hers. In Wells' movie adaptation, even the birth of a friend's baby becomes all about Frances and the play of emotions on Lane's busy, beautiful face.
  57. Bubba Ho-tep
    Don Coscarelli, writer-director of the logy, fatuous Bubba Ho-Tep, is trying to will a cult movie into existence -- which, of course, never works.
  58. Luther
    Rising above the throng is the great wreck of Sir Peter Ustinov, who, as the canny, saucy German Prince Frederick, distinguishes both himself and the movie.
  59. Demonlover
    Assayas can't resist turning Demonlover into an overcalculatedly irrational rabbit-hole-to-the-dark-side thriller. The movie morphs into a ''dream,'' all right, but I confess that all I wanted to do was wake up from it and return to the slithery intrigue of corporate depravity.
  60. Cold Creek Manor
    The journey, however, is a hollow one, since Quaid and Stone, for all their efforts, never really do seem married. Perhaps that's because Stone, with her dry-ice charisma, does everything that an actress should except connect to whomever she happens to be facing on screen.
  61. Mambo italiano
    This is feel-good filmmaking, to be sure, but the culture clash here is more than a meaningless vehicle for fizzy wish fulfillment. The not-unpleasant result is hearty Italian fare with the half-life of Chinese takeout.
  62. In This World
    Realer and more consequential than much being packaged for TV and movies these days as ''reality,'' the fictional In This World unfolds with the deceptive dispassion of a documentary, but builds with a sure sense of dramatic epic.
  63. Anything Else
    With every recycled piece of business -- which is to say, every scene in Anything Else -- the distance widens between Allen and the elusive audience he pessimistically chases. He has never seemed less in touch with his own real, pulsing, 21st-century city.
  64. Casa de los babys
    Marcia Gay Harden is an angry vulgarian who steals shampoo off the maids' carts and bribes a lawyer to get her baby. Sayles may not have planned it this way, but Harden makes crassness as powerful as any maternal instinct.
  65. To Be and to Have
    So superb, so graceful, so strong -- another beauty in this year of good documentaries -- that I do believe it will influence career choices, sending inspired viewers to study pedagogy, or cinematography.
  66. Secondhand Lions
    With no baseline ''truth'' to be found among the cartoony characters and cheesy twists, the whole production feels like a Texas-size load of secondhand lyin'.
  67. The Fighting Temptations
    Makes shameless use of tried-and-true elements -- but it's hardly the same old song.
  68. Underworld
    By the end, I was starting to ponder questions like, If a vampire mates with a lycan-vamp hybrid, which parent will have to convert?
  69. Dummy
    Serves up the sort of shrill ''satire'' of middle-class Jewish vulgarity in which the mere mention of words like ''brisket'' and ''klezmer'' is automatically presumed to be hilarious.
  70. Matchstick Men
    Actually, there's one other way to approach Matchstick Men, and that's to forget all about neuroses and con artistry and admire the movie instead for the unsettlingly beautiful directorial study in geographical mood that it is.
  71. Cabin Fever
    A big, dumb, crude, noisy, goose-the-audience bash and proud of it. It's not nearly as unsettling as ''28 Days Later.''
  72. Lost in Translation
    What's astonishing about Sofia Coppola's enthralling new movie is the precision, maturity, and originality with which the confident young writer-director communicates so clearly in a cinematic language all her own.
  73. Once Upon a Time in Mexico
    In its wildly overwrought, burrito-Western way, is about as close to a home movie as you're likely to see in a megaplex.
  74. The Order
    The picture is so lethargic that I began to think of watching it as a form of atonement.
  75. Party Monster
    As stagy and awkward as some of the Warhol/Morrissey films of the early '70s.
  76. Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star
    The number of levels on which these pros trade on their diminished reputations makes the movie an inside joke rather than a funny one. If Spade thinks otherwise, he's nucking futs.
  77. Taking Sides
    The sides to consider in Taking Sides are all but obscured by cinematic pomposity at best, Holocaust porn at worst.
  78. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
    There are instances when the filmmaker tries for Western iconography and settles for ''Full Monty'' ingratiation.
  79. The Other Side of the Bed
    While we can agree, for the sake of Iberian-American cinematic friendship, to go along with the whole simplified 1960s swinger premise and ''The Jackie Gleason Show'' choreography, we can also long for the comparatively nuanced 1990s swinger premise of ''Friends.''
  80. Jeepers Creepers II
    Writer-director Victor Salva squanders all of his original movie's not-entirely-awfulness and bumbles into the realm of unintentional comedy.
  81. My Boss's Daughter
    Zucker directs this mess like a substitute teacher soldiering through a day's work for a day's pay at a decertified school.
  82. The Medallion
    The Medallion makes you long for Tucker -- and for Jackie Chan to fly without digital wings.
  83. Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
    Had ''Boogie Nights'' been the tale of a California dreamer with a really long skateboard, the movie's delirious first half would have been ''Dogtown and Z-Boys,'' and its downbeat conclusion would be Stoked.
  84. The Battle of Shaker Heights
    Best to experience Shaker Heights for what it is: not a movie, exactly, but the true season capper of ''Project Greenlight,'' a series that finds its very drama on the road to mediocrity.
  85. Marci X
    A talent-stuffed assemblage of barbs and giddy musical numbers that shouldn't be written off as a feature flop -- but savored instead for the cult-ready collection of late-night satirical skits and misses it is.
  86. Thirteen
    With an authenticity that is tender and merciless, the movie shows you what it looks like when youth rebellion becomes a form of fascism.
  87. Uptown Girls
    Unlike in ''Freaky Friday,'' no magic spells are involved. Nor is there any of ''Freaky'''s marvelous charm in this ungainly Manhattan fairy tale, directed by indulgent sentimentalist Boaz Yakin.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Freddy vs. Jason
    So can Freddy beat up Jason, or what? Let's just say that neither one would have stood a chance against Abbott and Costello.
  89. American Splendor
    American Splendor presents Pekar as drawn on the page, Pekar as brilliantly interpreted by Paul Giamatti, and the actual Pekar, in the double role of narrator and interview subject -- sometimes all at once. The magic act is thrilling, and truly surprising.
  90. Shaolin Soccer
    Everything you've ever loved (or hated) but were afraid to laugh at in Asian martial-arts movies, ''Matrix''-ian bullet-time actioners, and Farrellyesque slapstick comedies -- all rolled into Hong Kong's highest-grossing local production ever.
  91. Open Range
    There's nothing corny, however, about the climactic shoot-out, which Costner has staged superbly as an extended logistical mini-war that surges and rifle-cracks with bloody abandon through what feels like every building in town. Call it dances with guns.
  92. Grind
    Supplies stretches of actual skating footage by pros doubling for the stars. It's in these moments, freed from the earthbound pull of its market-tested components, that the movie briefly relaxes into the sheer thrilling audacity of flying into the air propelled by a board on wheels.
  93. Le divorce
    I'm disappointed to report that Hudson and Watts have no chemistry as sisters, perhaps because Watts never seems like the expatriate artiste she's supposed to be playing.
  94. Step Into Liquid
    Even from the safety of a movie seat, you can just about feel the stinging hardness of the surf. Blue crush? This is more like white smash.
  95. S.W.A.T.
    Aware of its own cuteness because the dialogue plays by the rules of meta-entertainment.
  96. Freaky Friday
    A funny, shrewd, no-bull family comedy about the relationship between mothers and teenage daughters that allows Curtis the comedian to remember her days as a slinky starlet while making use of her wisdom as the mother of an adolescent girl herself.
  97. And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen...
    The director has said that the plot was influenced by a real English thief named Valentin who showed up at his door one day to repay money stolen a decade earlier.
  98. The Secret Lives of Dentists
    Don't let unpleasant personal dental associations stand in the way of seeing a luminous specimen of independent filmmaking.
  99. The Magdalene Sisters
    The rare movie that turns cruelty into art.
  100. American Wedding
    The third helping of ''American Pie'' offers little more than crumbs. Half the franchise's core cast (including Mena Suvari, Chris Klein, and Tara Reid) chose to skip the big fat geek wedding.
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