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. Friday After Next
    The movie is altogether too infatuated with its ramshackle spirit. Most of the gags take after the characters -- they just sit there.
  2. Standing in the Shadows of Motown
    Offers terrific interviews with the surviving Funk Brothers, who provide a tasty insider history of 4 a.m. recording sessions inside ''the snake pit'' (as the fabled Studio A was known) as well as a chilling description of their final kiss-off from Berry Gordy, the Motown mogul who treated them like indentured servants.
  3. Interview with the Assassin
    The film's best trick is the way that it treats conspiracy as a kind of political ''Blair Witch,'' a monstrous murk that haunts us precisely because it can never be seen.
  4. Half Past Dead
    When Seagal's undercover FBI agent Sascha Petrosevitch waddles into the big house wearing a do-rag and a billowing blue jumpsuit, it's the funniest jailhouse-flick scene since Gene Wilder's white-boy strut in ''Stir Crazy.''
  5. The Crime of Padre Amaro
    The real crime is the way that the movie turns Gael García Bernal, the hot-tempered, Roman-lipped costar of ''Y Tu Mamá También, into a backwater Freddie Prinze Jr.
  6. Ararat
    As ever, Egoyan assembles a devoted repertory cast, including Christopher Plummer.
  7. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    And among the things this ''HP'' does very well indeed is deepen the darker, more frightening atmosphere for audiences of all ages already familiar with the intricacies of the ''Potter'' landscape. (This is as it should be: Harry's story is supposed to get darker.)
  8. Hush!
    A feel-good movie that doesn't give you enough to feel good about.
  9. Far From Heaven
    Bold and brilliant.
  10. 8 Mile
    Movie stars radiate a power -- physical, erotic, spiritual -- that draws an audience into their orbit. Yet watching Curtis Hanson's gritty and electrifying 8 Mile, the first thing you notice about Eminem, the most scaldingly powerful artist in pop music today, is how vulnerable he looks.
  11. Femme Fatale
    If you look hard, you can make out a story in Femme Fatale, but it has nothing to do with the senseless pileup of jewel thievery, shutterbug voyeurism, and leggy sex bombs so shallow and bad they seem to have come out of a 1978 copy of Hustler magazine.
  12. Treasure Planet
    Quite honestly, you could nap for an hour and not miss a thing, but when the crew finally makes it to the glowing piles of booty at Treasure Planet's core, the film unleashes some pleasing visual fireworks. That's where it should have started, not ended.
  13. The Weight of Water
    In the heaving cross-century swirl of the climax, ''Weight'' makes its point: Jealousy is timeless; Hurley is not.
  14. Love in the Time of Money
    The characters who cross paths here in the hard shadows of late-'90s New York City are meant to convey loneliness, bitterness, neediness, loss, and bad karma. Mostly, they convey bad Sundance.
  15. I Spy
    TV's ''I Spy'' knew how to swing. The movie 'I Spy knows only how to scramble and string together moments of Murphy braggadocio and Wilson stoner-ocity, and the sweat shows.
  16. All the Queen's Men
    The comedy is nonexistent.
  17. Frida
    A revolutionary life has rarely felt less edgy, or the biography of an iconoclast more bourgeois.
  18. 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.
  19. Paid in Full
    A fake street drama that keeps telling you things instead of showing them, though Mekhi Phifer, playing a hustler who loves the life, is electric and true.
  20. All or Nothing
    In that rare moment, the movie relaxes its rictus of pain and actually dares to feel good. Moments like these aren't just a negotiation between all and nothing -- they're everything that allows us to care about even those characters who only slouch and shriek ''F -- - orfff!''
  21. Roger Dodger
    A little too programmed in its despair, but it coasts along on the jagged music of the modern lothario's song.
    • 28 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Ghost Ship
    That creaking noise you hear in Ghost Ship is the rattling of countless plot skeletons that have sunk before.
  23. Jackass: The Movie
    Provokes a suspense halfway between comedy and horror. I'm not sure if I enjoyed myself, exactly, but I could hardly wait to see what I'd be appalled by next.
  24. Naqoyqatsi
    If Microsoft and Nike ever merged into one corporate megalith (MicroNike?) and commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to direct its visionary new Super Bowl commercial, the result might look something like Godfrey Reggio's Naqoyqatsi.
  25. Real Women Have Curves
    It's refreshingly low on the kind of Cinema of Empowerment pedantry that often goes along with stories about ethnic families, sweatshop working conditions, or women confronting issues of weight and body image -- and this little crowd-pleaser embraces all three.
  26. Abandon
    Sometimes, typecasting works: Holmes and Bratt settle comfortably into their roles, and the movie proves a competently made, mildly diverting collegiate thriller -- at least until its all-too-predictable ''twist'' ending.
  27. The Grey Zone
    No dramatic feature has ever come quite this close to the matter-of-fact ugliness of the Nazi crimes.
  28. Auto Focus
    The performances are vividly alive.
  29. The Ring
    The best thing about the movie, which is a very elegantly crafted piece of gothic snuff hokum, is the way it teases and intrigues us with the revelation of what's on that tape.
  30. Formula 51
    The film should have been called ''Lock, Stock and Two Wilting Barrels.''
  31. Comedian
    The thrust of the movie is that even for Jerry, the quintessential scientist of stand-up, comedy is very, very hard to do. By the end, you're closer to knowing why.
  32. Brown Sugar
    As a love-jones soap opera, Brown Sugar feeds right into Dre's nostalgic crankiness.
  33. Knockaround Guys
    It has no twistiness or intrigue, and none of the juicy anthro-underworld detail that Koppelman and Levien brought to their screenplay for the tricky, enjoyable ''Rounders.''
  34. Below
    In the handsome, haunting submarine thriller Below, the usual perils of deep-sea maneuvers are heightened by psychic unraveling.
  35. The Rules of Attraction
    The cast is a pitch-perfect assemblage of pretty young things, but James Van Der Beek, as a slit-eyed dorm stud, proves that he can be an actor of cruel force.
  36. The Transporter
    It's like the worst movie Jean-Claude Van Damme never made.
  37. Punch-Drunk Love
    Deeply rich and strange new romantic comedy.
  38. Tuck Everlasting
    A dreamy adaptation of Natalie Babbitt's cherished 1975 children's novel.
  39. White Oleander
    Impressively unflappable and natural, 23-year-old Lohman -- whose best known credit is perhaps a role on Fox's short-lived ''Pasadena'' -- holds the whole plot together skillfully.
  40. Bowling for Columbine
    Even Moore's target ticket-buyers are likely to squirm with concern, unsure of who the real weasels and idiots are in this large, unkempt, rambunctious country of ours.
  41. Swept Away
    Ritchie made a movie that never pretends to be more than a guilty pleasure of soft-core kitsch, and Madonna and Giannini (son of Giancarlo, costar of the original) achieve a lively S&M chemistry.
  42. Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
    Bouncy animation and catchy songs keep the film from tasting too much like spinach.
  43. Heaven
    Further sad evidence that Tom Tykwer, director of the resonant and sense-spinning ''Run Lola Run,'' has turned out to be a one-trick pony -- a maker of softheaded metaphysical claptrap. It's enough to make you want to see him run again.
  44. Pipe Dream
    The film satirizes, and celebrates, an idea pivotal to both Hollywood and love: that in a world of impostors, the pretender with the most conviction can become exactly what he pretends to be.
  45. Welcome to Collinwood
    Excitement trumps incompetence as one colorful loser recruits another. Pretty soon, the screen is filled with hip actors playing clueless lowlifes, pretending they're in a Bizarro World production of ''Ocean's Eleven.''
  46. Bloody Sunday
    It's a mad cycle of arrogance and despair, and Bloody Sunday etches it onto your nervous system.
  47. Red Dragon
    A thriller made from a completist's checklist rather than with a cultist's passion.
  48. The Tuxedo
    Chan needs a foil, and Hewitt, while perky, doesn't project nearly enough comedy weight; she's too slight and tailored for his style.
  49. Biggie and Tupac
    At best, a half-finished puzzle, but Broomfield leaves you with questions that few investigators have even dared to ask.
  50. The Man from Elysian Fields
    A pompous and garbled parable about how terribly, terribly difficult it is to make it as a creative artist, and how important it is to maintain high standards of haberdashery.
  51. Sweet Home Alabama
    Unbearable were Witherspoon not such a genuinely attractive performer.
  52. Moonlight Mile
    In ''Ordinary People,'' at least one character -- Mary Tyler Moore's -- had to fall so that the others could survive. In Moonlight Mile, no one gets shut out of the hug cycle.
  53. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    Watching this film, one is left with the inescapable conclusion that Hitchens' obsession with Kissinger is, at bottom, a sophisticated flower child's desire to purge the world of the tooth and claw of human power. The movie isn't, finally, an argument. It's a long angry ''Boo!''
  54. Invincible
    Half-baked Herzog, though it has twinkles of theatrical purity that remind you of when his vision was grand.
  55. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
    Kaos was apparently aiming for a coolly stylized, straight-faced take on ''Spy vs. Spy.'' As Maxwell Smart used to say, ''Missed it by that much.''
  56. The Four Feathers
    It may be an accidental historical parallel that, at times, we seem to be watching a 19th-century version of ''The John Walker Lindh Story,'' but the fluke is only enhanced by the weird anonymity of Ledger's performance.
  57. The Banger Sisters
    Really, the sole favor Dolman does the plucky Hawn is to light her rear end so that its continued gloriousness can be appreciated.
  58. Trapped
    The most frightening sight, though, is that of Theron and Bacon, good actors trapped in the muck of making a living.
  59. 8 Women
    The result is weightless entertainment that's both camp and true, a warped adoration of star-quality actresses as amazing creatures who can project the lives of fictional characters as well as the essence of their own fabulous selves.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Secretary
    There's a word for an actress who can go from nervous to winsome to raunchy to romantic in a heartbeat and get you to adore her the whole time. The word is star.
  61. Spirited Away
    A triumph of psychological depth and artistic brilliance offered as the magical adventures of one skinny little girl.
  62. The Experiment
    Rigid, airless, and browbeatingly repetitive, Das Experiment is an overly didactic piece of thesis hectoring; it's like ''Lord of the Flies'' set in a Skinner box.
  63. Igby Goes Down
    Gets weirder and meaner and darker and sadder as it progresses, which is amazing since it simultaneously remains funny and horrifying right up to the end.
  64. Barbershop
    The mixed-up rhythms of the story rescue Barbershop from bland goodness.
  65. Alias Betty
    A nifty, entwined, ultimately gripping adaptation of British crime writer Ruth Rendell's novel ''The Tree of Hands'' by French director Claude Miller.
  66. Stealing Harvard
    It doesn't help that most of the jokes (like a rip-off of ''There's Something About Mary'''s dog-in-the-crotch bit) are themselves stolen.
  67. Swimfan
    Proof that a thriller can be sleekly shot, expertly cast, paced with crisp professionalism...and still be a letdown if its twists and turns hold no more surprise than yesterday's weather report.
  68. City by the Sea
    Moves along with a quietude, a scruffy direct plainness that has long gone out of style.
  69. In Praise of Love
    Godard, as always, sounds full of insight, yet he uses the past to damn the present in a way that may be reflexively self-serving. In Praise of Love leaves a taste as bitter as poison ash.
  70. FeardotCom
    The film squanders every opportunity (and international-coproduction cent) on by now imitative Nine Inch Nails-video-style visual Goth-goo, and, scarily, forgets to input a plot or script that makes any sense.
  71. Red Satin
    Undoubtedly downplays the seamier, less attractive experiences of Arab women and men in Tunisian cabaret culture, and plays up the fairy-tale charm of the universal ''Flashdance'' formula in an unusual setting.
  72. Undisputed
    Undisputed is a shrewd and splendidly volatile B movie structured around a highly original gambit of suspense.
  73. Little Secrets
    The kids in this syrupy family picture are spunky tykes and the adults are dolts, but Wood is worth watching because she's so clearly ready to play nobody's girl but her own.
  74. Serving Sara
    The few jaunty, ''Friends''-inflected lines Perry does get off are lost among the cow pies.
  75. Amy's Orgasm
    The orgasm, it turns out, is low on the list of Amy's issues. The title is faked.
  76. How I Killed My Father
    The script is a steady accretion of small stabs to the heart, propelling the gorgeous performances of Berling, Regnier, and especially the 76-year-old French cinema veteran Bouquet, whose every faint smile is killing.
  77. S1m0ne
    The movie pretends to warn against such shallowness -- but flaunts its arousal at how exciting such a controllable world is for those with access to the software.
  78. One Hour Photo
    In One Hour Photo, Williams is a snapshot of human complexity worth framing.
  79. Possession
    The movie is intelligent yet lifeless; it's all wisps and abstractions.
  80. Mostly Martha
    Nettelbeck has a particularly lovely sense of behind-the-scenes restaurant choreography. And her warm, patient understanding of little girls' psyches guides young Maxime Foerste, as the turbulent niece, to a terrific performance.
  81. Blue Crush
    The final 20 minutes of Blue Crush can stand as one of the few highlights in a movie summer of mostly hollow action-carnival fireworks. The trick, for once, isn't that we're watching superhuman stunts; it's that we're watching deeply human stunts.
  82. I'm Going Home
    The result is something as original as it is unlikely: a study in grief that is flooded with happiness.
  83. The Château
    If anyone steals the movie, though, it's Sylvie Testud, who never lets on whether the sexy French country maid she's playing is mournfully obtuse or embodies the wisdom of the ages.
  84. Scarlet Diva
    Has a voyeuristic tug, but all in all it's a lot less sensational than it wants to be.
  85. Secret Ballot
    Charms with its amalgam of absurdity, optimism, humor, and avuncular regard for the million small daily chores, rituals, suspicions, and courtesies of dwellers on even the sparsest spots on earth.
  86. xXx
    Even in the summertime, the most restless young audience deserves the dignity of an action hero motivated by something more than franchise possibilities. Movies like XXX -- a big 000 -- don't deserve our $$$.
  87. 24 Hour Party People
    An insider nostalgia trip for graying art punks. It could have been called ''When We Were Cool,'' and it's finally so cool that it freezes you out.
  88. Blood Work
    Eastwood is now playing a man whose will is stronger than his body, and it's that tension -- between anger and frailty, steel and decay -- that powers the movie.
  89. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
    The inventiveness is still superior and the network of fiends and family is extended.
  90. The Good Girl
    Only pretends to care about good people who sometimes do bad things. In fact, it hasn't got time for the pain.
  91. Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
    Lawrence makes you believe in the character you're watching. He does an amazing little piece of acting.
  92. Full Frontal
    Even by Soderbergh's standards of serious playfulness/playful seriousness, Full Frontal is a tricky novelty item: The director himself has variously described it as an ''experiment,'' an ''exercise,'' and a ''sketch.''
  93. One Last Kiss
    A crowd-pleaser in the deepest sense, mixes heartbreak and happiness together until you don't even want to see them apart.
  94. The Master of Disguise
    An awful, stillborn comedy assembled out of rusty spare parts from secret agent movies and run-of-the-mill ''Saturday Night Live'' skits.
  95. Signs
    It's a high-octane doomsday vision built almost entirely around our sense of anticipation, and that's both its strength and its weakness.
  96. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    Huppert has never been this cheerful, or lethal, and the movie itself is like Hitchcock's ''Rebecca'' reshot for House & Garden, with all the ghosts pulled out of the closet.
  97. The Kid Stays in the Picture
    A candy store for film buffs.
  98. Lan Yu
    At times too restrained, yet there are moments it captures the erotics of intimacy in a way that makes most American love stories look downright unfree.
  99. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    A modest vérité portrait of Wilco, the engagingly melodious, deeply unglam alt-folk rockers.
  100. The Country Bears
    It's sort of an ursine ''The Last Waltz,'' with more costumes and no direction from Martin Scorsese.
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