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 1.9 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. U2 3D
    The 3-D visuals envelop you, majestically, and that effect fuses with the band's surround-sound rapture to create a full-scale sensory high. U2 3D makes you feel stoned on movies.
  2. The Band's Visit
    Something marvelous happens as the filmmaker, in his first feature, expertly metes out small scenes of communication between people taught, for generations, to be wary of one another: This Band swings with the rhythms of hope.
  3. The Counterfeiters
    Without doing anything so divisive as taking sides, The Counterfeiters pays sympathetic attention to those who play their cards to win even when the rules are terrible, not least because the remarkable Markovics, an Austrian TV actor with a pugnacious anvil of a head, is so riveting as an unsaintly survivor.
  4. The Bank Job
    One of the pleasures of The Bank Job is that it returns us to the days when robbing a bank was a gritty, hole-in-the-wall affair.
  5. Horton Hears a Who!
    If I ran the circus, the gang that made the sturdy, witty, inventively animated Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! would get first dibs on any future movie productions of the Theodor Seuss Geisel canon.
  6. Heartbeat Detector
    It's a thin line between 20th-century Nazism and 21st-century corporate culture in Heartbeat Detector, Nicolas Klotz's rewardingly chilly psychological thriller.
  7. Under the Same Moon (La misma luna)
    The film says that the U.S. immigrant situation is untenable, but then it forces US to ask: What should be done?
  8. The Cool School
    The rare footage of '50s and '60s L.A. alone is a treasure; the City of Angels has rarely looked so hip. Bonus: cool music from the likes of Charles Mingus and the Velvet Underground.
  9. Flight of the Red Balloon
    Juliette Binoche is outstanding as a wildly untogether single mother who parks her son with a French-speaking Chinese nanny while she whirls and worries.
  10. Young@Heart
    They also make joyful music, communicated, both by the singers and their playful, sensitive documentarian, with an authority that quite knocks off socks.
  11. Standard Operating Procedure
    Morris, using a welter of photographs (many of which we haven't seen), constructs a day-to-day sense of how Abu Ghraib descended into a medieval hell.
  12. Surfwise
    Doug Pray's cool documentary about 85-year-old Dr. Dorian Paskowitz, his wife, and their eight sons and one daughter is about surfing insofar as surfing is the family's shared passion.
  13. Reprise
    Reprise is kissed with the breath of French New Wave sensibility, sweet with verve and a love of forward movement. The mood of joy in the midst of youthful pain is enhanced by the freshness of the first-time lead actors.
  14. Bigger Stronger Faster*
    Bigger, Stronger, Faster is a portrait of a culture that claims to hate steroids but may, by now, be too pumped to do much about it.
  15. The Foot Fist Way
    Not short on broad physical humor. But Simmons is a brilliantly detailed grotesque capable of withstanding comparison to his most obvious inspiration, Ricky Gervais' "Office" boss David Brent.
  16. Kung Fu Panda
    Light and goofy, yet the fight scenes, which are the heart of the film, are lickety-split mad fun.
  17. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
    The movie also captures Thompson's tragedy: the haze of drugs and bad writing that consumed him for no less than his last 30 years.
  18. August
    Anyone who thinks that Josh Hartnett isn't a true movie star should see his riveting, high-wire performance in August.
  19. Religulous
    He's a bombs-away provocateur, and in Religulous, Maher's blasphemous detonation of all things holy and scriptural, he doesn't really pretend to play fair. He's like Lenny Bruce with an inquiring mind and a video camera.
  20. I Served the King of England
    This is a dark story as well as a frothy one. But the bubble of absurdist self-absorption in which Menzel places this specimen of man-child is exquisite.
  21. Battle in Seattle
    His (Townsend) staging has a tumult, a multi-POV immediacy that brings to mind Paul Greengrass' "Bloody Sunday."
  22. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
    So much goes down on Nick and Norah's one enchanted evening that the best advice is to enjoy the ride -- the actual ride -- around this vibrant new New York.
  23. Happy-Go-Lucky
    The London universe Leigh creates (employing his trademark improv techniques to unite his ensemble, many of whom make their film debuts) isn't so much a reality as a hope, and an invitation to find joy and grace in everyday moments.
  24. JCVD
    A reality-twisting cousin to "Being John Malkovich" -- showcases a Van Damme who's sly like a fox about his own image.
  25. Milk
    A fascinating film -- more docudrama than biopic.
  26. Bolt
    Bolt breaks no great new stylistic ground -- and yet it's a sturdy beaut.
  27. Wendy and Lucy
    Wendy and Lucy is like "Lassie Come Home" directed by Antonioni. What's piercing about it, and also disturbing, is that Reichardt views the renunciation of society with something close to righteous purity -- as a lefty romantic dream.
  28. Marley & Me
    Wilson has a scene near the end with Marley that's the most wrenchingly tender acting of his career.
  29. Confessions of a Shopaholic
    Breathless and petite yet powerfully in-your-face, Fisher combines dizzy femininity and no-nonsense verve in the manner of a classic screwball heroine. She's like Carole Lombard reborn as a tiny angel-faced dynamo.
  30. Katyn
    The great Polish director Andrzej Wajda musters the power of classical filmmaking and personal emotional investment to dramatize a stunning atrocity long covered up.
  31. Tokyo Sonata
    Known for distinctive horror movies like "Cure" and "Pulse," inventive Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa finds just the right melancholy tone to suit a new and all too familiar kind of horror: economic downsizing.
  32. The Great Buck Howard
    The Great Buck Howard is in love with kitsch, the backwaters of showbiz, and true magic. It's a wee charmer that left me enchanted.
  33. Frost/Nixon
    Surges with an energy and visual verve that improve the play and enhance the themes of dramatist Peter Morgan's script.
  34. American Swing
    Plato's Retreat was a buffet of bodies, and the film catches the moment America could think that was tasty.
  35. Observe and Report
    The superb character actor Celia Weston (In the Bedroom) is truly breathtaking as Ronnie's boozer mom.
  36. Valentino: The Last Emperor
    Film music by Nino Rota provides a Fellini overlay.
  37. Earth
    This super-duper deluxe nature documentary clearly aims to recruit young viewers as conservationists.
  38. Il Divo
    You need know nothing about Italian politics to completely enjoy the fantastical, Fellini-fied, tragi-comic, biographical fun-for-all Il Divo.
  39. Outrage
    The movie excoriates the hypocrisy of self-hating gay lawmakers (several of whom it outs), yet it also explores the burden of the public closet.
  40. $9.99
    Using the droll, wise stories of Etgar Keret as her guide, Israeli filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal concocts an artful film that expresses deep thoughts, lightly.
  41. Lorna's Silence
    A stunning study of one desperate woman's conscience.
  42. Amreeka
    Amreeka is strategically inviting and carefully mild even when making unsubtle points about Palestinian suffering and American insensitivity.
  43. Splice
    A cheeky, great-looking, thoughtfully loopy creature feature about the lure and dangers of cutting-edge gene splicing.
  44. (Untitled)
    The whole cast is museum quality, and the ''music'' performances are pitch-perfect in their dissonance.
  45. Defamation
    This brave documentary takes on the topic of anti-Semitism in a relentlessly probing and original way.
  46. Red Riding Trilogy
    Each episode (originally made for British TV) works by itself, but there's a real payoff in following all three. (Nothing matches The "Wire," but this holds its own.)
  47. How to Train Your Dragon
    Rouses you in conventional ways, but it's also the rare animated film that uses 3-D for its breathtaking spatial and emotional possibilities.
  48. All About Lily Chou-Chou
    Gorgeously shot tableaux of random adolescent brutality are interrupted by flashes of computer garble and chat-room talk, backed by ''Lily's'' music, with its blend of Debussy-like arpeggios and Enya-like sighing.
  49. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    Does the movie, with its sock-puppet intros and narration by RuPaul Charles, mock Tammy Faye, sanctify her, or turn her into a flamboyant image of distressed womanly martyrdom -- the Judy Garland of televangelism? All of the above.
  50. Die Another Day
    The savviest and most exciting Bond adventure in years, and that's because there's actually something at stake in it.
  51. Trolösa
    A domestic tragedy of lacerating vision.
  52. Marooned in Iraq
    Nothing I've read about Iraq or seen on TV in the past few weeks has felt nearly as real and intimate as this commanding fiction.
  53. The Specialist
    This lone, fallen Nazi's obsessive distance from his actions is enough to give The Specialist a lingering chill.
  54. Judy Berlin
    Haunting and hopeful.
  55. The Cockettes
    The Cockettes weren't talented, exactly, yet the bedazzled flakiness of their passion takes you closer than just about any movie has to what was once really meant by the term ''free-spirited.''
  56. Earth
    Even blood, spilled so freely, has a distinctive intensity of red in this beautiful and harrowing film.
  57. The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg
    A sprightly, lovingly researched, rather misty-eyed sports documentary that's steeped in ethnic pride.
  58. Beautiful People
    There's a bravura recklessness to Beautiful People that perfectly fits its subject.
  59. The Story of Us
    Pungent, funny, and surprisingly forceful.
  60. 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.
  61. Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
    As compelling as it is bizarre.
  62. The Day I Became a Woman
    Creates a flow of symbolism so potent, so transporting in its physicality, that its impact all but transcends its righteous liberal ''meaning.''
  63. The Closet
    Cagey, high gloss comedy.
  64. A Time for Drunken Horses
    The nonprofessional cast of Bahman Ghobadi's remarkable, slow, rough edged feature reveals a simple, piercing grimness and determination framed by the gray, icy landscape of Iranian Kurdistan.
  65. The Son's Room
    It takes skill these days, if not nerve, to put a vital, happy nuclear family on screen and to invite us to share in every quiet tremor, every gentle jostle and smile of their steady, deep-flowing contentment.
  66. Bounce
    Watching Bounce, you look at him (Affleck) and believe how much he's got at stake, and you look at Paltrow and know why.
  67. The Tao of Steve
    It's a tiny, sunny character study about a fat guy who's an unlikely chick magnet. And as such it's a pip.
  68. An Affair of Love
    Fonteyne edges closer than most to capturing the mysterious rhythms of liaisons -- pornographique, romantique, and otherwise.
  69. XX/XY
    Emotional presence and a sophisticated understanding of commitment-phobia (as something other than a comedic punchline or an excuse for sex scenes) distinguishes this intense, contained drama, as does the unforced, sensual, and sensitive cinematography of Uta Briesewitz.
  70. Mumford
    Turns the tricks of psychology into duplicitous high play.
  71. City of Ghosts
    Turns out to be a supple, intriguing, and beautifully staged movie. It features Dillon, in his most forceful performance since ''Drugstore Cowboy.''
  72. Late Marriage
    Watch for the director's own mother, Lili Kosashvili, a standout as Zaza's fierce, stately mama.
  73. The Gleaners & I
    Feels delightfully organic, eccentrically rambling, the found artistic collage of a woman who herself loves to collect.
  74. The Believer
    Bean's commitment to serious theological examination is exciting, Gosling's performance is riveting, and this fiery and imperfect feature shines as a demonstration of independent filmmaking at its most uncompromising.
  75. Assassination Tango
    Acting doesn't get more personal, or much greater.
  76. Lumumba
    What matters now, what Lumumba conveys, is the urgent chaos of revolution.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Waking Ned Devine
    Unfolds with such unforced inevitability that absurdity never condescends to sticky adorableness.
  78. U-571
    When the submarine has to dive 400 meters beneath the surface to avoid detection, you can practically feel the water pressure crushing in on the sailors.
  79. Tape
    Linklater has hardly been a slacker this year. I'll take the tricky confrontational babble of Tape over some of the gauzier soliloquies in ''Waking Life,'' but either way, he's a filmmaker in love with the music of talk, and let's bless him for that.
  80. Four Weddings and a Funeral
    Grant is the rare actor who can mix the characteristics of sex appeal and ambivalence in believable, rather than irritating, proportions.
  81. The French Connection
    To watch it now is to appreciate more than ever Gene Hackman’s uncompromising talent, Owen Roizman’s great, barely-color cinematography, and a time when the spectacle of a foulmouthed, racist, brutal cop could still outrage as many moviegoers as it excited.
  82. Repo Man
    Unlike Cox’s sneering Sid and Nancy, it’s defined more by a tone of affectionate disaffection than antipathy, celebrating a friendlier species of anarchy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Dead Again
    With its stylized black-and-white sequences and fast-paced melodramatic plot, this homage to film noir is both intense and purposely self-conscious.
  84. Tumbleweeds
    Rarely have two actresses been so effortless in their intimacy.
  85. 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.
  86. The Last Days of Disco
    The fetching cast (including Jennifer Beals as a histrionic girlfriend), while a long way from Gwyneth and Matt stature, nevertheless reflects Stillman’s enhanced status as an established indie talent.
  87. Analyze This
    Crystal turns in his best (read: least sappy) performance in ages, getting through an entire movie -- most of it, anyway -- without mugging.
  88. Dark Blue
    Goes where all too few films dare to venture these days -- into the heart of moral darkness.
  89. Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin
    The nature of silent comedy was to elevate its heroes into myths, but after ''Charlie'' I can't wait to see Chaplin's movies again, this time to glimpse the man on the other side of the icon.
  90. Thirteen Days
    A big, square, rousing political thriller docudrama.
  91. The Fugitive
    The Fugitive is hardly Hitchcock — it never taps our emotions in a way that threatens to transcend the action — but it’s a mainstream thriller made with conviction, intelligence, and heat. In Hollywood, that used to be called professionalism. These days, it’s rare enough to look like artistry.
  92. The Gingerbread Man
    Branagh, chewing on a plummy Georgia accent, makes the divorced, boozing, and womanizing Magruder a smug yet touchingly vulnerable legal player.
  93. Two Family House
    The charm and art of De Felitta's gentle domestic sketch expand far beyond biographical borders.
  94. Stone Reader
    It's ''Moskowitz's March,'' really -- and it ends in stirring victory
    • 77 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Donnie Brasco
    It's the electric interplay between Pacino and Depp that will make it a Mob movie classic.
  96. The Cuckoo
    A stirring action movie -- in the international manner of ''The Fast Runner'' or ''No Man's Land."
  97. Love and Diane
    Riveting family portrait.
  98. Grosse Pointe Blank
    High school reunions should only be this satisfying.
  99. Tarzan
    One of the great virtues of Disney's most elegant animated ''classic'' in years is how blessedly sermon-free this zippy, dignified retelling of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ripping 1914 yarn is.
  100. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
    On the eve of Wuornos' 2002 execution, Broomfield digs deep into her abusive hell of a background (beatings, incest, sleeping homeless in the frozen Michigan woods) as well as her quasi-psychotic defense mechanisms.
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