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 Wedding Guest
    The phrase “low-key thriller” might be an oxymoron, but it also feels like the best description of The Wedding Guest.
  2. Greta
    A loony psychodrama so steeped in winking, twinkly-toed camp that it almost (almost!) escapes the leaden tropes of the genre.
  3. The Hole in the Ground
    The Hole in the Ground never seeks to differentiate itself from the established horror movie aesthetic: we get creepy jangling lullaby music, a decrepitly old hooded women mumbling to herself ominously, bare feet on creaking wooden floors, broken mirrors.
  4. The Mustang
    First-time feature filmmaker Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre brings a gorgeous, wide-open sparseness to her visual storytelling (it makes sense that Robert Redford, the original Sundance Kid, is listed as an executive producer), but it’s largely Schoenaerts’ movie to carry.
  5. Transit
    Petzold walks the tricky tightrope of being both timeless and timely, the performances (especially those of Rogowski and Beer) are chillingly good, and the ambiguous final shot is damn near perfect. In Transit, the past is prologue… and it’s devastating.
  6. Climax
    Is it possible to be an enfant terrible when you’re 55? Unrepentant French provocateur Gaspar Noé pushes that question (and your buttons) to the breaking point with his latest transgressive import, Climax.
  7. Paddleton
    Thanks to two pitch-perfect performances, Paddleton is bittersweet and poignant beyond words.
  8. Ruben Brandt, Collector
    It’s a triumph of style over substance. But what style!
  9. Isn't It Romantic
    Isn’t It Romantic pulls off a sweet sleight-of-hand trick as a rom-com-within-a-rom-com, mocking all of the classic rom-com tropes while still letting us indulge in them. The movie is having its gourmet cupcake and eating it too.
  10. Happy Death Day 2U
    Look, no one is expecting much from a movie called Happy Death Day 2U. Certainly not air-tight logic. But this chapter feels phoned in. And unless you’re really, really desperate for a new horror movie to check out, you might want to think twice about accepting the charges.
  11. Everybody Knows
    If there’s one nit to pick with Everybody Knows, it’s that Farhadi’s films, as excellent as they are, are starting to feel a bit same-y. He’s plying the same family-in-crisis formula he’s worked before. That formula still works like gangbusters, but it’s becoming a formula nonetheless: Happiness and community curdle into paranoia and suspicion.
  12. High Flying Bird
    Written by Oscar-winning Moonlight screenwriter Tarell Alvin McCraney, the new film feels stagey, confusing, and didactically obvious. You can tell that it was written by a playwright (which McCraney was and is).
  13. Fighting with My Family
    Most of Fighting’s narrative moves are as choreographed as any undercard match — and the outcome as clearly forecast — but the tears brought on by the movie’s last ten minutes of rhinestoned Rocky triumph taste salty, and real.
  14. Alita: Battle Angel
    This manga adaptation is a tired science-fiction odyssey, with bland digital effects piled onto a sappy non-story that feels like a two-hour elevator pitch for a 70-film franchise.
  15. Miss Bala
    It’s mostly left to Rodriguez to carry the absurdity on her shoulders, and the fact that she makes it so watchable is a real testament to her abilities. Next time, may the material rise at least halfway to meet her.
  16. King of Thieves
    Thieves feels oddly joyless — a mostly rote perp walk through the mechanics of unarmed robbery, sprinkled with occasional slapped-on signifiers of fun (wild camera angles, snazzy soundtrack, smash-cut flashbacks to Swinging London).
  17. Arctic
    Penna’s concept is hardly new, but his execution is sharp, clean, and smartly paced; a harrowing postcard from the void.
  18. Polar
    Åkerlund — the Swedish mastermind behind tastemaking music videos for the likes of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, and Taylor Swift — has jittery, high-gloss style to spare. But the primary-colored nihilism of his storytelling feels amateurish and ultimately exhausting; a gleefully unhinged teenage-boy dream that aims only for hard, shiny surfaces, and stays there.
  19. Piercing
    Clocking in at a lean and very mean 81 minutes, writer-director Nicolas Pesce’s follow-up to his grim 2016 black-and-white arthouse chiller "The Eyes of My Mother" is a sick-joke psychological cat-and-mouse game with just enough twists to keep you on your toes.
  20. Velvet Buzzsaw
    For a lot of its runtime, Velvet is fun and silly and enjoyably outrageous. It’s hard, though, to walk away with a real sense of anything more than blood on the canvas and a blank where your feelings — beyond mild bemusement, and a sudden appetite for prime Los Angeles real estate — should be.
  21. Cold Pursuit
    It knows exactly what kind of movie it is, but that doesn’t stand in the way of it goosing its bloodbath set pieces with irreverent, off-kilter gallows humor.
  22. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    As entertaining as The Lego Movie 2 ends up being — and let’s be clear, it’s still better than 99 percent of its competition — there’s something missing: that white-hot spark of insane creativity and out-of-the-box novelty that made the first Lego Movie such an unexpected, revolutionary surprise. Everything is still awesome. Just a little bit less so.
  23. Tito and the Birds
    The strength of Tito and the Birds lies in its imaginative touches like this and overall visual aesthetic, which mixes various painting and animating styles into a beautiful fusion, but the actual storytelling leaves a little depth to be desired.
  24. Serenity
    It wants to be trashy, pulpy fun that toys with your mind and your expectations. Sadly, it just ends up insulting both.
  25. Close
    The twists in Close aren’t very twisty and its thrills aren’t particularly thrilling. But if watching women getting smacked around by cartoon bad guys before finally getting payback is your thing, by all means, have at it.
  26. Fyre
    The movie is more than a bonfire of the inanities; it’s a shrewd indictment of a dream gone spectacularly, criminally wrong.
  27. The Upside
    The racial politics feel almost willfully retro, but the actors’ charisma cuts through: Forced to work strictly from the neck up, Cranston is just the right amount of gruff; Hart, aside from a deeply unnecessary catheter scene, gives a gratifyingly prickly and vulnerable performance. Somewhere beneath this passable-enough Upside, there’s a better, sharper movie for them both.
  28. A Dog's Way Home
    Heartwarming, mildly funny, and occasionally thrilling without ever being anything more than just fine.
  29. Glass
    Yes, it’s easy to be impressed by the world that Shyamalan has created and now fleshed out, but it would be nice if we were also moved to feel something too. In the end, Glass is more half empty than half full.
  30. Holmes & Watson
    A brilliant supporting cast, which includes Hugh Laurie, Steve Coogan, Ralph Fiennes, Lauren Lapkus, Rebecca Hall, and Kelly MacDonald, is utterly wasted on this lame and forgettable outing. The only real mystery is why they wanted to be apart of this project at all.
  31. Stan & Ollie
    The reason that this old-fashioned movie works as well as it does is the transformative commitment of its two leads. They’re both clowns crying on the inside, who, despite years of resentment, know they’re more than partners; they’re uneasy soul mates stuck in one last “fine mess” together.
  32. Second Act
    What’s fun is just watching Lopez and her supporting cast — including her real-life best friend Remini, Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford as her tightly wound coworker, and a loopy Charlyne Yi as her phobic new assistant — move through the scenes so easily.
  33. Cold War
    Director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War resembles a waking dream. And a ravishingly romantic one at that.
  34. Welcome To Marwen
    If Marwencol made your heart go out to Mark, Welcome to Marwen does something quite different. It makes you want to back away from him slowly.
  35. On the Basis of Sex
    A suitably inspiring biopic despite its narrative unevenness and occasional reliance on schmaltz, seeks to show audiences the origin story of a cultural icon.
  36. Vice
    The shrewd, relentless winkiness of McKay’s filmmaking style may have worked better, though, for breaking down subprime mortgages in The Big Short than it does chronicling a deadly misbegotten war. What remains then is the cipher at the center of Vice: the Man Who Wasn’t There, and probably never will be.
  37. Bumblebee
    John Cena is top billed, and though his brick-jawed military man doesn’t actually get many scenes, he does get a disproportionate share of the script’s best lines. He gives good muscle, but Bumblebee brings something even more important — and actually transforming — to the series: a sense of humor, and a heart.
  38. Capernaum
    For all of its brutal, raw force, Labaki’s excellent film is tough sledding — a sucker punch that lands with the emotional force of Dickens relocated to the slums of the modern-day Middle East. It leaves a bruise.
  39. The Mule
    The Mule fits the 88-year-old Eastwood perfectly. Not just because there probably aren’t many roles for actors of his age out there, but also because its lack of judgment makes sense for a star who’s always been as willing to play anti-heroes as heroes.
  40. Mary Poppins Returns
    Spoonfuls of sugar always help the movie magic go down; if only this Mary had gotten a necessary twist of lemon, too.
  41. Aquaman
    Wan, a director who’s proven himself to be a can’t-miss ace regardless of genre (from the horror formulas of The Conjuring and Insidious to the big-budget tentpole mayhem of Furious 7) seems to finally be out of his depth. He’s conjured an intriguing world, but populated that world with dramatic cotton candy and silly characters, including a hero who’s unsure if he wants to make us laugh or feel — and winds up doing neither. Pass the Dramamine.
  42. Mortal Engines
    Despite all of the film’s retro-future eye candy, it never quite sweeps you out of your seat and transports you someplace new. It’s a squeaky salvage job that could have used a fresh dose of oil to make it hum.
  43. Bird Box
    As Bird time-jumps between the claustrophobic action of the house and a desperate sort of jailbreak, director Susanne Bier (The Night Manager) keeps the mood taut and defiantly in the moment.
  44. Mary Queen of Scots
    What keeps the film from feeling like period-piece amber, all whispered alliances and wiggery, is the keenly feminist sensibility of first-time director Josie Rourke (her background is largely in theater) and the fierce charisma and complicated humanity of its two leads, sovereigns till the end.
  45. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    For a film that invites so much self-aware chortling over franchise in-jokery, you feel Spider-Verse has missed something essential from its own screen history.
  46. Vox Lux
    Corbet doesn’t seem as interested in the answers to the provocatively glib questions he raises as he is in creating a cynical riddle cloaked in style. No doubt some will find all of this to be a deep meditation on the pop-industrial complex, but from where I was sitting, it just felt like empty camp.
  47. The Christmas Chronicles
    What kind of Grinch would I be to berate a new cheesy holiday movie about two siblings going on a Christmas-related adventure in which, I repeat, Kurt Russell plays a hot Santa? Make some cocoa for the family, and spike yours if you have to, but remember what the holiday is about: watching mediocre, predictable movies with the people you love.
  48. Robin Hood
    On all fronts, it strives to twist the Robin Hood story into something more provocative, but ultimately it’s a garbled, hollow mess of attempts at relevancy.
  49. The Grinch
    Kids could still watch the peerless 1966 original, though their blooming little cortexes will probably respond to the shiny-bright novelty here — and be newly spellbound by a tale almost as old as color television, but still evergreen.
  50. Green Book
    In a world that seems to get uglier every day, this movie’s gentle heart and mere humanity feel like a salve.
  51. Widows
    It’s entertaining enough for popcorn — and gratifying, too, to watch these smart, strong women step into roles they’re so often left to support from the sidelines, while men have all the contraband fun. If only the execution of it didn’t feel like such a crazy-quilt patchwork of other, better films, and so jaggedly stitched together.
  52. Creed II
    Creed II slavishly follows the sentimental-palooka Rocky template as if it were a sacred text. Still, it doesn’t make those old rope-a-dope tropes any less effective.
  53. Shoplifters
    Kore-eda is working up to something else, steering the story he’s built so carefully toward an utterly unexpected detour. As much of what we think we know unravels, the film becomes not just an enjoyable, intermittently poignant portrait of imperfect people but a profound meditation on the meaning of family.
  54. At Eternity's Gate
    If Eternity is hardly a completist portrait — or even a narratively satisfying one, really — it’s still gratifying to watch in other ways. Not just for the pureness of Dafoe’s performance but for the way it lets art be both celebrated and unexplained, still as much a mystery as the man who made it.
  55. The Clovehitch Killer
    Unlike so many recent horror movies, The Clovehitch Killer is patient with its thrills, almost excruciatingly so.
  56. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
    Two of the chapters stand with some of the best work the merry-prankster filmmakers have ever done, while the rest are varying degrees of… fine.
  57. Ralph Breaks the Internet
    Ambitious, beautifully animated, and clever to a fault, Ralph Breaks the Internet breaks free of the pitfalls of most sequels by never forgoing heart for the sake of bigger franchise pyrotechnics.
  58. Instant Family
    At its heart (and it’s a big corny heart, for sure), the film’s message is one of unconditional love and embracing family wherever you find it. It’s hard to argue with. Especially when it’s served up with such spiky laughter-through-tears sweetness.
  59. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
    There might not be a more gorgeous-looking movie this year than Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
  60. Overlord
    A surprisingly well-made mash-up of old-fashion war movie tropes and proudly disgusting horror-flick shocks. It’s a ton of fun.
  61. The Girl in the Spider's Web
    Now a miscast Claire Foy adopts the hacker vigilante’s black leather and badass avenging-angel attitude for The Girl in the Spider’s Web — a disappointingly safe, by-the-numbers action-thriller.
  62. Here and Now
    But for most of the film, Parker’s Vivienne is bland and forgettable. A scene where she sleeps with the drummer in her backup band is supposed to be titillating but instead feels perfunctory.
  63. Bohemian Rhapsody
    Maybe unavoidably, the movie that’s emerged from all that has the distinct whiff of compromise and art by committee — the opposite, in other words, of nearly everything Queen’s flamboyant, defiant frontman stood for.
  64. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
    The rare quiet moments in Nutcracker suggest Foy might be a real movie star. Let’s give her a real movie and find out.
  65. They'll Love Me When I'm Dead
    More narratively straightforward (but also masterfully edited in F for Fake style), the documentary takes its title from a Welles quote about the fickle hypocrisy of the movie business and about his other favorite subject: himself. And that quote couldn’t have been more spot-on for a man who was most appreciated most only when it was too late.
  66. The Other Side of the Wind
    The Other Side of the Wind (both the movie and the movie-within-a-movie) is a hypnotic, magical mess of a film. It’s a lot of story and not enough of one. Still, there are shots that are so haunting and beautifully composed that you want to get out of your seat and take up residence in them.
  67. A Private War
    By the time the narrative comes to Colvin’s greatest get — she was essentially the first Western journalist to get inside Homs and refute Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s bold-faced lie that he wasn’t bombing his own people into oblivion — the price of that sacrifice, and the power of her story, feels finally, fully real. Whatever her private battles, War works hard to be the public reckoning her work deserves.
  68. Boy Erased
    Boy Erased is the kind of topical, well-intentioned movie that makes you wish it was slightly better than it is.
  69. Viper Club
    Viper Club is an earnest and often engaging film that’s undeniably heartfelt. It’s capital-I important and timely. But without its star’s passionate, nuanced performance, it would run the risk of being a bit generic and forgettable.
  70. Johnny English Strikes Again
    Every gag in this movie has already been done before, and better, presumably by one or both of the earlier Johnny English films. I promise that I will never force myself to find out.
  71. The Guilty
    The Guilty is an absolute workout that pulls the rug out from under you just when you think you have it figured out. The last ten minutes will keep you rattled long after you’ve left the theater.
  72. Suspiria
    It’s likely to be enjoyed more by audiences unfamiliar with the original.
  73. Monrovia, Indiana
    Few filmmakers can turn a mundane town council meeting about a library bench into a meditation on patriotism and civic responsibility the way Wiseman can. Let’s hope his camera continues to roll for years to come.
  74. Wildlife
    Wildlife is confident and patient and mature. It may be a small film, but its power is massive. Especially its very last shot, which is so devastating it has the force of a sucker punch.
  75. What They Had
    While it’s loaded with excellent ensemble performances and flashes of real poignancy, it can’t seem to help itself from occasionally jack-knifing into heavy-handed wrong turns that can play as clichéd or phony. It’s half of a great movie.
  76. The Oath
    The film wrongfully substitutes abrupt violence for anything truly provocative, squandering the promise of its early scenes with a disjointed third act and pat ending that renders its satire toothless.
  77. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
    The real magic of the movie comes in its echoes of the first — namely, Black’s performance as the Goosebumps mastermind.
  78. Apostle
    Netflix feels like a proper home for a film this idiosyncratic. After all, you’ll know within 30 minutes stumbling onto it whether you want to keep following its unsettling descent into blood-soaked madness or pick up your remote and head over to the relatively sunnier and safer comforts of "Broadchurch."
  79. 22 July
    Taken together, the film is kaleidoscopic, sober, and also a bit glib. 22 July is exceptionally choreographed and tough to sit through, but it also leaves an uneasy, bitter aftertaste knowing that the movie is probably exactly the kind of continued attention a deranged narcissist like Breivik would have wanted.
  80. The Happy Prince
    Everett’s utterly fantastic performance as Wilde slightly exceeds his grasp as a first-time filmmaker.
  81. Mid90s
    He (Hill) makes Mid90s resonate with universal poignancy and electric energy; his kids are the best, messiest kind of real, and they’re alright.
  82. Bad Times at the El Royale
    It’s British stage actress Erivo who feels like the real star. Her steely charisma and gorgeous powerhouse of a voice (Goddard takes every plausible opportunity to let her loose on a classic 1960s songbook; can you blame him?) is what gives the movie not just a different kind of heroine, but a heart.
  83. The Kindergarten Teacher
    Gyllenhaal, bright-eyed and brittle, brings her signature intensity to the role, though Lisa’s true inner world remains murky; it’s never quite clear if she’s just deeply unhappy or certifiably ill. Instead, the movie remains an intriguing but ambiguous portrait of a flawed, fascinating woman who knows herself either too well or not at all
  84. Studio 54
    One of the great surprises of Matt Tyrnauer’s giddy glitterbomb of a documentary about New York’s infamously Caligulan Me Decade hot spot is discovering how much of our culture (the drugs, the music, the sexual liberation) is wrapped up in one nightclub that existed for a mere 33 months.
  85. The Great Buster: A Celebration
    In The Great Buster, Bogdanovich has provided a brilliantly enthralling primer.
  86. Loving Pablo
    Escobar’s story hardly lacks for plot points, and director Fernando León de Aronaoa (Mondays in the Sun) hits them all obligingly, if broadly. What he doesn’t carve out much room for is richer character motivations or context.
  87. Private Life
    It’s about perseverance, compassion, and empathy.
  88. Venom
    Venom isn’t quite bad, but it’s not exactly good either. It’s noncommittally mediocre and, as a result, forgettable. It just sort of sits there, beating you numb, unsure of whether it wants to be a comic-book movie or put the whole idea of comic-book movies in its crosshairs.
  89. Black '47
    Despite its Irish setting, Black ’47 feels more than anything like an American Western, what with its shades-of-grey morality and almost Biblical quest for payback. Like Clint Eastwood’s Bill Munny in "Unforgiven" or John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards in "The Searchers," Martin is a silent avenger pushed to do things he doesn’t want to do but also can’t ignore.
  90. All About Nina
    All About Nina works best as a showcase for Winstead, even if she’s performing material we’ve already heard before.
  91. Monsters and Men
    Reinaldo Marcus Green’s quiet drama still carries its own kind of big stick, even if the story’s impact is ultimately muffled by his meditative, low-key style.
  92. Smallfoot
    Smallfoot has its own silly, beastie charm.
  93. Free Solo
    In the end, the answer may be only slightly deeper than “because it’s there”, but for 100 nerve-racking minutes, Free Solo brings us one man’s suicidal quest with sympathy, grace, and a ton of adrenalin.
  94. Assassination Nation
    There’s a kinetic energy in Levinson’s telling, and real catharsis in a riotous final sequence that feels all the more triumphant for the unlikeliness of such a bloody, happy ending.
  95. Life Itself
    Excellent performers are wasted, especially the criminally underutilized Mandy Patinkin and Annette Bening, both of whom appear in just bit parts. With far too much confidence but nothing to say, Life Itself lives up to the college-freshman affectedness of its own title.
  96. Love, Gilda
    Love, Gilda is penetrating, painful, and personal.
  97. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
    Black, no surprise, steals the show, manically hamming it up like Harry Houdini on laughing gas, while Roth tries to keep the breakneck pace of his phantasmagoria going. As someone who was growing bored with Roth’s gory shockfests, I say: “Welcome to the kiddie table, Eli.”
  98. White Boy Rick
    What sets it a notch or two above rote familiarity is its cast, featuring a charismatic, white trash-with-a-heart-of-gold turn from a mulletted Matthew McConaughey and a naturalistically low-key performance from newcomer Richie Merritt.
  99. The Land of Steady Habits
    As the tone wobbles between absurdity and tragedy, it also starts to shift toward something deeper and more bittersweet than mere midlife ennui. A lot of that is down to Mendelsohn, an actor who seems born to embody Holofocener’s kind of hero: weary and wounded but still putting it out there, a beautiful mess in progress.
  100. Lizzie
    By the time the climactic act of violence finally arrives, there’s barely enough patience left in the viewer to feel any real sense of catharsis or liberation. Just exhaustion.
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