Entertainment Weekly's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
    • 88 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Richard III
    Olivier’s spidery Richard — shuttling around with a black pageboy haircut and sleeves dangling to his knees — revels in his eloquence yet remains deliciously wicked.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Invasion of the Body Snatchers
    An extremely tight, beautifully made film.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    All That Heaven Allows
    Boiling over with heated acting and schmaltzy scores, Douglas Sirk’s ’50s melodramas tap neatly into our collective trash psyche.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Man with the Golden Arm
    Though director Otto Preminger’s decision to use an RKO set instead of Chicago locations initially jars, he makes it work, amping up the claustrophobic tension in beautifully choreographed long takes.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Land of the Pharaohs
    Joan Collins and her pointy bras are a hubba-hubba hoot.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Lady and the Tramp
    The first animated feature filmed in CinemaScope.
  7. Rear Window
    Masterpiece of voyeurism.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Them!
    The movie’s then-state-of-the-art mechanical beasties aren’t entirely convincing, but this archetypal ’50s monsters-on-the-loose flick can still tingle your carapace, thanks to taut direction, an intelligent script, a believable cast, and a nail-bitingly effective climax in the sewers of Los Angeles.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Wild One
    Brando’s tight denims and defiance prefigured James Dean’s archetypal rebellion.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Calamity Jane
    [Day] is dizzyingly kinetic (and funny) as Calamity Jane‘s tomboy cowgirl.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Limelight
    Overburdened by Chaplin’s creaky script and fussy acting. Nevertheless, his musical duet with Buster Keaton is an absolute gas, proof that even when Chaplin was bad, he could still be good.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Quiet Man
    Sentimental and sexist, John Ford’s gorgeous slice of the auld sod nevertheless moves like music.
  13. Don't Bother to Knock
    Don't Bother to Knock was the first film to truly grant her a juicy dramatic leading role, one that allowed Monroe to tap into her own childhood traumas and abuse.
  14. The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men
    Mostly just a bland, sanitized rip-off of the 1938 Errol Flynn version, offering little in terms of new contributions to the tale, and not improving substantially on anything that was already there.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Pat and Mike
    Pat and Mike is notable for featuring such actual female sports stars as Babe Didrickson Zaharias and Betty Hicks, and for displaying Hepburn’s own athletic prowess.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Tales of Hoffmann
    A logical distillation of Powell and Pressburger’s Red Shoes, Tales‘ splendid excess sometimes tilts toward gaudiness. What’s nectar to some is syrup to others, an overcooked reduction that can be too thick to swallow.
  17. The African Queen
    Bogart is hilariously crusty as a hard-drinking river rat who journeys downriver on a rickety steamer with a prim missionary (a flawless, lock-jawed Hepburn), trying to stay one step ahead of the Germans.
  18. Quo Vadis
    Golden era MGM takes on Christ! The lavish story of Roman-Christian conflict was universally loved, thanks to star turns by Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, and supporting players Peter Ustinov and Leo Genn.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    When Worlds Collide
    When Worlds Collide is essentially 81 minutes of bad emoting by future TV actors.
  20. Sunset Boulevard
    There's a long tradition of filmmakers poking fun at the movie business. But no one bit the hand that fed him more viciously or with sharper fangs than Billy Wilder in Sunset Boulevard.
  21. The Gunfighter
    A ruthlessly heartbreaking tale of a famous gunslinger (Gregory Peck in a black mustache and a little black hat) grown weary of facing down an increasingly young bunch of challengers to his quick-draw supremacy.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Father of the Bride
    The scenes between Taylor and Spencer Tracy are sweet and utterly lacking in artifice, and although the movie asks little more than her presence, she provides it with simple, natural grace.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cinderella
    The character gags work, the dreamlike ball sequence still induces swooning, and if you aren’t on the edge of your seat for the climactic fitting, it’s time to get back on the romanticism meds.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Young Man with a Horn
    (Doris Day) is quietly touching in Young Man With a Horn as a singer pining for Kirk Douglas’ tortured trumpeter.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    White Heat
    Walsh’s White Heat, starring Cagney in great form as psychotic mamma’s boy Cody Jarrett, is shot by shot, frame by frame, the hard-boiled masterpiece of the bunch.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Force of Evil
    A highly stylized tale.
  27. Key Largo
    Key Largo is heaps of fun if you’re willing to go along for the ride, but perhaps slightly more silly than audiences might expect (or creators intend).
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Paradine Case
    This movie's attempt at a scandalous love triangle is so miscalibrated that it's extremely difficult to care about the stakes beyond the official legal proceedings.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Naked City
    Nearly 50 years later, The Naked City‘s Oscar-winning cinematography and editing still have resonance.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Bishop's Wife
    Grant’s turn is thoroughly convincing because he himself appears to be having a terrific time: He’s expansive, graceful, and seems always on the verge of chuckling with goodwill.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Nightmare Alley
    As much EC comic as noir, Nightmare Alley is strong on atmosphere (thanks to Lee Garmes’ shadowy cinematography) and performances (particularly Joan Blondell, as fellow mind reader Zeena), but doesn’t quite deliver on its lurid pulp premise.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Odd Man Out
    Mason gives a grand performance, his voice racked with desperation and pain yet sonorous.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    I Know Where I'm Going!
    The writing-directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is best known for Technicolor wonders The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman, but I Know Where I’m Going!, a far less famous black-and-white romantic fable, is as charming as anything in their oeuvre.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Big Sleep
    Bogart’s portrayal of the detective as wisecracking moralist now seems to be what makes The Big Sleep the best of the eight Philip Marlowe pictures made to date.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    Brief Encounter
    Director David Lean’s magnificent rendering of the short, passionate, and unconsummated affair between two middle-class, middle-aged Brits remains the most memorable treatment of extramarital romance in movie history.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Spellbound
    The Salvador Dalí-designed dream sequence is still a dazzler, and deciphering it points to the real killer. Analysis the way it oughta be!
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1945)
    Controversy aside, ”Blimp” splendidly marries a sprawling narrative to stunningly imaginative filmmaking.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Body Snatcher
    The movie has those unmistakable, shiver-inducing touches Lewton (Cat People) is famous for: a loyal little dog refusing to leave the site of its master’s fresh grave, a blind singer’s song suddenly and shockingly stopping offscreen, and the surprise of that final coach ride.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    National Velvet
    No other child actor — nor adult one — has ever captured the pure, unconditional love between human and animal as Elizabeth Taylor does here. And few other films have caught the can’t-wait-another-second excitement of childhood fixation.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    To Have and Have Not
    The ”you know how to whistle, don’t you?” scene is justifiably famous, and there’s plenty more where that came from.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Double Indemnity
    Barbara Stanwyck cracks wise too, while dripping pheromones.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Gaslight
    It’s canny, gothic fun, helped along by Lansbury (in her film debut) as a tarty maid who delights in overstepping boundaries.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Lassie Come Home
    The slightly older set will be hard-pressed to watch Lassie Come Home without a great big lump in the throat.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Watch on the Rhine
    Lillian Hellman’s WWII potboiler Watch on the Rhine feels dated.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Random Harvest
    Garson and Ronald Colman beautifully play the delicacy of two aching souls trying to recapture their lost romance.
  46. Bambi
    Naturally, if you’re putting it before youngsters’ innocent eyes for the first time, you’ll want to stick close by in order to play grief counselor when Bambi’s mother ”meets” a hunter in the woods.
  47. To Be or Not to Be
    One of Hollywood’s funniest, and most poignant, classics.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Sullivan's Travels
    Preston Sturges’ most famous film, Sullivan’s Travels, may not match the sleek perfection of his ”Lady Eve,” but its endlessly fertile and still influential fusion of satire, screwball comedy, drama, and slapstick (most recent homage: the Coen brothers’ ”O Brother, Where Art Thou?”) remains tartly fresh.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Suspicion
    A few bravura sequences aside, it’s fairly flat.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    How Green Was My Valley
    The acting is strong (especially that of 13-year-old Roddy McDowall as the youngest son and Maureen O’Hara as the lovelorn daughter), and Arthur Miller’s Oscar-winning photography gives the images a spooky luster, but a little bit of Ford’s salt-of-the-earth piety goes an awfully long way.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Maltese Falcon
    Boldly manipulating light and shadow, utilizing drastic camera angles, and introducing Bogart’s Sam Spade, the first-time director’s detective classic defines film noir.
  52. Citizen Kane
    What’s magical about Kane — the sheer transformative thrill of invention — is there in every shot, every performance, every narrative surge.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Mr. & Mrs. Smith
    For a rom-com, it's neither funny nor particularly romantic despite the actors' best efforts.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 91 Critic Score
    The Letter
    In William Wyler’s richly torrid melodrama The Letter, Davis unsurprisingly mesmerizes as a duplicitous murderess pleading self-defense. What is surprising is how, with the help of a good, sympathetic director, she doesn’t play the role in all-out pit viper mode. Instead, Davis reveals something vulnerable and pitiable.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Pinocchio
    Among all of Disney’s endangered-tot stories, including Cinderella and 101 Dalmatians, only Pinocchio plucks the heartstrings with such incomparable resonance. Why? One reason is that this movie consistently sprinkles adorable comedy relief (has there ever been a more endearing sidekick than guardian Jiminy Cricket?) over scenes of malice, dismay, and outright horror.
  56. Gone with the Wind
    To see Gone With the Wind on a big screen again is to weep for the fearlessness with which Hollywood once believed the sublime was possible.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Shop Around the Corner
    What makes Shop timeless, ironically, is the specificity of its setting: a small department store in Budapest at the end of the global Depression.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Jamaica Inn
    The film looks decent, though not as striking as any of Hitchcock's prior sound films.
  59. The Wizard of Oz
    The Wizard of Oz remains the weirdest, scariest, kookiest, most haunting and indelible kid-flick-that's-really-for-adults ever made in Hollywood.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Beau Geste
    Spirited performances don’t / quite redeem the melodramatic contrivances of this often-filmed piece of romantic nonsense. But the Moroccan desert (actually Arizona) looks great, and at the very least, this Geste is leagues better than the 1966 remake with Telly Savalas.
  61. Stagecoach
    Action-packed and jaw-droppingly epic (it was the first time director John Ford ever shot in Monument Valley), Stagecoach is the perfect Western to show to people who don’t like Westerns.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Young and Innocent
    One of Hitchcock's lighter thrillers, Young and Innocent is a straightforward wrong-man film elevated by the chemistry of its leads, Derrick De Marney as fugitive and Nova Pilbeam as a young woman roped into his antics. Despite being relatively underwritten, their romantic dynamic crackles as the two easily find the comedy in every scenario without undermining the dramatic tension.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Nothing Sacred
    Ben Hecht supplied the cynically amusing script, but the brilliant Lombard makes it fly — wringing laughs from an arsenal of loopy gestures and cacophonous outbursts.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Swing Time
    Top Hat is tops with two of the duo’s most sublime numbers. The George Stevens-directed Swing Time, featuring glorious Jerome Kern-Dorothy Fields songs, is just as good.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Secret Agent
    It's pleasant to see a story that highlights the pointless absurdity of war and espionage, although some of the jokes are pretty mean-spirited.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Top Hat
    Top Hat is tops with two of the duo’s most sublime numbers (The Piccolino, Cheek to Cheek), plus Fred’s rat-a-tat solo, a funnier-than-you-remember script (Erik Rhodes’ English-mangling designer exclaiming: ”Never again will I allow women to wear my dresses!”), and the hummable Irving Berlin score.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Bride of Frankenstein
    The gloriously baroque Bride of Frankenstein is in every way a richer, more imaginative experience than its straight-arrow predecessor.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    Strauss' Great Waltz
    Decently crafted, but somewhat stiff and unremarkable.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Gay Divorcee
    The repartee is sharp, the plot is delightfully ridiculous, and the numbers — like ”Night and Day” and the epic Oscar winner ”The Continental” — are knockouts.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Flying Down to Rio
    In their first big-screen pairing, fourth-billed Ginger and fifth-billed Fred play second banana to a bandleader and his Latina love in Flying Down to Rio, a nutty entry that springs alive for ”The Carioca,” possibly the duo’s sexiest dance.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 42 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Cavalcade
    It’s rife with fey, unintentional camp like the scene in which a newlywed couple pledge eternal love on the deck of an ocean liner — only to move away and reveal a life preserver labeled Titanic. Cavalcade really won its Oscar because of Hollywood’s raging Anglophilia — the insecure sense that if a character says, ”Let’s all have a cup of tea!” the movie must be art.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    King Kong
    Granddaddy of beast-on-the-loose movies.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Number 17
    The story is practically impossible to follow, the direction is imprecise, and the whole thing is visually dizzying.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    East of Shanghai
    The director's handle on visual storytelling remains strong, but at this point, he hasn't quite figured out how to direct dialogue, which is a massive problem for a movie with so much talking.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Public Enemy
    In William Wellman’s The Public Enemy, Cagney’s tommy-gun delivery and dancer’s grace make underworld life seductively enthralling.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Murder!
    After the introduction of the titular crime and a proto-12 Angry Men jury scene, the film becomes a playful meta-commentary on the inherent silliness of watching actors go through the motions of detective work, with numerous charming visual embellishments.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Animal Crackers
    One of the five essential Paramount comedies.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    Juno and the Paycock
    Hitchcock deserves credit for putting his personal artistic flourishes aside to create a straightforward adaptation, undistracted by technical wizardry. Unfortunately, the film is essentially a vacuum with no sense of intrigue or urgency — there's practically no character development, thematic weight, artistic innovation, emotional resonance, or narrative thrust.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 42 Critic Score
    The Farmer's Wife
    It's technically competent but narratively sparse, with no humor or sense of urgency. Every scene feels as though it's 30 minutes long, which doesn't help its already lengthy runtime for a silent feature, with the latest restoration clocking in at almost two hours.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    The Manxman
    Hitchcock's final fully-silent film is one of his greatest early works.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Blackmail
    The director's most literal signature elements are almost all on display in his first talkie — dizzying camerawork, endless staircases, and fast-paced chase scenes make the movie's best moments distinctly engaging.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
    The movie simultaneously exploits and condemns our fear of the other — we suspect the stranger we know nothing about simply because we know nothing about him, and we almost hope that he's the killer because we so desperately want to be right.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 83 Critic Score
    Easy Virtue
    The courtroom scene that opens the movie is both exciting and technically marvelous, cleverly integrating flashbacks to clearly communicate the misfortune the main character has endured. The domestic melodrama that follows isn't as flashy or fast-paced, but it's perfectly fine, highlighting the cruelty of the wealthy class.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Jazz Singer
    The plot is powerful because it’s so absurdly melodramatic.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Ring
    The only movie for which Hitchcock claimed sole writing credit isn't particularly captivating — it's a relatively standard boxing movie with a textbook love triangle at its center.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Battleship Potemkin
    It’s required viewing in virtually every Film 101 class. Look at any MTV video or any slick million- dollar minute of advertising, and you’ll see its origins in that assemblage of shots in Potemkin.
  87. The Life of Jesus
    It’s only when you’re in the grip of the climax that you realize how richly the filmmaker has painted a landscape that to other eyes might appear so parched.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 67 Critic Score
    My Best Friend
    [Lanthimos] also co-directed it with comedian Lakis Lazopoulos, which means there are fewer of his handprints here, though he still imbued the buddy comedy (about a man who finds his pal in bed with his wife) with plenty of dark humor.
next
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »