Wall Street Journal's Scores

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For 3,944 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 44% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 54% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.7 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 62
Highest review score: 100 Les Misérables
Lowest review score: 0 The Limits of Control
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,102 out of 3944
  2. Mixed: 1,197 out of 3944
  3. Negative: 645 out of 3944
3944 movie reviews
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  1. Whale Rider
    Seduces us with its leisurely pace and felicitous details into believing that something miraculous is afoot in a mundane rural community.
    • Wall Street Journal
  2. The Kid Stays in the Picture
    A smart, funny and strangely touching film.
    • Wall Street Journal
  3. Everlasting Moments
    This exquisite film by the Swedish master Jan Troell is about seeing clearly, and fearlessly. It's also about subdued passion, the birth of an artist and a woman's struggle to live her own life.
  4. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
    Much of this R-rated movie is chaotic, yet it’s a richly hued, madly inventive, gleefully violent and happily slapdash contraption with a formidable female at its center.
  5. Together
    Terrifically funny and remarkably wise, a comedy that speaks volumes, without a polemical word, about the tension between rigid politics of any stripe and the imperatives of life and love.
    • Wall Street Journal
  6. The Fast and the Furious
    Shrewdly conceived, confidently executed and outrageously entertaining.
    • Wall Street Journal
  7. Elephant
    Calmly, almost serenely, Mr. Van Sant and his superb cinematographer, Harris Savides, reveal a vision of contemporary American youth quite unlike any other.
    • Wall Street Journal
  8. Two of Us
    This debut film by Filippo Meneghetti, streaming on major digital platforms, is elevated by the beauty of its performances, and by its masterly technique, which would suggest a filmmaker at the height of his career, not someone directing his first feature.
  9. Babylon
    In keeping with the exuberance of early Hollywood, Mr. Chazelle and his creative team—Linus Sandgren’s cinematography, Florencia Martin’s production design and Mary Zophres’s costumes all have to be dazzling to maintain Mr. Chazelle’s vision, and they are—create the feeling of a madcap, whirling ride.
  10. Tell No One
    Thrillers aren't always so thrilling, but Tell No One is -- and absorbing, sometimes perplexing and often stirring as well.
  11. Ghost World
    Smart, surpassingly odd, extremely funny and mysteriously endearing at the same time.
    • Wall Street Journal
  12. Dallas Buyers Club
    This classic tale of a little guy taking on giants benefits from being essentially true, and from accomplished filmmaking, but most of all from the beautiful vitality of Mr. McConaughey's performance.
  13. Burden of Dreams
    Blank created an enduring record of hubris, exploitation and unrelenting misadventure in the pursuit of artistic greatness, all ideally symbolized in both films’ central image—fashioned from mud, sweat and timber—of a huge boat being hauled over a mountain.
  14. Standing in the Shadows of Motown
    A glorious feature-length documentary -- This film will leave an indentment, and a deep one, on anyone who loves great, joyous music and cares about the people who make it.
    • Wall Street Journal
  15. Free Solo
    Free Solo would be an exceptional piece of filmmaking if it confined itself to the physical poetry of Mr. Honnold’s achievements. But it gets at his inner life too, and goes a long way toward answering the unspoken question of what makes — or allows — him to do what he does.
  16. The Secret Lives of Dentists
    This portrait of a failing marriage is one of the summer's great discoveries, and a marvel of mercurial intimacy.
    • Wall Street Journal
  17. Emilia Pérez
    By making Emilia Pérez a quasi-musical, Mr. Audiard cranks up the campiness; by making it a parable about one’s own past being inescapable, he makes it profound.
  18. The Square
    The Square is too long at 150 minutes and occasionally falls into the sort of preciosity it loves to deride. But the film is full of delicious riffs.
  19. Beasts of No Nation
    This is a harrowing film to watch. In spite of the vibrant jungle greens and the searing sun, it’s as bleak a vision of modern warfare as has ever been put on screen.
  20. The Assassin
    I also know The Assassin to be so ravishingly lovely that tracking the plot is far less important than luxuriating in the images.
  21. Never Look Away
    Never Look Away makes an eloquent case for art as an expression of hope, a way of searching for meaning in chaos.
  22. We Met in Virtual Reality
    While certainly a curiosity, We Met in Virtual Reality—a pandemic-inspired documentary filmed entirely within a social platform called VRChat—is also revelatory, if not entirely ennobling of the human condition.
  23. May December
    Any five audience members might have five different takeaways, which tells you there is a lot going on here. I was left with this thought: How well do we really know anyone, even ourselves?
  24. The Spectacular Now
    A movie of uns — unforced, unhurried, unpretentious. Though it's sometimes underdramatized, this story of adolescents on the brink of adulthood is refreshingly, and endearingly, unlike the overheated features that have come to define the genre.
  25. Petite Maman
    What you see is exactly what you think you’re seeing from the moment of your first guess. What you feel is another story—one of calm, almost inexplicable enchantment.
  26. Diane
    Diane navigates some challenging narrative disjunctures en route to a spiritual dimension, but it also has quiet moments that speak volumes. They’re all about Diane achieving a state of grace by awarding it to herself.
  27. Departures
    Beautiful moments abound. In Departures, the contemplation of death prepares the way for an appreciation of life.
  28. Jane Eyre
    Almost everything about Cary Fukunaga's version of the Charlotte Brontë romance is understated yet transfixing, mainly-although far from exclusively-because of Mia Wasikowska's presence in the title role.
  29. Senna
    What's most rewarding, though, is that Mr. Senna speaks extensively and eloquently for himself, and reveals himself to be an eminently human hero. He's thoughtful, even philosophical, about decisions that deprive him of seemingly well-earned victories.
  30. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
    I can't pretend to understand the intricacies of the Buddhist belief system that informs the surreal story, or the fantasy system in which Boonmee, embodying Thailand, recalls his nation's history and shimmering myths. Yet no effort of understanding is needed to be moved by Boonmee's descent into a limestone cave shaped like a womb.
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