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. The Lost City
    While the romantic comedy is hobbled by the lack of onscreen chemistry between the stars, it’s never in doubt that both actors are giving these exertions their all—each excels individually, but they just can’t kiss like they mean it. Instead, their rapport is that of professional colleagues who complement each other’s work, and Ms. Bullock allows Mr. Tatum to showcase his brilliance at playing dumb.
  2. The Motel Life
    It's admirable and even memorable, in its moody fashion, thanks to Roman Vasyanov's richly textured cinematography — he's a shooter to keep our eyes on — and three affecting performances.
  3. Iron Man 2
    Intimacy has vanished from the relationship between Tony and Pepper, and grace has been stricken from the movie as a whole.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Running with Scissors
    Ms. Bening takes her part and acts it all over the place, while Ms. Paltrow and Ms. Wood do their best theater of the absurd. It is left to Ms. Clayburgh, in a performance free of vanity and artifice, to find the movie's heart.
    • Wall Street Journal
  5. Jacob's Ladder
    As a metaphysical exploration of otherworldliness, Jacob's Ladder has a kind of morbid intensity, for those who like that sort of thing. The picture flounders, however, with its insistence on injecting a little politics into the paranormal brew. [1Nov 1990, p.A20]
    • Wall Street Journal
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Vanity Fair
    Despite the curry flavoring Ms. Nair has seen fit to add, this is a Vanity Fair without spice.
    • Wall Street Journal
  7. I Saw the TV Glow
    There’s an affected, self-mythologizing solemnity to the storytelling that can’t quite disguise some flaws in the fundamentals.
  8. Religulous
    For the most part Mr. Maher is an equal-opportunity denigrator, but it's worth noting that humor fails him when the subject is Muslim fundamentalism. It's hard to make light of what frightens us.
  9. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
    I wish I could be more enthusiastic about Prince Caspian, an honorable and attractive adventure for children and families. But scenic beauty and spirited action can't conceal its dramatic defects.
  10. Ballerina
    The movie is like a two-hour trailer, with one viscerally intense fight scene following another, filmed as usual for the series in long, fluid takes to maximize the wow factor.
  11. Young Goethe in Love
    Doesn't the reigning genius of the German language deserve his own "Shakespeare in Love"? Sure. But as Goethe scampers about Leipzig, comically failing his doctoral exam, spilling his books and looking bemused, young Johann might as well be auditioning for his own Disney Channel program.
  12. A Working Man
    A Working Man is watchable enough, with the occasional interjection of humor, but it’s a formulaic punch-’em-up that simply jams in as many fights as it can with little effort expended on plausibility.
  13. All Quiet on the Western Front
    Fully understanding the war—who does?—may not be necessary in appreciating the disturbing, moving and sometimes too-beautiful production. But that production certainly puts a Teutonic tweak on history, sometimes to outrageous effect.
  14. Hot Pursuit
    Hot Pursuit is about two women finding sisterly common ground despite ethnic, religious, philosophical, temperamental and/or phonetic differences. It also seems an inevitable stop on Hollywood’s perpetual recycling drive, which caters to an audience perfectly content with the creaky and familiar.
  15. Tomorrowland
    The whole film is an argument about nothing less than the future — can we fix our troubled world or not? But for all of its vaulting ambition, its sumptuous eye-feasts and its leapings back and forth in space and time, Tomorrowland never comes together as coherent drama in the here and now.
  16. Prometheus
    Prometheus, in efficient 3-D, places most of its bets on the wonders that today's visual artists and technicians can work with digital tools. This tale of an interstellar search asks cosmic questions about the meaning of life, but comes up with lame answers in a script that screams attention-deficit disorder.
  17. Failure to Launch
    Thanks largely to Ms. Parker and to the delectable Zooey Deschanel as her anhedonic house-mate, the filmmakers still manage to squeeze some juice out.
    • Wall Street Journal
  18. Bros
    A case can be made that it’s gutsy and honest for Mr. Apatow, Mr. Stoller and Mr. Eichner to place such an obnoxious (and recognizable) figure as Bobby at the center of a rom-com, but as we saw in “The King of Staten Island,” comedies about jerks work only if they’re funny, and Bros isn’t.
  19. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
    Madagascar 3 is all about exuberant motion, cute characters and gorgeous colors. It aims for the eyes, not the heart.
  20. Rory O'Shea Was Here
    Talented as they are, the wheelchair-bound stars of Rory O'Shea Was Here can't transcend a manipulative script.
    • Wall Street Journal
  21. Biutiful
    The safe course is to recommend the film, which seems pitilessly long at 147 minutes, only for the transcendent quality of Javier Bardem's performance.
  22. Sunshine Superman
    The film, like its subject and everyone who talks about him, is frustratingly short on analysis or insight. It’s as if BASE jumping had been invented and psychology had not.
  23. The Legend of Zorro
    Spasms of kung fu wire fighting, Spider-Man acrobatics, huge explosions and a lethal polo game can't replace the first film's beating heart and witty soul.
    • Wall Street Journal
  24. Quid Pro Quo
    Quid Pro Quo, a bizarre but audacious debut feature by Carlos Brooks.
  25. Quantum of Solace
    A model of mediocrity.
  26. Bubble
    The experience is interesting, in a flattened way.
    • Wall Street Journal
  27. Rams
    This remake isn’t terrible, just tentative and too long by at least 40 minutes.
  28. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
    To its perverse credit, “Venom 2,” as it’s being called, manipulates its audience with all the tentacles it can deploy, most of them cheerfully ridiculous, although a climactic battle between Venom and Carnage is the dreariest face-off since the Caped Crusader and the Man of Steel duked it out in Zack Snyder’s 2016 “Batman v Superman : Dawn of Justice.”
  29. Everybody's Famous!
    The intentional and unintentional absurdities of the plot do pay off, with a happy ending that's outlandish enough to be entertaining.
    • Wall Street Journal
  30. The Lodge
    The most horrible thing about The Lodge, a horror flick set mostly in a snowbound vacation house, is that it’s no fun.
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