Wall Street Journal's Scores

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For 3,961 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: 2,111 out of 3961
  2. Mixed: 1,202 out of 3961
  3. Negative: 648 out of 3961
3961 movie reviews
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  1. Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara
    Mr. Bellocchio, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Susanna Nicchiarelli, has crafted a weighty, suspenseful family drama that touches on the eternal conflicts of religion but widens into a consideration of law, personal development and power politics.
  2. Hit Man
    Advancing toward its end, Hit Man becomes the least predictable of romances and the most oddly riveting of thrillers, managing all the while to deconstruct the Hollywood fantasy invoked in its title even as it indulges in a yet more timeless one: that of two gorgeous people falling in love.
  3. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
    At its best, “Furiosa” is like a more fun, less ponderous and mysticism-free “Dune,” with every pedal properly to the metal. But it’s closer to numbing than enthralling, like a long ride with no shock absorbers.
  4. Babes
    Babes is the kind of comedy that makes you wonder what jokes are, exactly, and if what you just saw contained any.
  5. IF
    Swamping the audience with Michael Giacchino’s oceans-of-syrup score, IF expects viewers to cry at the end, but if so it’ll be due to regret at wasted time, or possibly from hyperglycemia.
  6. Back to Black
    The film is detailed, vivid, enthralling—and necessarily full of pain. The performances are top-notch, led by Ms. Abela, who does her own singing in an amazing re-creation of Winehouse’s muscular soul vocals.
  7. Living with Leopards
    Living With Leopards is superior nature content, largely because of the evident devotion of its humans.
  8. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    The second half, in particular, exemplifies science fiction at its best: thoughtful, exciting, provocative and pointed. It’s fantasy wrapped around ideological substance, making “Kingdom” the best of the franchise films to make it to theaters so far this year.
  9. Jeanne du Barry
    It’s a finely wrought story of palace intrigue enriched by lush sets and decors, having been shot at Versailles.
  10. Unfrosted
    Unfrosted is a bonbon, a truffle, a trifle and a distraction from dispiriting news and disappointing drama upon which one can gorge as if it were a package of Fig Newtons. No, too healthy: Honey Smacks.
  11. Evil Does Not Exist
    As pleasing as the film may be to those who treasure ambiguity and nuance, it strikes me as dry and tedious.
  12. 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.
  13. The Fall Guy
    Mr. Pearce (“Iron Man 3,” “Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation”) and his director have no idea what kind of picture they want to make. Instead they have four or five different concepts which they set loose like cars ramming into each other as they jostle for position.
  14. Terrestrial Verses
    It is a modest, methodical movie-in-vignettes that demonstrates the far-reaching, constrictive force of Iran’s regime and the society it has created. It is also a canny representation of the kind of straight-faced authoritarian illogic that creates its own delusional reality, which is then forced upon a people.
  15. Boy Kills World
    Boy Kills World should have stuck to gonzo comedy and been 15 minutes shorter. But Mr. Mohr exhibits the kind of flair for comic action that makes him an obvious choice to direct a big-budget Hollywood superhero epic.
  16. Challengers
    Director Luca Guadagnino and screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes tell the story out of order, jumping around in time so often that it becomes tiresome, especially since there is so little forward-moving plot.
  17. Stress Positions
    The movie has its funny moments, and even some halfway-poignant ones, but it occasionally gives one the feeling of watching a bawdy New York-set sitcom and listening to a segment of “This American Life” at the same time.
  18. We Grown Now
    As this frequently lyrical and touching portrait of youth reminds us, for many thousands of people over the years, Cabrini-Green was simply home.
  19. Sasquatch Sunset
    The gags seem fun and refreshing at first, but they get stale quickly. Moreover, since there is no plot and no dialogue, the quirky central idea never takes on any narrative momentum. What might have been a brilliant short subject—at, say, 15 minutes—gets stretched to its limits, and then some.
  20. Civil War
    Civil War is superficially silly—Mr. Garland writes himself into a trap in one tense scene and gets out of it with an absurd moment of action-hero gusto that is, as presented, not possible—but it’s also deeply silly. It’s a statement movie that contains no insights at all.
  21. Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill
    While it contains little for the devoted in the way of outright revelations, it’s an affecting film around which admirers and newcomers alike can gather to bask in the unique beauty of her work, and to follow the similarly distinctive trajectory of her painful and abbreviated life.
  22. The Beast
    The Beast has sequences of such insidiously effective suspense and arresting, even moving strangeness that the film could only have come from exactly those to whom it pays singular tribute: thinking, feeling humans.
  23. The First Omen
    Written by Tim Smith, Keith Thomas and Arkasha Stevenson, and directed by Ms. Stevenson, The First Omen relies heavily on gory imagery, jump scares and shocking dream sequences to cover for its weak plotting.
  24. Coup de Chance
    Reining in his famously discursive dialogue, and designing a clean, punchy plot, Mr. Allen limits himself to suggesting one big point with one big twist, which he makes emphatically, even wickedly.
  25. Wicked Little Letters
    The audience is left to feel sorry for characters we’re meant to find amusingly contemptible and to groan at the way the writing keeps taking potshots at the most obvious targets. When the film thinks it’s being wicked, it’s closer to being trite.
  26. La Chimera
    The past can be fetishized, commodified, dreamed of, but it can never fully be returned to—a stubborn impossibility that “La Chimera” dramatizes with playful, peculiar grace.
  27. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    Spectacular? I guess, if you’re wowed by soulless CGI chaos. Thrilling? Not really. At the end, I was left feeling the way Kong does at the beginning: tired and bored.
  28. Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros
    The aesthetics of Mr. Wiseman’s visual storytelling have seldom been so prominent or important as in “Menus-Plaisirs.”
  29. You'll Never Find Me
    The acting is first-rate, a disquieting pas de deux written by Indianna Bell and directed by her and Josiah Allen, who edited the piece.
  30. William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill
    Who doesn’t love Bill Shatner? The theatrical documentary “William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill” reminds us why, stylistically channeling what became the actor’s signature: a dedication to sustained gravitas so portentous that it becomes absurd, then keeps going until it emerges, triumphantly, into the realm of the genuinely spellbinding.
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