Wall Street Journal's Scores

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For 3,942 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 2.6 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: 2,101 out of 3942
  2. Mixed: 1,197 out of 3942
  3. Negative: 644 out of 3942
3942 movie reviews
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  1. The Death of Stalin
    Armando Iannucci’s absurdist comedy reveals this in an extremely loose manner of speaking, with malice aforethought, straight-faced glee and formidable sharpshooting that occasionally misfires. It isn’t history but free-range fiction, a venomous farce containing nuggets of fact, and if its subjects bear any resemblance to present-day dictators and authoritarian mugs or thugs around the world, then the movie has hit its archetypal target.
  2. A Wrinkle in Time
    If there’s a secret to a successful screen adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, it’s still secret. Disney’s version of the Madeleine L’Engle young-adult novel is a magical mystery tour minus the magic and mystery, and a great disappointment, since there were so many reasons to root for the film’s success.
  3. Red Sparrow
    The film suffers, terminally, from joyless direction by Francis Lawrence — no relation — and a monotonous script by Justin Haythe.
  4. The Cured
    That's a pretty good notion, though nothing comes of it because the first-time filmmaker, David Freyne, has so many undigested ideas on his plate-guilt, innocence, bigotry, forgiveness, atonement and, if you please, a replaying of IRA strife.
  5. Annihilation
    The result is daringly original and frequently beautiful, a shimmering treat from a singular intelligence.
  6. Loveless
    Austere and magnificent film.
  7. Black Panther
    The movie has a beating heart, and a big one; it’s not just sincere, but that rarest of birds in the jungle of mainstream entertainment, a heartfelt epic.
  8. Peter Rabbit
    This “Peter Rabbit” has certain charms, chief among them the bond of fondness between Peter and Bea, and the cinematography by Peter Menzies Jr. (whose father shot 63 episodes of “Skippy,” a once-beloved Australian TV series about a boy and his kangaroo).
  9. Golden Exits
    I tried to buy into the characters, to enjoy the performances on their own terms, but no dice. I saw only performers who, with one conspicuous exception, were working hard to ignite a glum drama that declined to combust.
  10. A Ciambra
    Jonas Carpignano’s second feature — and Italy’s entry for this year’s foreign-language Oscar — is shockingly alive, startlingly accomplished and remarkably acute. It’s a neo-realist study of a kid with special gifts for leadership, daring and friendship. And for stealing everything in sight.
  11. A Fantastic Woman
    Beyond the looking and seeing, this extraordinary film wants us to feel the coherence of Marina’s life. She is, she insists with beautiful passion, flesh and blood, like everyone else.
  12. Have a Nice Day
    It’s a story that doesn’t quite follow the money. The money is a maguffin, as per Hitchcock.
  13. West of the Jordan River
    There’s a weariness to West of the Jordan River, both in the storytelling and the face of Amos Gitai.
  14. Hostiles
    Most powerfully about what violence does to the soul: Joe is almost dead to the world, and to himself. Not quite, though. This harshly beautiful film is equally about his regeneration during the course of a journey that amounts to a parable of humanity trying to climb out of the pit of endless slaughter and retribution.
  15. 12 Strong
    Unconcerned with context or tonal nuance, it frames itself as an action thriller with a signature moment that could have been lifted from an old western.
  16. The Commuter
    Yet the nonsense content, being pure, is liberating, and allows us to savor all the machinery as machinery: the train, the plot, the pitch-imperfect dialogue, the huffing-puffing fights, the ridiculous stunts and, yes, the climactic train wreck. Here’s how filmmakers can fill screens when they don’t have a film to make.
  17. Paddington 2
    Paddington 2 is “The Godfather Part II” of Peruvian bear movies, a sequel that surpasses the superb original.
  18. The Insult
    It’s weighed down by symbolic significance, yet powerful and instructive all the same, with a few flickerings of black comedy.
  19. In Between
    In Between is full of life, a triptych of sexual and cultural combat that takes us to places that I, for one, knew nothing about.
  20. In the Fade
    Superb as Ms. Kruger is, there’s nothing she can do to keep the taut, heartfelt narrative from going off the rails.
  21. Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
    It’s always rewarding to see her (Bening) in action, even though her latest movie, Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool, doesn’t measure up to her performance.
  22. Downsizing
    It’s a movie in which too-muchness ends up being not-enoughness, since the script lacks a vital center. But the premise remains appealing. If you have to travel by air, being 5 inches tall makes a seat in economy a throne.
  23. Molly's Game
    No one knew Mr. Sorkin was a good director, but he is, and his filmmaking chops come topped with intelligence and curiosity. That makes it all the more remarkable, and I don’t mean good remarkable, when the film takes a last-reel turn into slushy psycho-sappiness, enlisting someone we thought we’d seen the last of to explain what the story was really about.
  24. All the Money in the World
    Expansively, melodramatically entertaining.
  25. The Post
    It’s a great story told well, for the most part, and exceptionally well through Meryl Streep’s Katharine Graham
  26. Phantom Thread
    The rhythms are unhurried, the drama pinpoint-intense, the style intimate, the wit Hitchcock-perverse.
  27. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
    This sequel turns out to be a comedy of manners, of all things, and an agreeable one, a movie that will get you laughing and suck you in.
  28. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
    A narrative that mixes, not always successfully, stirring moments and sensational action with angst and grim conflictedness on a galactic scale.
  29. Quest
    Quest is intimate, warm yet unsentimental and agreeably rambling, at least for a while. It’s an extended visit, squeezed into 104 minutes, with intensely likable people who are doing their best to hold things together, and, if possible, get a bit ahead.
  30. I, Tonya
    This is a feel-real film, a sharp-witted, tough-minded biopic about Tonya Harding, the 1991 U.S. figure skating champion and two-time Olympian who skated rinks around most of her rivals but never became America’s sweetheart.
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