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. Beowulf
    Beowulf deserves to be taken semiseriously; its eye candy is mixed with narrative fiber and dramatic protein. But it begs to be taken frivolously. Effects have grown so exciting in the realm of the third dimension that you just sit there all agog behind your polarizing glasses.
  2. Redacted
    The Americans are portrayed with varying degrees of loathsomeness, but there's not much variety in the film. It's all an awful aberration.
  3. Lions for Lambs
    You could make a case for this as a feature-film version of the FCC's fairness doctrine, but it feels more like a blandness doctrine, a pulling and hauling of the tone-deaf script, which is credited to Matthew Michael Carnahan, to the point of perfect vacuousness.
  4. No Country for Old Men
    If watching movie violence is cathartic, then this film amounts to heavy therapy. It's much more than that, however. This is the best film the Coen brothers have done since their glory days of "Fargo" and "The Big Lebowski," maybe the best they've done, period.
  5. American Gangster
    In the end, though, the success of American Gangster doesn't flow from the originality of its ideas, or its bid for epic status, as much as from its craftsmanship and confident professionalism. It's a great big gangster film, and a good one.
  6. Bee Movie
    Bee Movie isn't a B movie, it's a Z movie, as in dizmal.
  7. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    This is not a drama of shadings, but of ever-increasing intensity.
  8. Dan in Real Life
    Pleasing moments don't add up to a feature film, even though this one strives desperately for substance and coherence by slathering its slender story with treacly family values.
  9. Jimmy Carter Man from Plains
    Uncritical, but not unaffecting.
  10. Gone Baby Gone
    Storytelling problems surface toward the overwrought climax, but the worst problem is the unrelenting grimness. It's hard to like a movie that leaves you with no hope.
  11. Reservation Road
    A deadly earnest and deadly dull psychological thriller.
  12. Things We Lost in the Fire
    Mr. Del Toro is a fearless actor, and his Jerry, a heroin addict lurching toward redemption, is the heart and soul, as well as the haunted, rubbery visage, of a story of grief and loss that would be fairly lifeless without him.
  13. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    Ms. Blanchett can do no wrong, and does none here, though the movie around her, a popcorn-worthy sequel to the 1998 "Elizabeth," often lapses into opacity or grandiosity.
  14. Lars and the Real Girl
    It's nothing less than a miracle that the director, Craig Gillespie, and the writer, Nancy Oliver, have been able to make such an endearing, intelligent and tender comedy from a premise that, in other hands, might sustain a five-minute sketch on TV.
  15. Michael Clayton
    George Clooney's film noir sensibility in the title role feels authentic, and admirably solid.
  16. The Darjeeling Limited
    The film as a whole operates in Mr. Anderson's patented, semi-precious zone of antic and droll. It's not as if the filmmaker has gone off the rails. He's just not solidly on them.
  17. Feast of Love
    What passes for the movie's reality is interlocking episodes of ersatz ecstasy and angst -- a Cupid-governed "Crash" -- plus snippets of wisdom dispensed by Mr. Freeman's character.
  18. The Kingdom
    The Kingdom comes down to a police procedural, and one whose procedures prove none too interesting.
  19. Lust, Caution
    Sumptuously produced and beautifully visualized, this is a filmmaker's meditation on the culture that nurtured him. As a piece of entertainment, however, it's hoist by its own paradox -- an almost thrill-free thriller that seems seductive, yet stays resolutely remote.
  20. Into the Wild
    From seductive start to shattering finish, the film is as stirring, entertaining and steadfastly thrilling as it is beautiful.
  21. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
    The language of its narrative, like that of its characters, may be elevated -- a literary Western version of Damon Runyon -- but the words are intriguing, challenging and, occasionally, very funny.
  22. Eastern Promises
    Viggo Mortensen's performance is flat-out brilliant, and this relentlessly dramatic thriller represents a mid-life growth spurt for its director, David Cronenberg.
  23. In the Valley of Elah
    The more I thought about it, the less I liked what it turned out to be -- a vague promise unkept.
  24. Ira & Abby
    To do rough justice to this special treat in not much space, let me first stipulate that it evokes any number of Woody Allen films, thanks to its therapy-centric characters and its Upper West Side milieu.
  25. The Brave One
    The drama is repetitive rather than resonant, an over-calculated, under-ventilated studio production -- even paranoid thrillers need to breathe -- whose plot machinery grinds grim and coarse.
  26. 3:10 to Yuma
    The strengths of the first "3:10 To Yuma" were enhanced by its proportionality -- an intimate story told in 92 minutes. The story is no bigger in the new version, which goes on for 117 minutes. And it's certainly not better.
  27. In the Shadow of the Moon
    This magnificent documentary, directed by David Sington and presented by Ron Howard, rises to the occasion by interspersing its interviews with NASA footage that evokes the grandeur of the whole Apollo adventure.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Dedication
    Tiresome, pretentious.
  29. Deep Water
    As Crowhurst's situation grows desperate, the scope of the film expands -- from a good yarn to a haunting, complex tale of self-promotion, media madness, self-delusion and, finally, self-destruction.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Nanny Diaries
    So tightly constructed of clichés, stereotypes and chick-lit tropes that it's inert; no fresh air can blow in.
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