Washington Post's Scores

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For 11,478 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 52% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 5.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Oppenheimer
Lowest review score: 0 Dolittle
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6,014 out of 11478
  2. Mixed: 3,069 out of 11478
  3. Negative: 2,395 out of 11478
11478 movie reviews
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  1. Anaconda
    Mr. Whipple squeezing his Charmin is scarier than this phony baloney computer effects-driven anaconda.
  2. Rosenstrasse
    An extraordinary collective act of moral and physical courage is relegated to a backdrop for a mushy, synthetic family melodrama.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Soul Plane
    An hour and a half of real airplane turbulence is better than sitting through the bad, offensive material that makes up Soul Plane.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Freddy vs. Jason
    A kind of cinematic analogue of the Iran-Iraq war: It's overlong, it's hard to tell which one's the bad guy, and it's filled with lots of senseless carnage on both sides.
  5. Chasing Liberty
    An endless, virtually laugh-free pastiche of Aaron Sorkin by way of Aaron Spelling, Chasing Liberty features Mandy Moore trying so strenuously to be the next America's Sweetheart that she almost pops a vein.
  6. Death to Smoochy
    It's so over the top, the top isn't even visible in the rear-view mirror.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Laws of Attraction
    The plot, the dialogue and the main characters' love connection are basically mind-numbing.
  8. Don't Say a Word
    Thankfully, after its terrific start, Don't Say a Word transmogrifies so totally into Hollywood hooey that it's actually a relief. I'd hate to see a disturbance in the karmic perfection of Douglas's pitch-pure mediocrity.
  9. Impostor
    Isn't really a movie, it's only impersonating one.
  10. Detroit Rock City
    Well, it could have been good. But this goofy homage to Kiss fans gets dry mouth pretty fast.
  11. Inventing the Abbotts
    Too long winded and dull.
  12. Irreversible
    Fails because of its gratuitous rape and violence and also because of its pretentious and intellectually one-dimensional grounds, which make the violence at the end feel even worse.
  13. Close Your Eyes
    The plot, loosely derived from Madison Smartt Bell's "Doctor Sleep," is utterly stale. On their way to confront ancient evil, Strother and Losey keep tripping over timeworn cliches.
  14. Cabin Fever
    It's just a loud, derivative grade-Z horror film of no particular distinction.
  15. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
    Weakens, dilutes, disinfects and otherwise undermines the legacy of Tobe Hooper's 1974 original.
  16. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
    It's an uninspired blend, integrating the boys from "Porky's" and the girls from "Foxes" into a vehicle resembling the worst of "American Graffiti" and the best of "Rock and Roll High School." [13 Aug 1982]
    • Washington Post
  17. It Runs in the Family
    Schmaltzy.
  18. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    It just doesn't work...This isn't a blend of modern and classic so much as a collision.
  19. Reign of Fire
    It's just silly, loud and goofy. The dragon needed a bigger part and the two stars smaller ones.
  20. Catch That Kid
    Offers little in the way of originality, real excitement or even genuinely transgressive behavior.
  21. Charlie's Angels
    A tarted-up but tedious reprise of the '70s TV series.
  22. Jawbreaker
    Why sit through a lesser imitation, when you could just rent "Heathers" and those other movies for a far more enjoyable time? Drop-dead bitchery? Been there, done that.
  23. Message in a Bottle
    There's only one thing to do with this "Bottle": Put a cork in it.
  24. Snake Eyes
    A glittery but dunderheaded murder mystery.
  25. The Human Stain
    All in all, it's like a bachelor's apartment: a complete mess.
  26. Secret Window
    You can boost mediocrity a little, but you cannot raise it from the dead.
  27. Radio
    A train wreck of a film lying inert where the tracks of the Feel Good Line cross the Path of Good Intentions.
  28. Love Liza
    Sadly, the filmmakers haven't given viewers enough context or information about their protagonist to know whether he's utterly free or utterly unmoored -– or to care very much either way.
  29. View from the Top
    There's not much zest here, even with Mike Myers's energetic attempts to steal the movie as a cross-eyed flight instructor.
  30. Far From Heaven
    The movie has the sense of being embalmed, or pickled. With its stilted dialogue not quite kitschy enough to be funny and not quite authentic enough to be realistic, the whole movie feels as if it's taking place in formaldehyde.
  31. Head in the Clouds
    A snooze, despite all the sex and other gunplay.
  32. Backdraft
    Director Howard is so mesmerized by the flames, he squirts formulaic lighter fluid over everything. A conflagration of hyped-up movie cliches, courtesy of George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic special effects shop, scalds your face.
  33. The Yes Men
    A few minutes of inspired lunacy aside, The Yes Men is largely a case of the same old preachers preaching to the same old choir.
  34. The Shape of Things
    At best, the movie is a problematic chamber piece; at worst, a misdirected, slightly misanthropic pretension.
  35. Taking Lives
    Taking Lives would have to work nights to reach mediocrity.
  36. Casa de los babys
    For all his patient, accumulative storytelling, Sayles yields little that doesn't feel trite or overly schematic.
  37. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
    More in the dumb and dumber tradition of "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" sequels.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Mr 3000
    The script is much like a nine-inning sitcom that uses an obvious formula to tell a familiar story while garnering cheap laughs.
  39. Down with Love
    The parodistic romantic comedy makes the fatal mistake of so much middlebrow satire: It becomes that which it mocks.
  40. Festival in Cannes
    The only reason to watch this movie is for stargazing, nice shots of the sea and to revel in a world where false promises, lies and empty posturing are actively encouraged.
  41. Breakin' All the Rules
    A movie that sags and drags under the weight of poor pacing, execrable writing and largely unlikable characters.
  42. Stateside
    It's hard to know which is more annoying: The fact that writer-director Reverge Anselmo makes Dori's schizophrenic look like little more than a cute, sexually available lush or that he makes Mark's Marine act like a jarhead with nothing inside except fireflies.
  43. Piñero
    This character was an abusive swine. Perhaps it would be best to let his art stand on its own.
  44. Against the Ropes
    A boilerplate melodrama whose good guys and bad guys are so baldly drawn they could have been conceived by Friz Freleng.
  45. Catwoman
    Dragged down by a paper-thin story, the predictable number of fight scenes executed at equally predictable intervals and stock, unmemorable characters.
  46. Mean Machine
    I found it a rough night at the flickers.
  47. Max
    Mad Max just sails off into nonsense.
  48. Fools Rush In
    Movies don't come much lamer than Fools Rush In.
  49. The Ice Storm
    Unfortunately, the drama operates on a see-through, easily shatterable metaphor: the frigidity of the WASP soul. [17 October 1997, p.N32]
    • Washington Post
  50. eXistenZ
    Crazy? Crazy is too mild a word by far to describe the twisted worm at play inside the skull of the Canadian director David Cronenberg -- And that craziness is given full vent in the vomitorium called eXistenZ.
  51. Lost and Delirious
    Equally earnest and unconvincing.
  52. Hidalgo
    If it weren't for Sharif's extraordinary presence, there wouldn't be a cherishable moment in the movie.
  53. My Best Friend's Wedding
    The story isn’t bright enough or grand enough to contain all of Roberts’s star power.
  54. Grass
    It has as much of an ax to grind as the humorless and misguided bureaucrats it mocks.
  55. Very Bad Things
    It never makes you laugh that hard. Not even close. And so the thing becomes a bloody assault on the senses that commingles atrocity with tedium.
  56. Love Me If You Dare
    It's a nasty piece of work about two nasty pieces of work.
  57. Mona Lisa Smile
    Like the turtleneck cashmere sweaters and girdles that tie down these promising women, the movie is trite and trussed.
  58. Timeline
    Time travels, but it sure doesn't fly by in this debacle.
  59. S1m0ne
    Each plot twist trumps its predecessor into ludicrousness.
  60. Hulk
    Belabored, ostentatious, overlong behemoth.
  61. The Big Bounce
    A film so boring, unsexy, styleless, sluggish and physically ugly that its badness seems almost intentional.
  62. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
    What is perhaps most disappointing about this ham-handed film, though, particularly since it was directed by the screenwriter of the righteously raging "Thelma and Louise," is its crypto-misogyny.
  63. First Daughter
    One hackneyed, inauthentic, predictable scene after another.
  64. Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
    As little as there is to recommend in Scooby-Doo 2, it must be noted that the human cast has done an uncanny job of inhabiting their two-dimensional characters.
  65. The Peacemaker
    Between them, Clooney and Kidman would still need a third party to work up a personality. In fairness to both, they aren't given much to work with.
  66. Bright Young Things
    The movie, alas, is shackled somewhat by Waugh's original, pedestrian plot, which is too full of discrete incidents and slow to form an overarching story.
  67. In the Cut
    Although Ryan is cannily cast against type, she doesn't bring much more than muttery incoherence and nudity to the role.
  68. Stuck on You
    Viewers anticipating side-splitting guffaws will be disappointed: Stuck on You is a strangely lackluster, flaccid string of fitfully humorous episodes.
  69. Twisted
    A nasty, formulaic and unforgivably obvious procedural.
  70. Serendipity
    The ultimate in deja viewing:an overfamiliar and exasperating game of cat-and-mousie.
  71. The Replacement Killers
    Adolescents are too grown-up for this blasted nonsense.
  72. I Spy
    Moves at a glacial pace.
  73. The Final Cut
    Cut-and-dried sci-fi thriller.
  74. Ghost Ship
    Doesn't orchestrate the scares with much finesse.
  75. Saved!
    If you're mocking holier-than-thou-ness, you can't very well strike a hipper-than-thou tone.
  76. A Slipping-Down Life
    As a whole, the film is a perplexing, dark and brooding exercise, which only makes its inappropriately cheery ending feel all the more slight.
  77. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
    Two-hour exercise in chaotic action and coarse, annoyingly coy sexuality.
  78. Daredevil
    For the most part, Daredevil doesn't take a single dare; it travels the road much trod, even if it's through the midtown air.
  79. The Girl Next Door
    Nothing in this film makes any sense, and Stuart Blumberg, David T. Wagner and Brent Goldberg's script merely gets more preposterous as it elaborates on its implausible premise.
  80. Gods and Generals
    Less a movie than a meticulously, tediously accurate Civil War reenactment committed to celluloid.
  81. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    Watching Thurman's character "triumph" in a context as joyless and self-referential as Tarantino's is a soul-deadening experience, one that over two hours takes on the same dreary monotone as the cheapest pornography.
  82. The Other Side of the Bed
    It winds up being tuneless, unfunny and, despite its strenuous efforts, not terribly sexy.
  83. Walking Tall
    One mediocre, ploddingly predictable film, loaded down with cheesy Hollywood tactics.
  84. The Whole Ten Yards
    Will go anywhere for a gag, including into the realms of homophobic, gastrointestinal and erectile dysfunction humor.
  85. Shanghai Knights
    It's too bad Chan's imagination and delicacy were wasted in this movie.
  86. The Brown Bunny
    It's not really a movie. I suppose it's what could be called a recorded behavior.
  87. Godsend
    As the film's boo! moments get spookier and more frequent, Godsend gets more and more inane.
  88. Blow
    You can't make an epic about a mouse.
  89. The Reckoning
    Although the acting is committed and sometimes stirring, most of the characters are about as one-note as the biblical archetypes Martin wants to get away from in the first place. "The Name of the Rose" this ain't.
  90. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
    Like so many technological marvels, at the human level it's not only merely dead, it's really most sincerely dead.
  91. Undertow
    It's just sort of trying.
  92. The Corporation
    This is another unhelpful screed, uncontaminated by sense or perspective, that preaches loudly to the choir.
  93. Father and Son
    Here was my question for most of this movie: Wha-? I was clueless. Did not understand. Count me among the stupid.
  94. Levity
    So solemnly paced and deliberately performed that it seems to solidify before your very eyes.
  95. The Dreamers
    It may give many viewers a licentious flutter, but the highbrow ingredient -- although it desperately wants to be there -- is missing.
  96. The Last Shot
    There are some very funny passing lines, but the movie's too uneven to enjoy.
  97. Spun
    The title (which translates, essentially, as "burned out") is an apt description of the film itself: a hot and smoldering shell.
  98. National Security
    Martin Lawrence is all there is to National Security. And that's about two or three points out of a possible 10
  99. What's the Worst That Could Happen?
    Now and then sputters to comic life but more usually wheezes along.
  100. Rain Man
    It's Hoffman's failure, though, that sinks the picture. He is working here with his usual meticulousness, but there's no relaxation in his performance, no sense that he has ever merged with his subject, that he has found Raymond's center and is simply acting out of it.
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