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 5.2 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. Drive
    Low-key, sleek and sophisticated, Drive provides the visceral pleasures of pulp without sacrificing art. It's cool and smart. Some critics might even call it European.
  2. The American Friend
    An absorbing but rarefied, introspective variation on traditional thriller motifs, it's probably not the synthesis between the personal and traditional that Wenders needs but it's a fascinating compulsively watchable experiment.
  3. The Fighter
    If you think "Rocky" and "Raging Bull" define the alpha and omega of boxing movies, think again. David O. Russell's The Fighter proves there's still punch in the genre, especially when a filmmaker tells a familiar story in a brand-new way.
  4. Beasts of No Nation
    Fukunaga imbues this study of ma­nipu­la­tion and manufactured loyalty with an unsettling degree of visual richness and lush natural detail.
  5. Wings of Desire
    An ingratiating West German "Heaven Can Wait." (Review of Original Release)
  6. Gandhi
    While literate and coherent in digest-of-history terms, the chronicle of Gandhi's remarkable career as a mass political organizer and spiritual inspiration distilled from the biographical record by Attenborough and screenwriter John Briley remains grievously doting and squeamishly evasive.
  7. Look Into My Eyes
    The film stirs the soul less by the magic of ghosts than by the power of human connection.
  8. Iron Monkey
    Showcases its cast's athleticism and Ping's kinetic high-wire artistry. But unlike similar Western-made fare, it doesn't take itself seriously.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    An Angel at My Table
    For Americans, the measured accumulation of detail can be frustrating. It's like listening to a story about someone you barely know and being forced to prompt the teller, "And then? And then?"
  10. Quest for Fire
    Quest for Fire expresses an eloquent partiality for civilized virtues, especially companionship, sexual bonding and parenthood. [05 Mar 1982, p.B12]
    • Washington Post
  11. Monster
    Despite its sometimes overwrought mystery-tale gambits, however, Monster ultimately shifts from a saga of fateful misunderstanding to one of mutual comprehension.
  12. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
    “The Mortal Remains” brings all these tales together beautifully, by which I mean in a coda that is somber and hauntingly unsettled, like the last note of a dirge. Its music lingers in the air long after the closing credits.
  13. Godzilla
    Its images of the destruction of the cities is far more powerful than in American films, where the cities are trashed for the pure pleasure of destruction, without any real sense of human loss.
  14. The Visitor
    Gives viewers a perceptive, deeply personal take on the timeless immigrant narrative, in which the most epic journey is finally one of self-discovery.
  15. Green Room
    Aficionados of gore and guts may not mind the comfortably lived-in feel of this blood-spattered Green Room. But anyone looking for the ferocious originality, and unexpected humanity, of “Blue Ruin” will be disappointed by Saulnier’s uninspired cover version of a song we all know.
  16. The Plague
    The Plague does an exceptional job of making viewers share in Ben’s growing sense of dread.
  17. Don't Think I've Forgotten: Cambodia's Lost Rock and Roll
    What happened to almost an entire generation of musicians in Cambodia isn’t a scandal. As “Forgotten” makes powerfully, passionately clear, it’s a tragedy.
  18. Iron Man
    It succeeds only fitfully. Toggling between Stark's impish goatee and Iron Man's full-metal body condom, and amid so many generic fireballs, kill shots and earsplitting thumps, bumps and crunches, the film finally collapses under its own weight.
  19. Control Room
    Enlightening, if structurally relaxed documentary.
  20. How to Have Sex
    The direction and performances in “How to Have Sex” are so spontaneous and naturalistic that the film often plays like a slice-of-life documentary; it’s not necessarily a fully realized story, but as one chapter, it’s extraordinarily vivid.
  21. Salaam Bombay!
    Nair and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala aren't really great storytellers, but they are streetwise. Shot on a low budget, down and dirty and on location, "Salaam Bombay!" is like being there, if there is where you want to be.
  22. The People vs. Larry Flynt
    We're really celebrating Hollywood's freedom to create biographies of anyone, no matter how high or low on the social ladder, and still come up with the same banal characteristics, messages and conclusions. In this sense, The People vs. Larry Flynt doesn't champion, so much as squander, freedom of speech.
  23. Ju Dou
    Directed by Zhang Yimou, a maverick of China's "new wave," this disturbing tragedy is as unexpectedly lurid in its way as "Blue Velvet."
  24. In a World...
    In a World . . . is a lot of fun, reflecting Bell’s own obvious love of piquant paradox and the music of the spoken word. But it also has a sharply observant streak that makes it as nourishing as it is endearingly nutty.
  25. Selma
    There are several reasons to see Selma — for its virtuosity and scale, scope and sheer beauty. But then there are its lessons, which have to do with history, but also today: Selma invites viewers to heed its story, meditate on its implications and allow those images once again to change our hearts and minds.
  26. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
    More than its predecessors dating back to 1979’s lean, brutal “Mad Max,” “Furiosa” highlights the silliness and savagery of toxic men playing “Lord of the Flies” in the rubble of humanity.
  27. Poltergeist
    A fitfully witty and reliably spine-tingling horror melodrama...While it works you over effectively, Poltergeist betrays a good deal of rather dubious, uncoordinated manipulation. [4 June 1982, p.D1]
    • Washington Post
  28. For All Mankind
    For All Mankind is a beatitude of praise, a homesick look at a healthy nation. That's why this history of "all systems go" and "roger that" is Oscar-nominated instead of "Roger and Me." The closest it comes to controversy is when it tackles the question of how astronauts go potty in space.
  29. The Assistant
    Set over the course of a single, very long day, The Assistant derives almost all its quiet power from Garner, on whose face we see confusion congealing into concern.
  30. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    Dawn of the Planet of the Apes works both as allegory and action-adventure film. The internecine conflict between apes mirrors the troubled history of our own race.
  31. The Untouchables
    The real root of the movie's problems may lie in the fact that Mamet has identified with the men of principle and De Palma with the scoundrels -- in other words, with Capone instead of the eagle-scout Ness.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    IMAX: Hubble 3D
    The daring mission by astronauts to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope in May 2009 is the perfect subject for a brilliant, thrilling 3-D Imax movie. Such a movie, alas, has yet to be made.
  33. Kokomo City
    Kokomo City, D. Smith’s impressive debut documentary about Black trans sex workers, arrives in time to be an audacious, endearing, illuminating, often amusingly ribald primer.
  34. Dead Poets Society
    It's a literate though strained uplifter.
  35. Trolösa
    Held together by the intensity of its focus.
  36. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
    Breaks no new ground.
  37. Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary
    Makes for fascinating cinema.
  38. Affliction
    Like the bitter cold in which it's set, Affliction bites hard and true.
  39. Hustlers
    A funny, naughty, enormously entertaining kick in the pants, promising to be an East Coast “Showgirls,” only to wind up a girls-rule “Goodfellas,” leading viewers into a vicariously thrilling underworld ruled by money, drugs, seduction and a sliding moral scale dictated by ruthless realpolitik.
  40. Let the Sunshine In
    Let the Sunshine In doesn’t offer a consistently pretty picture. Where some viewers might view Isabelle as a hopelessly stunted victim of self-deception, others will see an avatar of empowerment and autonomy.
  41. Life of Pi
    Life of Pi is spellbinding while it lasts. Lee's film can be appreciated as many things -- a post-Darwinian meditation on coexistence as the key to survival, a reflection on the spiritual nature of suffering and transcendence, a beguiling bait-and-switch on the vagaries of belief itself.
  42. Let Me In
    Let Me In wants to make your flesh crawl, and it probably will. But it's unlikely to ever get under anyone's skin, the way "Let the Right One In" did.
  43. Fences
    Ringing with both ancient wisdom and searing relevance, Fences feels as if it’s been crafted for the ages, and for this very minute.
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