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. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
    It's long, but it's also very real and worth every minute.
  2. Lady Vengeance
    What you get for your entertainment dollar in Lady Vengeance is Korean director Chan-wook Park's brilliantly orchestrated story of how Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae ) got her groove back.
  3. Cars
    The Pixar people have an extreme talent for conjuring imagery that is both soaring in its majesty but also resonant -- it's a stylization but acute enough to carry emotional meaning.
  4. The Puffy Chair
    A charming, if limited, romantic comedy that examines post-collegiate angst with easy, unself-conscious humor.
  5. The Heart of the Game
    Combines nonstop action with an absorbing story to become a classic on par with "Hoosiers" and "Hoop Dreams."
  6. Gabrielle
    Huppert and Greggory provide the emotional impact. They respond accordingly, imbuing their mutual suffering with an exacting and moving finesse.
  7. Clerks II
    Clerks II finds Smith up to the profane, raunchy, profoundly humanist mischief of which he alone is the master. This is a lewd, lascivious, exhilaratingly life-affirming celebration of misfits and the misfits who love them.
  8. The Ant Bully
    The movie is an epic adventure with a rigorously moral point of view.
  9. The Bridesmaid
    Chabrol arranges his story with a subtle, almost clinical accumulation. And it takes close attention to the movie's seemingly innocuous details to understand his deeper purposes.
  10. Half Nelson
    Nearly every scene rings with its own ragged truth, which becomes increasingly painful as Dan's addiction becomes more unmanageable and as he refuses to confront the untenable politics of his own behavior.
  11. Factotum
    The film looks great on the screen, and Hamer has commissioned a terrific musical score from Kristin Asbjornsen, who has set a few of Bukowski's poems to haunting, jazzy music.
  12. Fan-Fan the Tulip
    That the actor performs so effortlessly, so casually, is the real magic here. You forget about technique, and, best of all, you forget you're watching a black-and-white subtitled French movie from the dusty past.
  13. Mutual Appreciation
    The three leads deliver funny, convincing performances in a film that wears both youthful callowness and intellectual sophistication lightly. Mutual Appreciation is the kind of movie whose dialogue mostly hews to the rhythms of "like, you know, whatever" but then occasionally throws in a word such as "puissance." And, like, it totally works.
  14. This Film Is Not Yet Rated
    Remarkably entertaining.
  15. The Ground Truth
    Mostly a string of talking-head interviews, but those talking heads -- more than 16 men and women -- are compelling.
  16. American Hardcore
    Stands as a valuable chronicle of a brief and snarling musical movement.
  17. The Science of Sleep
    Never intends to be deeper than a magician's hat, and its wonderfully low-tech stop-motion technique is not only a nod to Czech animator Jan Svankmajer but a tacit rebuke to computer-graphics-heavy fantasies such as "The Chronicles of Narnia" or the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
  18. The Last King of Scotland
    Macdonald has a fetching feel for the continent, and the movie has a powerful sense of what Africa looks and feels like; you can almost smell it.
  19. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
    This is an exceptionally assured debut, and Montiel exhibits rare care with editing and sound design. His real forte, though, is casting, to which a brief scene featuring Downey and the incandescent Rosario Dawson powerfully attests.
  20. Black Gold
    Beautifully shot and edited with swift efficiency, Black Gold joins a cadre of recent films that shine a welcome light on how the stuff we buy gets to us and, more to the point, how the price of that stuff often has little to do with its real cost.
  21. Infamous
    Though it's not as good as the brilliant "Capote," it's nevertheless a riveting, well-made picture.
  22. Flicka
    So those seeking a softer approach to the realities of both child- and animal-rearing should search elsewhere. The rest of us, meanwhile, are free to enjoy a well-made family drama pitched to young adults that's honest, tough and surprisingly engaging.
  23. The Prestige
    Bale and Jackman inject their reliable charisma into two otherwise very cold fish. Okay, I'll say it: If you see only one magic-at-the-turn-of-the-century movie this year, make it this one.
  24. Iraq in Fragments
    A vivid, poetic evocation of life in post-invasion Iraq that works both as impressionistic collage and candid portraiture.
  25. Copying Beethoven
    The movie is completely beguiling, and it delivers joy, the beautiful spark of the gods.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The History Boys
    Wildean panache of this caliber is not the norm in movie dialogue, so on this score alone, The History Boys is a blessing. The top-drawer work of a fine ensemble is another.
  27. The Good Shepherd
    The Good Shepherd is serious adult moviemaking, a truly surprising effort from De Niro, a man deeply interested in the art, craft and psychology of espionage. He seems to believe that we'd better be interested in it, because it's interested in us.
  28. Venus
    Director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi take a deeper, edifying interest in the moral ambiguities that arise between Maurice and Jessie. And thanks to our warm investment in both characters, we're more than willing to sign up for this existential ride. We allow this relationship -- and the movie -- to take us places we'd never usually go.
  29. Notes on a Scandal
    I can't remember a film that sees the here and now more precisely, one that offers total believability in the tone and motive of its characters and then goes further, showing us a whole and completely recognizable world.
  30. Becket (re-release)
    It is a snapshot of a great actor in his prime and a chance for us to see one of yesteryear's great films in all its kingly luster.
  31. An Unreasonable Man
    Nader haters may not be mollified, but An Unreasonable Man, like its subject itself, is a one-stop civics lesson no one should miss.
  32. Into Great Silence
    As we vicariously participate in their daily rituals, we find ourselves at the ground level of spiritual worship. It's hard to recall a similar documentary that brings viewers so palpably close to that sacred experience.
  33. Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
    A riveting, amusing, enlightening and emotionally affecting movie by a guy you've never heard of, about -- wait for it -- the consumer debt crisis.
  34. The Namesake
    Although we miss some of the finer details that made Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 book so meaningful, we're moved by the movie's themes of cultural displacement and the power of chance.
  35. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    Director Ken Loach is full of astonishments. An avowedly leftist filmmaker, he has always seen beyond political cant to compassionate reality. He's also incredibly sensitive to what might be called the nuances of life, and he always brings a high sense of spontaneous reality to his films.
  36. Color Me Kubrick
    Color Me Kubrick is like a nice, deep, clear cocktail of ammonia on the rocks: bracing, comic, astonishing, all of which hide its poison center.
  37. Offside
    Along with such colleagues as Abbas Kiarostami and Moshen Makhmalbaf, Panahi has perfected the art of realist filmmaking,
  38. After the Wedding
    Wedding has enough coincidences, screamfests, drunken rants and shock revelations to fill a season of "Desperate Housewives," but it comes across as finely textured drama, thanks to the performers, who make their characters so persuasive and three-dimensional, we're too mesmerized to care about the story's more overwrought or histrionic passages.
  39. The Valet
    Kristin Scott Thomas delivers an unnervingly smooth performance as Auteuil's suspicious wife.
  40. Flanders
    Flanders, which takes us from the rustic heartland of northern France to the killing fields of an unnamed foreign locale, has such a primitive poetry, we are moved even by its most gruesome moments.
  41. Golden Door
    Writ small, Golden Door is an absorbing and moving love story; writ large, it's the story we've never stopped telling ourselves.
  42. Day Watch
    Like its predecessor, the movie is a joyous celebration of extravagant pulp and post-Soviet kitsch, joyously trafficking in gore, loud cars, ladies' stilettos and excess for its own sake.
  43. 12:08 East of Bucharest
    A remarkable film from Romania.
  44. Manufactured Landscapes
    Manufactured Landscapes makes an inelegant point elegantly. The point: Humanity is altering the landscape drastically and by implication irrevocably.
  45. 1408
    Swedish director Mikael Hafstrom creates a compelling ride of a movie. Every beat of the film is weighted with significance, and our mounting dread becomes almost intolerable.
  46. Lady Chatterley
    Director Pascale Ferran makes this a sort of opera of two bodies, as the characters discover not only each other but themselves. And the French filmmaker cannily turns their corporeal discoveries into a moral mission, two desperately lonely souls crying for spiritual freedom in a world of moral constriction.
  47. You Kill Me
    Frank (Ben Kingsley) meets Laurel (Tea Leoni), a woman who has been around the block a time or 200, and she likes Frank's directness, while he likes her unflappability. This is one of the greatest screwball relationships in years.
  48. Vitus
    The cast is superb, especially the young actors who portray Vitus; Gheorghiu is a real-life piano prodigy, lending an extra frisson to the intoxicating music that plays throughout the film.
  49. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
    Screenwriter Michael Goldenberg and director David Yates have transformed J.K. Rowling's garrulous storytelling into something leaner, moodier and more compelling, that ticks with metronomic purpose as the story flits between psychological darkness and cartoonish slapstick.
  50. Sunshine
    Beam yourselves aboard Sunshine, set 50 years in the future. The voyage works, beautifully.
  51. Molière
    An extravagant and thoroughly irresistible story of intrigue, romance, comedy and artistic inspiration.
  52. This Is England
    This Is England, set in the social dystopia of Margaret Thatcher's Great Britain, gives us something far more humane and complex than a culturally specific memoir about Doc Martens shoes, reggae music and mindless aggression.
  53. Live-In Maid
    A vivid portrait of a society in the midst of wrenching change, but it transcends its immediate context to become a thoughtful, even unforgettable, chamber piece, performed with exquisite subtlety by two fine actresses.
  54. The Rape of Europa
    Fascinating facts and testimony.
  55. Lust, Caution
    Though Lust, Caution resounds with these disconcerting themes, it operates on the same principle that distinguishes all lasting romances, be they "Wuthering Heights," "Casablanca" or "When Harry Met Sally."
  56. The Heartbreak Kid
    You can expect to fall about, snort and hoot, at times hard enough to hurt inner body parts that only doctors can identify.
  57. Control
    Corbijn makes us achingly aware of the singer's talent, the haunting poetry of his songs and how, living in the gloomy culture he did, his passing was virtually inevitable.
  58. Kurt Cobain About a Son
    The result is a film exponentially more vivid and absorbing than the garden-variety rock-doc or biopic. "About a Son" is a must for anyone who still loves Cobain, or still has hope for cinematic portraiture.
  59. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    One artist's moving tribute to another.
  60. War Dance
    This is documentary-making at its best, not pretending to be journalism, but still playing a crucial role in telling stories that otherwise wouldn't make the front page.
  61. Enchanted
    Even if its most ironic humor will sail over the heads of very little ones, Enchanted is that rare comedy that will appeal to the whole family.
  62. I'm Not There.
    A fascinating experiment that, if the viewer is willing to surrender to Haynes's sometimes hermetic meditations on Dylan's life, heartily rewards the investment.
  63. Margot at the Wedding
    Watching Kidman, Leigh and -- in his nutty, damn-the-torpedoes way -- Black as they torment, confound and torture one another amounts to a vicarious thrill ride in human behavior.
  64. Nanking
    In clothes reminiscent of the '30s (but not, strictly speaking, costumes) the performers read dramatically from the letters, journals and diaries of the Western missionaries and diplomats; they "perform" but in the limited sense, using only face and voice to communicate with the camera. And you have to say: Wow.
  65. The Kite Runner
    For all the pain and loss that The Kite Runner depicts, it is still a film of exhilarating, redemptive humanity, conveying an enduring sense of hope.
  66. Charlie Wilson's War
    This movie probably gets the Washington process better than any since Otto Preminger's underrated "Advise & Consent" in 1962. It's not about men of virtue doing the impossible, but men of flaws doing the doable, but just barely.
  67. The Water Horse
    Combining the best of fantasy and somber reflection, The Water Horse is a lovely ride.
  68. U2 3D
    In many ways, watching the movie is BETTER than concertgoing. We can enjoy that buzzy feeling of community without the fist-pumping biker obscuring our view.
  69. The Band's Visit
    Smart, subtle, deceptively simple little.
  70. In Bruges
    Those who know McDonagh's work know a vein of darkness will run deeply through the comedy. It has seldom been darker. Or funnier. He has made a hit-man movie in which you don't know what will happen and can't wait to find out. Every movie should be so cliched.
  71. Under the Same Moon (La misma luna)
    Thanks to the uncommonly shrewd judgment of screenwriter Ligiah Villalobos and director Patricia Riggen, both newcomers, the film never feels like rank exploitation, even as it steadily aims for the emotional jugular.
  72. Priceless
    Tautou is a delight, as always, using her bubbly personality to comic advantage. And Elmaleh makes for a sort of poor man's Buster Keaton, perpetually stressed but refusing to surrender, no matter how much damage he sustains to himself or his wallet.
  73. Shine a Light
    Vibrant and engaging documentary.
  74. Water Lilies
    It's a world where every emotion feels like the earth moving, and where the shifting tectonics of young lust and friendship, along with the lifelong lessons of a broken heart, have never felt more real.
  75. 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.
  76. The Fall
    The Fall is often an affectionate caricature itself, but one of astonishing beauty, featuring two heartfelt performances from Untaru and the tender, often mordantly funny Pace. They're perfect foils for Tarsem's gorgeous tone poem to cinema as a medium of magic and miracles, stories and lies.
  77. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
    As portrayed by William Moseley, Skandar Keynes, Georgie Henley and especially Anna Popplewell as Susan, the Pevensies still make for terrific tween protagonists, and Aslan, the majestic mythical lion voiced by Liam Neeson, is still a breathtaking manifestation of the Cat Upstairs.
  78. Reprise
    Reprise says many cogent things about success, what it does to people and how they define it. But it also indicts the mechanics of the culture in a way that is neither Danish nor American but globalized and all the more poignant for it.
  79. Journey to the Center of the Earth
    Terrific family entertainment, an action comedy on a par with "Night at the Museum" and "National Treasure."
  80. Encounters at the End of the World
    It's as much fun to anticipate what he's (Herzog) going to say as it is to appreciate the snowy landscapes, belching volcanoes and mustachioed seals before his lens. And what could have been a conventional travelogue becomes a sort of ruminative odyssey of the mind.
  81. My Winnipeg
    Maddin has called his new film a "docu-fantasia," and it's an apt label for an entirely idiosyncratic mix of local myth and history, dubious science, salacious gossip, personal rumination and endless camp humor.
  82. Pineapple Express
    The movie is jampacked with jokes, sight gags and set pieces guaranteed to appeal to the audience's sense of the preposterous.
  83. Step Brothers
    So childish it seems to arrive in diapers, and that's not bad; it's good.
  84. Tropic Thunder
    The history of filmmakers skewering Hollywood's darker excesses is a long and rich one, from Billy Wilder through Robert Altman. With Tropic Thunder, a rude, crude, over-the-top satire about rude, crude, over-the-top action movies, Ben Stiller makes an ambitious and surprisingly effective bid to join those vaunted ranks.
  85. Australia
    A wildly ambitious, luridly indulgent spectacle of romance, action, melodrama and historic revisionism, Australia is windy, overblown, utterly preposterous and insanely entertaining.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Transsiberian
    All in all, the film is an excellent, if modest, alternative for moviegoers who have been blockbustered into submission this summer.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Vicky Cristina Barcelona
    Vicky Cristina Barcelona is beautiful because Allen is now decidedly in control of this phase of his career, which blends the sharpness of his older dramas with a newly acquired expatriate hipness.
  88. Ghost Town
    A sweet and hilarious romantic comedy featuring a breakout performance by British comic genius Ricky Gervais, inspires viewers to pause, reflect and praise one of the most rare and wondrous occurrences in contemporary cinema: the Good Movie.
  89. A Christmas Tale
    Even though it's pretentious and overlong, A Christmas Tale is still maddeningly engaging, thanks in large part to its attractive and gifted cast.
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