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. All Over the Guy
    The movie's entertaining for some wickedly funny situations and witticisms.
  2. The Crime of Padre Amaro
    May be morally tangled, pessimistic, lurid and foreboding, but it's also humanistic.
  3. Chaos
    One heck of a tale of deliciously unladylike payback.
  4. Stevie
    A heart-stirrer at times. More often, it's a heartbreaker.
  5. Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.
    Extraordinary documentary.
  6. The Princess and the Warrior
    You don't have any idea what's going to happen next. You're not caught in a movie, so much as a narrative stratagem.
  7. Affliction
    Like the bitter cold in which it's set, Affliction bites hard and true.
  8. The Ballad of Bering Strait
    It isn't wildly imaginative, but its subjects are novel enough in their own right. They're a little bit country and a little bit Rachmaninoff.
  9. Waking Ned Devine
    Writer-director Kirk Jones III keeps the movie resolutely brisk and light, twisting mildly this way and that but never detouring for long.
  10. Mondays in the Sun
    To the patient viewer, the rewards are many, especially Bardem's performance.
  11. The Circle
    In its brisk way, it's a devastating piece of work, and very brave too.
  12. The Endurance
    An engrossing chronicle.
  13. Ulee's Gold
    The film becomes a modest delight.
  14. Vertical Limit
    Possibly the most suspense-charged mountain-climbing movie ever made.
  15. Pleasantville
    I can't get over the nagging feeling that Pleasantville's beguiling spell was cast by a real magician, only to be carelessly broken by the same clumsy charlatan.
  16. Eight Legged Freaks
    This is postmodern folk art, a tricky transaction in which the work isn't just a story, it's a genre survey, a homage, a meditation, a parody and, oh yeah, while it's at it, still a pretty good story.
  17. Finding Forrester
    Manages to take the cerebral act of literary creation and make it exciting, sexy even.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Madame Satã
    Shot almost entirely on location with a hand-held camera, director Karim Ainouz's film draws you in close. The charisma and intensity of Lazaro Ramos as Joao holds you there.
  19. Bulworth
    It's daring, deliberately offensive and, for a comedy, it has far more ideas in it than actual laughs.
  20. The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
    When I say this movie's a charm, I'm really talking about Irwin.
  21. Legally Blonde
    Blondes may or may not have more fun, but in this one case, they certainly provide more fun.
  22. One Day in September
    The film, built of interviews with participants, is fast-paced, utterly absorbing and ultimately tragic.
  23. Charlotte Gray
    Has an intoxicating, old-fashioned feel about it. We are instantly lost in the period, thanks to cinematographer Dion Beebe's almost haloed images and Joseph Bennett's authentic, restrained production design.
  24. Manic
    It's without posturing or phony outrage, and offers instead something far more affecting: a deep sense of melancholy. This is the way it is, it says, and not much can be done about it.
  25. Jet Lag
    Rather wonderful to sit through. It's fluff with flavor. And a cell phone.
  26. Willard
    This is a one-riff movie and instant cult classic.
  27. Repo Man
    Cox gives the denizens of Edge City wacky ways of expressing themselves whether they're principals, passers-by or disembodied voices. [14 Sept 1984, p.C1]
    • Washington Post
  28. Colors
    It's an exhilarating sparring match between Duvall's workmanlike fine-tuning and Penn's raw energy. [15 Apr 1988]
  29. The Hunt for Red October
    This is a Reagan youth's wet dream of underwater ballistics and East-West conflict.
  30. The Hot Spot
    A crazy, intentionally ludicrous movie that's a lot of film-noir fun.
  31. ABC Africa
    A gorgeous and surprisingly profound meditation on a place and its people.
  32. On the Run
    The most cinematic of the three films. It tells its story in stark, often wordless scenes.
  33. An Amazing Couple
    In this comedy, Cecile misinterprets husband Alain's furtive attempt to have himself medically tested as suspicious extramarital behavior.
  34. After the Life
    The most assured of the three films.
  35. Tumbleweeds
    Janet McTeer doesn't imitate Mary Jo Walker, and she doesn't act her. She becomes her. It's almost spooky.
  36. Carnage
    A gorgeously morbid meditation on the interconnectivity of life.
  37. Primal Fear
    A crackling courtroom drama with more twists than O.J. had alibis.
  38. Rounders
    This isn't a movie where story matters that much: It's a movie of character and milieu, both of which it evokes brilliantly.
  39. Analyze This
    Ramis...does extract every last yuk from this lively clash of id and superego, this spoofy buddies' odyssey from underworld to Prozac nation.
  40. Big Eden
    The key to success: The audience must really like both characters and believe that they deserve a fairy-tale ending. That's definitely the case in this nicely acted love story.
  41. Babí léto
    Though the story line seems grim at times, it's always made lighter by Brodsky's gentle, often hilarious presence.
  42. Mission: Impossible II
    Such a feast of outlandish pleasures it'll send you home steam-cleaned and shrink-wrapped.
  43. The Secret Lives of Dentists
    Roundly entertaining.
  44. Dark Blue
    Shelton's harrowing and compulsively watchable morality play.
  45. Charlotte Sometimes
    Wonderful images, hues, sensations and faces.
  46. Menace II Society
    May just be the best in its genre… Entertainment and radical street preaching, all rolled into one. If it tells black kids not to try this at home, it also revels cinematically in blam-blam-you're-dead. This is what makes the movie maddening -- and what gives it strength.
  47. Northfork
    Isn't everyone's cup of tea -- as the Polishes admit in a clever bit of critical preemption -- but it possesses an undeniable, haunting grandeur.
  48. The Fugitive
    A flurry of stunts, close shaves and deeds of desperate daring, it easily transcends its television origins to become a stylish pacemaker-buster.
  49. The Man Without a Past
    It's a gentle, surprising little movie whose rewards lie in what its characters don't say as much as in what they do.
  50. The Joy Luck Club
    Gives refreshing -- and bittersweet -- dimension to the age-old clash between generations.
  51. Dark Blue World
    The last word you'd expect for it is "sweet," yet it is exactly the right one. That may come as no surprise to some, since the director is Jan Sverak, who brought sweetness to his breakthrough film "Koyla," but it caught me by total surprise.
  52. Two Family House
    The story, which deals straightforwardly with racism, miscegenation, adultery and consumerism, is a fascinating combination: a movie with an almost Capraesque heart and pristine, almost stagey lighting schemes, that addresses uncomfortable moral issues with today's perspectives.
  53. Quiz Show
    As taut, sleek and guiltily comfortable as the classic Chrysler automobile we see at the beginning, Quiz Show is built for entertaining road performance.
  54. Phone Booth
    What keeps Phone Booth going, despite its premise, is the acting and the writing, both of which are top-notch.
  55. Midnight Run
    Robert De Niro is one extended pleasure in Midnight Run -- a real actor putting his considerable talent to work in a well-scripted comedy. And he's more than complemented by Charles Grodin, a brilliant comic performer who has been wasted up to now in small roles or lousy movies. [22 July 1988]
  56. Demonlover
    Disturbing, darkly beautiful.
  57. The Spanish Prisoner
    Pure David Mamet is an acquired, but delicious, taste.
  58. Nurse Betty
    Nurse Betty is this year's "Being John Malkovich"-an utter original with a little something to say and a way of saying it that manages to be at once delightful and bilious.
  59. Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
    And if the movie's not particularly visual -- apart from the excerpted scenes from Fellini's extremely visual films -- it's entertaining for the ears. Fellini talks and talks. And like many directors, he talks a good life.
  60. The Man Who Wasn't There
    It's the latest and one of the best entries in a genre whose highest philosophical expression is the whiplash realization that the universe doesn't play fair.
  61. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
    In this movie, only one thing is certain: No one remains the same.
  62. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    Tried hard to honor the spirit of the franchise, not exploit it, and take it to a new level and a surprising destination.
  63. Real Women Have Curves
    Handsomely shot by cinematographer Jim Denault, the film immerses the audience in Ana's world, its mosaic of colors and sounds and people, to create a vivid cinematic portrait not only of one girl but of an entire community.
  64. The Hunted
    It's a good ride, briskly paced, well played and vividly photographed by Caleb Deschanel.
  65. Under solen
    Makes a virtue of its own simplicity. But don't be fooled. That simplicity is mere cover. You're kept wondering about the outcome until the very end.
  66. One Hour Photo
    Intense and absorbing experience.
  67. Dopamine
    A lot of bigger movies won't provoke you half as much.
  68. Stone Reader
    While he dithers around in search of a movie and a theme, Moskowitz meets intriguing people -- almost all of them older men. And because they are hungry readers, they have interesting things to say.
  69. The Thomas Crown Affair
    A full-throttle fantasy, about as heady a movie experience as it gets.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Zero Day
    Will chill you to your core.
  71. Hamlet
    These are great, primal stories that pull you in, make you care and put you on the edge of madness and violence.
  72. The Cuckoo
    It's a whimsical tale of war and redemption, of faith, hope and even some charity...It's quite a treat, as a matter of fact.
  73. Love and Diane
    It is a movie about the real challenge of heroism.
  74. The Core
    A two-hour pleasure cruise.
  75. Italian for Beginners
    It's all done without special effects, soaring strings or manufactured sentiment. Now, that's entertainment.
  76. Nowhere in Africa
    Consistently absorbing family saga is primarily a safari of the soul.
  77. Le divorce
    A relaxed delight, a series of delicately tongue-in-cheek musings about the clash between American and French cultures.
  78. Bull Durham
    You may catch yourself trying to remember where you parked a little before the end.
  79. Tarzan
    Speaking of Jane, Minnie Driver gets the big banana for top off-screen performance. She brims over with prissiness and pep, tenderness and visionary appreciation.
  80. The Embalmer
    A bummer, but one that manages to stick to its depraved convictions until the strange and bitter end.
  81. Along Came a Spider
    Freeman fills Cross's gumshoes with distinction.
  82. Together
    Moodysson's cornball sentimentality about the many shapes of the human family is tempered by his honesty about personal frailty and the silliness of utopian living experiments.
  83. The Object of My Affection
    It's just more wry than funny, more a gently subversive comedy of modern manners than the simpering date movie it seems to be masquerading as.
  84. Die Hard
    A firepowered, blood-drenched action picture that doesn't let up.
  85. Ha-Chaverim Shel Yana
    You probably never dreamed a charming romantic movie could be staged against a backdrop of Scud attacks from Saddam Hussein.
  86. Together
    A true original, thanks to some memorable characters, an engaging story and a thrilling classical soundtrack.
  87. Lawless Heart
    It's an intriguing experience.
  88. The Weather Underground
    A smart, absorbing, often exhilarating documentary.
  89. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
    Engrossing, educational, amusing and disturbing. And who could ask for more than that from a film?
  90. S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine
    Cinema at its most intellectually honest and morally necessary.
  91. Life
    We have been treated to something we normally would never get in a prison comedy like this: a little delicacy with the humor.
  92. Jerry Maguire
    Cruise is at the top of his form, and Gooding makes a brilliant opponent.
  93. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
    You have the right to remain silent. But if you do, call 911 -- your funny bone is busted. [2 Dec 1988]
    • Washington Post
  94. The Princess Blade
    It's all story, character and dazzling martial arts violence, as orchestrated by fight choreographer Donnie Yen at breakneck speed.
  95. Sliding Doors
    This is the lightest, brightest and tightest film confection to come down the date pike in quite some time.
  96. A Few Good Men
    An entertainment to be seen and appreciated in momentum. As such, it is constantly gripping
  97. Startup.com
    Astute and entertaining documentary.
  98. Frida
    Endlessly interesting. It's about people who thought ideas and art mattered, which makes it a rarity today.
  99. Our Lady of the Assassins
    The grimness of the movie becomes not only too unbearable, its point is clear about halfway through. After that, everything comes across as redundant retreading of the same perspective. But for atmosphere, great cinematography and eye-opening directness, this movie can't be beat.
  100. L.A. Confidential
    Hanson delivers something ever rarer in film culture, not a new film noir but an old-fashioned total movie, somehow of a single piece.
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