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. Spartan
    Is Spartan a perfect, or even a great, movie? Probably not. But in its prickly irascibility and deeply unsettling intelligence, it makes for a very, very good one.
  2. The Agronomist
    Has important things to tell viewers about global politics, and in an eerily resonant way.
  3. The Widow of Saint-Pierre
    A compelling French Canadian drama.
  4. The Full Monty
    Along with witty, appropriately rough-hewn repartee and genuine poignancy, writer Simon Beaufoy manages to sustain suspense to the last gyration.
  5. Miracle
    Reproducing every bruise, blowup and body-check and getting right up on the ice and into the fray, the movie brings the audience back to 1980 with bone-crunching verisimilitude.
  6. Seabiscuit
    Although nowhere near the class of its equine hero, is quite a satisfying ride.
  7. The War of the Roses
    Director DeVito, who never did know when to quit, manages to be as clever as he is vicious. His first movie, "Throw Momma From the Train," seems almost lyrical in comparison to the ruthlessness of this vehicle.
  8. Monty Python's Life of Brian
    Given the current heightened tenor of religious rhetoric and paranoia, it may well wind up pushing brand-new buttons today. To quote Michael Palin quoting Jesus, "There's just no pleasing some people."
  9. Looney Tunes: Back in Action
    Delightful, delicious and destructive.
  10. Mayor of the Sunset Strip
    An elegy for an aging rock pixie.
  11. The Italian Job
    It is, as with any cinematic joy ride, not the destination that matters, but the rush of getting there.
  12. The Business of Strangers
    The dynamic between Channing and Stiles is as compelling as a freeway wreck.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Manhunter
    Based on the ingenious novel "Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris, it keeps the nerves racing on fear-fuel until its oddly anticlimactic climax. [15 Aug 1986, p.N29]
    • Washington Post
  14. Wonderland
    Grim, yes, and great viewing.
  15. The Anniversary Party
    Although the movie -- falls occasional prey to pretension, it's a classic guilty pleasure.
  16. The Guru
    A joyous genre-blender guaranteed to crank up your karma.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Raising Victor Vargas
    As fresh -- and as restorative -- as a lemon ice on a hot day.
  18. October Sky
    It makes a great point: Love, honor and respect your father, but then get the hell out of town.
  19. In & Out
    Hilarious ... It's dishy, but not swishy.
  20. Unbreakable
    I was hooked from beginning to end.
  21. The Vertical Ray of the Sun
    There are scenes that simply ask the audience to drink in the details, to enjoy the repast, just as much as follow the plot.
  22. Spellbound
    Could hardly be more suspenseful if it were scripted.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Secretary
    Initially cold and perverse to its core, the film transmutes into something warm and uplifting. Normal, even.
  24. Undercover Brother
    May well wind up being the smartest bonehead comedy of the summer.
  25. Tom Dowd & the Language of Music
    Moormann deserves credit, not only for choosing a wonderful and deserving subject for a film, but for doing him proud.
  26. Anger Management
    Miller time for the funny bone.
  27. Barbershop 2: Back in Business
    It's a warm, often funny reunion of the sassiest, chattiest characters ever to buzz a brother's head. You'll like this one more than you'd expect.
  28. A Beautiful Mind
    A greatly ambitious undertaking, but from the commercial point of view quite insane. The movie is ridiculously fragile: It's like a Faberge egg, and even a twitch of foreknowledge will destroy the magic of the movie utterly.
  29. Matchstick Men
    Let it swindle you; it's part of the fun. In fact, it's all of the fun.
  30. The Terminator
    When Terminator is not taking itself seriously -- and sometimes even when it is -- it's lots of fun. And filmmakers James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd don't drown us in blood, though it's not for the squeamish.
  31. Identity
    Something fresh, clever and confident.
  32. The Story of the Weeping Camel
    Strangely moving film.
  33. El mariachi
    This brilliantly naive, low-budget shoot-'em-up presents every action as if it were brand spanking new.
  34. Desperado
    The commercial transition has been remarkably successful. This is primarily thanks to Rodriguez, who not only retains the original movie's kinetic flair, but takes it further.
  35. Jeepers Creepers
    It may stir you, it may make you laugh. I am of the stirred variety. I do not want to meet this guy in the dark, though I've been meeting him in my dreams for years. We all have.
  36. Joy Ride
    In noir, everybody's guilty, and that's one of the pleasures of Joy Ride. The three youngsters aren't exactly innocent.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Dog of Flanders
    A beautiful, sad, spiritual story with joy and delicacy, visual chops and emotional depth.
  38. Enemy of the State
    An enormously entertaining visit to planet paranoia, but its escapist pleasures titillate only in direct proportion to the degree of persecution complex that you bring into the theater with you.
  39. The Princess Bride
    A percolating comedy. The laughs may not tear your belly up, but they're constant and they dovetail with the story.
  40. Owning Mahowny
    Kwietniowski has managed to create a surprisingly engrossing and suspenseful narrative without resorting to cosmetics, melodrama or hype.
  41. Iron Monkey
    Not only visually brilliant, it's funny, too.
  42. Shadow Magic
    It's a film about culture clash, the generation gap and the loss of tradition that inevitably accompanies the arrival of anything new.
  43. Bright Leaves
    We are hooked into a low-tech but compelling dynamic -- between relatively static images and McElwee's sensitive, connective narrative.
  44. Pretty Woman
    Roberts and Richard Gere costar in this bubbly scamper, which goes to the head like champagne -- the cheap, sweet kind that leaves you with a throbbing head. And yet this monstrously derivative romance is great giddy fun.
  45. Glengarry Glen Ross
    All the performances are exceptional.
  46. Runaway Jury
    Efficient, precise, carefully calibrated and terrifically entertaining.
  47. A Song for Martin
    August, who also made "Pelle the Conqueror" and "House of the Spirits," steers this story to its stirring conclusion with firm lack of sentimentality.
  48. Me Without You
    Michelle Williams turns in a performance that is seamless, canny and artistically mature.
  49. Rat Race
    Even though this will not go down as a great Zucker comedy, he has made Rat Race funnier than it could reasonably hope to be.
  50. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
    What a superb job director Marcus Nispel has done re-creating, yet also revising, 1974's grisly, gristly, protein-centric masterpiece.
  51. Jesus' Son
    Crudup gives a performance that is by turns scary, heartbreaking, grotesque and funny as hell.
  52. Buffalo '66
    Personal and private almost to the point of self-absorption, the film is ultimately saved from neurotic narcissism by the director's self-deprecating humor and unapologetic honesty about his own dysfunction.
  53. Monsieur Ibrahim
    A movie suffused with a warm glow of nostalgia for times and music and movies gone by.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Terminator 2: Judgment Day
    Visceral to the point of overkill (and beyond), a berserk blizzard of kinetic images, it doesn't even give you time to be scared.
  55. Tomorrow Never Dies
    Tomorrow Never Dies isn't one of the great Bonds, by any means. But it's familiar, flashy and enjoyable in all the right places.
  56. Army of Darkness
    Few American directors would dare to show as much over-the-top glee in their chosen craft as Sam Raimi does in Army of Darkness. [19 Feb 1993, Style, p.c7]
    • Washington Post
  57. Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
    Preserves and resuscitates the hard-boiled genre.
  58. Carandiru
    The movie is powerful, if numbing. What movie about a massacre isn't?
  59. State and Main
    Relentlessly funny satire.
  60. Beyond the Mat
    You don't have to love WWF scrapping to appreciate this movie.
  61. Charlie's Angels
    The gals are fab. And so's the movie.
  62. Sex and Lucia
    It's still pretty darn good, despite its smarty-pants aura.
  63. The Sweet Hereafter
    The chronological looseness is part of the pleasure of the piece, which magically reassembles in the last reel into something strong, lucid and compellingly powerful.
  64. Guinevere
    Affecting, gloriously acted.
  65. Two Girls and a Guy
    Cerebral, frenetic and funny, this chamber piece from filmmaker James Toback provides a timely if inconclusive comment on monogamy.
  66. A Fish Called Wanda
    It'll keep you amused enough to sit still and even remember it fondly.
  67. Il Postino: The Postman
    An enchanting Italian serio-comedy about the most unlikely of cinematic subjects-the origins, structure and reach of poetry.
  68. Antwone Fisher
    Blessedly free of the self-righteous histrionics and sentimentality that so often cheapen powerful personal stories.
  69. Love Liza
    Hoffman's touchingly fractured performance gives the picture a warm dimension.
  70. Blue Car
    Certainly no feel-good flick of the summer. But it's always tough and honest.
  71. Japanese Story
    Like a haiku, it is not what is said, but what is unsaid, that leaves the most lasting echoes.
  72. Monster
    An okay movie made nearly great by one great thing: the bravura, mercilessly watchable performance of Charlize Theron.
  73. Reconstruction
    It is a fascinating dance between style and substance.
  74. Va Savoir (Who Knows?)
    It gets frenetic, in the French way, but it never stops getting amusing. This is what happens when you let grown-ups make movies.
  75. What Time Is It Over There?
    The story that emerges has elements of romance, tragedy and even silent-movie comedy.
  76. Lone Star
    The most enjoyable John Sayles movie in recent memory.
  77. Sunshine State
    Part of the joy of watching a John Sayles film is to see how he knits together so many people and stories into a densely layered, always absorbing whole.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Fast and the Furious
    Along with the cast's charm, they provide enough fuel for a fun one (movie).
  79. Divided We Fall
    Based on a true story, the movie takes us through some harrowing times.
  80. Central Station
    A touching and unusual road movie-cum-buddy film.
  81. Pecker
    It's also sweet, sentimental, rather funny and, as John Waters films go, surprisingly gentle.
  82. Lilo & Stitch
    Fresh and rainbowy as a midday Hawaiian sun shower.
  83. Drumline
    Shakes, rattles and rolls the house, building to a climax that makes you almost forget you're in a movie theater and not a football stadium at halftime.
  84. The Exorcist
    A museum piece, something to be enjoyed for its historical value. [2000 re-release]
  85. Aberdeen
    It's clean and transparent, with no movie director tricks. The characters, not the montages, speak the loudest.
  86. Con Air
    Preposterous, predictable, but excessively entertaining, this frenzied thriller draws both story and characters from such action classics as "The Fugitive," "Die Hard," "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Silence of the Lambs."
  87. Mean Creek
    That rare movie that manages to be not only an adroit, carefully observed study in character and suspense, but important.
  88. Black Hawk Down
    You're drawn in, like it or not. You can't get away from the immediacy. Or the feeling that you're getting sucked in, too.
  89. The Devil's Backbone
    This film is much more atmospheric; it builds, not so much logically as viscerally, until you feel you can't escape. Lurid and overdone as it is, it's still a real disturber of the peace.
  90. The Rainmaker
    Coppola, who both wrote and directed this entertaining adaptation, follows the well-thumbed scenario, but with the help of his winning cast he disguises the absence of invention.
  91. My Dog Skip
    I had to beg my 8-year-old to stop laughing.
  92. Max
    Fascinating story.
  93. Intolerable Cruelty
    Smart, silly, splenetic and a bit smug, it's a movie that might put a viewer's teeth on edge were it not for its winning lead performances.
  94. eXistenZ
    A triumphant return to the icky, otherworldly eerieness that graced such earlier Cronenberg works as "Scanners," "Videodrome" and "Dead Ringers."
  95. Next Friday
    Hilarious.
  96. Shaolin Soccer
    Shaolin Soccer is "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" with soccer balls, a touch of Sergio Leone and not one microsecond of seriousness.
  97. Gosford Park
    It's a very funny movie in that sniffy Brit way.
  98. The Original Kings of Comedy
    There's nothing stodgy about these court jesters or their humor, even though their act is a decidedly grown-up affair.
  99. Barbershop
    It's funny as hell, and I am proud to say that as a card-carrying white guy, I got three, or possibly even four, of the 239 jokes.
  100. The Rundown
    There've been dozens of shotgun movies, most of them directed by Sam Peckinpah ("The Wild Bunch," "The Getaway") but Berg is inventive...All this, and Christopher Walken too? What more could a fella ask for?
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