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. Cruel Intentions
    The original was about social manipulation as blood sport. Amazing how easily it transports, themes intact, to our blighted decade, and to our children.
  2. Such a Long Journey
    There's a refreshingly unusual spirit at work.
  3. Panic Room
    The movie, which suggests a combination of "Wait Until Dark" and "Rear Window," not only takes your breath away on an aesthetic level, it eloquently evokes the mother's and daughter's vulnerability.
  4. S1m0ne
    Writer-director Niccol (who wrote and directed "Gattaca" and scripted "The Truman Show") uses disarming, but wicked lightness to damn the celebrity-worshiping culture and Hollywood's beyond-the-looking-glass filmmaking.
  5. Ride with the Devil
    In its quiet way, Ride With the Devil is terrific.
  6. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
    As a Coen brothers fan I hate to say this, but the movie's a collection of great bits and pieces rather than a complete work.
  7. Sense and Sensibility
    Lee, who made the upbeat "Eat Drink Man Woman," plays this double love story as brightly as possible. There's peppy social satire in the smallest of gestures.
  8. America's Heart and Soul
    This is Disney at its live-action best and brightest.
  9. Saving Private Ryan
    Its relatively minor imperfections seem more glaring when compared to the near flawlessness of the film's lyrical, scorching start.
  10. P.S.
    Even though the story ultimately doesn't match the intensity with which it began, the movie's extraordinary for its two main performances.
  11. Dirty Dancing
    It's a wonderfully corny story, performed exuberantly by Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze. When these two get together, you practically have to get out the fire extinguishers.
  12. Spy Game
    With its cast of back-stabbing functionaries and desk jockeys, Spy Game makes the sport and hard work of espionage seem chillingly real.
  13. Blind Shaft
    Powerful yet ambiguous.
  14. Deconstructing Harry
    A provocative, but extremely profane work, it is surely Allen's bawdiest since "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex."
  15. Goya in Bordeaux
    The camera, freed to glide, flows as if through the old man's memory, discovering both the glory of his life and the tragedy.
  16. Spider
    An eensy-weensy movie sustained by two utterly gigantic performances.
  17. Next Stop Wonderland
    Shot with a shaky hand-held camera, Wonderland is a sentimental fairy tale with a gritty documentary feel.
  18. All the Real Girls
    It's a movie of deft impressions and telling human moments. Whether or not those impressions and moments add up to anything is almost beside the point.
  19. A Dirty Shame
    John Waters may not be a great filmmaker, but he's usually onto something, and A Dirty Shame is onto something big.
  20. Saved!
    Bears the unmistakable stamp of authenticity, even at its most outrageous.
  21. American Wedding
    If you do not bring pride, good taste or sense to this third American Pie installment, you'll have a good time.
  22. Cellular
    This unpretentious little bit of superior craftsmanship will be utterly mesmerizing to two kinds of people in particular: those who love cell phones and those who hate them.
  23. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster
    Absorbing, funny, exhilaratingly entertaining ride through two years in the life of the most successful heavy metal band in history.
  24. Facing Windows
    The film is slick, beautifully acted and completely entrancing.
  25. 25th Hour
    Lee has created that rarity in filmmaking: a movie we need, right now.
  26. The Cooler
    Still, it's difficult to hold his whoppers against him. In creating characters of such spirit and life, and in imagining such a vibrant, imaginative homage to the transformative powers of love, Kramer, more than most, has earned the right to push his luck.
  27. Mostly Martha
    Sweet without being saccharine and funny without being forced, the closely observed romantic comedy treats the culinary arts as a metaphor for personal healing.
  28. Mallrats
    The movie is a piece of junk...However, it's also immensely likable and hysterically, irreverently funny.
  29. The Other Side of the Bed
    Peppy, funny and sensual. If you have to see any romantic comedy that's not directed by Billy Wilder, or written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, this wouldn't be a bad choice.
  30. Shanghai Knights
    Far from great but greatly entertaining.
  31. THX 1138
    Testament to the emergence of a visually masterful filmmaker, capable of ingenious, low-tech special effects.
  32. Seducing Doctor Lewis
    So disarming, it's hard to say anything but good things about it. So get in line. The doctor is in.
  33. The Iron Giant
    Still, the movie -- as beautifully drawn, as sleek and engaging as it is -- has the annoyance of incredible smugness.
  34. Sexy Beast
    A Molotov cocktail of a movie, an engaging conflagration of British B-flick, cockney wit and gallows humor. There's even a delicate little love story in there.
  35. Notting Hill
    So the film has this weird postmodernist taint: It has a self-aware script that cleverly plays off the reality of its own cast and their famous real-life contretemps. It's smart and knowing.
  36. Changing Lanes
    Far richer than you'd ever think possible.
  37. Selena
    The film's many musical scenes can be riveting. But Selena is less concert film than family drama, particularly focusing on Selena's struggles with her father after she falls in love with, and eventually marries, her guitarist Chris Perez (heartthrob Jon Seda).
  38. We Were Soldiers
    Gibson may get top billing, but it's Sam Elliott who steals all the scenes. As Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, a man who fires with his own .45 revolver rather than the standard M-16 rifles, he's full of hilariously colorful comments.
  39. Undertow
    The movie builds slowly to its grinding climax, and the suspense -- the standard by which a thriller must primarily be judged -- is first-rate.
  40. Before Sunrise
    Though Linklater allows the movie to wander, he never allows the pace to slacken, and more often than not he finds some unexpected bit of found poetry or cultural kitsch to make the digressions worthwhile.
  41. Father and Son
    If the setting is claustrophobic, it's also bracingly beautiful, a contradiction that is every bit in keeping with Sokurov's preference for ambiguity over clarity.
  42. I'm Not Scared
    Deliberate disorientation keeps the audience constantly off balance, and it's brilliantly effective.
  43. The Bourne Identity
    There isn't a dull or dumb moment in this movie.
  44. Open Range
    It's a fine, old-fashioned 2 1/4 hours at the Bijou.
  45. Training Day
    As exhausting as it is exhilarating to watch, the film in the end is less than fully satisfying.
  46. Dancer in the Dark
    You may leave this movie exhilarated by its no-holds-barred boldness or annoyed and bewildered at the unpredictable course it takes.
  47. The Last Seduction
    A steely neo-noir thriller with a nasty comic veneer.
  48. Antz
    Sorry, stinging fire ants couldn't make me reveal the outcome of this witty and, yes, surprisingly suspenseful adventure.
  49. Amadeus
    Amadeus isn't meant to be a biography of the composer's life, but a bawdy, black fantasy, a fiction based on a few curious facts. [21 Sep 1984, p.23]
    • Washington Post
  50. Magnolia
    As intoxicating as the flower it's named for, and its characters, most of them as flawed and fascinating as the film itself, seem intoxicated by the overpowering scent.
  51. Cast Away
    If there's anyone who can make this ordeal -- and when you're plumb out of characters, it can be an ordeal -- tolerable, and even entertaining, it's Hanks.
  52. Monsters, Inc.
    Whatever its ultimate position on the greatest hits list, Monsters, Inc. is supple and technologically sophisticated entertainment.
    • Washington Post
  53. Galaxy Quest
    The wisecracks fly fast and furious
  54. The Usual Suspects
    This thriller is like a game of life-and-death chess, with quick double-crosses and wild gambits.
  55. An Everlasting Piece
    The movie finds charming humor in a world full of sectarian strife between Protestant and Catholic.
  56. Bandits
    As for Billy Bob, they all steal the money, but he steals the show.
  57. The Boxer
    If you view it passively, as a well-crafted melodrama set in danger among passionate antagonists, The Boxer is rewarding enough. If you attack it intellectually, you see the degree to which it is informed by ideas and realize the power of its argument.
  58. Bridget Jones's Diary
    Grant is casually fabulous and very amusing, but all power to Firth the actor. He's the compleat Darcy, and he never wavers.
  59. The Sweetest Thing
    That cameraderie is bound to appeal to women looking for a howlingly trashy time.
  60. Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There
    This is cinema as oral tradition. And one heck of a cheap-seat deal.
  61. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope
    Star Wars had all the right stuff, and unlike its confounding progenitor, "2001: A Space Odyssey," it was fairy-tale simple: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," good met evil. [Special Edition]
  62. Gods and Monsters
    Eminently watchable thanks to strong performances from its three leads (McKellen, Redgrave, Fraser).
  63. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
    The spare and unsparing tone of I'll Sleep When I'm Dead makes it as existential -- and as original -- a whodunit as they come.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fear and Trembling
    This quietly odd and hilarious tale is a bit like a Japanese version of the popular BBC comedy series "The Office" or perhaps the "Dilbert" comic strip at its peak.
  65. Strayed
    Strayed has the strange clarity of a fable. It strips everything away until only instincts and emotions are left.
  66. The Inheritance
    The cast, all classically trained on the stage, is simply commanding.
  67. Something's Gotta Give
    Generally quite amusing, with a brilliant cast.
  68. Hearts and Minds (re-release)
    Davis, who won an Oscar for Best Documentary, may not have agreed with presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon on the war, but he heeded Johnson's call to fight for hearts and minds. His aim was dead on target.
  69. Zhou Yu de huo che
    It's a terrific film because each of the characters is so fiercely felt.
  70. My Flesh and Blood
    Poignant, heartbreaking proof that, sometimes, love is just not enough.
  71. All About My Mother
    It's enough to make your head spin, but Almodovar, whose mastery of the medium has never been more assured, gives you plenty to think about, ultimately grounding the dizzy whirl of his idiosyncratic fictional world in a story that feels not just true but universal.
  72. Under the Tuscan Sun
    The cliches are obscured by the sheer fun of it all.
    • Washington Post
  73. One Swallow Brought Spring
    The movie, which Carion wrote with Eric Assous, has a calming quality. The story moves slowly but, given the milieu and pace of life, this seems perfectly appropriate.
  74. Intermission
    Very, very funny, thanks to a lively first script by Mark O'Rowe, who has a good ear for earthy dialogue and a sense of life's absurd little synchronicities.
  75. The Barbarian Invasions
    A movie that, in the story of one man dying, shows us all how to live.
  76. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
    Sharp, lively, funny and ultimately sobering film.
  77. Pieces of April
    Belongs, wholly and completely, to Clarkson, who delivers Joy's mordant asides and withering observations with a flawless balance of tartness and vulnerability.
  78. Vengo
    Feels like a song you may have heard before, but one whose aching beauty makes it endlessly listenable.
  79. Batman
    The Batblast of the summer.
  80. Enduring Love
    It's the best kind of movie: so alive in its storytelling that only in retrospect do you realize that the ideas represent a metaphysical inquiry.
  81. The Triplets of Belleville
    Overflowing with madcap visual flair and following a rambling thread of a plot that seems, at times, more the product of free association than an actual script, The Triplets of Belleville is a triumph of animated style over substance.
  82. America's Sweethearts
    Terrifically funny romantic comedy, is a slam-dunk for Julia Roberts, the Michael Jordan of cuteness.
  83. Bread and Roses
    There's every reason to watch Bread and Roses for what Loach really does best: He involves us directly in the desperate lives of his characters, who are forced to live without security and who have to compromise to make ends meet. And, above all, who feel as real as moviemaking allows.
  84. Suzhou River
    A Chinese film whose simple surface belies greater mysteries.
  85. Alien: Resurrection
    So drippy and slippery you'll feel that you're hiding in Kevin Costner's nasal passages during the filming of "Waterworld."
  86. A Knight's Tale
    Savvy without being smug, cute without being saccharin, and funny without slipping into over-the-top goofiness, this is a 14th-century good time.
  87. Postmen in the Mountains
    It's a love letter to the myriad ways, large and small, that mail handlers change lives the world over.
  88. Primary Colors
    Its palette isn't primary at all: It's full of secondary shadings.
  89. Bruce Almighty
    Carrey is so gifted a physical comedian that even mediocre material shines in his talented hands, not to mention his talented feet, face, elbows, ears, hair and, ahem, derriere.
  90. Treasure Planet
    Boasts the purest of Disney raptures: It unites the generations, rather than driving them apart.
  91. Girlfight
    Luminously understated.
  92. Dreamcatcher
    I think you can say that almost everyone watching this will be spellbound, whether they're stupefied by its insanity, more conventionally compelled by the various horrors in store or a combination of both.
  93. Eyes Wide Shut
    It's painstakingly paced, but it's also entrancing.
  94. In America
    In Sheridan's warm and glowing treatment, the moral of the story feels less like a reheated fable than like something utterly, indescribably original.
  95. Shadow of the Vampire
    Diabolically amusing without plunging into the Mel Brooks zone, and it's smart without being pedantic. And it's genuinely scary at times.
  96. Being Julia
    Bening makes the movie into something finer still.
  97. The Devil's Advocate
    Unlike so many pagan entertainments that seem to have no moral center as they blow things up, this one in fact does. It's very small, but it's there.
  98. Jackpot
    It's a movie full of quietly assured flourishes: elegant camera compositions, wonderful uses of silence and an entertainingly eclectic cast, including Peggy Lipton as a sensitive bartender.
  99. Nico and Dani
    Touching, funny, unflinching and true.
  100. Liar Liar
    Carrey is not only under control, but funnier than ever.
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