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. Hot Tub Time Machine 2
    The film isn’t bad, although it is somewhat repetitive. If it has plot holes, conceptual laziness and an overreliance on dumb-insult humor, the film at least seems to know it. There are lots of self-referential jokes that acknowledge its own stupidity.
  2. Da Sweet Blood of Jesus
    Although Lee briefly engages in some fascinating ideas linking the vampire’s existence to cultural empowerment, preservation and survival, he squanders that potential in leaden soft-core cliches that usually wind up with him ogling the female form.
  3. She's Beautiful When She's Angry
    With its awkward reenactments and other stylistic clunkers, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry doesn’t break much formal ground. But it serves as a moving reminder of how crucial citizen action is in fomenting social change.
  4. Boy Meets Girl
    Often, it feels conspicuously educational. The movie is far better when it focuses on its intimate story of love between family and friends in a small town.
  5. Timbuktu
    In providing audiences a chance to bear witness to unspeakable suffering as well as dazzling defiance and human dignity, Sissako has created a film that’s a privilege to watch.
  6. Kingsman: The Secret Service
    Kingsman delivers on its promise of escapist fun, with a touch that alternates between Galahad’s old-school polish and Eggsy’s roguish charm. Like the rookie who knows that you have to make a few mistakes while following the master, the movie shrugs off its missteps with a wink and a smile that makes them easy to forgive.
  7. Fifty Shades of Grey
    In the end, there’s nothing here we haven’t seen before. But there’s also nothing as agonizingly awkward as James’s prose.
  8. Red Army
    In this swift, smart, often very funny film, Polsky takes an unprecedented look at the legendary Soviet-era hockey program and its life after glasnost, exposing an athletic system that became a crucial symbol of Communist history and politics, but also discipline, grace and brooding, melancholy soul.
  9. The Duke of Burgundy
    As a meticulously composed piece of contemporary gothic, The Duke of Burgundy is exquisite to look at, but it succeeds best as a human drama, and a searching investigation of how to ask for what you want — and maybe even getting it in the end.
  10. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
    The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is like the family movie equivalent of a Krabby Patty: It tastes fine and will satisfy some cravings. But it’s ultimately a product cranked out to make money and keep our consumer-driven society, much like Bikini Bottom’s, chugging along without significant disruption.
  11. Jupiter Ascending
    It seems that Andy and Lana Wachowski have never lost that childlike ability to dream. But they also haven’t mastered the grown-up power to rein it in. The story they tell in Jupiter Ascending could probably occupy an entire television season. There’s way too much here for one movie to hold.
  12. Winter Sleep
    The film serves not only as a mesmerizing escape into another world, but also a compelling, compassionate deep dive into human frailty and self-deception.
  13. Mommy
    The volatile, unbridled emotion of Mommy — its sheer life force — makes up for its structural weaknesses, giving viewers an often breathtaking glimpse of a director who, like his own adamantly unconventional protagonists, is fairly bursting at the seams with spiky, headstrong brio.
  14. Black Sea
    The film’s patina of richly textured grime lends the film a gloomy, claustrophobic beauty that serves its mood, as well as its satisfyingly misanthropic message: Greed isn’t good, and most people aren’t either.
  15. Black or White
    The performances are fantastic across the board, with Costner acting in his trademark low-key naturalistic style and Spencer as the picture of no-nonsense maternal love. But their efforts can’t make up for overly simplified characters, not to mention melodramatic exchanges that sound exactly like written dialogue.
  16. Leviathan
    Magnificently acted, expertly crafted and unerringly sure of every treacherous step it takes, Leviathan is an indictment, but also an elegy, a film set among the monumental ruins of a culture, whether they’re the skeletal remains of boats, a whale’s bleached bones, a demolished building or a trail of lives that are either ruined or hopelessly resigned.
  17. Beloved Sisters
    Without at least the tawdry pleasure of a little bodice ripping, the film moves along sluggishly, even though it is well acted and handsomely shot.
  18. Mortdecai
    Mortdecai succeeds more as a talky farce than an action-packed adventure. But it would be even better if Mortdecai weren’t about Mortdecai at all.
  19. Song of the Sea
    Enchants on every level: story, voice work, drawing and music.
  20. Song One
    The movie, which marks the feature debut of writer-director Kate Barker-Froyland, has the low-key appeal of “Once,” with its extended scenes of music and drama-free romantic subplot. But the characters in Song One are stubbornly bland, despite their quirks.
  21. Cake
    There’s no doubt that Aniston deserves more roles like this one but, with luck, in less maudlin, more surprising movies.
  22. The Boy Next Door
    The Boy Next Door plays best as unintentional comedy.
  23. The Wedding Ringer
    What’s truly regrettable about The Wedding Ringer is that, at certain moments, it almost succeeds as a heartfelt comedy about male friendship in which its two stars, Josh Gad and Kevin Hart, get to demonstrate that they can act.
  24. The Search for General Tso
    A fascinating, funny and informative documentary.
  25. Spare Parts
    It is the four young actors who play the students who truly shine, and who elevate the formulaic film above and beyond its familiar proceedings.
  26. Little Accidents
    The acting across the board is top-notch, especially by Banks, who is probably best known for her comedic roles. She doesn’t get to flex any of those muscles here; Little Accidents is a serious movie, but, to its credit, it’s never entirely bleak.
  27. Paddington
    Because of its adorable protagonist, laugh-out-loud gags and touching premise, Paddington succeeds in a way most CGI/live-action hybrids do not.
  28. A Most Violent Year
    If A Most Violent Year has a weakness, it’s in that structural looseness.... Still, A Most Violent Year is an engrossing, often beautiful film, and a breakout opportunity for Isaac.
  29. Appropriate Behavior
    Comedy today is less about punch lines and pratfalls and more about eliciting that laugh-gasp hybrid. And those jokes come constantly in Appropriate Behavior.
  30. Blackhat
    Blackhat is also one of the most visually unattractive movies I’ve ever seen.
  31. Two Days, One Night
    As a parable on karma, capitalism and Darwinian corporate politics, Two Days, One Night can often feel brutal. As a testament to connection, service, sacrifice and self-worth, it’s a soaring, heart-rending hymn.
  32. American Sniper
    The battle scenes are alternately tense and thrilling, especially during one climactic sequence.
  33. Taken 3
    The film dutifully cleaves to the contours of a well-established and viscerally satisfying formula.
  34. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
    It’s a haunting story of love between two misfits who shouldn’t be together. In its doomed yet somehow hopeful spirit, it’s closer to the noir sensibility of “Let the Right One In” than the pop-horror of “Twilight.”
  35. Predestination
    The movie may not have quite the mind-bending wallop of “Inception,” but Predestination is about something deeper than fantasy.
  36. Inherent Vice
    Inherent Vice unfolds so organically, so gracefully and with such humanistic grace notes that even at its most preposterous, viewers will find themselves nodding along, sharing the buzz the filmmaker has so skillfully created.
  37. Inside the Mind of Leonardo
    Not quite documentary, yet by no means drama, Inside the Mind of Leonardo is what might be called poetic biography: maddeningly fragmentary and idiosyncratic, but 100 percent true.
  38. Unbroken
    Unbroken may not exactly be mired in sanctimony, but it’s standing, almost up to its ankles, in an unhealthy sense that its subject — about whose simple humanity the film otherwise goes to great lengths to illuminate — is a candidate for sainthood.
  39. Into the Woods
    The casting for the movie is outstanding. Streep is marvelous, as always, but in this case she outdoes even herself (and the script) by bringing a degree of poignancy to her conniving character.
  40. The Gambler
    It’s John Goodman who steals every scene. As a scary loan shark who might cough up cash to get Jim out of his pickle, Goodman elevates the material, showcasing the dark humor that Wyatt was clearly going for. But, overall, that comedy just doesn’t land.
  41. Big Eyes
    As provocative as the questions it raises are — questions about connoisseurship vs. populism, personal expression vs. the market, and the dark arts of press, publicity and shrewd self-invention — the film’s achievements stay on the surface of those themes rather than plunging deeper.
  42. Mr. Turner
    Through it all, Spall is equally enigmatic and transfixing: With his guttural croaks and barks, his Turner is often difficult to understand, but, thanks to Spall’s amazing physical performance and Leigh’s sensitive, information-laden direction, he’s never incomprehensible.
  43. 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.
  44. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb
    The aptly subtitled Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb is a blast of dead air and mummified humor.
  45. Annie
    There are some very funny moments in the movie, even for grown-ups, including a video of Will that goes viral. The absurd machinations of Will’s smarmy political adviser are also good for a laugh. But ultimately, Annie is so fixated on being current that it will never be more than a passing fancy.
  46. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
    Jackson’s storytelling at this point is so driven by green-screen trickery and digital legerdemain that he seems to have forgotten about human emotion.
  47. Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers And The Emergence Of A People
    The power of images — to distort, define, denigrate and celebrate — emerges with clarity and force in Through a Lens Darkly, a fascinating, visually stunning, emotionally devastating documentary by Thomas Allen Harris.
  48. The Babadook
    The feature debut of writer-director Jennifer Kent is not just genuinely, deeply scary, but also a beautifully told tale of a mother and son, enriched with layers of contradiction and ambiguity.
  49. Exodus: Gods and Kings
    This biblical action drama that feels excessive in every way imaginable, from running time (nearly 2 1/2  hours) to melodramatic acting to the conspicuous amount of computer generation.
  50. The Imitation Game
    Viewers may get the sense that The Imitation Game leaves Turing’s essential mysteries intact, but they will nonetheless find even the most public contours of his story ripe with drama, excitement and deeply affecting resonance.
  51. Top Five
    Admittedly, Top Five suffers from its share of too-convenient contrivances and clunky passages... But Top Five is also buoyantly self- sustaining, thanks in part to Rock and Dawson’s easy, convincingly seductive chemistry and some genuinely hilarious surprises.
  52. The Pyramid
    The air inside the pyramid isn’t the only thing that’s stale in this ludicrous yet mildly likable horror film.
  53. Antarctica: A Year on Ice
    Yes, it features some of the most rapturous footage of calving glaciers and ice floes — alternately freezing and thawing — that you’re likely to have seen (much of it captured on equipment designed and built by the filmmaker). But it is the simple glimpses of ordinary life in an extraordinary place that are the most stirring moments in the film.
  54. Miss Julie
    Miss Julie is a strangely clinical movie experience. It’s a story that makes an impression without leaving a mark.
  55. Remote Area Medical
    Remote Area Medical is an in­cred­ibly tragic movie. It’s also an important one, reminding viewers that America is more than its coasts and cities. There are corners of the country we all too easily forget.
  56. Wild
    Wild is an accomplished movie, and often a beautiful and moving one, but the woman at its center remains warily at arm’s length.
  57. Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain
    Some of the portrayals are over-the-top in their villainy, and the dialogue, acting and music all tend to be melodramatic. But all of the overt heartstring-pulling doesn’t add much. Given the awful calamity, the truth would have been enough to amp up the emotions.
  58. Point and Shoot
    VanDyke might have set out to give himself a crash course in manhood, but Point and Shoot gives us a crash course in the myriad and contradictory things the word has come to mean.
  59. Women Who Flirt
    It’s just a question of what route Angie and Marco will take to happiness. Yet their unsurprising journey is lively and entertaining, thanks in equal measure to the movie’s star and its director.
  60. Penguins of Madagascar
    The screenplay by John Aboud, Michael Colton and Brandon Sawyer has a fizzy, pop-culture pizazz, tempered by a distinctly vaudeville sensibility. It’s smart, but not brainy; dumb, but never inane.
  61. Horrible Bosses 2
    Even at its lamest and most entitled, this sequel will most likely please fans of the first installment, chiefly because Bateman, Sudeikis and Day are, admittedly, often very funny together.
  62. Foxcatcher
    Foxcatcher exerts a mesmerizing pull, not only because it affords the chance to witness three fine actors working at the height of their powers, but also because it so steadfastly resists the urge to clutter up empty space with the filigree of gratuitous imagery and chatter.
  63. The Homesman
    It’s an oddity, and all that strangeness is what makes the movie hard to shake.
  64. Diplomacy
    The movie is an intellectual puzzle, the outcome of which is never in doubt. Its minor thrills come not from not knowing what will happen, but from watching the cagey choreography of two acrobatic minds.
  65. Pelican Dreams
    The fate of these birds, which, the film tells us, could live into their 40s, becomes as engrossing as many a human drama.
  66. Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas
    A glorified infomercial in defense of the holiday that contains about 15 minutes of actual content padded out with almost an hour of filler.
  67. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1
    It’s a joyless, surpassingly dour enterprise, but one that fulfills its mission with Katniss’s own eagle-eyed efficiency and unsentimental somberness.
  68. Dumb and Dumber To
    So maybe some of this is hilarious. Heck, maybe all of it is. It will not be everyone’s cup of tea, and it was not mine.
  69. The Better Angels
    A movie that’s visually stunning and often poetic, but also leaves too much unsaid.
  70. National Gallery
    National Gallery could have used a few more edits; its long run time may limit its appeal. But the film is remarkably engaging and, with close looks at so many important pieces of art, bursting with beauty.
  71. The Overnighters
    The Overnighters is commendable for many reasons, not the least of which is the way it allows complex issues to remain complex.
  72. Rosewater
    Rosewater doesn’t hector, nor does it giggle about the issue of press freedom. It’s an impressive and important piece of storytelling.
  73. The Theory of Everything
    It’s an exceptional film, not because of its protagonists’ impressive triumphs, but because it honors their struggle.
  74. Beyond the Lights
    The fact that Beyond the Lights is so effective at both celebrating and critiquing extravagance and artifice can be credited to Prince-Bythewood’s shrewd understanding of the highly pitched cinematic vernacular she’s working with. Even more crucially, when it came time to cast the transformational figure at her fable’s center, she found the real thing.
  75. Listen Up Philip
    Listen Up Philip makes literary talent seem less like a blessing than a curse.
  76. Low Down
    It’s appropriately melancholy, and yet there’s a sense that the movie only scratches the surface.
  77. The Way He Looks
    The tale, from Brazilian writer-director Daniel Ribeiro, is told with such tenderness, such intelligence and such aching honesty that it takes on the weight of something far more significant than puppy love. Like its subject, first kisses and best friends, it’s hard to forget.
  78. The Great Invisible
    Brown seamlessly blends the emotional, intimate stories of people with bigger pictures, using the explosion as the starting point for a ripple effect that just keeps growing.
  79. Bitter Honey
    It would be nice to know if the troubling images we see are a sweeping problem or just a small glimpse of a minority.
  80. Force Majeure
    Force Majeure leaves the audience squirming — in all the very best ways.
  81. Big Hero 6
    It’s a movie that’s as fun to watch as it is funny. But the real appeal of Big Hero 6 isn’t its action. It’s the central character’s heart.
  82. Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me
    I’ll Be Me is an elevating experience, inviting the audience to bear witness to Campbell’s courage, humor and spiritual strength. His story may make for a tough movie, but it’s an important and triumphant one, as well.
  83. Interstellar
    Interstellar tries so hard to be so many things that it winds up shrinking into itself, much like one of the collapsed stars Coop hurtles past on his way to new worlds. For a movie about transcending all manner of dimensions, “Interstellar” ultimately falls surprisingly flat.
  84. The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
    A gorgeous, magical and melancholy fantasia about the joy and pain of human existence.
  85. Plot for Peace
    [A] sometimes fascinating, often convoluted, movie.
  86. Laggies
    Laggies possesses irrepressible cheer, optimism and an innate sense of ease that often go missing in angstier productions loosely organized under “Aging, fear of.” Unlike its sometimes annoyingly wishy-washy heroine, this is a movie that knows just where it’s going, and finds joy in the journey.
  87. Awake: The Life of Yogananda
    [A] dreamy, entrancing and occasionally overstuffed documentary.
  88. Horns
    Heedless of purpose, Horns charges full speed ahead anyway, ramming its high-concept hooey down your throat until the only heat you feel is from indigestion.
  89. Before I Go to Sleep
    The film is not without its pleasures. Kidman and Firth lend the pulpy material a certain prestige, even if Strong comes across as simply another plot device (and a perplexing one at that).
  90. Nightcrawler
    The film has a sulfuric, Dostoyevskian quality — and sick sense of humor — that captures the muted aquarium that Los Angeles becomes at night, a spell that’s broken once plot overtakes mood.
  91. The Irish Pub
    A lovingly laid-back documentary about the charms, liquid and otherwise, of the traditional Irish watering hole.
  92. 1,000 Times Good Night
    1,000 Times Good Night has moments of both startling violence and breathtaking beauty.
  93. E-Team
    Exciting, absorbing and stubbornly optimistic in the face of overwhelming devastation, E-Team will, with any luck, shed deserved light on the routine sacrifices these activists and professionals make for the sake of human values.
  94. 23 Blast
    Despite the decent performances, the script by first-time screenwriter Toni Hoover (who reportedly Googled “how to write a screenplay” after deciding to chronicle the story of her blinded football-playing friend) swings from flat to overly sentimental, while Baker’s rookie direction is predictable and occasionally confusing.
  95. Rocks in My Pockets
    There are slow bits, as Baumane delves into stories that are less interesting than others. But overall, her family history is rife with complex characters, and she brings them all to life in a loving, if scrutinizing, way.
  96. Watchers of the Sky
    Editing these unwieldy stories into a cohesive, meaningful way must have been a massive undertaking. Editors Jenny Golden and Karen Sim did such an impressive job that even at two hours — an eternity for a doc — the movie never feels too long.
  97. Ouija
    Though Ouija starts off evoking a nicely eerie atmosphere of dread, it ultimately goes too far, making the liminal space between the spirit world and this one all too eye-rollingly literal.
  98. Citizenfour
    Citizenfour isn’t just a useful primer in the civil liberties and consent issues his disclosures raised. It humanizes a man who almost immediately became controversialized as a naive, self-important desk jockey or, worse, a handmaiden to terrorists everywhere.
  99. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
    The bravura gestures work gorgeously in Birdman, as does the humor, which playfully balances the film’s most mystical, contemplative ideas with a steady stream of inside jokes and well-calibrated shifts in tone and dynamics.
  100. John Wick
    Like so many action movies, John Wick goes way beyond a reasonable carnage threshold. Brawls that are exciting in the beginning become dull as each sequence attempts to outdo the last. But John Wick has a more interesting story and better fights than most.
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