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 5.4 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. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
    It really captures what it feels like to be a kid.
  2. Shame
    Fans of Fassbender's yummy performances in this year's "Jane Eyre" and "X-Men: First Class" should be forewarned that, although we see the handsome Irish actor in the altogether, Shame is strangely un-sexy.
  3. Hope Springs
    Hope Springs is a minor miracle of a movie. Within a Hollywood tradition accustomed to treating sex as something titillating, taboo, gauzily idealized or downright pornographic, finally someone has made a movie that treats it in the riskiest way possible: as the physical expression of intimacy between two flawed but recognizable adults.
  4. Boy
    A funny and touching coming-of-age story.
  5. Magic Mike
    It's a nicely balanced blend of comedy, drama and athletic dancing that plies its trade with winking, unforced self-assurance.
  6. Ender's Game
    Ender’s Game is more than a parable about bullying, or a disquisition on the concept of the “just war.” It’s also a rousing action film, especially in Imax.
  7. Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel
    The documentary mostly steers clear of Vreeland's home life. Little attention is paid to her husband or her children, and that may be partly because Vreeland didn't seem to have much time for them, according to interviews with her two sons.
  8. Footnote
    Most footnotes don't get a passing glance, but this one proves worthy of careful study.
  9. Frankenweenie
    It's great fun.
  10. Jiro Dreams of Sushi
    For all the trite sayings that come to mind, the story feels exceptional thanks to the subject, a self-made perfectionist still pursuing culinary transcendence.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    First Position
    Forget that "reality" show about young dancers on the Lifetime channel. First Position, a debut documentary from Bess Kargman, is the real thing.
  12. Hell and Back Again
    The film suggests that it doesn't really matter whether Harris ever gets back in uniform. He's forever carrying around a piece of unexploded ordnance in his head.
  13. The Swell Season
    Most vividly, The Swell Season captures the insistent, borderline-disturbing energy of fandom at its most rabid and psychically intrusive.
  14. Bullhead
    Many terms applied to action movies - muscular, animalistic, testosterone-fueled - are literally true of Bullhead.
  15. Your Sister's Sister
    Very little is simple in Your Sister's Sister -- not the emotions, the naturalistic tone or the unstudied, easygoing performances. But the film's pleasures are.
  16. Easy Money
    The story and cinematography are gritty, but the portraits of these characters are impressively human.
  17. Safety Not Guaranteed
    As happens with many time-travel films, this one ultimately paints itself into a bit of a narrative corner.
  18. Headhunters
    Headhunters has less in common with the somber, brooding tone of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" than the cheeky black comedy "In Bruges."
  19. Children of Paradise (1945)
    To TV-raised minds, Paradise spends more time than it needs to get where it's going. But in its own terms, the movie has flashes of oldtime magic. It's a precious piece of time past -- and time kept.
  20. Frozen
    The animated comedy-adventure has a sweet and very modern message, plus strong characters. More important, the movie blends the music-minded mentality of yore with the more recent ambition (thank you, Pixar) of truly appealing to all ages.
  21. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
    A baggy, at times brutal conglomeration of surprisingly deep character development and aggressively percussive action, The Winter Soldier is a comic-book movie only in its provenance.
  22. A Simple Life
    The movie is often poignant but leavened with humor.
  23. Carrie
    It’s as affecting as drama as it is effective as horror. It wrenches, even as it unnerves.
  24. Noah
    Viewers may not agree about what they’ve seen when they come out of Noah. But there’s no doubt that Aronofsky has made an ambitious, serious, even visionary motion picture, whose super-sized popcorn-movie vernacular may occasionally submerge the story’s more reflective implications, but never drowns them entirely.
  25. Last Call at the Oasis
    As a lucid, emotionally involving portrait of the looming crisis surrounding water - supplies of which are dwindling as contamination rises - Jessica Yu's smartly constructed argument works less as a tutorial than as an infectiously impassioned call to arms.
  26. 42
    Harrison plays Rickey with a jutting jaw, squinting eye and hoarse bark straight out of the Irascible Old Coot playbook, his character constantly invoking God and the almighty dollar to justify what became known as Rickey’s “noble experiment.”
  27. Beloved
    By the time it glides -- not lumbers -- to the closing credits, it's also amazingly moving.
  28. Sleepwalk with Me
    With warmth, unsparing self-awareness and that ineffable Everyman appeal sometimes called "relatability," Birbiglia proves to be as engaging a presence on the screen as he has been all these years onstage and over the radio waves.
  29. Flight
    Just in time for the holiday travel season, Flight brings audiences perhaps the most harrowing scenes of a troubled airplane ever committed to film.
  30. Oslo, August 31st
    Oslo, August 31st builds to an unforgettable climax, a bravura sequence that starts at a party, crawls through a variety of nightclubs and raves, and ends on a note of utterly surprising lyricism.
  31. Pitch Perfect
    For the most part, it works brilliantly.
  32. The Invisible War
    Dick, whose films include a revealing expose about the movie industry's film ratings board, has created yet another galvanizing call to action with The Invisible War.
  33. X-Men: Days of Future Past
    Days of Future Past is, in itself, as intoxicating as a shot of adrenaline. It’s what summer movies are meant to be.
  34. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
    Dawn of the Planet of the Apes works both as allegory and action-adventure film. The internecine conflict between apes mirrors the troubled history of our own race.
  35. War of the Buttons
    Moving without being melodramatic, War of the Buttons is a tale of the worst -- and the best -- that people of all ages are capable of.
  36. Deadfall
    There's a powerfully creepy sensibility to Deadfall. But the way it handles the messiness of families -- a universal message given vivid metaphorical life in the blood and guts it leaves in its path -- is finally rewarding.
  37. Arbitrage
    There are few cinematic pleasures as satisfying to behold as an actor in a role that fits him like a Savile Row suit. Richard Gere offers just such gratification in Arbitrage, a silky, sophisticated Wall Street thriller that finds the actor utterly in his prime, wearing his age and accumulated emotional wisdom with warmth, charisma and nonstop appeal.
  38. The Imposter
    What's most fascinating are the movie's larger questions about why some people tell impossible lies -- and why others believe them.
  39. Farewell, My Queen
    The foreboding and chaos contrast neatly with the lavish costumes and sets. Versailles takes on the feel of a gilded fortress, behind which the serving class hopes to hide. But money can't buy everything, including, in this case, security.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Ballplayer: Pelotero
    It's a story with serious human drama that will make you think a little differently the next time you watch your favorite team take the field.
  41. The World's End
    This movie’s pleasures are less about its villains and more about the interplay between Pegg and Frost.
  42. The Impossible
    The film is studded with many tiny, lovely moments.
  43. Chicken with Plums
    A whimsical, sad, diverting and altogether delightful exploration of how cinema can benefit, not only from glancing back at its own past, but by staying open to parallel forms of presentation and play.
  44. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
    The only artwork by Ai that Klayman's film dwells on at any length -- aside from the iconic "bird's nest" stadium he helped design for the Beijing Olympics, and then denounced as tasteless -- is "Sunflower Seeds." Created for a 2010 exhibition at London's Tate Modern, the installation featured 100 million hand-painted ceramic sunflower seeds spread out on the floor.
  45. The Conjuring
    Whatever your belief system, this much is gospel: Movies like The Conjuring are less about the battle between God and Satan than the battle between the silly and the scary.
  46. Rush
    Howard directs Rush with speed and jangly, jarring verve, bringing the races themselves to white-knuckled life and allowing the men’s stories to play out with only slightly predictable reversals, upsets and, inevitably, those hard lessons learned.
  47. Not Fade Away
    In writer-director David Chase's heartfelt delivery, this same old tune somehow comes out sounding fresh.
  48. The Other Dream Team
    The documentary offers a fascinating and heartfelt examination of history through the microcosm of one sport.
  49. 10 Years
    10 Years doesn't completely avoid the road-not-taken theme. It does, however, neatly navigate around many of the potholes, finding a novel and nuanced approach to addressing the ways that our mistakes make us better, wiser and more human.
  50. Chasing Ice
    Chasing Ice aims to accomplish, with pictures, what all the hot air that has been generated on the subject of global warming hasn't been able to do: make a difference.
  51. A Royal Affair
    But even appreciated simply as a little-known chapter of European history, it proves consistently engrossing, edifying and affecting.
  52. West of Memphis
    West of Memphis makes a lucid, absorbing contribution to an epic saga that Berlinger and Sinofsky first wrestled into an 18-year-long narrative that changed two lives and saved one. And it gives that epic an ending that's happy, sad, inspiring, infuriating, right and terribly wrong, all at the same time.
  53. Quartet
    Smoothly navigating the perilous line between insufferably twee and heartbreakingly grim, Quartet is a subtle, sure-footed delight.
  54. Beauty Is Embarrassing
    Beauty Is Embarrassing stays true to White's own exacting standards: It's thoughtful, skillfully executed and pure pop pleasure, from start to finish.
  55. Detropia
    That Detropia won't be just another well-reported urban obituary is clear from the film's arresting opening moments.
  56. Step Up To The Plate
    It's the story of changing chefs and changing seasons. It looks at food as not just something that nourishes our bodies, but as something that enriches our lives and our relationships.
  57. Trolls
    Like the hit single on its soundtrack, “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” the movie Trolls is irresistibly charming because of a simple but catchy hook.
  58. Kung Fu Panda 3
    Directors Jennifer Yuh Nelson and Alessandro Carloni deploy a gorgeous color palette for the Chinese countryside, using vibrant, swirling shades of green, blue and red for the panda hideaway....The directors also make sure to let Po stay the charming bumbler he’s always been. That’s what makes him such an earnest, lovable hero.
  59. Divergent
    Director Neil Burger (“Limitless”) has crafted a popcorn flick that’s leaner, more propulsive and more satisfying than the bestseller that inspired it.
  60. Admission
    Admission is not especially funny. The trailer can’t seem to make up its mind. On the one hand, it looks like a satire of academia. On the other hand, it could be a gentle rom-com. In truth, it’s neither.
  61. The House I Live In
    Technically, The House I Live In isn't season six of "The Wire." But Eugene Jarecki's investigative documentary probing our nation's futile war on drugs is so similar in tone and intent to HBO's acclaimed series that fans of the defunct television program will want to take a look.
  62. Edge of Tomorrow
    Like summer movies themselves, it’s become so easy to be glib in dismissing Tom Cruise. “Edge of Tomorrow” provides welcome and hugely entertaining evidence that he’s still a star of considerable gifts, and savvy enough not to let them be squandered just yet.
  63. Saving Mr. Banks
    Saving Mr. Banks doesn’t always straddle its stories and time periods with the utmost grace. But the film — which John Lee Hancock directed from a script by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith — more than makes up for its occasionally unwieldy structure in telling a fascinating and ultimately deeply affecting story.
  64. Brooklyn Castle
    Enlightening, inspiring and expertly crafted documentary.
  65. Ant-Man
    The second half of this nearly two-hour film is a pure delight — fast-paced and funny and filled with special effects and humor as great as any recent Marvel movie, with the possible exception of “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
  66. Bears
    The spectacular cinematography (which took a year to capture), the sometimes silly and sentimental narration, and the alternately cutesy and menacing score are all used to showcase the dramatic lengths the wildlife kingdom’s most famously protective mother will go to provide for her cubs.
  67. The Bay
    A ripped-from-the-headlines psychological chiller that burrows under the skin with its terrifyingly local twist.
  68. Ginger & Rosa
    Suffused with enormous compassion for the young woman at its center, this parable of awakenings shares some DNA with the art house hit “An Education” but has little of that movie’s nods to cozy humor and happy endings.
  69. Much Ado About Nothing
    With Much Ado About Nothing, Whedon has crafted an endearing bagatelle, made with equal parts brio and love, ambition and pared-down modesty.
  70. Barbara
    In the vein of such recent classics as "The Lives of Others" and "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," Christian Petzold's Barbara re-visits the quiet, everyday tragedies of the Iron Curtain era, when paranoia ran deep and for very good reasons.
  71. Muppets Most Wanted
    The wittiest jokes and cameo appearances are designed to soar far over the heads of young filmgoers and into the atavistic pop consciousness of their adult companions.
  72. No
    No isn’t nearly as definitive or declarative as its title: It leaves viewers wondering whether they should cheer, shrug or shake their heads.
  73. Blue Jasmine
    Blue Jasmine may not be a comeback in any aesthetic or professional sense, but it nevertheless feels like Allen has come back: to the psychic space and collective anxieties of the country of his birth and a real world that, for a while there, he seemed to have left behind.
  74. The Maze Runner
    As incomplete as the narrative is, The Maze Runner delivers on almost every other level.
  75. Sweetgrass
    It's a gorgeous and, believe it or not, riveting documentary . . . about sheep.
  76. The East
    As usual, Marling is a pleasure to watch for the psychological complexity and contradictions of her character. This time, the story almost lives up to the performance.
  77. The Company You Keep
    At its core, The Company You Keep is a good, solid thriller about a fugitive trying to clear his name. But it’s a much more interesting movie at the edges.
  78. The Boxtrolls
    The story of The Boxtrolls, in lesser hands, might have turned out only so-so. Under Laika’s loving, labor-intensive touch, it takes on a kind of magic.
  79. Beyond the Hills
    The filmmaker’s dedication to non-judgment occasionally militates against narrative drive: Beyond the Hills begins to sag in its middle sequences, when the repetitive monotony of Alina’s outbursts begins to yield diminishing returns. But he has made a film that’s worth even those wearying sequence.
  80. The Bling Ring
    Like a seductively lambent hall of mirrors, The Bling Ring lays bare the venality of train-wreck celebrity culture, striving and self-deception by dramatizing a fact that’s as delicious as it is depressing.
  81. The Spectacular Now
    The movie captures the raw excitement and heartbreak of adolescence so completely that it manages to replace a seen-it-all jaded heart with the butterflies that accompany fresh experiences.
  82. Flatliners
    Flatliners is a heart-stopping, breathtakingly sumptuous haunted house of a movie.
  83. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
    It can feel, at times, both overlong and oversimplified, but the story propels itself along while awakening in viewers some profound emotions.
  84. Populaire
    Populaire is a mostly delightful and entirely unironic throwback to the kind of film they stopped making about 50 years ago.
  85. What Maisie Knew
    Primarily, What Maisie Knew is a showcase for consistently superb performances that, while utterly grounded in their characters, succeed in keeping viewers off-balance as to who will do what, and when.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    V/H/S/2
    The gory and grotesque V/H/S/2 marks such a drastic improvement over its predecessor, though, that I’m actually eager to see who signs up for the inevitable third endeavor. With the right people in p
  87. The Wall
    Pölsler’s film is quietly deliberate without ever feeling slow.
  88. Murph: The Protector
    The challenge for any filmmaker wanting to convey the personal tales of our nation’s armed forces likely lies in finding a narrative as compelling, relatable and sentimental as the one told in Murph: The Protector.
  89. 20 Feet from Stardom
    It’s a story of standing out and blending in, sometimes at the same time.
  90. Finding Dory
    In deciding not to stray far from the first film in plot or tone, it makes for a pleasant, familiar, cheerfully unassuming fish-in-her-water tale.
  91. The Attack
    On one level, The Attack is a mystery, but not the kind you think. It’s obvious from the start who detonated the bomb; the only question is why. It’s a question that probably cannot be answered to the satisfaction of anyone living outside Israel or the occupied territories.
  92. Short Term 12
    Short Term 12 is that rare movie gutsy enough to tell the truth about love: that it’s not a poetic longing or a magical-thinking happy ending, but a skill. And, the film suggests, we all have the capacity to learn it.
  93. Don Jon
    Don Jon is a disarming film that proves Gordon-Levitt’s deftness both behind the camera and in front of a computer screen, writing.
  94. The Hunt
    Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen delivers an astonishingly restrained and expressive central performance in The Hunt, an engrossing psycho-social drama by Thomas Vinterberg.
  95. The Patience Stone
    Farahani’s performance is outstanding. She comes across as both delicate and fierce, and her sad-eyed anguish is palpable.
  96. In a World...
    In a World . . . is a lot of fun, reflecting Bell’s own obvious love of piquant paradox and the music of the spoken word. But it also has a sharply observant streak that makes it as nourishing as it is endearingly nutty.
  97. 22 Jump Street
    This is a sequel that wears its well-worn formula, mocking inside jokes and gleeful taste for overkill proudly, flying the high-lowbrow flag for audiences that like their comedy just smart enough to be not-too-dumb.
  98. Heaven Is for Real
    Thanks to a sensitive performance from Kinnear, as well as from a terrific cast of supporting actors, what could have been merely a feel-good exercise in Eschatology Lite instead becomes a wholesome but also surprisingly tough-minded portrait of a man wrestling with his faith.
  99. Out of the Furnace
    A well-acted, beautifully filmed, utterly depressing chronicle of revenge and thwarted dreams in post-industrial America.
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