Washington Post's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. White House Down
    White House Down never quite seems to decide what kind of movie it wants to be, although by firepower alone it qualifies as this summer’s most cartoonishly bombastic exercise in sensory overload (so far).
  2. The Heat
    Bullock and McCarthy and the chemistry they generate are far more compelling than the movie they’re in. Too often the sketches go on too long, and the coarse, abrasive tone quickly begins to feel repetitive and off-putting.
  3. 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.
  4. World War Z
    The result is a movie that, while no classic, can be credited with giving the audience something a bit more substantive than the usual disposable summer fare.
  5. Molly's Theory of Relativity
    The movie features not one, but two precocious children, a cloying stock character that should be used sparingly, if at all. And much of the dialogue sounds fake, veering alternately toward cutesy and overly cerebral.
  6. Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself
    He was many things, the documentary reveals, but self-serious was not among the late writer’s lengthy list of descriptors.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. Monsters University
    Crystal, 65, and Goodman, 61, are a long time out of college, but they somehow manage to carry off the callowness of youth.
  10. Fill the Void
    The movie confounds at times with its aversion to clearly explaining each relationship and ritual, but ultimately that makes each realization seem more like a new discovery.
    • 29 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Vehicle 19
    A lean, low-budget and claustrophobic mistaken-identity thriller that’s so stripped-down, it’s nearly nonexistent.
  12. Dirty Wars
    The film is a documentary, pure and simple. But the movie, by director Rick Rowley, plays out like something of a murder mystery.
  13. Pandora's Promise
    In the end, its somewhat equivocal message — that nuclear power might just be the lesser of several evils — is more convincing than you’d think.
  14. Man of Steel
    Snyder tries to up the spectacle ante with ever more explosions, crashes, thermal blasts, topological realignments, gunfire and mano-a-mano fistfights. But the result is a punishing sense of diminishing returns and a genre that has finally reached the point of mayhem-induced exhaustion.
  15. Hating Breitbart
    The depiction of an always energetic and often furious Breitbart may please the man’s followers. But Marcus makes little effort to illuminate Breitbart’s character or motivation, so this high-pitched portrait ends up a little flat.
  16. This Is the End
    Rogen and his friends may have set out to celebrate virtue at its uneasiest, but they’re clearly still most at home with earthly delights.
  17. 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.
  18. The Kings of Summer
    Without the benefit of deeper psychological spadework, The Kings of Summer stays resolutely on the surface, resembling more of an extended sitcom than a memorable movie on a par with the films it references.
  19. Violet & Daisy
    The actors can’t compensate for a story that ultimately sputters.
  20. Wish You Were Here
    The ending is neither outlandish nor foreseeable, which is its own impressive accomplishment.
  21. The Purge
    The people of 2022 may “release the beast” by slaughtering their fellow Americans. In 2013, that’s still what we go to the movies for.
  22. The Internship
    The fact that this overlong, often preposterous comedy succeeds at all (which it does, only occasionally) proves that the Vaughn/Wilson charm can still work a measure of magic.
  23. After Earth
    You can’t blame Will Smith for wanting to give his son a leg up in the business. Maybe one day Jaden will have his father’s career — and his ability to carry a movie. For now, it’s a little premature to ask him to bear the weight of this soggy, waterlogged “Earth” on his skinny shoulders.
  24. Now You See Me
    The problem is that, in focusing on what makes a good caper, director Louis Leterrier forgot about what makes a good movie: character development, carefully constructed tension and believable plot points.
  25. 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.
  26. Frances Ha
    The writing is so musical, so attuned to human frailty and aspiration, that I defy anyone to watch the movie without smiling — with amusement one minute, rueful recognition the next, but probably always with some measure of simple, undiluted delight.
  27. Epic
    Enormously visually appealing, even if the story itself is almost unrecognizably bloated.
  28. Fast & Furious 6
    Like its predecessors, doesn’t need CGI, 3-D glasses or even praise from film critics. It just needs to please its audience with amped-up, old-school thrills that make its target demo whoop and holler with every zoom, smash and ka-BOOM. Consider this review a declaration that it does just that.
  29. The Hangover Part III
    To make matters worse, this third “Hangover” is dull.
  30. Stories We Tell
    With its ingenious structure, seamless visual conceits and mordant humor, Stories We Tell is a masterful film on technical and aesthetic values alone. But because of the wisdom and compassion of its maker, it rises to another level entirely.
  31. Star Trek Into Darkness
    The casting coup here is Benedict Cumberbatch, who exudes steely resolve and silken savagery as a villain on the cusp of becoming a legendary nemesis.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 88 Critic Score
    Venus and Serena
    The documentary also reveals the sisters’ almost symbiotic closeness. They live together most of the year, cook together, do karaoke together and joke about how difficult it would be if one chose to get married.
  33. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
    The Reluctant Fundamentalist will likely make some people mad because of the way it holds the United States responsible for the repercussions of its actions in the world. Like Changez himself, the film has a complicated relationship with the superpower.
  34. The Great Gatsby
    Childlike, fetishistic and painfully literal, Luhrmann’s experiment proves once again that it’s Fitzgerald’s writing — not his plot, his characters or his grasp of material detail — that has always made “Gatsby” great.
  35. At Any Price
    At Any Price finally hinges on tragedies, reversals and moral ambiguities of Shakespearean proportions, but they’re delivered ploddingly rather than as the intricate parts of an inevitable whole. At Any Price ultimately suffers from the very phenomenon it laments: Like Henry Whipple’s farm, it feels more mechanistic than organic.
  36. Iron Man 3
    A frantic, occasionally funny, finally enervating bricolage of special effects, explosive set pieces, sardonic one--liners and notional human emotions, this branch of the Marvel franchise tree feels brittle and over--extended enough to snap off entirely.
  37. Mud
    This is where a filmmaker’s taste and reflexive sense of balance makes all the difference. Southern culture may be on the skids in Mud, but Nichols’s sensitive portrayal is gratifyingly on the level.
  38. The Big Wedding
    Even the susceptible softies, who always cry at weddings, will probably leave the theater dry-eyed, not to mention feeling a little empty inside.
  39. Arthur Newman
    A film in search of a tighter edit and a stronger point of view. It meanders from scene to scene, calling to mind the images of leaking faucets and dribbling IV fluid that appear here in close-up.
  40. Pain & Gain
    The whole thing is played for laughs that almost never come. To be sure, the film has its moments, but they’re few and far between.
  41. Disconnect
    If this strikes you as vaguely familiar, you’re right: Disconnect is a computer “Crash.”
  42. Oblivion
    It’s an engrossing, if complicated and twisty, story, with plentiful sci-fi action and a provocative subtext about the nature of the human soul. At times, however, the balance between those two things feels off.
  43. Scary Movie 5
    Lazy, boring, vile and tragically unfunny attempt at a horror-film spoof.
  44. Trance
    There’s a little too much happening in the film’s violent, frenetic conclusion, which involves the retrieval of fractured memories, the confession of betrayals and so many narrative loops within loops that the film’s big reveals never make perfect, deeply satisfying sense. Maybe it’s not supposed to.
  45. 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.
  46. To the Wonder
    Clocks in at close to two hours. It feels much longer. By comparison, Malick’s World War II epic “The Thin Red Line” tipped the scales at a whopping 170 minutes. But at least that 1998 film had people shooting at each other. There’s no such excitement here.
  47. 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.”
  48. Evil Dead
    More stomach-churning than soul-chilling. The list of on-screen atrocities includes attacks by nail gun, electric carving knife, chain saw, shotgun, crowbar and chunk of ceramic from a broken toilet tank, used as a crude bludgeon.
  49. The Host
    It’s a mushy and unsuspenseful melodrama.
  50. Starbuck
    It’s silly and a bit sappy, but it works, in a crowd-pleasing way.
  51. G.I. Joe: Retaliation
    Although “G.I. Joe” is merely a movie based on Hasbro toys, the action -- the real point of all this -- feels just as lifeless.
  52. InAPPropriate Comedy
    A more accurate title would be “Inept, Inadequate and Insipid Comedy.”
  53. The Croods
    Just good, goofy fun, for a generation too young to have met Bamm-Bamm.
  54. Olympus Has Fallen
    Olympus Has Fallen at least possesses the frisson of timeliness amid otherwise hoary action-movie cliches.
  55. 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.
  56. Spring Breakers
    How on earth is it possible for one film to be so tiresome? Spring Breakers isn’t deadly dull despite all the nudity and violence, but because of it.
  57. 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.
  58. Upside Down
    In Upside Down, writer-director Juan Solanas takes the gimmick about as far as it can go, rendering the metaphor of longing and separation in effective, and richly visual, terms. If anything, however, he goes too far.
  59. Stoker
    Stoker plays out like a Kabuki “Macbeth”: gallons of style slathered on a story you already know by heart.
  60. 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.
  61. The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
    A generic, fitfully funny mainstream comedy that doesn’t nearly get the best from its name-brand players but doesn’t qualify as a desecration, either.
  62. Emperor
    This drama is serious and well made but will appeal primarily to those with an interest in the devastated setting (1945 Tokyo) and the enigmatic title character (Emperor Hirohito).
  63. Oz the Great and Powerful
    About the movie industry’s misguided belief that it can distract the audience from a film’s narrative weaknesses with little more than flash and spectacle. That con might have worked with the rubes once upon a time, but in case Hollywood hasn’t noticed, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
  64. Jack the Giant Slayer
    Too scary for very young children, yet too silly for most older fans of director Bryan Singer’s earlier forays into the Superman and X-Men franchises, “Jack” seems designed to appeal to a very narrow, and possibly illusory, demographic: the mature moppet.
  65. Phantom
    Intriguing, if uneven, thriller.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 25 Critic Score
    The Last Exorcism Part II
    An ineffective excursion that maintains a few direct ties back to the original film but never moves the story forward.
  67. A Place at the Table
    The problem, as “Table” shows, isn’t that the next meal never comes. It’s that when it arrives, too often it is filled with empty calories.
  68. 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.
  69. Dark Skies
    The movie builds a moderate, if less than monumental, level of spookiness, regardless of your ignorance. It’s a workmanlike piece of suspense.
  70. Snitch
    Snitch is protein-and-starch filmmaking at its utilitarian -- and belly-filling -- best. Johnson brings the steak; Bernthal the sizzle. The father-son drama is served up as sauce on the side. But as long as the beef isn’t too overcooked, who needs the A1?
  71. Safe Haven
    Safe Haven is one of those Valentine’s Day confections that satisfy your sweet tooth until you get to their weird, off-putting center. The problem with movies is that you can’t put them back in the box.
  72. Beautiful Creatures
    His screenplay for Beautiful Creatures is sharp and witty, considering the needlessly complicated source material. His cast is stellar, and the chemistry between his young stars magical. But too much of rest of the movie, like Thompson’s monstrous mother, is an unholy mess.
  73. A Good Day to Die Hard
    Both assaultive and tiresome, A Good Day to Die Hard barely registers on the action movie Richter scale. It goes bang, it goes boom, and then it blessedly goes away.
  74. Identity Thief
    McCarthy’s willingness to go to the mat notwithstanding, it’s viewers who are likely left feeling punched in the gut.
  75. Side Effects
    Like a gel cap in a sip of orange juice, the psycho-pharmacological thriller Side Effects goes down easily, even if its long-term impact turns out to be barely dis­cern­ible.
  76. Stand Up Guys
    It's Walken who grounds every scene with the kind of watchful honesty that has become his brand in late-career.
  77. Warm Bodies
    Cute without being especially clever, Warm Bodies is almost as pallid and as brain-dead as its zombie antihero.
  78. Bullet to the Head
    Hill and Stallone seem determined simply to prove that, even in their golden years, they're still tough enough to rumble with all comers. Bullet to the Head exposes that bravado for the pose that it is, and it's not a good look.
  79. Parker
    Parker the movie, like the man, delivers exactly as promised.
  80. Movie 43
    Movie 43 is a near masterpiece of tastelessness. The anthology of 12 short, interconnected skits elevates the art form of gross-out comedy to a new height.
  81. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
    A rarely funny spoof that's heavy on bone-crushing and blood-gushing.
  82. Quartet
    Smoothly navigating the perilous line between insufferably twee and heartbreakingly grim, Quartet is a subtle, sure-footed delight.
  83. 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.
  84. Mama
    There's something dead and rotting at the center of Mama, and it isn't the ghost of the woman who lends the horror film its title.
  85. The Last Stand
    That's the thing about this corpse pileup of an action movie. It persistently tries to drag the audience down to its mindless level.
  86. LUV
    It's a shame that the plot proves to be such a head-scratcher when so many elements of the film seem promising.
  87. Broken City
    Overall, this is an entertaining diversion.
  88. Amour
    Amour is a must-see film that not everyone must see, at least right now.
  89. Gangster Squad
    Slick, sick, self-consciously stylish and defiantly shallow, Gangster Squad is one of those movies you can't talk about without invoking other (often better) movies. A lot of movies.
  90. Zero Dark Thirty
    By and large, Zero Dark Thirty dispenses with sentimentality and speculation, portraying the final mission not with triumphalist zeal or rank emotionalism but with a reserved, even mournful sense of ambivalence.
  91. Not Fade Away
    In writer-director David Chase's heartfelt delivery, this same old tune somehow comes out sounding fresh.
  92. Promised Land
    Despite their Everyman appeal, Damon and Krasinski don't create much by way of emotional investment, instead becoming mirror images of their most mild-mannered, white-bread selves.
  93. Parental Guidance
    It's hard to know who exactly Parental Guidance was made for.
  94. Django Unchained
    Breathes its own refreshing, occasionally demented, life into that time period, albeit in a pulpy, stylized cinematic language more akin to vampire-hunter cartoonishness than "Lincoln's" more classical reserve.
  95. Les Miserables
    For better or worse, though, this adaptation of the mega-hit Broadway musical fits neither description, largely because it lives in that kinda-sorta, okay-not-great, this-worked-that-didn't in-between for which words like "better" and "worse" fall woefully short.
  96. Rust and Bone
    Turns out to be one of the most transportingly romantic movies of the year, one that finds the most stirring emotion in struggle rather than in ginned-up melodrama or easy resolution.
  97. The Guilt Trip
    Anne Fletcher's lifeless comedy about an overbearing mother and her exasperated adult son, has no flawlessly delivered punch lines. It doesn't even have a hangnail.
  98. Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away
    Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away has plenty of eye candy... What the movie lacks, unfortunately, is coherence.
  99. 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.
  100. The Impossible
    The film is studded with many tiny, lovely moments.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »