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. The First Grader
    It's heartwarming. But the film never really takes fire.
  2. Jumping the Broom
    Thank goodness for Tasha Smith's character, Shonda. She supplies the only reliable laughs as Pam's fun-loving best friend.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Forks Over Knives
    Forks is a plate of vegetables. It's high on nutritional value but absent any pleasure.
  4. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
    He (Herzog) emerged with a breathtaking tour of art that, in its formal sophistication, dynamism and rhythmic lines, looks as bold and new as Cezanne's work must have looked in the 1860s.
  5. Meek's Cutoff
    A mesmerizing cinematic journey that is often as arduous and spare as the lives of its hard-bitten protagonists.
  6. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
    On Stranger Tides feels as fresh and bracingly exhilarating as the day Jack Sparrow first swashed his buckle.
  7. Hesher
    Bad role models sometimes make the most interesting movie characters. The ill-mannered, unkempt, foulmouthed and hot-tempered title character of Hesher is just such a walking contradiction.
  8. Bridesmaids
    Wiig has the natural beauty and self-deprecating expressiveness it takes to be a star comedienne; she spends much of Bridesmaids looking like a slightly girlier version of Lucinda Williams.
  9. Everything Must Go
    If it sounds wholly bleak, it isn't. Remember, this is a movie about a yard sale. Over the course of the film, Nick struggles with the idea of, as he puts it, "selling all my crap" - he means that both literally and metaphorically - and getting on with his life. That sentiment, and Ferrell's refusal to sentimentalize it, is reason enough to smile.
  10. Something Borrowed
    Something Borrowed clinches it: It is not okay to sleep with the fiance of one's best friend. What's odd, and ultimately icky, is how enthusiastically the film attempts to justify doing so.
  11. There Be Dragons
    There Be Dragons is like fine wine, served in a Big Gulp cup. A little is very nice. A lot is way too much.
  12. The Beaver
    In a triumph of cinema over celebrity gossip, The Beaver mostly makes us forget about Gibson's madman persona and simply draws us into the story that he and director Jodie Foster, who also plays Walter's wife, Meredith, want to tell.
  13. Thor
    The effects are effective. The humor is humorous and just self-referential enough to let you know the film doesn't take itself too seriously.
  14. Prom
    Nor will you find much excitement, tension or resemblance to actual teen culture in this whitewash of the quintessential rite of passage.
  15. The Princess of Montpensier
    At times, "Princess" resembles a widescreen Hollywood western, with exhilarating Steadicam shots of horsemen galloping across broad plains and corpse-strewn fields.
  16. Fast Five
    It delivers the most entertaining "Fast and Furious" adventure while also getting 2011's summer movie season off on the right lead foot.
  17. African Cats
    Ultimately, this is a universal story about how these wild mothers, like their human counterparts, sacrifice again and again - all to make sure their children are happy, healthy and well fed.
  18. POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
    Like the best ad man, he makes his point by making us laugh.
  19. Potiche
    Fortunately, for both Ozon and the viewer, the title character is played by Catherine Deneuve, who can very nearly carry a film by herself.
  20. Winter in Wartime
    The most compelling thing about Winter in Wartime, the Netherlands' official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars, is not the story. And the story is pretty darn compelling.
  21. Water for Elephants
    Big, slick and showy. It is also undeniably effective entertainment.
  22. Atlas Shrugged: Part I
    Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 is nearly as stilted, didactic and simplistic as Rand's free-market fable.
  23. Scream 4
    The problem is, the movie doesn't really care if we are laughing with it or at it.
  24. The Conspirator
    In The Conspirator, Wright announces in no uncertain terms that she is back and more than ready for her close-up.
  25. Rubber
    Rolls straight over silly, smashing through stupid without stopping and then barreling into a kind of insane comic brilliance without so much as a speed bump to slow it down.
  26. Rio
    This is a movie that imbues even the hoariest quest-peril-life lesson tropes of family animated films and imbues them with new life and rhythm.
  27. Winston Churchill: Walking with Destiny
    Still, what separates Walking With Destiny from a run-of-the-mill war documentary isn't necessarily its insights into its main subject but its tangential stories about fascinating nobodies.
  28. Arthur
    This Arthur is an exercise in time-travel tedium, a trip to the Land That Funny Forgot.
  29. Soul Surfer
    The swells of inspirational storytelling sometimes threaten to swamp the underlying inspirational story.
  30. Your Highness
    While the chemistry between characters is impressive and the comic delivery spot-on, the jokes feel unoriginal.
  31. In a Better World
    This meditation on violence explores the toxic knock-on effect of powerlessness and overcompensation, delivering a potent essay on the roots of society's most primal evils.
  32. Hanna
    The single most compelling reason to see Hanna is Hanna herself. As played by Saoirse Ronan, who made her first big splash as another morally challenged youngster in Wright's 2007 "Atonement," the character is a fascinating and frustrating cipher.
  33. Source Code
    A taut, mostly well-crafted race against the clock that combines the time-loop conceit of "Groundhog Day" and the postwar paranoia of "The Manchurian Candidate."
  34. Hop
    A piece of fluff as artificially sweetened as a fuchsia Peep, rises above these low expectations - but only barely.
  35. Insidious
    You can't criticize it for false advertising.
  36. Sucker Punch
    An extremely boyish ode to girl power.
  37. Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules
    You can't fault the filmmakers for reshaping a diary into a cohesive film. You can however, fault them for taking one of the great antiheroes in preteen literature and turning him into, well, an even wimpier kid.
  38. I Am
    While I Am has its boogeymen - especially the rich, the racist and the ultra-competitive - Shadyac implicates himself whenever possible.
  39. Limitless
    A heck of a ride. On the way to its unpredictable (if less than wholly satisfying) conclusion, it is entertaining, a little silly and visually dazzling.
  40. Win Win
    In spirit, and sheer joie de vivre, it's everything the movie business should aspire to. Win Win exemplifies movies the way they oughtta be.
  41. Paul
    The derriere-flashing, dope-smoking, potty-mouthed antics of this antisocial E.T. justify every bit of the rating that the MPAA has slapped on him.
  42. The Lincoln Lawyer
    A pleasantly seedy crime thriller.
  43. Jane Eyre
    While qualifying as the most gorgeously appointed and finely detailed version of the novel so far, still lacks the element of essential fire to make it come fully, even subversively, to life.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Mars Needs Moms
    A majestic musical score by the great composer John Powell somehow makes everything old feel fresh and wondrous again.
  45. Red Riding Hood
    A lurid, loopy, utterly ludicrous enterprise.
  46. Battle: Los Angeles
    H.G. Wells did it better. This movie spends so much yawn-inducing time on variations of the same combat scenario that its final showdown feels rushed.
  47. Even the Rain (Tambien la Lluvia)
    Telling an old story in a new way and infusing what might have been a dry political polemic with poetry, passion and unlikely warmth.
  48. Drive Angry 3D
    "Drive Trashy" would be a more accurate title for the first 45 minutes of this gore-spurting, sex-flaunting romp. And that's the good part.
  49. Take Me Home Tonight
    If director Michael Dowse took Matt and Tori out of the equation - which is to say, if he took out the main storyline - the whole event could have been a lot more fun.
  50. Rango
    Depp possesses one of the finest speaking voices in the business - a nimble, mellifluous instrument that can go from sexy growl to fey warble in no seconds flat.
  51. The Adjustment Bureau
    Equal parts playful, sophisticated and engrossing, The Adjustment Bureau is like the first songbird of spring, signaling that the winter of our collective brain-freeze is over and it's safe to go back to the multiplex.
  52. Beastly
    Getting teens to look past the superficial may be a noble goal, but when they're staring at the pretty but talentless Pettyfer, it's a hard lesson to take seriously.
  53. The Grace Card
    Powerful lead performances and the filmmaker's noble attempt at holding a magnifying glass over the Deep South's still-contentious race relations help The Grace Card edge closer to the realm of mainstream entertainment. It's not just a dry sermon in feature-length form.
  54. Nénette
    The animal's striking resemblance to a human is part of what makes Nicolas Philibert's documentary Nenette so evocative.
  55. Hall Pass
    Haphazardly conceived, phlegmatically paced, lazily filmed and punctuated with gratuitous moments of sexual and scatological slapstick.
  56. I Am Number Four
    Unoriginal and woefully half-baked, Number Four plays out as such.
  57. The Last Lions
    The result is a movie that may be geared to a nature film fan base but will also appeal to admirers of good storytelling.
  58. Unknown
    The weakest link in Unknown - okay, other than the utter preposterousness of its entire premise - is Jones, who as a modern-day version of Hitch's ice queens can't hold her own with the likes of Kim Novak, Grace Kelly and Eva Marie Saint.
  59. The Eagle
    Nothing more than an action-packed bagatelle masquerading as history.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Justin Bieber: Never Say Never
    It's a fluffy, mildly inspiring, celebration of the hero leading up to his big moment.
  61. Gnomeo and Juliet
    Any film that dares to cast the bat-chewing heavy-metal legend as a gentle, ceramic reindeer named Fawn is okay in my Bard book.
  62. Cedar Rapids
    Like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton before him, Helms plays a lamb trotting hopefully through the abattoir, blessedly unaware of the blades hanging just above his head.
  63. Just Go with It
    An egregiously unfunny enterprise.
  64. The Illusionist
    It's enough to make you laugh if you didn't feel like crying.
  65. Sanctum
    This is a movie that features not one, but two graphic mercy killings. Forget "127 Hours": Sanctum makes sawing off your own arm look like a minor penalty for the crime of spelunking while clueless.
  66. Undertow
    As if love triangles aren't complicated enough, the bittersweet Peruvian film Undertow offers a couple of twists on the archetype.
  67. And Everything Is Going Fine
    Spalding Gray himself has the last word on his life, something this exacting storyteller would surely have demanded.
  68. The Rite
    Hafstrom largely ignores the progress made by his demon-banishing predecessors and delivers a palatable PG-13 thriller that's safe, soft and sinfully cliched.
  69. Barney's Version
    If Richard J. Lewis's film can't re-create the novel's complex stew of grievances, dirty jokes and misremembered anecdotes, it's still a warm tribute.
  70. Biutiful
    Biutiful soars to its highest points once it shifts its focus away from death to ask us how we are choosing to live our lives.
  71. The Mechanic
    Despite a certain emotional chill, what holds this Mechanic together is - no surprise - the core Carlino story.
  72. The Way Back
    The Way Back diligently catalogs the outrages through which extreme cold, hunger and thirst put the body, and Weir's camera finds the terrible beauty in his actors' chapped lips, windburned cheeks and tenderized feet.
  73. Another Year
    Another Year allows viewers to occupy both psychic spaces, nesting into the warm comforts of a long-lived-in home and then, on a dime, seeing it through the searching eyes of the marginalized figures that, over the course of 11 films, Leigh has so often championed.
  74. My Dog Tulip
    It's hard not to feel a certain affection for a tale that is so unapologetic about just that: affection.
  75. The Dilemma
    Vaughn is the film equivalent of a well-known novelist that no longer gets a good edit. He has the charismatic salesguy shtick down, but he needs a director who can rein him in.
  76. Summer Wars
    Considering it's anime, Summer Wars starts out more like a bad romantic comedy.
  77. The Green Hornet
    Kato's often the best part of the movie. Britt calls him a "human Swiss army knife," and he's right; Kato is not a sidekick, but a fully formed hero who's full of surprises.
  78. Season of the Witch
    The movie proceeds in near darkness, perhaps to obscure its shoddy special effects, but the pervasive gloom is less discouraging than star Nicolas Cage's indifferent performance.
  79. Country Strong
    Disjointed drama filled with one-dimensional characters and melodrama so Lifetime movie-esque that it careens into unintentional comedy.
  80. Blue Valentine
    Writer-director Derek Cianfrance, who with Blue Valentine makes an astonishing debut.
  81. Gulliver's Travels
    Unnecessary and unfunny re-imagining of the classic satire by Jonathan Swift.
  82. Rabbit Hole
    What on the surface seems to possess all the melodrama and photogenic suffering of a banal prime-time weepie instead becomes a lucid, tough, deeply sensitive examination of emotional fortitude.
  83. How Do You Know
    It's the kind of movie that succeeds as a culmination of moments that ring true and sweet.
  84. Somewhere
    "Don't tell, show" has been the writer's imperative for generations; Coppola takes that edict to its most visual and satisfying extremes.
  85. Casino Jack
    That's the problem with the whole movie, which lies halfway between poker-face documentary and broad farce.
  86. Little Fockers
    How bad is the third installment... So bad that this bland, pointless sequel features a gratuitous scene where the stunning Jessica Alba - one of many new faces added to an already overstuffed ensemble - strips down to her lacy undergarments, belly-flops into a backyard pit, rolls around in the mud, and I still can't recommend you pay to see it.
  87. True Grit
    True Grit has sweep and scope and entertainment value to burn, but it's Mattie who invests even the grandest aesthetic elements with meaning.
  88. The Fighter
    If you think "Rocky" and "Raging Bull" define the alpha and omega of boxing movies, think again. David O. Russell's The Fighter proves there's still punch in the genre, especially when a filmmaker tells a familiar story in a brand-new way.
  89. The Tempest
    Boasting a plot that's heavy on the magical shenanigans, this pretty and poetic adaptation of Shakespeare's play is a fantasia for the smart set, a literary novelty for anyone who wants to have fun without giving up food for thought. On that score, at least, it delivers, in spades.
  90. Yogi Bear
    An uninspired studio product that demands as little from the audience as it did from its writers, directors and actors.
  91. TRON: Legacy
    There are worse things than being trapped inside a computer game with Olivia Wilde. In Tron: Legacy, the loud, long and less than wholly satisfying sequel to "Tron," that's the bittersweet fate of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), the computer-nerd hero of both the 1982 sci-fi cult classic and its high-tech, 3-D update.
  92. The King's Speech
    It's the kind of absorbing, attractive, unfailingly tasteful enterprise that a critic can recommend without caveat.
  93. Megamind
    Megamind has presentation in spades. But it also has something even rarer than that. It's got heart.
  94. Due Date
    Due Date isn't pretty; in fact, it gets kind of ugly. But, at least in the eyes of certain beholders, therein lies its peculiar, bent beauty.
  95. Cool It
    Some of it sounds, quite frankly, nuts. And a few of Lomborg's enemies have said as much. But throwing tons of money at the problem with little result? That also sounds kind of crazy.
  96. Unstoppable
    From the story itself to the way it's told, Unstoppable is a hymn to stylish, unpretentious competence.
  97. Love and Other Drugs
    A jagged little pill of a movie from baby boomer avatar Edward Zwick.
  98. Faster
    In Faster, it's a car, not actors, that drives movie.
  99. Monsters
    No ordinary horror film. If it were, it might be a bit better than it is. As the movie stands, it's a less-than-compelling relationship drama, with aliens.
  100. Welcome to the Rileys
    "Welcome to the Rileys"? Thanks, but no thanks.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »