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. Tangled
    One thousand points of light never looked so fetching.
  2. Burlesque
    Burlesque delivers eyeful after eyeful of rapid-fire opulence and spectacle. But its most memorable sight is the indelible image of one star taking flight, and another triumphantly staying put.
  3. Marwencol
    At its heart, it's about the communities we forge - real and imagined - to save our own lives.
  4. I Love You Phillip Morris
    There's plenty to scratch your head about here. Is it a drama? A comedy? And if it's a farce, what's it making fun of?
  5. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
    After all, it isn't every kid's movie that wrestles with the subject of faith in a higher power, or sin, or the afterlife. And it isn't every kid's film that can do it so entertainingly. Sure, that's heavy stuff if you're looking for it. But it doesn't spoil the great, great fun to be had in Narnia - or the magical spell it casts - if you're not.
  6. All Good Things
    All Good Things is creepy and weird and sad, and little else.
  7. The Tourist
    Cinema-as-shoplifting is okay, as long as you still get the feeling it's for a greater good. But that's something The Tourist is sorely missing.
  8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I
    It's half of a really good movie, full of the enchantment, emotion and incident for which the Potter series has become so fanatically cherished.
  9. Tiny Furniture
    A funny, affecting movie about growing up in the shadow of a formidable mom.
  10. Waste Land
    Spend some time there, thanks to the documentary Waste Land, and you start to get the sense that, amid the trash, something really is blooming.
  11. White Material
    A lean and hungry thing. With the sparest of storytelling, the French filmmaker ("35 Shots of Rum") devours her audience, swallowing us up in a yarn that is as enigmatic as it is engrossing.
  12. Black Swan
    A near-masterpiece of a film set in the hothouse world of New York ballet.
  13. The Next Three Days
    It plods along dutifully, with the occasional zigzag into contrivance, tidy coincidence and outright preposterousness.
  14. Fair Game
    The kind of taut, serious adult drama Hollywood rarely produces anymore. Quality-starved audiences should flock to it, if only to ensure that more of them get made.
  15. 127 Hours
    Although Ralston's act of desperation is admittedly difficult to watch, viewers who might avoid the film out of squeamishness would be depriving themselves of one of the year's most exhilarating cinematic experiences.
  16. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
    Client 9 doesn't make any excuses for Spitzer, who is interviewed extensively in the film and who wisely insists that he alone is responsible for his fate.
  17. Morning Glory
    Even Mary Tyler Moore's sunny but vulnerable Mary Richards or Tina Fey's Liz Lemon seem more fleshily real than Becky.
  18. For Colored Girls
    It's hard to imagine that any self-respecting man would want to sit through two hours - let alone two minutes - of such caustic man-bashing.
  19. Howl
    Howl mixes a number of story lines and aesthetic approaches: We get glimpses of Ginsberg's early days as a poet, including his relationships with Kerouac and Neal Cassady, as well as a depiction of the trial, where a parade of critics and professors pronounced Ginsberg's creation either a work of genius or irredeemable filth.
  20. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
    The final, deeply satisfying conclusion to the trilogy of Swedish thrillers based on Stieg Larsson's bestselling novels.
  21. Inside Job
    If you think you've absorbed all you could about subprime mortgages, credit default swaps and the arcana of elaborate derivatives, think again. Inside Job traces the history of the crisis and its implications with exceptional lucidity, rigor and righteous indignation.
  22. Life as We Know It
    At nearly two hours, the movie feels bloated. It could easily lose 30 minutes, give or take, and live. It would still not, however, live up to its title.
  23. Tamara Drewe
    In addition to all the rollicking, ribald humor, Tamara Drewe also has a couple of flashes of darkly comic violence. In a literary sense, it's poetic justice, really. Punishment meted out for bad behavior.
  24. Hereafter
    It starts out with a tsunami - and ends up standing in a puddle.
  25. Stone
    Say this about Stone: When it's good, it's very good. And this twisty, atmospheric drama is at its best when Edward Norton takes center screen as the title character.
  26. GhettoPhysics: Will the Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand Up?
    Like "What the Bleep," this movie is a bit of a hodgepodge, blending an interview-driven documentary with a less remarkable story-based drama.
  27. 7 Prisoners
    7 Prisoners is an angry film, but Moratto, crucially, reserves his most intense judgment for an inhumane system, not the characters who are trapped by it, each in different ways.
  28. Youth
    The film’s themes mature from adolescent pettiness to adult regret, with several epilogues set well after the main events of the story.
  29. RED
    Unlike "Wild Hogs" or last summer's "The Expendables," this adaptation of the "Red" graphic novel series gets into a cool, sophisticated swing.
  30. Jackass 3-D
    Jackass is also a touching ode to male friendship at its most primal.
  31. Secretariat
    It's tough to guess who will enjoy Secretariat more -- filmgoers who remember the extraordinary events of 1973, when the chestnut 3-year-old won the first Triple Crown in 25 years, or those for whom the story is brand-new.
  32. It's Kind of a Funny Story
    There's very little that's even kind of funny in It's Kind of a Funny Story, which can't accurately be described as a comedy but isn't a true drama, either.
  33. Nowhere Boy
    Even with all this talent and earnestness, though, Nowhere Boy still feels indulgent, slight and almost instantly forgettable.
  34. The Social Network
    The Social Network has understandably been compared to "Citizen Kane" in its depiction of a man who changes society through bending an emergent technology to his will.
  35. Let Me In
    Let Me In wants to make your flesh crawl, and it probably will. But it's unlikely to ever get under anyone's skin, the way "Let the Right One In" did.
  36. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    Stone has a knack for pacing, detail and atmosphere that manages to feel authentic and fancifully allegorical at the same time.
  37. You Again
    Suffers from an increasingly common movie defect: appealing, sharply drawn supporting characters, and a cast of main characters that is as unlikely as it is unlikable.
  38. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
    And the action? It's especially hard to determine who's fighting whom in "Legends," because, well, because they are a bunch of owls.
  39. Buried
    A well-made, excruciating exercise in containment and sustained suspense. It's a breakout moment for Reynolds. Is it a fun hour and a half? No. But it succeeds within its own straitened contours. It's an intriguing squirm. Now, please get me outta here.
  40. Waiting for 'Superman'
    Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim's scathing, moving critique of American public education, makes you actually want to do something after you dry your eyes.
  41. You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
    It's a highbrow romantic farce, without the laughs.
  42. Jack Goes Boating
    All in all, Jack Goes Boating is an auspicious -- if slightly ostentatious -- debut by Hoffman, one of today's greatest actors. Maybe next time his performance in front of his camera will be as subtle as his performance behind it.
  43. Easy A
    Enhanced by a wicked sense of humor, Will Gluck's movie does what Hughes did best, showcasing characters with personality who make you wish you had them on speed dial.
  44. Alpha and Omega
    The littlest children in your house may find something to titter at from time to time, but based on the reaction of a young screening audience, it won't be often.
  45. The Town
    It's a smart, bold genre exercise that's enormous fun to watch, harking back to gritty urban thrillers of the 1970s with an assured sense of tone and style.
  46. Catfish
    Even in an increasingly virtual world, the filmmakers suggest, keeping it real still matters.
  47. Never Let Me Go
    Epitomizes the kind of somber, aesthetically refined and morally engaged film that commands deep respect without inspiring much affection.
  48. Bran Nue Dae
    So light and airy, it almost floats away on its own breeziness.
  49. Legendary
    Despite the hackneyed script by John Posey, Legendary is not without merit, and the story works fairly successfully as a family drama between Cal, Mike and their single mother, played by the dependable Patricia Clarkson.
  50. The Virginity Hit
    A comedy that looks like a documentary but plays like a horror film -- to parents of teenagers.
  51. Hideaway (Le refuge)
    Sometimes a movie makes a point that's been made before, but makes it so beautifully and so quietly that it feels like you're discovering it for the first time. Hideaway does that, with the obliqueness of an off-hand comment. The glancing touch makes it all the more hard-hitting.
  52. I'm Still Here
    The movie is as damnably perplexing as the subject himself.
  53. Going the Distance
    It's filthy, funny and kind of sweet, if not quite up to the level of Judd Apatow's oeuvre in the burgeoning field of R-rated comedies with heart. You will laugh and blush in equal measure.
  54. Machete
    Despite broad satire about racism and border fences that will appeal to some liberals, the movie doesn't line up neatly along party lines -- except in that other sense of the word "party." It's a movie that just wants to have fun.
  55. Last Train Home
    It's depressing enough to watch this family's struggles with life. But their pain really hits home when you think that the pants you might be wearing could have contributed to it.
  56. A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop
    The Chinese film offers this important take-away: Don't attempt to remake a Coen brothers movie, especially if you plan to turn the thing into a bizarre concoction of melodrama and slapstick comedy.
  57. The American
    An action thriller that adamantly refuses to deliver action or thrills, instead engaging in a brand of arty, self-conscious formalism rarely seen outside repertory theaters or cinema-studies classrooms.
  58. Mesrine: Killer Instinct
    Much of it plays like an unintentional mash-up of the numerous wrong-side-of-the-law sagas that preceded it.
  59. The Last Exorcism
    Stamm creates an anxious psychological horror that's vaguely familiar yet refreshingly original.
  60. Lottery Ticket
    Things really slow down during the movie's ill-advised forays into drama.
  61. Nanny McPhee Returns
    It can take a miracle to create a movie that's fun for kids and their parents. Luckily, Nanny McPhee has a little magic up her sleeve.
  62. The Switch
    The Switch, to its credit, really is about a boy, who with the help of a sensitive, sad-eyed kid, stands a chance of becoming a man.
  63. The Tillman Story
    Emerges as the summer's first true must-see film, required viewing for everyone, but especially audiences in Washington.
  64. Vampires Suck
    Vampires suck? That's a matter of opinion. But here's what inarguably, unequivocally does suck: Vampires Suck.
  65. Eat Pray Love
    Eat Pray Love finally settles into its own cinematic destiny as an attractive escapist love story, in which the romance is more with the I than with the guy.
  66. The Expendables
    A super-stoked action thriller
  67. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
    A dog-frequency movie: enjoyable only to those tuned in to its particular register.
  68. Animal Kingdom
    The most troubling aspect of the story -- and its most compelling -- is the emphasis on banal, everyday life.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Step Up 3-D
    The main reason to see Step Up 3D is for the high-energy dancing and innovative camerawork, and on those points it delivers.
  70. The Other Guys
    For the most part, The Other Guys is seriously silly stuff, in the best sense.
  71. Lebanon
    While the title alone may send people into a tizzy, this actually isn't a movie about which side is right or wrong.
  72. Dinner for Schmucks
    Dinner for Schmucks has already raised hackles in the Yiddish-speaking community for the breathtakingly offensive epithet in its title (and it's not "dinner"). But it turns out that this comedy of humiliation, starring Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, isn't nearly as off-putting as it might have been.
  73. Charlie St. Cloud
    Charlie St. Cloud, like its star Zac Efron, is a gorgeous, unblemished thing. Both would be much improved with a tiny flaw or two.
  74. Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore
    Is it mindless fun for the kids in an air-conditioned environment? I guess, sure, but it's maddening how many details in Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore are swiped wholesale from other stories.
  75. The Extra Man
    Swifter comedic timing and a clearer narrative thread might have helped center this peculiar adaptation of Jonathan Ames's 1998 novel of the same name.
  76. Get Low
    It's as soothing and pure as the sweetest water from the deepest well.
  77. What's the Matter with Kansas?
    Funny? Scary? Entirely logical? It all depends on your point of view, of course, and "What's the Matter With Kansas?" isn't likely to move viewers one way or another.
  78. Salt
    It's popcorn pulp that collided -- at 100 mph, natch -- with a far more sober and crafty grown-up movie.
  79. Ramona and Beezus
    Knits together scenes and themes from all eight of Cleary's Ramona Quimby novels into a sweet and funny, if slightly overlong, portrait of life on a modern-day Klickitat Street.
  80. Countdown to Zero
    Alternately edifying and alarming film about nuclear proliferation.
  81. Inception
    Inception is that rare film that can be enjoyed on superficial and progressively deeper levels, a feat that uncannily mimics the mind-bending journey its protagonist takes.
  82. The Sorcerer's Apprentice
    As Balthazar, Cage doesn't disappoint. He's just manic enough to keep the character from becoming too predictable.
  83. The Kids Are All Right
    Arrives as the perfect midsummer movie, a comedy about a flawed-but-functional family that, like "Toy Story 3," captures the drama of growth and separation in all its exhilaration and heartache.
  84. Predators
    It's hard to take Predators terribly seriously.
  85. Despicable Me
    Hang in there and Despicable Me turns into an improbably heartwarming, not to mention visually delightful, diversion.
  86. The Girl Who Played with Fire
    All too often, the second movie of a trilogy is a bridge. ("The Matrix Reloaded," anyone?) As often as not, it feels more like the first half of the last movie than a film in its own right. The Girl Who Played With Fire is no exception.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Winnebago Man
    Entertaining and thoughtful documentary.
  88. The Last Airbender
    Playing a hero who's meant to be something akin to the young Dalai Lama, Ringer brings less than zero gravitas to the role. He makes the kid who plays Gibby on "iCarly" look like Sir Laurence Olivier.
  89. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
    If Slade doesn't necessarily advance the medium with this installment, he nonetheless advances the franchise, with enough lucidity and skill that he's persuaded at least one erstwhile agnostic to take a stand.
  90. Grown Ups
    Grown Ups finds Sandler reverting to lunkheaded, lazy-laff form.
  91. Wild Grass
    Wild Grass might be the strangest film I've seen all year. Maybe all millennium. Is it any good? Quite frankly, I have no idea.
  92. Knight and Day
    It's both straight-faced spy film and sly spy spoof. That's a difficult balancing act, but director James Mangold gets it exactly right.
  93. Jonah Hex
    Jonah Hex may not be the longest 81 minutes you ever spend, but it might well be the most tedious.
  94. Cyrus
    Even at its most troubling, Cyrus is powered by a deep vein of humanism, one that offers hope to even the weirdest among us.
  95. I Am Love
    As a full-on celebration of beauty in all its forms, this gem of a contemporary melodrama invites viewers to plunge into a world of unerring taste and luxury, where even tragedy comes softly when it inevitably arrives.
  96. Toy Story 3
    Lasseter and his team plunge the audience into a collective case of empty- nest syndrome, with a dash of mortal terror thrown in for grins. And again, they make it work.
  97. Stonewall Uprising
    For a movie about a groundbreaking gay rebellion, Stonewall Uprising plays it much too straight.
  98. The Karate Kid
    The new Karate Kid brings fresh life and perspective to the classic tale of perseverance and cross-generational friendship, thanks to Harald Zwart's sensitive direction and two exceptionally appealing stars.
  99. The A-Team
    A thoroughly unnecessary but nonetheless satisfying adaptation of the cheeseball 1980s TV series.
  100. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
    The insecurities that seem to feed Rivers's often angry humor -- and that have left her face looking like a mask frozen in horror -- are left unexamined.
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