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. Rambo
    This muttering boatman seems to have lost his old-time heroism. No longer is Rambo killing for a cause, but for kicks. And his portentous blather, even by Rambo standards, becomes unintentionally hilarious.
  2. How She Move
    The movie, which is burdened by a rather mediocre script by Annmarie Morais but boasts some terrific performances -- is not just a sports movie. It's a girls-can't-do-it/girls-can-do-it/girls-do-it/girls-beat-the-boys-at-it movie.
  3. Untraceable
    From its very first scene, Untraceable isn't the sophisticated, brainy thriller it so nearly could have been, but just another movie about a serial murderer.
  4. Alice's House
    Even though it sounds awfully depressing, there's something moving about watching people go at their lives with everything they have -- or don't have.
  5. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
    Anamaria Marinca delivers an utterly transfixing performance as Otilia, a young woman who helps a friend (Laura Vasiliu) obtain an illegal abortion in the waning days of Romania's communist Ceausescu regime.
  6. U2 3D
    In many ways, watching the movie is BETTER than concertgoing. We can enjoy that buzzy feeling of community without the fist-pumping biker obscuring our view.
  7. Cassandra's Dream
    Instead of offering a perspective that, at the very least, laments a world where the flow of money hurts otherwise good people, Allen simply pushes the movie into an uncertain sinkhole between morality play and black comedy.
  8. Cloverfield
    Cloverfield is a relentless, I-thought-my-eyeballs-were-bleeding exercise in visual disorientation.
  9. Mad Money
    Possesses its share of modest laughs, many of them delivered by Ted Danson as Bridget's bemused husband. But director Callie Khouri (best known for writing "Thelma & Louise") doesn't bring the dash needed to make this a comic heist on a par with "Ocean's Eleven."
  10. 27 Dresses
    Katherine Heigl makes an official bid for America's Sweetheart in her sophomore effort, 27 Dresses, a romantic comedy that -- despite her undeniable, apple-cheeked appeal -- sags like a day-old bouquet.
  11. Taxi to the Dark Side
    Although it's tempting to call Gibney's documentary "the one Iraq film you MUST see this season!!!" (which, by the way, it is), it's not just about Iraq. It's about torture as policy.
  12. First Sunday
    Ice Cube and Tracy Morgan are the nominal stars of First Sunday, but it's Katt Williams who steals the show in this by turns trite and mildly amusing B-comedy.
  13. The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie
    Clever enough to keep adults entertained, even if the story is something of an antique.
  14. Honeydripper
    Trudging nobly under a mantle of impeccably earnest intentions and a fussy, too-quaint-by-half production design, Honeydripper lags and drags to its utterly predictable end. There's not a spark of spontaneity or soul about it.
  15. The Orphanage
    Lures us in with extraordinary subtlety. Keeping sound effects and incidental music to a relative minimum, it builds its suspense almost subliminally. So when something scary or shocking does occur -- deprived of those Hollywood-style cues -- we are truly startled.
  16. There Will Be Blood
    A searing, apocalyptic and finally breathtaking drama.
  17. Persepolis
    The movie, while no fun, faces hard truths and asks hard questions.
  18. The Bucket List
    The overall sense, however, is of a movie coasting on an obvious and somewhat flimsy premise, to which no one thought to bring much else besides Nicholson and Freeman.
  19. The Great Debaters
    It's a great family movie, if not historically perfect, and something that a lot of people are going to like.
  20. The Water Horse
    Combining the best of fantasy and somber reflection, The Water Horse is a lovely ride.
  21. P.S. I Love You
    If P.S. I Love You proves anything, it's that Hilary Swank may be a great actress, but she can't do cute.
  22. Charlie Wilson's War
    This movie probably gets the Washington process better than any since Otto Preminger's underrated "Advise & Consent" in 1962. It's not about men of virtue doing the impossible, but men of flaws doing the doable, but just barely.
  23. National Treasure: Book of Secrets
    Cage is back in crackling good form in National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
  24. Steep
    Nonetheless, there's something life affirming in all of this. Even as most of us recoil with self-preservation at their feats, we also secretly applaud them pushing the envelope of mortality.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Admirers of Stephen Sondheim who have wondered whether a riveting movie would ever be made from one of his stage musicals can put aside their doubts and worries: Tim Burton has finally accomplished it in his ravishing Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
  26. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
    The best part of Walk Hard, oddl enough, is the music. I might not care to see Walk Hard" a second time, but I can't wait to hear it again.
  27. Alvin and the Chipmunks
    Youngsters who love the shrieky singing and don't notice the tapioca of the story will probably get their money's worth. Parents: Bring earplugs.
  28. I Am Legend
    Instead of maintaining its edgy sense of constant discomfort, the movie is compelled to make Neville as fuzzily adorable and messianic as possible.
  29. The Kite Runner
    For all the pain and loss that The Kite Runner depicts, it is still a film of exhilarating, redemptive humanity, conveying an enduring sense of hope.
  30. Youth Without Youth
    Unfortunately, "Youth" becomes so lost in its own conceptual, convoluted vortex, it becomes virtually incomprehensible. Coppola proves that even the best of our film artists can lose sight of what this medium is all about: entertaining, enlightening and including its audience.
  31. The Perfect Holiday
    A piece of holiday cheese that even Harry & David wouldn't touch.
  32. Nanking
    In clothes reminiscent of the '30s (but not, strictly speaking, costumes) the performers read dramatically from the letters, journals and diaries of the Western missionaries and diplomats; they "perform" but in the limited sense, using only face and voice to communicate with the camera. And you have to say: Wow.
  33. Atonement
    Nothing comes easily in Atonement, especially its ending, which, both happy and tragic, is as wrenching as it is genuinely satisfying. How fitting, somehow, that a novel so devoted to the precision and passionate love of language be captured in a film that is simply too exquisite for words.
  34. The Golden Compass
    The movie simply delivers too many colorfuls for its own good, none of whom establish a true emotional identity, and thus it isn't moving, it's busy. Busy, busy, busy.
  35. Revolver
    Its main purpose -- and no, you are not experiencing ocular breakdown -- is spiritual.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Walker
    Got it. Drug companies are evil, and gay people are discriminated against. But these Hollywood pieties can't paper over Schrader's maddening indifference to explaining exactly how the bad guys have been pulling the strings during the previous hour and a half. [14 Dec 2007, p.WE33]
    • Washington Post
  37. Juno
    Not only gives us a superb new cast of believable characters, it transcends its own genre. Only superficially a teen comedy, the movie redounds with postmodern -- but emotionally genuine -- gravitas.
  38. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    Thanks to Bauby's courageous and honest writing, and Schnabel's poetic interpretation, what could have been a portrait of impotence and suffering becomes a lively exploration of consciousness and a soaring ode to liberation.
  39. Awake
    Awake is a pleasing if negligible diversion.
  40. The Savages
    Bringing a tough, astringent wit to a subject too often wrapped in the cozy blanket of sentimentality or cute humor, Tamara Jenkins takes a frank look at the indignities of aging in The Savages, a black comedy that invites viewers to laugh or at least smile ruefully at the dying of the light.
  41. August Rush
    Intended as a fuzzy family fable, "August" plays more to the gag reflex than to the heart, especially when our little orphan starts playing the guitar like a virtuoso after what seems like a three-minute tutorial.
  42. Enchanted
    Even if its most ironic humor will sail over the heads of very little ones, Enchanted is that rare comedy that will appeal to the whole family.
  43. Hitman
    The best movie derived from a violent computer game we've ever seen. You can take or leave that kind of qualified high-five, but, for us, it was a thoroughly entertaining experience. Think of bargain basement "James Bond" amped up into TV den-sittin', mouse-clickin' overdrive. But with human actors.
  44. I'm Not There.
    A fascinating experiment that, if the viewer is willing to surrender to Haynes's sometimes hermetic meditations on Dylan's life, heartily rewards the investment.
  45. The Mist
    More political allegory than horror movie.
  46. This Christmas
    The result is a big, gushy, emotional, secret-driven, family-obsessive casserole, perhaps facile in some of its resolutions, but so full of good heart and love -- the real kind, which is scratchy, awkward, difficult to express and doesn't conquer all but just some -- that the movie is difficult to resist.
  47. Beowulf
    The story works, but I wish they'd teach these avatars to act.
  48. Love in the Time of Cholera
    Lush, extravagant, sad and touching, Love in the Time of Cholera still feels weirdly insubstantial when all the febrile passion has abated. Like a fever it breaks, passes and is forgotten.
  49. Margot at the Wedding
    Watching Kidman, Leigh and -- in his nutty, damn-the-torpedoes way -- Black as they torment, confound and torture one another amounts to a vicarious thrill ride in human behavior.
  50. Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium
    The movie, directed (and written) by Zach Helm in grotesquely bright colors, means to approach the creepy wonder of Roald Dahl but gets only the creepy part right.
  51. Redacted
    The film's moral commentary is De Palma redux: same old Brian enjoying the peeping, bringing us into the guilt zone, then saying shame on all of us.
  52. What Would Jesus Buy?
    Must-see viewing for anyone who thinks of Christmas as just a mall and its night visitors.
  53. Southland Tales
    May be ambitious in its genre-defying abandon, sideswiping science fiction, satire, film noir and melodrama along the way, but it's also exasperatingly convoluted, self-amused and politically sophomoric.
  54. No Country for Old Men
    I appreciate No Country for Old Men for the skill in the film craft. I understand No Country for Old Men for its penetrating disquisition on narrative conventions and its heroic will in subverting them. I admire No Country for Old Men for the way it tightens its grip as it progresses, taking us deeper and deeper into a hellish world. I just don't like it very much.
  55. Fred Claus
    Vaughn's con-man jive doesn't get much play in this one; he spends most of his time as a bitter creep, and the writing (by Dan Fogelman) isn't sharp enough to make the hipster-at-the-North-Pole theme pay off in any meaningful way.
  56. Lions for Lambs
    But for all its passion and topical currency, the movie plays too often like a college colloquium. And it ends on an unsatisfying note, with each character's choice, whether fateful or fatal, hanging in a confounding limbo of indeterminacy.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    P2
    If in the end P2 contains few surprises, it's still a nice piece of polished escapism.
  58. War Dance
    This is documentary-making at its best, not pretending to be journalism, but still playing a crucial role in telling stories that otherwise wouldn't make the front page.
  59. Holly
    An emotional thriller that is by turns contrived and impassioned.
  60. The Life of Reilly
    The Life of Reilly pays fitting homage to a man who deserves to be remembered for much more than just trading double-entendres with Brett Somers on "The Match Game."
  61. American Gangster
    It has the aspirations of an epic of crime and punishment, a superb feel for time and milieu, and an almost subliminal feel for myth.
  62. Bee Movie
    The more the movie progresses, the more you realize how much Seinfeld's voice sounds like a droning bee -- the kind you want to swat away.
  63. Darfur Now
    See Darfur Now, and you won't read the daily news the same way again.
  64. Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten
    One artist's moving tribute to another.
  65. Martian Child
    In drama, and just about everything else, almost is never enough. Which is why Martian Child, about the growing bond between an adult and child, never reaches us.
  66. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    In addition to being a study in great acting, this is a study in great directing.
  67. Bella
    A Mexican movie in which the outcome is never in doubt, the scenes are endless -- sorry, we meant poetic-- and the false beard on the central character's face looks as though it could use a little extra gum.
  68. Dan in Real Life
    Filmgoers haven't seen a family this neurotically enmeshed since the last Diane Keaton movie.
  69. Jimmy Carter Man from Plains
    The movie doesn't offer much new to anyone familiar with Carter.
  70. Music Within
    If it does nothing else, Music Within shows us how deeply Ron Livingston's amiable face can take us into a movie. But even likable mugs like his -- remember him in "Office Space"? -- need help from the movies around them.
  71. Mr. Untouchable
    It's fast and furious, and it proves that crime doesn't pay, unless you know how to do it right.
  72. 30 Days of Night
    Directed by David Slade ("Hard Candy"), the action scenes are artful and terrifying; these killers move so quickly and decisively, there seems to be no hope for humanity.
  73. Gone Baby Gone
    The movie is taut, fast, achingly authentic and terribly melancholy.
  74. Rendition
    Reese Witherspoon paces and cries through Rendition in a performance that does as much a disservice to her talent as the movie does to the issues it raises.
  75. Reservation Road
    Ruffalo is so squirrelly in the role that he seems like a dead giveaway from the start. You know exactly where the story is going, and, dang, that's exactly where it goes.
  76. Things We Lost in the Fire
    Del Toro will probably get an Oscar nod for his Jerry, because the film is so full of Oscar moments, including a cold-turkey detox bit. He rumbles and shivers and screeches and bangs his head on the wall and takes a shower in his clothes. I never believed a second of it.
  77. Wristcutters: A Love Story
    Seems to me, teenage suicide isn't that funny, and nothing in this movie changed my mind.
  78. O Jerusalem
    Makes the mistake of including too sweeping a scope in too small a movie and with too few resources.
  79. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
    Overdresses and ultimately abandons what drew us to its 1998 predecessor in the first place: an intimate embrace with history.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Final Season
    Nathan Wang's score borrows blatantly from "The Natural" and is slathered on thick in all the big emotional scenes. They establish the right nostalgic mood, but it's broken with that loud "ping" of a metal bat every time a kid gets a hit.
  81. Lars and the Real Girl
    Gosling's performance is a small miracle, not only because he's so completely open as a man who's essentially shut off, but because he changes and grows so imperceptibly before our eyes.
  82. Sleuth
    Little more than a sleek, stylish stunt.
  83. Terror's Advocate
    The result is a panorama of European radicalism. Depending on your politics, you may think "long live the revolution" or "curse the day the CIA ended its assassination program."
  84. We Own the Night
    Phoenix is an arresting presence on screen, but don't expect any "Departed"-esque fast talk from Wahlberg, who is oddly inert in a role that should crackle with brotherly ambivalence.
  85. King Corn
    It should be required viewing before going into a supermarket, McDonald's or your very own refrigerator.
  86. Control
    Corbijn makes us achingly aware of the singer's talent, the haunting poetry of his songs and how, living in the gloomy culture he did, his passing was virtually inevitable.
  87. For the Bible Tells Me So
    A brisk, entertaining and even moving exploration of the sometimes frayed intersection where Christianity meets homosexuality.
  88. The Heartbreak Kid
    You can expect to fall about, snort and hoot, at times hard enough to hurt inner body parts that only doctors can identify.
  89. Michael Clayton
    This uncommonly intelligent thriller evokes the great films of the 1970s ("All the President's Men," "Klute," "Three Days of the Condor") that managed to elicit gritty urban realism while maintaining a suave sense of style and moral complexity.
  90. The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising
    This movie is a particular disappointment. Although The Seeker is in Walden's tradition of positive storytelling, John Hodge's script is guilty of downright goofy utterances on occasion.
  91. Kurt Cobain About a Son
    The result is a film exponentially more vivid and absorbing than the garden-variety rock-doc or biopic. "About a Son" is a must for anyone who still loves Cobain, or still has hope for cinematic portraiture.
  92. The Darjeeling Limited
    The Darjeeling Limited"has its charms, chief of which is watching three terrific actors evince with unforced ease the rewards and resentments of brotherhood.
  93. Trade
    By introducing silly elements into a serious endeavor, the filmmakers undercut their own movie. In the end, we're watching a somewhat exploitative movie about exploitation.
    • 44 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Game Plan
    Follows familiar formulas and characters, both brightened by a bit of wit and good performances from the two leads.
  95. The Kingdom
    One electrifying performance becomes the only saving grace of The Kingdom, a goofy action movie that tries to marry the blitzkrieg entertainment of "Rambo" to the cultural consciousness of "Syriana."
  96. Lust, Caution
    Though Lust, Caution resounds with these disconcerting themes, it operates on the same principle that distinguishes all lasting romances, be they "Wuthering Heights," "Casablanca" or "When Harry Met Sally."
  97. The Price of Sugar
    Designed to educate, outrage and finally spur viewers to action. That it does so with vibrant visual style and an engaging narrative makes it that rare consciousness-raising film that's not only good for you, but a joy to watch.
  98. Into the Wild
    Sean Penn sings a powerful and poetic hymn to America with Into the Wild, his sweeping, sensitive and deeply affecting adaptation of Jon Krakauer's best-selling book.
  99. Good Luck Chuck
    The movie spares no effort to reach out to the crudest, youngest audiences it can.
  100. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
    Andrew Dominik's long and bizarre movie about the American outlaw appears to stick close enough to the facts so that historians won't be able to complain. But it languishes toward torpor.
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