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. Bug
    We find ourselves in the fascinating no man's land between horror and comedy -- right where this movie wants us to be.
  2. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
    Funner, biggerer, brighterer, bolderer, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End is not only okay, it may even be close to good. A lavish spectacle illuminated by Johnny Depp's swishing pirate captain, the movie has its dull moments, but not many.
  3. Angel-A
    Angel-A is counterfeit art-house chic writ large -- a French film that fails to produce the ineffable charms of the yesteryear movies it brazenly imitates.
  4. Golden Door
    Writ small, Golden Door is an absorbing and moving love story; writ large, it's the story we've never stopped telling ourselves.
  5. Paprika
    It's best appreciated by assuming something of a dream state ourselves and enjoying the giddy flow.
  6. Shrek the Third
    The end result of Shrek the Third is that you laugh a lot and you go home grumpy.
  7. Flanders
    Flanders, which takes us from the rustic heartland of northern France to the killing fields of an unnamed foreign locale, has such a primitive poetry, we are moved even by its most gruesome moments.
  8. Severance
    None of the killings has any suspense, and the capital I irony -- that these people make their living selling death in small mechanical packages and munitions to the world and are now being hunted down by the same devices -- never begins to produce any results. Put it on a level with a mid-series "Halloween."
  9. Fay Grim
    The trouble is, this is Hartley all over again. What seemed cutting edge and sharp in the 1990s -- the smart-alecky references to obscure filmmakers (Werner Herzog, Andrei Konchalovsky), the self-mocking tone in the actors' voices, the overall sense that this movie is subverting itself -- feels rehashed and old.
  10. Once
    Even the uninitiated will be hard-pressed to resist the movie's charms, from its likable leading players and its charming Dublin setting to its wistful take on modern love.
  11. 28 Weeks Later
    As viscerally compelling as smash-mouth filmmaking gets.
  12. Georgia Rule
    Just what we need least: a warm family comedy about child molestation.That's Georgia Rule, which combines battleship actresses of the "Steel Magnolias" variety, fall-down-go-boom comedy that was obsolete in the '30s, Lindsay Lohan's cleavage and intergenerational fondling just for kicks.
  13. The Hip Hop Project
    Ultimately, The Hip Hop Project is all raggedy rhythm and long-winded discourse, a tuneless song in search of a hook.
  14. The Salon
    The comic equivalent of microwaved leftover food -- and pretty stale at that.
  15. The Ex
    A stunningly insipid romance, marks an all-time low for actor Zach Braff -- his "Gigli," if you will.
  16. Provoked: A True Story
    Unfortunately, Provoked possesses the tiny production values and schmaltzy music of a prime-time special, despite its ensemble of terrific actors.
  17. ShowBusiness: The Road to Broadway
    ShowBusiness is not so clever nor so entertaining as the popular musical "A Chorus Line," which plied this territory more than 30 years ago, but it does go deeper into the mechanics of the business.
  18. Away from Her
    Rarely has love at any age been depicted so honestly on screen. For such a fully realized portrait to be created by a 28-year-old first-time director is even more remarkable.
  19. Spider-Man 3
    An overlong, visually incoherent, mean-spirited and often just plain awful Spider-Man 3.
  20. Civic Duty
    The film is all cliched atmospherics and no real insight.
  21. Paris, je t'aime
    Paris, je t'aime builds into something quite wonderful.
  22. The Treatment
    The Treatment gets this year's Rip van Winkle award.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Waitress
    Among the joys here are the supporting players, each with well-defined stories and quirky personalities. Cheryl Hines (HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm") and Shelly play fellow waitresses searching for their own happiness, and good ol' Andy Griffith is memorable as the curmudgeonly diner-owner who takes a shine to Jenna.
  24. Jindabyne
    Sometimes, the sincerest form of tribute is inferiority. Watching the Australian film Jindabyne, one soon embraces the conclusion: Robert Altman did this work better. And with fewer brush strokes.
  25. The Condemned
    It's hard to imagine an audience that won't break up in laughter at this bewildering mixed message: Enjoy this movie, but you really shouldn't be watching it.
  26. Snow Cake
    Never gets as emotionally involving, or persuasive, as the moviemakers intend it to.
  27. Diggers
    Never quite breaks out of its talky inertia.
  28. Something to Cheer About
    This is a modest documentary, actually made in 2002 but only now gaining national release, which celebrates Attucks and that particular team, but most important Coach Crowe, by all accounts a remarkable man.
  29. Hot Fuzz
    Hot Fuzz deploys the same mix of genre conventions, slapstick and old-school British humor that made "Shaun of the Dead" such a dumb-but-good romp.
  30. Vacancy
    For horror fans who appreciate a bit of craft with their second-rate experiences -- Paul Haslinger's fear-mongering score is terrific for what it's worth -- this might merit a future late-night rental.
  31. Fracture
    The good part about this okay, but way less than great, thriller is that you won't notice how cheesy it is until the heartburn from the popcorn has eased. In these jaded times, that's a bargain.
  32. In the Land of Women
    The movie refuses to descend into the cute smarminess of a mutual recovery drama, thanks to originally conceived characters. We're always wondering -- and wonderfully surprised -- by their choices.
  33. The Valet
    Kristin Scott Thomas delivers an unnervingly smooth performance as Auteuil's suspicious wife.
  34. Red Road
    Its story -- and eerie allure -- comes from our evolving perception of Jackie (Kate Dickie), a surveillance operator in Glasgow, Scotland, who spends long days and nights monitoring the screens.
  35. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters
    A work of either a profoundly transgressive genius or a goofball high on Pez and patio sealant. It could come from no normal collection of brain cells.
  36. Pathfinder
    Makes "Conan the Barbarian" seem like Dostoyevsky in its complexity.
  37. Perfect Stranger
    Just another thriller, utterly disposable.
  38. Year of the Dog
    White delivers another weirdly dark-but-funny story.
  39. Disturbia
    LaBeouf is appealing as the frustrated shut-in, and comic-relief cred goes to Aaron Yoo, who plays his neurotic buddy Ronnie. The ending, though, drags, and the film quickly shifts from a clever homage to "Rear Window" to a bad parody of "The Silence of the Lambs."
  40. Grindhouse
    The films are bloody, stupid and buoyant in a kind of infantile way, celebrating mayhem, flesh and gore. Planet Terror is by far the livelier.
  41. The Hoax
    Even though we're caught up in his derring-do as he beguiles entire meeting rooms of jaded publishers and editors, we're kept at a dissatisfying distance from Irving and the movie.
  42. The TV Set
    Often possesses the gimlet-eyed wit of "The Player" or the mock docs of Christopher Guest.
  43. The Reaping
    If only The Reaping had the decency to be coherent.
  44. Are We Done Yet?
    John C. McGinley from "Scrubs" gets to strut some of his comic stuff as the deranged builder, but he's the only passable feature in a property that should be condemned.
  45. Firehouse Dog
    Firehouse Dog goes into the marginally watchable category, aimed as it is toward the middlebrow family trade, preferably dog owners with their own Sparky slopping up the station wagon windows.
  46. Black Book
    The new Dutch film Black Book manages to turn World War II into a large piece of cheese. A lurid, pulpy, slightly perverse potboiler, the movie suffers mainly from its utter lack of seriousness.
  47. Killer of Sheep
    See Killer of Sheep, and see it again and again. It's one of those truly rare movies that just get better and better.
  48. Blades of Glory
    To see seemingly reg'lar guys utterly stripped of dignity and defense is cruel enough, but crueler still is the laughter that you cannot seem to stop from rupturing your lungs and aorta.
  49. The Lookout
    The dour, downbeat story eventually spirals into grisly Grand Guignol and contrivance. Still, Gordon-Levitt is superb, and Jeff Daniels delivers a wry and wily performance as Pratt's blind roommate.
  50. Meet the Robinsons
    An animated feature (showing in 3-D in select theaters), has a couple of clever tricks that make it worth wearing those dumb, uncomfortable glasses. But this would be as delightful and attractive a production without the gimcrackery.
  51. After the Wedding
    Wedding has enough coincidences, screamfests, drunken rants and shock revelations to fill a season of "Desperate Housewives," but it comes across as finely textured drama, thanks to the performers, who make their characters so persuasive and three-dimensional, we're too mesmerized to care about the story's more overwrought or histrionic passages.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shooter
    It's a story that can be transplanted from genre to genre, because we never grow tired of it, which is to say that it fits snugly into the paranoid drift of American movies, and the value we place on one honest man with a gun.
  53. The Last Mimzy
    The best element of the movie is a subplot involving Noah's spiritually obsessed teacher (Rainn Wilson) and his wacky girlfriend (Kathryn Hahn), whose bumbling eccentricities give the movie an emotional liveliness it otherwise lacks.
  54. Pride
    Inspired by the true story of Ellis, has Hollywood formula practically stitched to its Speedo. But the characters and the actors who play them are so captivating, we're too entertained and charmed to notice.
  55. Reign Over Me
    Binder has set a difficult bar -- to make a funny, sad, original movie about the healing power of not necessarily healing -- and he just manages to clear it.
  56. TMNT
    The upshot is that the film is technically superb and quite enjoyable as long as you don't bang your head against the plot.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Boy Culture
    Opportunities for dramatic tension, comedic effect, erotic energy, even just flat-out weirdness -- all are squandered by Brocka and the actors in a haze of blandness that gives the film all the edge of a particularly gay Gap commercial.
  58. Color Me Kubrick
    Color Me Kubrick is like a nice, deep, clear cocktail of ammonia on the rocks: bracing, comic, astonishing, all of which hide its poison center.
  59. First Snow
    A movie that clearly aims to be a cool, picturesque modern film noir becomes another moody banality.
  60. Offside
    Along with such colleagues as Abbas Kiarostami and Moshen Makhmalbaf, Panahi has perfected the art of realist filmmaking,
  61. The Page Turner
    What The Page Turner lacks in scale and ambition, it makes up for in precision. It's a small French delicacy, tart, acerbic and cynical, that focuses on three or four characters and yet manages to bring them and their dilemmas to vivid life.
  62. The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair
    It is a film rich in detail, the kind that simply never emerges in the nightly news accounts of the war.
  63. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
    The movie has more cleverness than violence, and its breakdown of cliches is vivid and witty. Baesel is an extraordinary presence, holding the film together with his mesmerizing performance, charm and openness, and Goethals measures up to him.
  64. I Think I Love My Wife
    The movie is hilarious...there's Rock's encounter with Viagra, which I can't describe but has to be one of the funniest scenes of the decade.
  65. Premonition
    Sandra Bullock is a disheveled, grumpy, adorable mess in Premonition, a psychological thriller that was no doubt pitched as "Medium," only longer and brunette. Or maybe "The Eternal Sixth Sense of the Spotless Groundhog Day."
  66. My Brother
    What it possesses in heart and goodwill, it sorely lacks in narrative skill and artistic depth.
  67. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
    Director Ken Loach is full of astonishments. An avowedly leftist filmmaker, he has always seen beyond political cant to compassionate reality. He's also incredibly sensitive to what might be called the nuances of life, and he always brings a high sense of spontaneous reality to his films.
  68. 300
    It's kind of a ghastly hoot, and while I suppose it does no harm, it also contributes nothing. It's a guilty unpleasantness.
  69. The Host
    It's the last thing anyone expected: an old-fashioned monster movie with a heart.
  70. Beyond the Gates
    The film may employ the well-worn tradition of filtering African stories through the experiences of Europeans, but they use the conceit for some penetrating revelations.
  71. Maxed Out: Hard Times, Easy Credit and the Era of Predatory Lenders
    A riveting, amusing, enlightening and emotionally affecting movie by a guy you've never heard of, about -- wait for it -- the consumer debt crisis.
  72. The Namesake
    Although we miss some of the finer details that made Jhumpa Lahiri's 2003 book so meaningful, we're moved by the movie's themes of cultural displacement and the power of chance.
  73. The Ultimate Gift
    There's nothing wrong with the moral of The Ultimate Gift's story; in fact there's everything right about it. But director Michael O. Sajbel too often succumbs to movie-of-the-week sentimentality and starchy pacing. Still, Breslin's captivating performance reminds you why she was recently nominated for an Oscar.
  74. Zodiac
    That's exactly the problem with this movie: It's not about a killer, or his victims, or the manhunt or the cops. They're all in it, of course, more or less. But it's about a writer.
  75. Wild Hogs
    The movie never rises to the level of the professional, much less the comic. The gags are witless and surprisingly gross. The four actors, each accustomed to being at the center, never develop any rhythm, any chemistry, any anything.
  76. Black Snake Moan
    Parading through most of the movie in a cutoff T-shirt and bikini briefs, Ricci takes the stereotype of the oversexed farmer's daughter to gothic extremes; Jackson's character, named Lazarus, is similarly drawn with oversize strokes.
  77. Into Great Silence
    As we vicariously participate in their daily rituals, we find ourselves at the ground level of spiritual worship. It's hard to recall a similar documentary that brings viewers so palpably close to that sacred experience.
  78. The Astronaut Farmer
    Sure, it's the corniest of conceits, but "Astronaut" taps delightfully into one of our deepest cultural values: the one about the pursuit of happiness. And the movie's unpretentious lightheartedness, which echoes the old-fashioned, corn-fed lore of Frank Capra, or even "The Andy Griffith Show," makes it blissfully easy to sign on for this good-natured voyage.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Reno 911!: Miami
    Moviedom is littered with the wreckage of ill-conceived small-to-big-screen adaptations, but Reno 911!: Miami is not the disaster it could have been. Fans of the TV show need not shudder. You will not see sacrilege.
  80. Amazing Grace
    If Amazing Grace serves its most superficial purpose -- to educate the viewer -- it's hardly compelling viewing.
  81. Gray Matters
    Unfortunately, the film, written and directed by Sue Kramer, starts with a distinctly uncomfortable moral baseline: How exactly is any audience supposed to identify with a character whose relationship with her brother borders on the incestuous?
  82. Starter for 10
    McAvoy, so memorable as Idi Amin's doctor turned adviser in last year's "The Last King of Scotland," may be the most likable British newcomer since Ewan McGregor; his glistening eyes can seduce audiences with their ability to show conflicting emotions.
  83. Glastonbury
    Clocking in at two hours-plus, Glastonbury at times gives viewers the impression that they're slogging through the three-day plunge into mud, music and madness themselves. But for all the posers with light sticks and piercings, there are moments of Dada-esque beauty, not to mention some great music.
  84. Breach
    The acting is superb, particularly from the three principals.
  85. Bridge to Terabithia
    The news is good for Bridge to Terabithia fans. The beloved children's book has not just survived but thrived in its adaptation to the screen.
  86. Avenue Montaigne
    Avenue Montaigne transforms an overwhelming metropolis into a user-friendly village with quirkily appealing characters.
  87. Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams
    The power of "Grbavica" is not the arc of its story line, but the fullness of the world Zbanic creates.
  88. Music and Lyrics
    I don't think the ending is up to the rest of the movie, but Grant and Barrymore are great together, and the movie has both zing and song.
  89. Bamako
    No one can deny the powerful reality that weaves its way through Bamako.
  90. Hannibal Rising
    The movie streamlines much of Harris's book. It's a shame, because it results in the movie's fundamental flaw -- the one-dimensionality of Hannibal.
  91. Norbit
    Much of the movie -- which Murphy wrote with a small posse of collaborators -- is taken up with the torturously dull, not to mention unbelievable, romance between Norbit and Kate (a disappointingly lackluster Newton) and the tedious agenda of Cuba Gooding Jr. as a schemer-manipulator.
  92. The Last Sin Eater
    Clearly targeted at Christians looking to reaffirm their faith. Its chances of crossover success with the secular crowd seem remote, given the dramatic shortcomings.
  93. Because I Said So
    What the filmmakers try to play for laughs -- a mom and her daughters chatting about orgasms while shoe shopping -- isn't funny, it's creepy.
  94. The Situation
    Though Philip Haas's digitally shot film has the firsthand immediacy of such nonfictional docs as "Iraq in Fragments" and "Gunner Palace," its dramatic template feels disappointingly secondhand.
  95. Fired!
    It's a shame Allen fired her from that play. After all, then she might not have had the time to make this documentary.
  96. Puccini for Beginners
    But when mechanical plots are a drama's main engine, we look for something else to divert us, preferably good comedy. That's in short supply, unfortunately. And it's no fun to sit through the movie's retread Woody Allenisms.
  97. Constellation
    The central story, in which Helms has to make up his mind whether to attend his sister's funeral, is too limited a conflict to hang a movie on. Ultimately, audiences will have to satisfy themselves with the collective presence of these actors and the movie's obviously good-hearted intentions.
  98. In the Pit
    What Rulfo needs, unfortunately, is what too many trendy directors forsake: some social context, some succinct voice-overs and some talking heads to put the serious issues (urban poverty, urban stress, environmental degradation, corruption) into perspective.
  99. Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?
    Deeply absorbing and moving with the caffeinated speed of Smith's own feisty campaign, Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? is at once a celebration of small-d democracy and an elegy to it, a portrait that will surely inspire and infuriate viewers.
  100. An Unreasonable Man
    Nader haters may not be mollified, but An Unreasonable Man, like its subject itself, is a one-stop civics lesson no one should miss.
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