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. The Salesman
    If the conceit feels obvious and strained, it still gives Farhadi and his actors ample room to explore the ambiguities of commitment, ethics and revenge in a society where mistrust in public servants runs deep.
  2. You Can Count on Me
    A humanistic gem of a movie, with unforgettable performances from Linney and Ruffalo.
  3. The Pianist
    A beautiful story, told in measured cadences by a master of old-timey narrative compression and expression.
  4. Get Out
    Like all great movies, Get Out faithfully obeys the conventions of its genre — in this case horror films shot through with brutal wit and sharp-eyed allegory — while getting at profound psychic and political realities. The shocks and the laughs are thoroughly entertaining, but it’s the truth of Get Out that’s so real.
  5. City of Life and Death
    It's a muscular, physical movie, pieced together from arresting imagery and revelatory gestures, large and small.
  6. West Side Story
    Spielberg and Kaminski have enjoyed a fruitful collaboration for decades, but their work on West Side Story brings the partnership to breathtakingly poetic expressive heights.
  7. Song of the Sea
    Enchants on every level: story, voice work, drawing and music.
  8. Amy
    [A] sensitive, superbly constructed, ultimately shattering documentary.
  9. The Edge of Heaven
    Oropelled by memorable performances by mostly unknown actors. The most famous of the ensemble, Hanna Schygulla, delivers a by turns serene and shattering performance as a mother struggling with loss, conscience and the first glimmers of unexpected connection. She's only one essential and unforgettable part of a flawless whole.
  10. 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.
  11. Birds of Passage
    It’s a watchable tale, yet it’s also hard to know just how much truth there is in the presentation of the Wayuu, whose presence in the film at times seems more picturesque than plausible.
  12. Ilo Ilo
    Sensitive performances by the four main players suit the tone, which is naturalistic and even earthy — most of the characters are shown going to the bathroom — yet ultimately poignant.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    An Education
    A beguiling little film that, with deceptive restraint and forthrightness, opens up worlds of roiling, contradictory emotions.
  14. Lebanon
    While the title alone may send people into a tizzy, this actually isn't a movie about which side is right or wrong.
  15. Ash Is Purest White
    “Ash” may not hit the dizzying heights of “Sin” but, compared with “Mountain,” it’s a far more consistent and satisfying ride.
  16. The Endurance
    An engrossing chronicle.
  17. The Rider
    Filmed with widescreen grandeur on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, The Rider reinvigorates tropes from the western genre of men, horses, honor codes and vast expanses of nature with a refreshing lack of sentimentality, without sacrificing their inherent lyricism and poetry.
  18. Eighth Grade
    Thanks to Burnham’s exuberant, alert writing and Fisher’s masterful command of vulnerability, anxiety, resilience and steadfast self-belief, Kayla emerges as an icon of her own — just by being herself.
  19. Kings & Queen
    Odd, complex and charming.
  20. Sling Blade
    Takes you down paths full of primitive, almost biblical implications, but it also finds comic relief in moments of palpable tension.
  21. Girlhood
    Girlhood is a mesmerizing exercise in the enlightenment that can happen when a filmmaker shifts the male cinematic gaze ever so slightly and uncovers what looks like a whole new world.
  22. Let's Get Lost
    At the most fundamental level, the real Chet Baker is a kind of nowhere man. He's too insubstantial for Weber to levitate him into greatness. This fact is the source of the film's dramatic tension, and Weber, to his credit, seems to have realized it.
  23. Offside
    Along with such colleagues as Abbas Kiarostami and Moshen Makhmalbaf, Panahi has perfected the art of realist filmmaking,
  24. Mona Lisa
    Mona Lisa is consistently undercut by sentiment, whether it's the cute routines between George and his best friend, a mechanic and junkman, or the "heartwarming" stuff between George and his estranged daughter. In the end, "Mona Lisa" is another movie about the lovable little people; the movie is mushy where it should be monstrous. [16 July 1986, p.D1]
    • Washington Post
  25. Knocked Up
    Turns out to be not just rude, crude and outrageously funny but a deceptively sophisticated meditation on moral agency -- with pot jokes!
  26. Turtles Can Fly
    All of the actors in Turtles Can Fly are nonprofessionals, and all bring electrifying authenticity and presence to their roles.
  27. The Departed
    Crackles right along, stopping only long enough for Scorsese's signature bursts of explosive violence. Those brawls feel a bit rote, but what's different here is a newfound playful humor.
  28. Festival Express
    A delirious piece of pop ephemera.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring
    Though lacking in any particular narrative surprise, the film nevertheless takes the viewer completely by surprise several times.
  30. April and the Extraordinary World
    In truth, the story is practically beside the point with all the spectacular visuals. The steampunk aesthetic might be overdone, but there’s still a lot here worth marveling at.
  31. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
    As a stylistic and narrative throwback, Alfredson's adamantly un-thrilling procedural reminds viewers of an era when viewers allowed themselves to be entertained by a good yarn about a few colorful or at least colorlessly compelling characters.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 63 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Wild Robot
    The Wild Robot has reduced a lot of respectable early reviewers to happy tears, and chances are that you and your children will feel the same.
  33. Half Nelson
    Nearly every scene rings with its own ragged truth, which becomes increasingly painful as Dan's addiction becomes more unmanageable and as he refuses to confront the untenable politics of his own behavior.
  34. The Fabulous Baker Boys
    A thoroughly enjoyable entertainment that should play just about everybody's strings right. Kloves proves to be quite a plucker.
  35. The Insider
    A well-orchestrated nightmare that keeps you on edge until the very end.
  36. Love and Diane
    It is a movie about the real challenge of heroism.
  37. About Schmidt
    What gives About Schmidt its ultimate boost, what pushes it into the stirring heavens is Nicholson, who produces the most understated -– and one of the most powerful –- performances of his career.
  38. Hero
    It's a brilliant movie, fluent, spectacular, breathtaking and basically, uh, wrong.
  39. The Taste of Things
    Binoche is so gifted, she no longer seems to act anymore: She just is, in all her serene confidence and physical charisma, and “The Taste of Things” provides the ideal showcase for those ineffable gifts.
  40. Neil Young: Heart of Gold
    Director Demme is smart and sensitive enough to sit back and listen to the music without attention-getting intrusions. The tunes are subtly compelling.
  41. Mudbound
    This is a big movie, about big emotions and ideas, which Rees evokes and explores through an extraordinarily rich tapestry of atmosphere, physical setting, visual detail and sensitive, subtle performances.
  42. Passing
    The narrative moves toward its foregone conclusion with the low energy of a slow-moving locomotive on train tracks leading to a broken bridge.
  43. My Life as a Zucchini
    It may not sound like it, but calling this barely 70-minute Swiss stop-motion film “heavy” — as in substantial and almost swollen with feeling — is a true compliment.
  44. Honeyland
    The film by Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov is a strange and curious thing: part fly-on-the-wall anthropology, part ecological fable.
  45. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
    The film's not only funny and weird, it's oddly poignant. I miss Hedwig already.
  46. Holy Motors
    An electrifying, confounding, what-the-hell-just-happened exercise in unbounded imagination, unapologetic theatricality, bravura acting and head-over-heels movie-love.
  47. Unforgiven
    If Eastwood had any emotional depth as an actor, the character's anguish might come through.
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