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 Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
    The tale grows only more toxic with time.
  2. 16 Blocks
    It seems such a waste to go onto the actual streets of Lower Manhattan and shoot a movie this stupid. Think of the money, the logistics, the interruptions in the city's life -- all that trouble for what? For this? For shame.
  3. Aquamarine
    Aquamarine is better than nothing for its woefully underserved audience.
  4. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
    There is a clear festive buzz, as attendees laugh, bob and listen to Chappelle's impish, inventive comedy, and some of the best music hip-hop has to offer.
  5. Merry Christmas
    The first two-thirds of Joyeux Noel are strangely inert, but the film ends with a moving and surprisingly sophisticated meditation on the definition of moral duty.
  6. Our Brand Is Crisis
    Political junkies will love this movie.
  7. Tsotsi
    As Tsotsi, Chweneyagae turns his face into a living battle mask -- curved, molded and sandpapered into smooth ruthlessness. But as the story unfolds, Tsotsi's mask begins to crack, and his humanity begins to flow through.
  8. Running Scared
    Not surprisingly, everything feels begged, borrowed and stolen from other better movies, from Quentin Tarantino's exclamation-point violence to the slo-mo bullet trajectory shots from "The Matrix."
  9. Unknown White Male
    Fake or not, Unknown White Male doesn't live up to its tantalizing potential.
  10. Black Orpheus
    A riotous, rapturous explosion of sound and color, Black Orpheus is less about Orpheus's doomed love for Eurydice than about Camus's love for cinema at its most gestural and kinetic.
  11. Date Movie
    Date Movie, alas, is here to remind us that slapstick can be just plain bad. These are sight gags best appreciated with a blindfold.
  12. Eight Below
    Although the dogs have surely been Disney-fied to some extent, the sequences of them trying to survive are magnificent and deeply moving. Bring the Kleenex, and hug your pups when you get home.
  13. Freedomland
    This would have made a fascinating film if Freedomland were one movie. Instead, it turns into several movies, none fully realized. What could have been an unusually smart police procedural becomes a sprawling, overwrought melodrama that itself morphs into a sort of spiritual romance.
  14. Night Watch: Nochnoi Dozor
    Bekmambetov handles these narrative bumps with ease, infusing even the hoariest -- and goriest -- of horror movie cliches with equal parts macabre fascination and jaunty humor. The film lives up to its hype with a style, swagger and substance that will appeal not just to the fanboys (and girls) but to their uninitiated friends as well.
  15. Sophie Scholl: The Final Days
    Andre Hennicke is particularly chilling as the yappy mad dog judge who sends them to death.
  16. Winter Passing
    Winter Passing is one dull, extended encounter session among hackneyed characters -- although Deschanel gets the most points for almost imitating a human.
  17. C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America
    With surprisingly good production values and sly, underhanded wit, Willmott never tips his hand, steadily guiding the satire to a genuinely stunning, back-to-reality conclusion.
  18. Curious George
    It's pretty elementary.
  19. Final Destination 3
    With a premise as cavalier as this, perhaps director and co-writer James Wong could have found a tone more original than post-Wes Craven cynicism. Instead, he panders to viewers, allowing them to take gleeful comfort in the destruction of the stupid and doomed.
  20. Firewall
    Flagging energy isn't the only issue here; Ford has become enslaved in his own cliches.
  21. The Pink Panther
    Most of the humor in The Pink Panther derives from Martin's silly French accent, especially when he tries to pronounce the word "hamburger." But zat joke, she ees not funny. And The Pink Panther ees, how you say, ze real dog.
  22. 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.
  23. The Fallen Idol (re-release)
    This is an example of a writer and director working in perfect harness, with Reed smoothly ratcheting up the story's suspense and Greene speculating on his cardinal theme of moral ambiguity. They don't make movies like The Fallen Idol anymore, all the more reason to see it now while you can.
  24. A Good Woman
    All in all, A Good Woman retains ye olde Wilde's zing, his sense of pace and place, but most of all his snappy one-liners, and it finds a new way to showcase them brilliantly.
  25. When a Stranger Calls
    When a Stranger Calls never manages to convey the primal, almost atavistic terror that has earned John Carpenter's movies and the "Scream" franchise their places in the teen horror canon. The most lasting psychological effect of this pulp non-classic will most likely be limited to a deep pathological fear of Architectural Digest.
  26. Something New
    Lathan, who was such a live wire as the aspiring basketballer in 2000's "Love & Basketball," gives this movie an alert, glamorous presence.
  27. La scorta (re-release)
    Ultimately, La Scorta is a tight, competent but rather inconsequential thriller. It's diverting, but thin. (Review of Original Release)
  28. Bubble
    Soderbergh and screenwriter Coleman Hough aren't interested in creating a coy whodunit so much as evoking the deeper, less romantic mysteries of people -- and it's riveting.
  29. Annapolis
    The only impressive thing about it is the monotony and thoroughness with which it replicates cliches from older, better movies and hammers them into pop alloy to an up-with-me beat beat beat of its musical score.
  30. Nanny McPhee
    Even Thompson, the one you look forward to watching, is disappointing.
  31. Imagine Me & You
    Imagine settles disappointingly for rom-com cliches. It doesn't even bother to explore its own premise.
  32. Manderlay
    Even the basic look of the film -- it was filmed on a stage with every shot set against a bleak, dark backdrop -- underscores the filmmaker's position as master manipulator, in a laboratory, looking down at his mice running through his maze.
  33. Roving Mars
    A briskly moving, deeply engaging 40-minute documentary.
  34. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
    It's pretty funny. You don't actually watch it so much as indulge it and admire its cleverness.
  35. Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
    The movie doesn't so much end as reach a stopping point and limp hurriedly off-screen, like a bad stand-up chased out by boo birds. But God, is it funny.
  36. Why We Fight
    Memo to left-wing anti-Bushies: Stories like this work. Don't lecture. Tell stories! Much better!
  37. End of the Spear
    The movie is tentative, dramatically speaking...The most powerful moments come at the end -- documentary excerpts of Steve Saint, the son of one of the missionaries, and his friendship with Mincayani, the man who killed his father.
  38. Glory Road
    From its sepia-toned palette to the Motown hits that drive its terrific soundtrack, Glory Road is utterly authentic. But most astonishing is an unrecognizable Jon Voight as Adolph Rupp.
  39. Last Holiday
    The movie is content to be a kind of middling expression of human decency: It's never either terribly funny or terribly dramatic, but Latifah's quiet solidity and common sense root it in ways that larger, louder pictures never achieve.
  40. Tristan and Isolde
    If I had to sum up Tristan & Isolde for a term paper, I'd say it's like "Braveheart" without the face paint, "Shrek," except the Lord Farquaad character is a sweetheart, and "Freaks and Geeks" because James Franco is so hot, even in Orlando Bloom-y ringlets.
  41. Following Sean
    You won't be disappointed, and you will be deeply, quietly moved.
  42. Fateless
    Koltai is an accomplished, Oscar-nominated cinematographer (for 2000's "Malena"), and Fateless is meticulously composed and shot.
  43. Hostel
    There's a reason why one goes to see cinematic gorefests like Hostel: to partake vicariously of the bloodfest, to get hopped up on the sickness of it all, the utter degradation, the fall of Western Civilization, yadda yadda yadda, and oh yeah, to hoot at the flying fingers, the guts, the blood, the bare breasts.
  44. The Promise
    The movie is full of invasions, assassination attempts, chases and escapes in seemingly random order, the result being completely chaotic.
  45. Match Point
    A sort of romance noir -- spruced up in pressed white linens -- this British-made film is elegant, uncompromising and oh-so- veddy nasty.
  46. Wolf Creek
    A nasty bit of counter-programming, Wolf Creek is for people sickened by the sentimental excesses of the day and the holiday season and want to hide from them in mayhem, slaughter, torture and degradation.
  47. Casanova
    The movie Casanova, starring Heath Ledger, not only fetters the randy Venetian in political correctness, it condemns him to dwell inside the modern equivalent of a bad Shakespeare play.
  48. Rumor Has It...
    A jarring amalgam of sitcom goofiness and uncomfortable ooginess.
  49. The New World
    The New World is stately almost to the point of being static and thus has trouble finding a central story around which to arrange itself; it's not quite the thin dead line, but it's close.
  50. The Matador
    At first blush, there's something vicariously liberating about Brosnan strutting through a lobby dressed only in Speedos and cowboy boots. But it also feels false. The actor seems to be theatrically slumming before his return to suave form.
  51. Munich
    It seems almost disrespectful to weave in a provocative re-creation of the killings -- somehow a massacre of unarmed innocents that shocked the world should be more than just fodder for ginning up the tension at the end of a commercial movie.
  52. Caché (Hidden)
    Laurent's crime is really the crime of being European and conquering people of color. That understood, Cache is brilliant.
  53. The Ringer
    More than predictable. It plods along with the inevitability of a doomed soldier going off to war.
  54. Cheaper by the Dozen 2
    This is definitely a family trip to stay home and skip.
  55. Fun with Dick and Jane
    Fun With Dick and Jane has lived up to its title: It's fun, and that's fine.
  56. The White Countess
    Despite its brilliant evocation of this great city at this most provocative time in history, the movie just gets sillier and sillier.
  57. The Family Stone
    There are many ways to define the shrieking awfulness of The Family Stone, from the general lack of wit to the cheap exploitation of cancer to its casual cruelty, but it's writer-director Thomas Bezucha's casting that really goes awry.
  58. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
    There are complications, extremely cleverly worked out. Jones is in just about every scene in this taut, provocative film.
  59. The Producers
    It's too long to be great and it's too square to be great and it's too loud to be great and it finds homosexual effeminacy too funny to ever be called great, but I can't imagine anyone coming out sadder than they went in.
  60. Hoodwinked!
    Hoodwinked makes a little sense. Too bad, then, it's so crummy.
  61. King Kong
    Jackson's big monkey picture show is certainly the best popular entertainment of the year. The film is a wondrous blend of then and now: It honors its mythic predecessor of 1933 while using sophisticated movie technology to seamlessly manipulate the fantastic.
  62. Brokeback Mountain
    Brokeback Mountain possesses handsome and sympathetic lead players, magnificent scenery, heartbreaking melodrama, righteousness and cultural import. But as a testament to the importance of following one's passion, it's devoid of one crucial thing: passion.
  63. Memoirs of a Geisha
    Memoirs of a Geisha is everything you'd expect it to be: beautiful, mesmerizing, tasteful, Japanese. It's just not very hot.
  64. Mrs Henderson Presents
    Humor and warmth abound in Mrs. Henderson Presents.
  65. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
    Well told, handsome, stirring and loads of fun.
  66. The World's Fastest Indian
    As the movie's tag line has it, it's based on a hell of a story. Too bad they didn't just tell it.
  67. Æon Flux
    With the exception of a few enjoyable action scenes, such as when Aeon and fellow operative Sithandra (Sophie Okonedo) flip and backflip their way across a lethal garden of bullet-spewing trees and spikes disguised as blades of grass, Aeon Flux is surprisingly draggy.
  68. Transamerica
    If Tucker's road map often feels a little too confining and the screwball comedy too contrived, he can take credit for introducing viewers to a character they have almost certainly never met before.
  69. First Descent
    The stars of First Descent aren't particularly memorable, or even likable. At their worst, they come off as cocky, self-absorbed Peter Pans; at their best, they're sweet but shallow.
  70. The Boys of Baraka
    Rich, sweet, densely layered and deeply satisfying. A film that might have been a dry exercise in earnest nonfiction filmmaking becomes a soaring, artistically complex testament to survival, character and hope.
  71. Mrs Palfrey at The Claremont
    It's all expectable, it's all enjoyable: British theatrical professionalism at the highest pitch.
  72. The Ice Harvest
    This often macabre comedy allows us to doff such civilized traits as taste and decency. We're free to laugh at anything, and we do. Oh, the shame -- and the good time.
  73. Just Friends
    In all, it's not too bad and it's not too long.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rent
    Onstage, Rent is a series of power surges, but in the movie the songs leave you flat.
  75. Yours, Mine and Ours
    The storyline is so familiar ("Cheaper by the Dozen," et al), the audience can practically call out scenes ahead of time.
  76. The Libertine
    It doesn't help matters that The Libertine seems to unload every olde English cliche on file.
  77. Syriana
    What's so powerful about the film is the rich stories it tells and how it leads them like so many human tributaries to one black, bubbling source.
  78. 39 Pounds of Love
    Truly touching moments such as a surprise meeting between Ami and his estranged brother, Oscar, show us this movie didn't need any sentimental help.
  79. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
    Probably the most engaging Potter film of the series thus far.
  80. Walk the Line
    Unfortunately, for all its good music and admirable vocal impersonations, Walk the Line slides -- very, very slowly -- downhill.
  81. Breakfast on Pluto
    Although "Pluto" has a rollicky, endearing air, it's cooler than Jordan's other films.
  82. The Syrian Bride
    On one hand, the movie is guilty of schematic arrangement...But at the same time, Israeli producer-director-writer Eran Riklis and Palestinian co-writer Suha Arraf use the device to reveal touching human complexity.
  83. Pride & Prejudice
    Lord God, can she take control of a scene, dominate a movie, project to the last seat, radiate power and personality unto the rafters. It's a great performance. I love the way Knightley's eyes light with furious intelligence when she cuts the pompous Darcy a new something or other.
  84. Derailed
    It's fast, slick, stupid, violent fun and, despite the cynically high body count, without serious intention in this world.
  85. Zathura: A Space Adventure
    This handmade feel gives Zathura an appealing, childlike sense of wonder, an element too often forgotten in movies with many times the budget and technological resources.
  86. Bee Season
    Co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, whose visual schemes lent a hypnotic aura to their previous collaborations -- "The Deep End" and "Suture" -- don't find the right balance of story and image this time.
  87. Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic
    She is so funny she should come with a seven-day waiting period.
  88. Get Rich or Die Tryin'
    Shockingly inert.
  89. Chicken Little
    Takes the story one more crank toward the literal. When the thing hits the bird, it turns out, guess what, it is a piece of the sky, the sky is falling. It's like saying: McCarthy was right! Sheesh, revisionist history: It's everywhere!
  90. Jarhead
    What's so good about the movie is Gyllenhaal's refusal to show off; he doesn't seem jealous of the camera's attention when it goes to others and is content, for long stretches, to serve simply as a prism though which other young men can be observed.
  91. The Dying Gaul
    A small, self-contained gem of incisive writing, superb acting and rich, expressive visuals.
  92. Gay Sex in the 70s
    An engrossing piece of social history, a lively, astonishingly well-documented excavation of that period.
  93. The Legend of Zorro
    What a waste of talent, time and money. And guess what else? Not only is The Legend of Zorro stupid and boring but -- ta-da! -- it's also really long!
  94. Prime
    Sure, this romance, starring Meryl Streep, Uma Thurman and Bryan Greenberg, follows a familiar boy-meets-girl scenario, but Younger turns the routine into combustible fun.
  95. Saw II
    It's clear this sequel (directed by Darren Lynn Bousman) doesn't have the same smartness (I speak relatively) of the original. Nonetheless, "Saw" fans can still look forward to involuntary incineration, wrist and throat slashing, bullets through brains and the bashing of someone's head with a nail-festooned club.
  96. The Weather Man
    Shines the light on a special kind of heroism -- the guts to face up to yourself and make changes. What makes this so emotionally compelling is the way Dave scrambles from this deep vale of cluelessness to something approaching moral maturity.
  97. Paradise Now
    Paradise may not change anyone's ideology, but it should convince some that, but for some deeply divisive views of religious morality, people are pretty much the same on either side of the holy fence.
  98. Three... Extremes
    Like a bouquet of poisoned flowers -- beautiful, delicate and lethal. A trio of horror films from three "extreme" Asian directors, it shows how much evil fun talented bad boys can have on a very small scale.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Ballets Russes
    An electrifying documentary.
  100. Doom
    A loud, standard-issue sci-fi action film that has a confusing mission.
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