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. Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story
    It canters along, content to follow the Rules of Cute and Fuzzy Horse Movies.
  2. Shopgirl
    You keep expecting Shopgirl to get funny or sad or poignant; it never does. It just starts, then it's over.
  3. Stay
    That mind-bending, mystical business was better handled in such films as 1990's "Jacob's Ladder."
  4. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
    Macabre, yes, but the movie's also inventive and funny. You get a lot of smart bang-bang for your buck.
  5. After Innocence
    The moral purity of After Innocence is so overwhelming that it simply leaves you with nothing to say or do. It's kind of beyond criticism.
  6. Protocols of Zion
    The movie goes off the rails only when the filmmaker inadvertently legitimizes the Protocols' loony philosophical heirs by interviewing a New York medical examiner and a widow about the remains of one of 9/11's Jewish victims.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Kids in America
    Short on real teenage angst and emotion, the film is long on caricatures.
  8. Naked in Ashes
    By turns fascinating, puzzling and troubling -- a deeply felt account of the varieties of religious experience but also a thoroughly uncritical apologia for fanaticism.
  9. Ushpizin
    Most revelatory here is Malli, who defies the stereotype of submission and subservience and emerges as a woman of self-possession and substance. (The earthily beautiful Bat-Sheva Rand infuses the character with a generous dollop of her own zaftig sensuality.)
  10. Domino
    It's like a ferret on crystal meth that belatedly discovers ecstasy, and it's a tiresome trip either way.
  11. Elizabethtown
    It's hard to believe the creative mind that gave us "Almost Famous," "Jerry Maguire," "Say Anything" and "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" looked up with satisfaction after typing 117 pages of this.
  12. Where the Truth Lies
    Canadian director Atom Egoyan delivers a rare misfire with Where the Truth Lies, a shockingly fatuous murder mystery with pseudo-intellectual pretensions.
  13. North Country
    An engrossing, well-crafted story of a grave injustice avenged, hitting all the right notes of sympathy, outrage and, finally, relief.
  14. Innocent Voices
    What's so powerful about Mandoki's film, which he co-scripted with Torres, is the complex, ever-surprising course that Chava takes toward manhood.
  15. Loggerheads
    If Loggerheads sometimes feels too forced, it features some unforgettable performances, especially by Hunt, an accomplished comedienne who makes an impressive debut as a dramatic lead here.
  16. Nine Lives
    The beauty of Nine Lives is that its occasionally overlapping stories feel entirely unforced; Garcia's is a filmmaking style of rare lyricism, compassion and discretion.
  17. Good Night, and Good Luck.
    The film, therefore, is like a child's view of these events, untroubled by complexity, hungry for myth and simplicity.
  18. In Her Shoes
    There'd be nothing wrong with this if the film 'fessed up to its kitschy soul. Instead, it pretends to be the high-minded drama it's not.
  19. Two for the Money
    The fight between good and evil feels fixed in favor of Hollywood redemption.
  20. Waiting...
    It's lewd, crude and socially irredeemable.
  21. The Squid and the Whale
    This story doesn't just belong to them anymore. This richly observed, sometimes heartbreaking movie has become ours, too.
  22. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
    Gromit's every facial move -- every grimace, scowl, eye-roll and glance askance -- is sublime.
    • Washington Post
  23. Capote
    The genius of the film, besides Hoffman's stunning performance, is that it knows exactly how much is enough. It never overplays, lingers or punches up.
  24. The Greatest Game Ever Played
    It's such a great story, you have to ask two questions: Why didn't they make this movie before? And why did they make it this way?
  25. Into the Blue
    May look good cavorting prettily on deck, but ultimately it deserves to walk the plank.
  26. Serenity
    No matter what's coming their way, post-apocalyptic doom or gloom, this James Gang of the galaxy is just plain fun to watch.
  27. MirrorMask
    So single-minded in its reach for fantasy, it becomes the genre's evil opposite: banality.
  28. The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio
    It has its own subversive power, as it elevates one family's struggle for working-class survival and valorizes a woman of simple faith and inner strength.
  29. The War Within
    A portrait of a mild-mannered zealot, one that seeps under the skin and unsettles the nerves.
  30. A History of Violence
    A sobering reflection on our culture's attitude toward violence.
  31. Flightplan
    Until those final moments, Flightplan succeeds admirably, both as a sophisticated psychological thriller and as an example of, if not great art, then superb craftsmanship.
  32. Roll Bounce
    The film can't get its rhythms right, fluctuating wildly between comedy and pathos.
  33. Dear Wendy
    It's a diatribe from beginning to end.
  34. Dorian Blues
    It doesn't open up much new territory, except to eschew much of the dark, frank sexuality that has characterized such recent sexual coming-of-age movies as "Mysterious Skin." Instead, Bardwell offers a cheerful, if sometimes strenuously earnest, take on a subject that seems overdue for a lighthearted touch.
  35. Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D
    A gee-wonderful virtual visit to the arid orb, which uses ingenious technical sleight of hand to -- let's face it -- fake it beautifully.
  36. Occupation: Dreamland
    It's a movie with the exciting parts cut out.
  37. Oliver Twist
    The fact that there's nothing wrong with it -- that there's nary a scenic detail or scrap of dialogue or performance that isn't utterly on the nose -- is precisely what's wrong with it.
  38. Everything Is Illuminated
    A clinically adequate, occasionally above-average art house film. In certain moments, it has all the subtlety and illumination one should ever need.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Proof
    Paltrow is pretty commanding, even if Madden pushes things toward airlessness by keeping the camera so tight.
  40. Just Like Heaven
    Outlandish, uneven, preposterous and often maddeningly morbid.
  41. Lord of War
    Tells Yuri's story with the same bravado and stylishness as Scorsese at his finest, with bigger-than-life characters and situations splashing across the screen in breathtaking scale.
    • Washington Post
  42. Corpse Bride
    For all its charm, we can't quite figure out for whom the film is intended: Talking maggots and decaying bodies do not a kiddie movie make.
  43. Thumbsucker
    A gently stirring symphony about emotional transition filled with lovely musical passages and softly nuanced performances.
  44. Stupid Boy
    Should we really be so moved and uplifted that a horny, ignorant young man begins to join the human race? Not when our voice of conscience is an off-screen filmmaker issuing pseudo-profound, and ultimately banal, pronouncements about the true nature of love and seduction.
  45. G
    For anyone to enjoy this starchy, contrived exercise in vanity and product placement, it's best not to have read the book. In fact, it's best not to have read ANY book.
  46. Venom
    Reprises all the tedium of slasher flicks.
  47. Separate Lies
    Fellowes has brought intelligence and control to the eternally vexing question of whether the right thing is always the good thing.
  48. The Man
    Unfortunately, The Man makes the mistake of assuming casting is all it takes to make a good comedy.
  49. An Unfinished Life
    This unusual convergence of stars doesn't amount to much.
  50. The Exorcism of Emily Rose
    With a cast like this, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a superior performance vehicle and on that count alone is never less than riveting.
  51. Cote d'Azur
    A romper that doesn't shy away from sexual frankness or Mediterranean laissez faire.
  52. Keane
    May be too much suspense for some, but it's vividly powerful.
  53. Green Street Hooligans
    Soccer needs this movie like Georgia needed "Deliverance."
  54. Music from the Inside Out
    Is it a great film? Not quite. It flits from idea to idea too promiscuously and relies too much on the visually deadening use of people talking on camera. But among the dull passages there are moving stories, and a very loving sympathy for the people it profiles.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie
    Unfortunately, a good deal of Touch the Music"is devoted to vacuous interviews with Glennie, who seems positively incapable of saying anything substantial. Nor is most of the music very good.
  56. Transporter 2
    Statham isn't the best thing in Transporter 2; he's essentially the only thing.
  57. Underclassman
    If you saw "21 Jump Street" back in the '80s, or any of a number of shows featuring cute and cuddly cops, you pretty much know where this flick is heading.
  58. The Constant Gardener
    Isn't quite a great espionage movie or a great Africa movie, but in a summer of heat and wind, it's the next best thing.
  59. The Brothers Grimm
    Gilliam does two things well: mud and trees.
  60. The Cave
    The Cave isn't just a bad movie, it's a very, very, very bad movie, so bad that it can't even redeem itself by turning into high camp.
  61. Undiscovered
    Indeed, I'd say Undiscovered belongs on the WB, but that would be gravely unfair to the channel, which looks like the BBC in comparison.
  62. The Baxter
    With The Baxter, Showalter's begging his way into the ranks of the safe and the mediocre.
  63. The Memory of a Killer
    Belgian actor [Jan] Decleir's tough-guy vulnerability ... gives an otherwise standard police procedural extraordinary grace and power.
  64. The 40 Year Old Virgin
    In a textbook example of the have-it-both-ways ethos of self-loathing narcissism, Carell has succeeded in creating a character of old-fashioned decency in a movie that otherwise flouts it at every turn.
  65. Red Eye
    That's not to say it's great; it's not. Maybe it's not to say it's good, because it's only sort of good. It is to say, however, that it's nifty.
  66. Valiant
    A mite too hard to follow for most of the kiddie crowd who'll want to see it.
  67. El Crimen Perfecto (The Perfect Crime)
    The first 60 minutes of this black comedy are brilliantly sustained, but then director and co-writer de la Iglesia loses his way.
  68. Supercross
    A poor man's "Lords of Dogtown," substituting hard-core motorcycle racing for extreme skateboarding and featuring a young cast of television-bred actors.
  69. Reel Paradise
    A documentary that uses Pierson's self-congratulatory mission to explore a deeper story about cultural clashes and the complex dynamics of the modern American family.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till
    You leave the theater feeling moved by a mother's courage, sickened by the crime and a little frustrated, wondering if this unquiet moment in our history will ever rest easy.
  71. The Skeleton Key
    It's all ultimately made watchable by the exceptional cast ... and a story that, despite some unsavory racial undertones, holds the audience's interest even when it veers toward the downright silly.
  72. Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
    It's not Deuce's satisfied clientele, but the audience, that gets the shaft.
  73. Four Brothers
    Loud, stupid, unrealistic, overdone, without a thought in its ugly little head and kind of enjoyable.
  74. The Great Raid
    This is a movie for people more interested in the subject matter than its dramatic presentation.
  75. Asylum
    Shouldn't fool viewers into thinking it's anything but a pseudo-artsy piece of tripe.
  76. Grizzly Man
    A small masterpiece of a documentary that takes us into the heart of a complex darkness.
  77. Pretty Persuasion
    A devastatingly dishonest, tough look at teenage life.
  78. Pulse
    Like the best horror movies, it doesn't beat you over the head, splatter you, or fold, spindle and mutilate you. Rather, slowly and subtly, it creeps you out. You may go home and throw out your computer and lock the doors.
  79. Clean
    It's the moral journey of Nolte's character that is the real story in Clean, but Assayas instead focuses on the manipulative habits of an addict, resulting in a mannered study of narcissism and self-pity.
  80. The Dukes of Hazzard
    So loud, so long, so dumb.
  81. Broken Flowers
    Jarmusch manages to imbue banality with surprising beauty and humor.
  82. 2046
    It takes what could be called the Chinese equivalent of chutzpah to make a movie with three of the world's most beautiful and talented women -- Gong Li, Maggie Cheung and Zhang Ziyi -- and to be more interested in the male character.
  83. Duma
    Documentary makers struggle for this effect -- a feeling for the land that is both grand and unsentimental. The makers of Duma, a fable fit for children, have found it.
  84. Junebug
    With its wise understanding of the magnetic pull (and invisible polarities) of family, Junebug is an auspicious debut for Morrison.
  85. Darwin's Nightmare
    What gradually comes into focus is a terrifying, appalling, infuriating cycle of exploitation and corruption.
  86. Must Love Dogs
    This is nothing but a dare-to-be-terrible movie.
  87. Sky High
    A slight but sure-footed, live-action comic fantasy.
  88. Stealth
    It's not new. It's not interesting. I wish it would go away.
  89. The Aristocrats
    As long as it stayed mainstream dirty it was okay, but when it got into perversions the American Psychiatric Society hasn't even named yet, it left me behind.
  90. Tony Takitani
    A marvelously moody meditation, beautiful to look at and beautiful to ponder as the camera slowly pans from one scene to the next, framing life as still life.
  91. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
    Sure, Balzac meanders at too leisurely a pace. But the actors are charming; the story sweet
  92. The Devil's Rejects
    The movie's signal flaw -- that is, other than its degeneracy, its sloppiness, its love of dark things and pretty stains and arterial spray patterns -- is Moseley as the demonic Otis.
  93. Hustle & Flow
    It's more of an urban fairy tale, a surprisingly charming story that -- in certain sections -- almost crystallizes into the sweetness of a Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland musical.
  94. The Island
    If you find yourself at "The Island" I have only three words of advice: Vote yourself off.
  95. Bad News Bears
    You don't watch Bad News Bears for the action out on the diamond. You hang out with that hangdog coach so you can catch every slurry, sour-mouthed retort coming out of his mouth.
  96. 9 Songs
    9 Songs inadvertently proves just how limited experimentation for its own sake can be.
  97. The Edukators
    What makes the film so affecting, however, is its matter-of-fact evocation of character. Each person in the four-character cast is vivid and specific and believable.
  98. Last Days
    It's definitely NOT a conventional biopic about Kurt Cobain. (Nor, as its title oddly suggests, is it about the demise of writer-director Van Sant.) It's a tone poem, an elliptical, fictionalized meditation about the ill-fated rock 'n' roll superstar.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    November
    The best thing about this psychological exploration is its star, Courteney Cox.
  100. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
    The satirical edge has been dulled in a film that is dominated, and ultimately swamped, by its star's mannered, pixilated performance.
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