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 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    The girls in 'Traveling Pants' are only mannequins wearing someone else's clothes. They don't get inside your head, let alone your heart.
  2. The Longest Yard
    Whether it's the sight of Reynolds squeezed painfully into a football uniform or the endless footballs-to-the-crotch and tired gay jokes, The Longest Yard has the feeling of mutton dressed as lamb.
  3. Madagascar
    The underwhelming, only fitfully amusing movie left me hungry for more.
  4. The Ninth Day
    Plays more like a philosophical debate than a war drama.
  5. Saving Face
    A sweet, true and, at times, universal love story it is.
  6. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
    Revenge was supposed to be the one that really socked it to us, about Anakin's almost biblical fall from grace. But the movie never rises to its powerful occasion.
  7. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire
    A compelling, compact story about a country that was left to destroy itself while one man presided futilely over the carnage.
  8. Mindhunters
    So stupid it makes "xXx: State of the Union" look like it was written by Nietzsche.
  9. Kicking & Screaming
    If its made-for-TV sensibility explains its chaotically blobby shooting style, it doesn't clarify a plot so painfully padded that it looks for laughs in strange digressive asides regarding bratwurst and coffee.
  10. Monster-in-Law
    So tame and limp, it may actually give mothers-in-law a good name.
  11. Unleashed
    A little less conversation, a lot more action, please.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Mad Hot Ballroom
    Insightful and endearing documentary.
  13. My Mother
    Involves such a disturbing blend of unhealthy mother-son affection and physical pain that it gives new meaning to the term child -- not to mention audience -- abuse.
  14. Layer Cake
    The director Vaughn has a flair not merely for action and ambiance but also for character.
  15. Kings & Queen
    Odd, complex and charming.
  16. Tell Them Who You Are
    Possibly without meaning to, the younger Wexler has made a superb examination not of professional cinematography -- really, who cares? -- but of the eternal bad business between fathers and sons.
  17. Crash
    This is the rare American film really about something, and almost all the performances are riveting.
  18. House of Wax
    You'll be rooting for these people to get slaughtered out of sheer boredom.
  19. Kingdom of Heaven
    To introduce an archetype like this to western audiences -- as the world weathers culturally and religiously demonizing times -- may have been worth this whole flawed movie. Too bad the story didn't just start with him.
  20. Jiminy Glick in Lalawood
    Never was this funny a comedian in this horrible a movie.
  21. Mysterious Skin
    A startling portrayal of how the cycle of abuse plays itself out in the lives of its victims.
  22. Brothers
    There's such a sense of overall intensity, you know you have been though something powerful.
  23. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    Although "Hitchhiker" starts out a total gas, it doesn't have enough fuel to sustain the ride, ultimately amounting to little more than some amusing gags strung together in search of a story.
  24. xXx: State of the Union
    So primitive, it must have been written in lizard blood on animal skin.
  25. 3-Iron
    It's actually quite satisfying, in a weird, magical-realism sort of way that manages to disturb and confound as much as it appeases the romantic.
  26. À Tout de Suite (Right Now)
    In the end, A Tout de Suite leads to not much more of a point than one woman's loss of innocence.
  27. Death of a Dynasty
    Well shot and edited, Death of a Dynasty is hardly a comedy classic, but it's frequently on target.
  28. Funny Ha Ha
    Dollenmayer has managed to transform a sad sack into an indie screen goddess.
  29. The Holy Girl
    Feels like something I know is supposed to be good for me, but that I just couldn't stomach.
  30. Ladies in Lavender.
    A poignant portrait of one woman who has loved and lost, and another who never had a love to lose.
  31. The Tunnel
    Good old-fashioned movie storytelling that steadily builds, over the course of nearly three hours, to a white-knuckle conclusion that satisfies on nearly every level.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Another Road Home
    Earnest if emotionally unsatisfying documentary.
  33. The Interpreter
    Gets more and more complex until it's almost laughable; it has too many beats, too many reverses, and in the end seems unbelievable.
  34. A Lot Like Love
    It starts with a bang and ends with a whimper.
  35. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
    It's a story of jaw-dropping chutzpah, grim, mostly hindsight-based humor and more stomach-churning drama than you could find in 10 screenplays.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Game of Their Lives
    It is flat-footed, uninspired and disjointed from start to finish, a glaring disservice to the men who played the game.
  37. The Man Who Copied
    Never better than fair to middling pleasant.
  38. The Amityville Horror
    I got exactly what I expected: Scared and tickled, within an inch of my life.
  39. House of D
    A little more literary than lifelike, House of D is a story that feels too pat, and too perfect, for its own good.
  40. It's All Gone Pete Tong
    Just inspiring enough, just scary enough, just sappy enough and just funny enough to get by.
  41. Torremolinos 73
    Starting out as a wacky little comedy about a mousy Spanish couple who become unwitting porn stars, Torremolinos 73 suddenly morphs, during the third act, into a far more sober and tender story about the lengths to which a man will go to give his wife what she wants.
  42. Palindromes
    As a director, Solondz seems to have his own locked-in fate -- to favor caricature over compassion -- and his movies are the worse for it.
  43. Sahara
    Sahara is a mediocrity wrapped inside a banality, toasted in a nice, fresh cliche.
  44. Fever Pitch
    It's almost too dull to pan.
  45. Kung Fu Hustle
    For all its stylishness, verve and moments of visual poetry, the relentlessly punishing slapstick and overall cruel tone left me cold.
  46. Eating Out
    A sweet and funny take on the crossed-wire romantic couplings of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.'
  47. Winter Solstice
    Sternfeld has created a garden on film that opens up its blooms for us, not in the dark of the movie house, but long after we've left the theater.
  48. ...And They Lived Happily Ever After
    Manages to be a diverting and funny character study, at least most of the time.
  49. Major Dundee (re-release)
    What's important is that Major Dundee, not a great movie but a great star-driven, big budget 1965 studio western, is back in all its fractured glory and confidence.
  50. Eros
    It doesn't seem like overstating things to say that Eros becomes steadily worse as it goes along.
  51. Voices in Wartime
    Its pedagogical tone perfectly suits it for viewing in classrooms.
  52. Sin City
    Two hours and six minutes has never seemed so much like two and six-tenths seconds. It's pure pulp metafiction.
  53. Dust to Glory
    It's a fascinating film, but after a while, the digital photography wears out its gritty welcome.
  54. Control
    Visually stylish surrealist drama.
  55. Look at Me
    Smart, absorbing movie.
  56. Beauty Shop
    Spends too much time being convivial and not enough time looking for the kind of real conflict that begets a good comedy.
  57. Oldboy
    Its magnificence is that it takes itself dead serious. It's not entertainment, but it's sure a piece of toughness.
  58. Guess Who
    Might provide a much-needed fix for Mac's most ardent fans, but they'll have to wait for a star vehicle that fully exploits the range of his comic gifts.
  59. The Ballad of Jack and Rose
    Often seems less like a fully realized film than an illustrated story, its paragraphs reduced to neatly contrived set pieces.
  60. D.E.B.S.
    A hideously unfunny spy spoof with pretensions to social satire in its treatment of a lesbian relationship.
  61. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
    The makers of Miss Congeniality 2 have violated the cardinal rule of Sandra Bullock cinema. They turned her into someone unlikable.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Mondovino
    A picnic wine, if you will -- more conversation-starter than collector's item.
  63. Ice Princess
    A somewhat formulaic if nevertheless crudely effective manipulation of the figure skating themes that all of us girls love so much.
  64. The Ring Two
    Illustrates the law of returning diminishments.
  65. Melinda and Melinda
    Give Woody Allen credit for ambition. Failing at one movie wasn't enough. Nearly anyone can do that; it happens all the time. He's chosen to fail at two simultaneously.
  66. Fifty-Fifty
    Though it captures many sharp, stark details of life in poverty-stricken Kazakhstan, Schizo's momentum is so measured, it nearly lulls its audience to sleep.
  67. Steamboy
    The movie never transcended its elaborate production work to achieve an independent reality.
  68. Hostage
    But by the time Willis's character saves this considerably long day, it's filmgoers who will no doubt feel like prisoners, as a movie that promises to be a taut nail-biter devolves into the kind of silly, overblown climax parodied so beautifully by Robert Altman in "The Player."
  69. Robots
    The story fails to really engage on any level save the kinetic.
  70. The Upside of Anger
    It feels like a retread of several better movies, with a nastier, more bitter edge.
  71. Millions
    The movie, though quite funny in parts, turns organically dark, and it refuses to paint a picture of a cotton-candy world. It prefers the real one.
  72. In My Country
    This romantic melodrama ... doesn't even get to first base.
  73. Don't Move
    A syrupy Italian power ballad along the lines of the ones on the movie's soundtrack. Its tune is mawkish, bombastic but, in the end, not especially resonant.
  74. Dot the I
    Indeed it looks as if this otherwise straight-to-video endeavor, which was made in 2003, is being released only to cash in on Bernal's of-the-moment-ness in Hollywood.
  75. Off the Map
    A joy to watch.
  76. Be Cool
    Where there was effortless cool in the first movie, there is nothing but manufactured posing here.
  77. The Jacket
    In this case, the adage would go something like "material, material, material," also known as the Nicolas Cage Rule: Good acting can't overcome bad taste.
  78. The Pacifier
    With no real comedy to enjoy, it's torture to watch Diesel undergo a predictable change from emotionless soldier to loving family man. Makes you want to spit out your pacifier in disgust.
  79. Dear Frankie
    Within this overly familiar trope, there's plenty of room for small surprises, not the least of which are delightful, understated performances all around.
  80. Gunner Palace
    Do these soldiers make it? We keep watching and waiting. There's not much more to Gunner Palace than that, but it's no different than the soldiers' lot.
  81. Walk on Water
    Fox's film seems to say that the kind of saintly purity that would enable one to walk on water -- or to kill with impunity and without repercussions -- doesn't exist.
  82. The Best of Youth
    Works as both historical allegory and moving family drama.
  83. Cursed
    Wes Craven, who started the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series, should know a lot better.
  84. Diary of a Mad Black Woman
    Sure, I laughed. Yes, I cried. But mostly I just wanted to throw up.
  85. Man of the House
    It's got a lot of small movies bouncing around inside it, but there's no big movie on the outside.
  86. Up and Down
    Haunting little film, whose chaotic universe is churned up by the conflict between the haves and the have-nots.
  87. The Other Side of the Street
    More love story than thriller, with the mystery providing only slack tension and the December-December romance that ultimately develops between Regina and Camargo crackling with drama and sexual tension aplenty.
  88. Turtles Can Fly
    All of the actors in Turtles Can Fly are nonprofessionals, and all bring electrifying authenticity and presence to their roles.
  89. Because of Winn-Dixie
    Robb is remarkably assured; there isn't a false note in her performance.
  90. Constantine
    Much of Constantine simply portends.
  91. Son of the Mask
    Lacks "spark."
  92. Downfall
    Intriguing, oddly banal and ultimately deflating.
  93. Schultze Gets the Blues
    Schorr's endearing little movie gets under your skin much like the music it celebrates.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Animation Show 2005
    All of the dozen works featured are strong, with even the least engaging of the stories ... being visually compelling.
  95. Ong Bak
    Refreshingly free of the hyperbole of special effects...Ong-Bak will win no scriptwriting awards, but Jaa is definitely the real deal.
  96. Bride & Prejudice
    A big, sprawling, sweet-natured mishmash with plots upon subplots and enough characters to make the head spin.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hitch
    Hitch works best when it's a buddy comedy, with Smith and James having a blast as smooth Yoda and jiggly Jedi.
  98. Inside Deep Throat
    It's a fascinating story but not so fascinatingly told.
  99. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    Quite simply, a beautiful film, in both form and content.
  100. Pooh's Heffalump Movie
    It Works.
  101. Nobody Knows
    The kids in Nobody Knows are most decidedly not crazy, and we come to care for them to an almost excruciating degree.
  102. The Wedding Date
    Amusing premise, not-so-amusing execution.
  103. The Nomi Song
    There remains a maddening emptiness where the film's ostensible subject should be.
  104. Rory O'Shea Was Here
    If there's such a thing as freedom for everyone, Rory's determined to give the prospect its most grueling road test.
  105. Assisted Living
    This finale turns Assisted Living from fascinating experimental film into something finer.
  106. Travelers and Magicians
    To watch this movie is to be moved not only by an affecting, warmly spirited yarn, but also by the wisdom that seems to waft to us directly from those snow-capped peaks.
  107. Alone in the Dark
    Supremely idiotic.
  108. Hide and Seek
    Jigh class briefly gives way to high camp, which then itself dissipates to an anticlimactic thud.
  109. Fascination
    It plays like a soft-core-porn potboiler left over from the 1970s about a hot vampire chick.
  110. Lost Embrace
    Argentine filmmaker Daniel Burman's shaky-camera, cinema-verite-style dramedy meanders in charming fashion.
  111. Are We There Yet?
    The humor's a tad too raunchy for the kids, and the predictable plot won't win over any of the parents.
  112. Head-On
    Has its share of surprises, especially in the performances of its two main players.
  113. Monsieur N.
    In the end Monsieur N. could use a little less cloak-and-dagger and more of what made "The Emperor's New Clothes" work, i.e., heart.
  114. Assault on Precinct 13
    Still breaks the first and only commandment of remakes: Thou shall at the very least do justice to the original, or thou shall not be made at all.
  115. Machuca
    Engaging entertainment and a great work of art.
  116. Coach Carter
    Covers every cliche in the Hollywood sports movie playbook, but it also makes the routine much more enjoyable than you'd expect.
  117. Elektra
    What it suffers from most is the sense of offhand storytelling that lies halfway between creative laziness and cost-cutting sloppiness.
  118. Racing Stripes
    Although this film about a zebra who aspires to win horse races has a marvelous premise, it slows to a mediocre canter right out of the starting gate.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Chorus
    Might have gone down as an endearing fable, if only the route to its finale had been less cliched.
  120. Short Cut to Nirvana: Kumbh Mela
    An overture to the subject rather than a profound study.
  121. White Noise
    Hampered by Niall Johnson's script, which is often confusing, muddy and ultimately cliche-ridden.
  122. Sky Blue
    Unfortunately, the more traditionally drawn 2-D human characters are as flat, in every sense of the word, as can be.
  123. A Love Song for Bobby Long
    Traffics in nearly every trite cliche of the "colorful" South one can think of, from its pseudo-Gothic aesthetic to its overripe dialogue.
  124. The Assassination of Richard Nixon
    It grinds on and on without mercy. You're in the cross hairs. There is no escape. Where is that Secret Service when you need it?
  125. The Merchant of Venice
    As cinematic storytelling, it works.
  126. In Good Company
    Good points aside, In Good Company is a bland, occasionally phlegmatic pastiche of cliches and dull encounters.
  127. Fat Albert
    Seems like a pretty cool movie -- at least, for a remake of a 1970s Saturday morning TV show.
  128. The Woodsman
    Not to be missed, if only for an unforgettable leading performance by Kevin Bacon.
  129. In the Realms of the Unreal
    The path taken by the film is somewhat labyrinthine and obscure, but it offers enough rewards to counterbalance its frustrations.
  130. The Phantom of the Opera
    Isn't just for music fans. It's more accessible than that, thanks to Joel Schumacher's bright direction and a few storytelling embellishments.
  131. Meet the Fockers
    Don't even rent the DVD, it'll only encourage them.
  132. Hotel Rwanda
    It sweeps over you with blunt, unequivocal conviction.
  133. Imaginary Heroes
    Never manages to achieve the balance between authenticity and eccentricity.
  134. Beyond the Sea
    This vainglorious biopic about Bobby Darin is really about what the '60s pop singer and actor means to Kevin Spacey.
  135. Flight of the Phoenix
    This is high-carb filmmaking at its finest. When it's all over, you'll have a knot in your stomach.
  136. The Sea Inside
    I remained strangely dry-eyed up to the final shot.
  137. Spanglish
    So rancid is Brooks's fury that it's clouded his judgment, so that each of his main characters is a stereotype of the most broad-brush, malodorous nature.
  138. The Aviator
    We may enjoy watching the spectacles, but we don't much care for, or even have a feeling for, the guy in the cockpit.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
    A gem of a movie, all its adversity and wickedness a backdrop for a story about the remarkable resilience of children
  140. Million Dollar Baby
    The heart of Million Dollar Baby lies in the core relationships among Frankie, Maggie and Scrap, friendships so pure, so genuine, so authentic that it takes actors of Eastwood's, Swank's and Freeman's caliber to sell them in this otherwise cynical world.
  141. Ocean's Twelve
    About halfway through you'll get an incredible hunger to see a movie.
  142. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
    Hovers frustratingly somewhere between charming and only mildly amusing.
  143. Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids
    Doesn't just bring you to the edge of the hopeless zone, it takes you right into its homes where the children play.
  144. Blade: Trinity
    If ever there was a case for quitting while you're behind, this "Blade" is it -- ready to be buried in a vat of garlic.
  145. House of Flying Daggers
    The sheer joy of letting go as a tale overwhelms your senses and drives the known world away -- that's the story.
  146. After Midnight
    So taken with its own love of cinema, it forgets to lead you down the necessary dramaturgical path to make you fall in love, too.
  147. The Green Butchers
    It's the sick humor that's most appealing about this odd little Danish film.
  148. The Aryan Couple
    The whole thing is coarse and vulgar, as it hides its low fascinations behind a scrim of Holocaust piety until it becomes pure kitsch.
  149. Closer
    Everything is tearful confessions, angry interrogations and breakups. But there's nothing underneath.
  150. Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
    Stone's film is a case study in cultural analysis that aims at too much and achieves too little.
  151. A Very Long Engagement
    Engagement simply disappears inside its own enormous, intricate and ambitious design.
  152. Notre musique
    A film about war and reconciliation, is deeply Christian, a study in humility and the moral uncertainty at the core of the Christian message.
  153. Christmas with the Kranks
    Everyone in the film is mean-spirited, manipulative and repulsive, and I'm only talking about the women! The men are much worse, particularly Dan Aykroyd.
  154. Alexander
    Like every other second of more than 10,000 seconds in Alexander, it doesn't engage in the least.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Fear and Trembling
    This quietly odd and hilarious tale is a bit like a Japanese version of the popular BBC comedy series "The Office" or perhaps the "Dilbert" comic strip at its peak.
  156. Days of Being Wild (re-release)
    Its themes of passion, heartbreak and the inexorable passage of time are eternal.
  157. National Treasure
    Rated PG, which must stand for "particularly gullible," it's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for people who slept through American history class.
  158. Bad Education
    To watch Bad Education is to revel, along with Almodovar, in the power of cinema to take us on journeys of breathtaking mystery and dimension and beauty.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie
    An amusing enough romp through his familiar undersea universe.
  160. After the Sunset
    The true crime is the eight bucks the filmmakers want to steal from you. Best advice: Don't let them get away with it.
  161. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    One singularly unbecoming character, who should, by rights, forever remain a "singleton."
  162. Kinsey
    For all its explosive material, this is a fairly straightforward telling.
  163. Finding Neverland
    You're expected to weep, and perhaps you will weep. But if you do, it's not likely that you'll respect yourself in the morning.
  164. The Polar Express
    A truly satisfying holiday picture, the kind everyone can enjoy.
  165. Fade to Black
    A spectacular concert documentary that also gives some fascinating insights into the making of "The Black Album."
  166. Brother to Brother
    Works far better as an idea than its execution; this has to do with the difficulties of making profound statements with limited budgets and technology, and also grappling with the still-growing sensibilities of an emerging writer.
  167. Cachorro
    Has a refreshingly original attitude.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Alfie
    Occasionally amusing, technically lovely but ultimately dated.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Incredibles
    The movie is full of wonderful little touches: Syndrome, the bad guy, is drawn to remind viewers of "Heat Miser" from the classic Christmas cartoon "The Year Without a Santa Claus."
  170. Voices of Iraq
    Fairly fascinating little documentary.
    • Washington Post
  171. Enduring Love
    Although this script starts off with great zest, it's ultimately a disappointment.
  172. Birth
    Too highbrow for the multiplex and too literal for the hipsters, it's unsatisfying both as gothic camp and serious cinema.
  173. Saw
    But humans who live above ground, including horror fans, will find themselves only fitfully entertained and more consistently appalled.
  174. Ray
    It is to the film's credit -- and Foxx's -- that we are able to see, behind the flash and fury, a man who didn't know how to love, and was so much the lonelier for it.
  175. Sideways
    There's not a false note here, and the entire supporting cast -- is uniformly excellent.
  176. Undertow
    It's just sort of trying.
  177. Hearts and Minds (re-release)
    Davis, who won an Oscar for Best Documentary, may not have agreed with presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon on the war, but he heeded Johnson's call to fight for hearts and minds. His aim was dead on target.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Lightning in a Bottle
    The movie manages to educate without losing steam.
  179. Postmen in the Mountains
    It's a love letter to the myriad ways, large and small, that mail handlers change lives the world over.
  180. The Machinist
    Psychological suspense at its finest.
  181. The Grudge
    It's effectively frightening. It's just not the kind of frightening that stays with you very long, unless of course someone decides to make the same movie . . . yet again.
  182. Surviving Christmas
    Absolutely awesome in its relentless mediocrity.
  183. Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain... Begins to Die
    There are some very thought-provoking points, and the movie deserves a balanced listening-to.
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