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 5.3 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. Ghost Ship
    The plot doesn't always make sense, despite a thunderous explicatory montage halfway through, but as a fresh setting for terror shenanigans.
  2. The Thirteenth Floor
    Things become almost too strange and convoluted to handle. The story's dramatic effectiveness starts to seriously malfunction. The fascinating and the mysterious become the silly and occasionally comical.
  3. Facing Windows
    There's something diverting but not wildly stirring about this Italian drama.
  4. 25th Hour
    It's the usual undisciplined, overextended Spike symphony: more fun than it is any good.
  5. The Cooler
    Had The Cooler stuck to its dark guns and not turned into a treacly, love-conquers-all fairy tale, this movie might have gone somewhere. In the end, you're only watching this with a sort of mercenary interest in the actors.
  6. Gods and Generals
    One doesn't come away from it with any sense of what the victory cost in human terms.
  7. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
    A raunchy parody that's hip-deep in the mainstream it aims to rip, and sometimes does despite a glut of smug inside jokes.
  8. Waterworld
    Waterworld isn't "Fishtar," but Kevin Costner's pricey, post-apocalyptic sloshbuckler isn't a seafaring classic either.
  9. Seven Years in Tibet
    Unfortunately, Harrer's inner struggle isn't as grand as the sweep of Jean-Jacques Annaud's direction.
  10. Starsky & Hutch
    What modest pleasure the film affords is largely thanks to the charisma of its genial stars.
  11. Before Sunrise
    Sunrise feels more like an absorbing experiment than a supple success.
  12. The Bourne Identity
    As for Damon, this may not be a performance so much as an appearance. But he cares so utterly, it works.
  13. Antz
    Sorry, Antz has no show-stopping song and dance numbers, no catchy melodies and no love songs either. The score, made up of old standards, does, however, enhance one of the movie's wittier episodes.
  14. Rush Hour 2
    Nothing more or less than a moneymaking encore. The story is functional. The performers assume their marks with almost flippant ease.
  15. Monsters, Inc.
    Marvels of animation abound in Monsters, Inc. -- when it comes to irreverent humor and real heart, Monsters doesn't quite measure up.
    • Washington Post
  16. Big Daddy
    Sweetly dopey, kid-friendly, if overly contrived comedy.
  17. Total Recall
    Actually, any fun you might encounter in Recall can be traced, most often, to director Verhoeven, who injects some of his "Robocop" camp into this mega-dumb project.
  18. The Sweetest Thing
    The movie is neither good nor bad, but in its clever packaging of boy fantasy and girl fantasy, extremely cunning. As for Princess Diaz, no force on Earth can stop her now.
    • 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.
  20. Woman Thou Art Loosed
    Ultimately, the movie's too uneven to be totally satisfying.
  21. Alias Betty
    Makes for interesting, rather than emotionally compelling viewing.
  22. Robot Stories
    Most of the performances are excellent. The scripts, however, are slight and unsurprising.
  23. Payback
    That script – co-written by Terry Hayes and director Brian Helgeland – is almost too noir for its own good at times, but Gibson somehow manages to pull its implausibility off.
  24. The Count of Monte Cristo
    A mediocre production that nevertheless will strike a deep and resonant chord with viewers.
  25. A Home at the End of the World
    The film's first half is easily the best and brightest. As the movie moves into the more saddening sections, however, it loses most of its power.
  26. A Room with a View
    If amusing, A Room With a View is little more than a lark, a series of skits, a two-hour tribute to the rich British eccentric.
  27. Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst
    Guerrilla' is an engaging film, but it's a documentary and nothing more.
  28. Cachorro
    Has a refreshingly original attitude.
  29. Ali
    Watching Ali, you can be sure of experiencing two opposing things: a sterling performance from Will Smith as Muhammad Ali and a bewilderingly punch-drunk movie from Michael Mann.
  30. Jurassic Park
    The suspense and technical wizardry are the only reason to watch Jurassic Park. In a summer movie, that's more than enough, of course. But screenwriter Michael Crichton, adapting his popular novel with David Koepp, slashes almost everything that made the book an entertaining read.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Red Dragon
    Red Dragon is merely the distant echoes of what we liked about "Lambs."
  32. Tokyo Godfathers
    Will probably appeal most to hard-core fans of Japanese animation and its wide-eyed style, both visual and philosophical.
  33. The Matrix Reloaded
    No, it's not great. No, it's not a disaster.
  34. Lost Highway
    In Lost Highway, David Lynch dabbles in spooky, chilly implication and a sort of hip incoherence.
  35. Working Girl
    A subplot involving Griffith and first boyfriend Alec Baldwin becomes the-subplot-that-wouldn't-go-bust, and comic scenes sometimes go bankrupt because they just hold their stock too long. Light entertainment like this should zip along like those financial quote boards.
  36. Enemy at the Gates
    As long as you focus on the central sniper-versus-sniper story -- and not the dreadful mishmash of jarring accents or the film's unconvincing romantic subplot or any of the personal relationships -- you'll enjoy it.
  37. Not One Less
    At first, the picture is moving. . And suddenly charm turns to quasi-commie didacticism.
  38. The Road Home
    A nostalgic paean to China's fading pastoral ways, might easily be taken for an audition tape for Zhang Ziyi.
  39. Time of the Wolf
    More than watchable, if less than compelling.
  40. Cop Land
    Unfortunately, while Stallone can carry the weight, the movie can't. Too much of it is too busy -- too many undeveloped subplots -- and some of the main plotting feels murky.
  41. Kiss the Girls
    The movie -- adapted from James Patterson's novel by David Klass -- operates on the crime-movie equivalent of automatic pilot. It takes off, flies and lands without much creative intervention.
  42. Scary Movie 3
    It's outrageous. It's obnoxious. It's offensive. And yes, it's also really, really, really funny. Or, at least, it is for the first 40 minutes or so.
  43. The Saddest Music in the World
    You're left, as with certain vivid dreams, filled with memorable images but not completely able to account for what you just experienced.
  44. Titanic
    This movie should have blown us out of the water. Instead we catch ourselves occasionally thinking the unpardonable thought: "OK, sink already."
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Powerpuff Girls
    Offers cleverness and charm that are hard to come by in the summertime multiplex.
  46. Schindler's List
    A ruthlessly unsentimental portrait of a German war profiteer's epiphany that inspires neither sorrow nor pity, but a kind of emotional numbness.
  47. Beijing Bicycle
    Beautifully filmed and very atmospheric in terms of evoking the sights and sounds of modern-day Beijing, this Chinese movie suffers a flat tire about halfway through.
  48. Bowling for Columbine
    The only thing wrong with Bowling for Columbine is Moore himself.
  49. Breaking the Waves
    Although it contains many visually compelling passages and some provocative moments, the movie is strangely banal and simplistic.
  50. Ed Wood
    Burton has evoked the surface of Ed Wood's life, but in a story about a man who loves angora and frilly panties, he has barely unbuttoned Wood's uniform.
  51. Luther
    It's just unfortunate that a movie about such a daring man ultimately takes few risks.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time
    The trouble with this art movie is that it's more a movie than it's art.
  53. Sleepy Hollow
    In Burton's hands, Washington Irving's spooky classic is reincarnated as an overripe, grisly Goth cartoon.
  54. Bottle Rocket
    Gets by on quirky charm and slacker chic-but just barely.
  55. Ararat
    Doesn't connect with its audience in the one place that matters most: the heart.
  56. Girl with a Pearl Earring
    Unfolds as a series of meticulous tableaux vivants, but like those parlor pastimes, it lacks physical verve and a compelling emotional charge.
  57. Man on Fire
    The film as a whole, while possessing a kind of vicious beauty, feels as cold and as embalmed as a corpse.
  58. Waking Life
    It's a cult movie in search of a cult. It'll probably find one. It certainly looks and feels like no other movie ever made.
  59. 2 Fast 2 Furious
    Not about good storytelling, but it knows to turn up the volume, cut to dizzying closeups of driver's eyes as they negotiate dangerous bends and indulge its audience in the soul slaps, fanny grabs and head nods that govern this racing lifestyle.
  60. Flickering Lights
    It's funny and violent and fast and, er, Danish.
  61. Blade
    Blade's stomach-turning special effects, bone-crunching martial arts and cynical humor will more than satisfy any action-film addict's need for a fix of eye-popping escapist adrenaline.
  62. True Crime
    The geological equivalent of an albatross around the neck. It's another of those Warner Bros. productions that are heavy on star iconography and production values but AWOL on story.
  63. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
    Like the South, the movie is sumptuous and somnolent.
  64. May
    In visual terms, it's clear McKee has a talent for moviemaking...But he's going to need better stories than this.
  65. Wild at Heart
    The movie's initial intensity is so great, it consumes itself. By the time we reach the final scene, which is clearly supposed to exude glorious rapture between offbeat lovers Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, it has all the warming effect of cold ash.
  66. Bring It On
    A spoofy paean to cheerfolk that has more bounce per flounce than most tales about teen queens.
  67. Hukkle
    The film is ultimately too self-regarding, too smug to be transcendent itself.
  68. The Passion of the Christ
    Even within what often looks like a self-indulgent exercise in humiliation, pain and gratuitous gore, there is no denying the moments of genuine and powerful feeling in The Passion of the Christ -- some of which, by the way, evoke Jesus's most profound teachings of Jewish principles.
  69. Barton Fink
    Like the mysterious, bound package Goodman gives Turturro (the contents are never revealed), the Coens isolate a small area of interest, bind it with psycho-atmospheric finesse, then wait for something significant to emerge. Even after a second viewing of this movie, it doesn't.
  70. 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.
  71. Scary Movie 2
    It's a lot more tightly focused than the first outing, and for fans of the demented comedy of Elliott and Cross, or the thespian chops of Woods (a last-minute replacement for an ailing Marlon Brando), it's worth putting up with humor that's the filmic equivalent of a big, spit-soaked raspberry.
  72. Ella Enchanted
    Good and entertaining fun.
  73. The Door in the Floor
    Bridges can't be a whole movie. But he's the main reason to watch.
  74. The American President
    Like Shepherd's speech, The American President touches on all manner of issues but illumines none of them. And while there are some engaging glimpses of the president's staff in action...the film's principal pleasures lie in the president's pursuit of a first lady.
  75. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
    Yes, it is v. funny. It's just not v. clever. And clever is what made the original Bridget Jones movie such a hoot.
  76. The Day After Tomorrow
    It's the Weather Channel on steroids.
  77. Goodbye Lenin!
    It's a sweet family dramedy whose political undertones don't flatter either capitalism or "democratic socialism."
  78. Kinsey
    For all its explosive material, this is a fairly straightforward telling.
  79. Mulholland Dr.
    Mulholland Drive is an extended mood opera, if you want to put an arty label on incoherence.
  80. Requiem for a Dream
    While director Aronofsky pistol-whips your attention with his style, the characters (mostly relegated to human mannequins in Aronofsky's visual schemes) suffer big time.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Sea Inside
    Placid and rather attractive on the surface, with depths you can sense but which are never fully plumbed.
  82. A Very Long Engagement
    Engagement simply disappears inside its own enormous, intricate and ambitious design.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Benji: Off the Leash!
    The overall unevenness of tone is the movie's biggest flaw, but the slo-mo scenes of doggie derring-do are quite funny.
  84. 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.
  85. 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.
  86. Courage Under Fire
    I sat through "Courage" with interest, but I wasn't particularly moved or riveted with suspense.
  87. The Chamber
    Though it lacks the gloss, twists and star power of earlier Grisham movies, The Chamber does possess Gene Hackman's most cantankerous turn since the lowdown lawman he created in "Unforgiven."
  88. Clear and Present Danger
    There's nothing "wrong" with this movie but it feels like warmed-over business as usual.
  89. Afterglow
    Afterglow may not bestow Julie Christie with the hip imprimatur of a Travolta-style comeback. But the British actress coyly and elegantly updates the siren-ish presence she exuded in "Darling," "Far From the Madding Crowd," "Petulia," "The Go-Between" and even "Shampoo." [16Jan1998 Pg N.32]
    • Washington Post
  90. Brassed Off
    Brassed Off gets bogged down in sentimentality; and that political agenda is spread on thick.
  91. Breakdown
    The movie's surrender to banality is all the more dispiriting because it gets off to such a good start.
  92. Crash
    Crash doesn't extend beyond its most immediate sensationalism. When the movie does attempt to find a theme, it slams into a brick wall of mumbo-jumbo.
  93. Hoodlum
    You can feel Hoodlum hungering to be bigger than it possibly can be. It wants to be "The Godfather" of African Americans, a vast tale of crime and heroism and nerve and ambition. But it tries too hard and ends up feeling spotty rather than deep. [27Aug1997 Pg D.01]
  94. Night Falls on Manhattan
    That said, what must be added is that, disappointingly, Night Falls on Manhattan doesn't quite add up.
  95. Scent of a Woman
    In the end, however, when all Pacino's demons are bared, they don't add up to the poignant punchline you were set up for. The movie seems to have two or three finales too many -- a disturbing trend in all too many films of late.
  96. Rosewood
    Making a film about mob violence while showing restraint and humanism is a difficult procedure. Singleton and screenwriter Poirier search for some gradations within the white ranks, but for the most part, every cracker's a psycho with a short, smoking fuse.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Soul Food
    While Soul Food aims to be the kind of hearty, satisfying story that sticks to your ribs, it comes across more like an appetizer or a midnight raid on the fridge. Tasty, but easily forgotten.
  98. Crimson Tide
    Most egregiously, the filmmakers set up a classic struggle between right and wrong and then, in a coy coda, refuse to take a stand.
  99. Die Hard: With a Vengeance
    Director John McTiernan, who redefined the action genre in the original "Die Hard," does devise some smashing explosions, crashes and so on, but nothing really new.
  100. Batman Forever
    Sometimes thrilling, but rarely inspired, it is thoroughly-almost perfectly-adequate.
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