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. Good Boy!
    Surprisingly nimble and fun to watch, mostly thanks to the magnificent dogs Hoffman has found to portray his lead characters, and thanks to the actors he cast as the animals' voices.
  2. Intolerable Cruelty
    Smart, silly, splenetic and a bit smug, it's a movie that might put a viewer's teeth on edge were it not for its winning lead performances.
  3. Girls Will Be Girls
    There's a thin line between some drag comedy and misogyny, and Girls Will Be Girls, a crass comedy in which all the women are played, with over-the-top abandon, by men, roars past that line.
  4. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
    Reconfirms Tarantino's status as the master of pop cinema and puts a sense of excitement into the year. He has matched, if not eclipsed, the power and scope of 1994's "Pulp Fiction," though not its human charm.
    • Washington Post
  5. Bus 174
    The results are as riveting as any action movie ever made.
  6. Mystic River
    If Mystic River is just a bit overplayed, a tad too highly pitched, it still resonates with grief and fury and feeling.
  7. The Event
    Despite its impeccable acting and subtle backdrop of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The Event lets its message overwhelm its emotion.
  8. Out of Time
    Until that sugar coating at the end, Out of Time is clever, believable and gripping, and seems to be headed to a wondrous, bad place as it carefully modulates classic '40s themes.
  9. Concert for George
    It offers a special "something" for everyone who ever appreciated the Quiet Beatle's musical gifts and spiritual explorations.
  10. The Station Agent
    The best advice to filmgoers who appreciate smart, mature, humanist movies is, simply, Go.
  11. Wonderland
    Overblown, overheated, overdirected, overacted, overlong.
  12. School of Rock
    A movie for almost everyone, from boomer parents (who remember their teens and twenties) to their teenage kids (who can't wait to get started with same). And if there's anyone who can bring so many into the same mosh pit, it's Black, who so occupies the role you can't believe he's acting.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Bollywood/Hollywood
    Surprisingly amateurish attempt at cross-cultural comedy.
  14. My Life Without Me
    The film should at least be wise and three-dimensional enough to see Ann's motivations as a source of mystery as much as heroic self-empowerment. This one-dimensional ennoblement doesn't sit quite right.
  15. Duplex
    This is a one-note deal, and it doesn't take long before you want to, well, just move out and leave these characters in their rent-controlled limbo.
  16. The Rundown
    Turns out he's infinitely more likable than Vin Diesel, who carries his sense of stardom through every movie like an insufferable Atlas. In fact, Dwayne Johnson is a gentleman, the kind of Rock who puts you in a very easy place.
  17. Under the Tuscan Sun
    It's like a music video of Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" filmed in the Chevy Chase Pottery Barn.
  18. Bubba Ho-tep
    The film stars Bruce Campbell of the "Evil Dead" series as Elvis in a touching, funny and at times grotesque performance that is actually the best thing about the movie.
  19. Luther
    It's just unfortunate that a movie about such a daring man ultimately takes few risks.
  20. Yossi & Jagger
    Short but powerful drama.
  21. Demonlover
    Meant to be a sleek, dark, disturbing David Cronenberg-style thriller, Olivier Assayas's film is just an annoying concoction.
  22. Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion
    Each revelation seems more disturbing than the next. But Chinese treatment of Tibetans is only half the heartbreak. The other is the amazing resilience of the Tibetans, who are overwhelmingly Buddhist.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Cold Creek Manor
    This movie isn't a thriller, it's an insomnia killer.
  24. Mambo italiano
    Lacks that outrageous effrontery that might have socked it to its intended audience.
  25. In This World
    It's of an odd genre: a formally scripted (by Tony Grisoni) feature with a musical score that adheres totally to journalistic accuracy and willfully ignores formula, melodrama and uplift. It's a real down-lift.
  26. Anything Else
    The movie doesn't have the energy to be truly horrible. It's too muted and enervated. But it's a somewhat tedious thing to sit through.
  27. Casa de los babys
    For all his patient, accumulative storytelling, Sayles yields little that doesn't feel trite or overly schematic.
  28. To Be and to Have
    Amounts to a rare gift and an opportunity to appreciate the end of an era and celebrate one of the screen's most subtly etched heroes: the soft-spoken Monsieur Georges Lopez.
  29. Secondhand Lions
    It's less a children's movie made for contemporary children than a children's movie made for people who still remember, and pine for, how children's movies were made 50 years ago.
  30. The Fighting Temptations
    A soundtrack buried inside a sitcom.
  31. Underworld
    It needs a wooden stake AND a silver bullet through its script.
  32. Matchstick Men
    Let it swindle you; it's part of the fun. In fact, it's all of the fun.
  33. Cabin Fever
    It's just a loud, derivative grade-Z horror film of no particular distinction.
  34. Lost in Translation
    It gets at something exquisitely human, so human that even movie stars feel it.
  35. Once Upon a Time in Mexico
    However many millions of dollars Rodriguez set aside for blanks and exploding squibs was a waste. Depp's salary, on the other hand, was money well spent.
  36. The Same River Twice
    If you can get past the "Big Chill" setup, there is a fine piece of moviemaking here.
  37. Carnage
    A gorgeously morbid meditation on the interconnectivity of life.
  38. Party Monster
    The wanton fabulistas of Party Monster are as boring and insignificant as the very "normals and drearies" they so contemptuously deride.
  39. Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star
    This David Spade comedy breaks an ankle, ruptures several knee ligaments and hits the dirt harder than a felled linebacker. Best thing you can do for this movie? Leave it writhing in the throes of forced humor.
  40. Taking Sides
    The notions of the good man's complicity through inertia and of innocence tarnished by association are ones that have been more powerfully explored before.
  41. The Backyard
    The movie is not for the squeamish, but for those who are unafraid to look at what is, perhaps, their own metaphorical "backyard," for those willing to stare into the long, dark night of the contemporary American soul, its bone-crunching message is worth hearing.
  42. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands
    The story, which feels more like a sprawl of television episodes than a film, is a little tedious to sit through.
  43. The Other Side of the Bed
    It winds up being tuneless, unfunny and, despite its strenuous efforts, not terribly sexy.
  44. Jeepers Creepers II
    Functional but tiresome.
  45. The Medallion
    So cheesy and cheap that it almost attains high camp.
  46. Babí léto
    Though the story line seems grim at times, it's always made lighter by Brodsky's gentle, often hilarious presence.
  47. Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
    Gator never emerges as anything but a blatant and outspoken -- and virulently brutal -- jerk.
  48. Rana's Wedding
    Clara Khoury delivers a performance that is luminous, fierce and intensely focused as the title character of Rana's Wedding.
  49. The Battle of Shaker Heights
    An insufferable piffle.
  50. Thirteen
    The creation of teen-girl culture seems almost pitch-perfect. The flaw is the flaw of most works of muckraking when they are held to artistic standards: It's a question of proportion.
  51. Uptown Girls
    It's all too, too cute and too, too forced for words -- not to mention too, too dark.
    • 37 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Freddy vs. Jason
    A kind of cinematic analogue of the Iran-Iraq war: It's overlong, it's hard to tell which one's the bad guy, and it's filled with lots of senseless carnage on both sides.
  53. American Splendor
    The genius of the film is its utter commitment to the Pekar point of view.
  54. Shaolin Soccer
    Shaolin Soccer is "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" with soccer balls, a touch of Sergio Leone and not one microsecond of seriousness.
  55. Open Range
    It's a fine, old-fashioned 2 1/4 hours at the Bijou.
    • 30 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Grind
    A lightweight skating story/road-trip film, is apparently the best it can do, which is to say, not good at all.
  57. Le divorce
    Should have been a smart bit of cinematic froth but instead sinks like an overworked souffle.
  58. The Princess Blade
    It suffers from a dreary middle section. Great movie, mediocre script.
  59. Step Into Liquid
    This is pretty much a feel-good film for committed fans and moviegoers looking for some spectacular combination of travelogue, athleticism and slo-mo grace.
  60. S.W.A.T.
    Offers up the kind of pleasures that only a summer movie can...The cast is good-looking, the soundtrack is loud, the plot is stupid.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Freaky Friday
    Terrific at capturing what teenage behavior would look like on a grown-up.
  62. Zero Day
    The movie can't help but resonate with a ripped-from-the-headlines topicality.
  63. And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen...
    An exercise in vanity, indulgence and a startling degree of shallowness.
  64. The Secret Lives of Dentists
    Roundly entertaining.
  65. The Magdalene Sisters
    Mullan's movie is admiringly uncompromising. He refuses to augment the horrors with relief.
  66. American Wedding
    If you do not bring pride, good taste or sense to this third American Pie installment, you'll have a good time.
  67. Gigli
    Enervated, torpid, slack, dreary and, oh yes, nasty, brutish and long.
  68. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life
    In a summer of surprisingly self-serious comic book movies" Lara Croft "stands out as being particularly humorless.
  69. Mondays in the Sun
    It's a long and relatively underdramatized film, but it's powerfully true.
  70. Buffalo Soldiers
    Suffers from melodramatic overkill.
  71. Hotel
    An ambitious, experimental mess of a movie in search of something more profound.
  72. Seabiscuit
    Although nowhere near the class of its equine hero, is quite a satisfying ride.
  73. Lucía, Lucía
    I love a good story, too, but I prefer one that actually goes somewhere (although, as joy rides to nowhere are concerned, this one is a beaut).
  74. Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over
    Some viewers will miss the warmth and boisterous family dynamics of its predecessors.
  75. Camp
    Occasional clumsiness is easily coated over by the movie's overarching goodwill.
  76. Masked and Anonymous
    Simply painful to watch as the doomed vehicle it's trapped in comes whistling toward a fiery crash landing.
  77. Johnny English
    Delivered with the kind of English aplomb that PBS audiences around the country have come to know and love. It must be the accent.
  78. The Embalmer
    A bummer, but one that manages to stick to its depraved convictions until the strange and bitter end.
  79. How to Deal
    A bad, unimaginative story posing pretentiously as the very opposite.
  80. The Sea Is Watching
    It has the big themes that obsessed Kurosawa at his greatest, and that alone makes it worthwhile.
  81. Dirty Pretty Things
    One of the year's best films.
  82. Bad Boys II
    Just like "Bad Boys," only louder, longer and the stars get paid more.
  83. September 11
    A crashing letdown.
  84. A Housekeeper
    Even if the film is only moderately enjoyable, it can create a sort of exotic escapism.
  85. Northfork
    It's just too lost in its own presumed self-enchantment.
  86. The Cuckoo
    It's a whimsical tale of war and redemption, of faith, hope and even some charity...It's quite a treat, as a matter of fact.
  87. I Capture the Castle
    Could have been a sensation if a director with a smidgen of moviemaking instinct had taken the helm.
  88. The Holy Land
    The acting of the main cast is uniformly nuanced, and, except for some bad makeup on Mendy's father, the film never looks as low-budget as it must have been.
  89. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
    It's not brazenly bad or heroically bad or stridently bad. It's bad in all the old, dull ways of being bad: poor performances, absurd story, dreary special effects, witless dialogue and the excessive length of someone taking himself far too seriously.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Madame Satã
    Shot almost entirely on location with a hand-held camera, director Karim Ainouz's film draws you in close. The charisma and intensity of Lazaro Ramos as Joao holds you there.
  91. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
    Not enough to keep this celluloid ship from sinking under the weight of its own stupidity.
  92. Tattoo
    Well acted, moodily shot and tautly written, this Tattoo may feel like you've seen some of it (or its ilk) before. Still, its haunting images get under the skin, leaving an indelible impression.
  93. Swimming Pool
    Until the movie gets lost in its ultimately convoluted conceit, however, it's a superb modulation of menace, tension, mystery and eroticism.
  94. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    Wastes no time getting very loud and very silly and never really lets up.
  95. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
    A respectable effort that doesn't care to do more than course smoothly and effortlessly through familiar waters.
  96. Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
    Flops where it should zing, trotting out cringe-worthy cliches and hoary plot contrivances and depicting femininity through a drag queen's funhouse mirror.
  97. On_Line
    There's something so familiar and commonplace about this story and its characters...it's hard to get particularly thrilled.
  98. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
    Two-hour exercise in chaotic action and coarse, annoyingly coy sexuality.
  99. 28 Days Later...
    Unrelentingly grim, unremittingly gross and unforgivably unattractive, 28 Days Later is an orgy of troubling images and bestial sound effects.
  100. Francis Ford Coppola Presents: The Legend of Suriyothai
    Easy on the eyes and hard on the head, Suriyothai is absolutely unaffecting where it matters most, in the heart.
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