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. Under Siege
    An entertaining splasher film, Under Siege pits Casey Ryback (Seagal) against psycho terrorists Strannix (Tommy Lee Jones) and Krill (Gary Busey). As with most action films, viewers guessing the ending won't disappoint themselves, though the setting is certainly different from the usual urban decay of Seagal dramas. Everything is played out on the Missouri, which is actually the cleverly reconstructed USS Alabama. Would that such cleverness had been applied to the script, which has holes big enough to drive a submarine through.
  2. Presumed Innocent
    Close kin to Fatal Attraction, but more earnestly told, it is a cautionary treatise on the wages of fooling around in the office (death for her, despair for him). But mostly it is a solid whodunit, driven by subtext and the intensity of Ford, Greta Scacchi as the predatory other woman and Bonnie Bedelia as the wronged wife.
  3. Sabrina
    It's a workmanlike transmogrification from a 1950s fairy tale to a brash present-day romance. Thanks to Julia Ormond's rather delicate Sabrina and Harrison Ford's amusingly deadpan performance as Linus Larrabee, the movie certainly has its moments. But this "Sabrina" never evokes the sweet allure of Billy Wilder's original film. How could it?
  4. Roger & Me
    For all his legitimate laments and pithy documentary moments, Moore gloats too much over his treasure. Where Moore makes his mark is basically where he shuts up and, like a good documentarian ought to, lets the subjects do the talking.
  5. Psycho II
    Psycho II is only a shadow of the master, a technical scare without the original's life-long grip on the subconscious. It fades as soon as the house lights go up. [10 June 1983, p.21]
    • Washington Post
  6. Distant Voices, Still Lives
    For all the When Irish Eyes Are Smiling's and Love Is a Many Splendored Thing's filling the soundtrack, Voices never engages more than your eyes and ears. It leaves you out in the cold and vaguely wondering, Is the entire British nation depressed?
  7. The Arrival
    For better or for worse the movie belongs to Sheen, who does manage to generate enough intensity to hold writer-director David Twohy's unwieldy story together. [31 May 1996, p.D6]
    • Washington Post
  8. Things Change
    The movie is modest and winning, and we almost feel guilty for wanting it to be more -- but we do. The spirit of camaraderie and the love of performers performing is infectious, though. It may not be enough, but it's close.
  9. Hellraiser
    Hellraiser is certainly a cut or two above the slasher films that seem to proliferate on Friday the 13ths and Halloweens. It's a decidedly adult picture, with some disquieting sexual tensions that simply wouldn't work with the usual teen crew. It's also a treatise on the thin line between pleasure and pain and how easily crossed it can be.
  10. The French Lieutenant's Woman
    Sufficiently attractive and absorbing to sustain the fond delusion that Charles' pursuit of the mystifying Sarah might culminate in a revealing, conclusive confrontation. [02 Oct 1981, p.C1]
    • Washington Post
  11. After Dark, My Sweet
    Dern's dirtball performance gives After Dark, My Sweet a desperately needed quality of slugged-out authenticity -- he gives the movie its edge. If anything, though, Foley makes Thompson's killing universe too inviting, too sunny and comfortable. He's missed the essence of Thompson, but all in all, there are worse ways of failing.
  12. The Pope of Greenwich Village
    Vincent Patrick, author of the best-selling novel, wrote the screenplay that gives the actors, including the superb Geraldine Page, plenty to run with. It just never gets them anywhere.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Arachnophobia
    It's a one-joke movie, a funhouse ride, the cinematic equivalent of having a rubber spider thrown in your lap. But it doesn't matter if you reject the wispy script or the plot, which has as much substance as a spider's web; you'll jump every time.
  14. Like Water for Chocolate
    In the end, Like Water for Chocolate is an overwrought potboiler that punishes Tita for her sexual freedom.
  15. Revenge of the Pink Panther
    Peter Sellers, as Inspector Clouseau, puts on a lot of funny costumes and has a lot of funny accidents. It was a good routine in 1964, and it's a good routine 14 years later. But it has gotten sloppier over the years.
  16. Turner & Hooch
    But forget the vet-cum-love interest and the fish. It's the canine (not to be confused with "K-9") stuff that really matters.
  17. See No Evil, Hear No Evil
    If it weren't for the good will that the stars have built up over the years, See No Evil would pass without notice; even with the stars, that's what it deserves. But these are ingratiating performers, even when working far below their peak. Watching them, you find yourself wanting to laugh even when the laughs are undeserved.
  18. The Manhattan Project
    This is a movie about teen-agers that doesn't patronize them, which gives it a realistic, lived-in feel. [13 June 1986, p.D9]
    • Washington Post
  19. Toy Soldiers
    Toy Soldiers is hardly deep, but it's diverting and so are most of the actors. First-time director Daniel Petrie Jr. knows his way around this roughhouse terrain -- he wrote Beverly Hills Cop, The Big Easy and Shoot to Kill -- and while he keeps things taut, he has yet to display substance rather than style.
  20. ...and justice for all.
    Taking frantic aim at a fairly promising target -- American jurisprudence -- And Justice for All makes a trigger-happy, scatterbrained spectacle of itself. Although it shatters all over the screen, this would-be topical satire may strike enough chords among rabble-rousing yahoos to become a hit of sorts. Profoundly depressing sorts, that is. [19 Oct 1979, p.B6]
    • Washington Post
  21. The Pick-up Artist
    Anyone want to watch some guy pick up women? Especially a fat-lipped, insincere kid who says "Did anyone ever tell you you have the body of a Botticelli and the face of a Dégas?" Me neither. But luckily, there's a little more than that to James Toback's The Pickup Artist.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    When a Stranger Calls
    Director Fred Walton sets the audience up early for a 20-minute reign of terror and gracefully shocks them out of their seats in a final blitz. But he packs the middle with drawn-out dialogue and mindless series of chases and escapes that do little more tan pad the feature film into feature length. [19 Oct 1979, p.31]
    • Washington Post
  23. Careful
    Maddin keeps what could have been a one-joke theme interesting for an admirably long time. But eventually, it becomes, well, hard to breathe. There's something wonderfully unique about the project but the reasons for doing it remain buried.
  24. The Little Mermaid
    The Little Mermaid is only passable. Even at its highest points, it cannot claim a place next to even the least of the great Disney classics.
  25. The World According to Garp
    Williams, might have been more aggressive. Otherwise, director Roy Hill has done about as well as you can when translating word to image, not only through plot, but via the repetition of symbols: primitive, obvious ones -- the toad, a death's head costume, a child's clumsy drawings. After two hours and 20 minutes, all the parables and paradoxes join in a sluggish whole. And we wind up where we began, up in the air without a tail gunner. [23 July 1982, p.11]
    • Washington Post
  26. Hardcore
    Schrader's second feature, Hardcore, is more confidently made than his first, Blue Collar, but it slips into a similar category: absorbing but unsatisfying. [10 Feb 1979, p.C1]
    • Washington Post
  27. The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    In Milan Kundera's novel, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," the characters are pawns on a complex, philosophical chessboard with Kundera's didactic commentary accompanying every move. In his adaptation, director Phil Kaufman films the pawns, even many of the moves. But without Kundera's connecting presence and voice, the result is closer to Chinese checkers than chess...Very attractive and watchable checkers, sure
  28. On Golden Pond
    But there's something timid about the way in which Ernest Thompson has adapted his witty play for the screen version of On Golden Pond, as if it had to do an extra-hard job to prove itself appealing. [22 Jan 1982, p.17]
    • Washington Post
  29. The Four Seasons
    Stylistically, the film is all in small talk, too -- those television-perfected moments of everyday life that evoke recognition, rather than curiosity, about human behavior. But there's nothing in their lines or behavior that would make any of them irreplaceable in this sort of friendly group. [22 May 1981, p.17]
    • Washington Post
  30. Coneheads
    It's very funny in places, even sort of tender. But let's not get out of hand.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Herbie Goes Bananas
    In one scene -- a costume ball on his ship -- Korman wears an archaic naval uniform and explains that is is an exact copy of "the uniform worn by Lord Nelson when he defeated the Spanish Armada." That's very funny, but one wonders whether anyone who understands why it is funny could enjoy the rest of the picture. [11 Aug 1980, P.B3]
    • Washington Post
  32. 3 Men and a Little Lady
    The sequel ought to pacify fans of the original. A predictable mix of farce and sentiment, pleasantly paced by director Emile Ardolino, the story is not in the least demanding.
  33. My Father the Hero
    Most of the humor is sophisticated slapstick, which Depardieu mastered in the hilarious trio of Francis Veber comedies he did with Pierre Richard in the '80s.
  34. Wayne's World 2
    Carvey is such a lovable doofus and Myers such a well-intentioned naif that it's hard to get down on them, especially considering that the heirs to their niche in pop iconography are Beavis and Butt-head.
  35. The Beverly Hillbillies
    But despite the overall thinness, there's a great spirit afoot. It's a TV-cultural guilty pleasure to see this charming, dust-covered series from the 1960s gussied up and ready to go. Which is why it will work better back on your TV screen.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie
    Power Rangers is good junk.
  37. Love Affair
    For my money, the best thing about Affair is Shandling, whose amusing quips and facial reactions steal what little of the show there is to steal. You almost wish the story would switch to him permanently.
  38. The Trigger Effect
    The Trigger Effect enjoys bursts of energy as people confront each other in low-budget groups of twos and threes, but it never becomes the subtly powerful experience Koepp was clearly after.
  39. The Verdict
    Early on, Lumet wastes too much time characterizing Newman, following him from bar to bar to bar. Though Newman plays a good drunk, his performance is far from intoxicating. When he rests his case, the jury goes to sleep. [17 Dec 1982, p.19]
    • Washington Post
  40. Strange Brew
    Neither triumph nor fiasco, Strange Brew leaves plenty of room for improvement, but I hope Thomas and Moranis get the chance to demonstrate that they've learned a lot from the mixed assortment of nuttiness in their first movie comedy. [30 Aug 1983, p.B4]
    • Washington Post
  41. Star 80
    It's a snuff movie, all dressed up, for self-abusive audiences...You feel filthy after seeing this stuff, paying to be a party to this sad, sordid business, watching this woman being used during and, now, after life. [11 Nov 1983, p.25]
    • Washington Post
  42. The Krays
    As the movie progresses, it becomes less interesting. There are some striking performances from the supporting cast, particularly Steven Berkoff's rabid portrayal of a rival gang lord. The rest of the film, in fact, could have benefited from a little of his mad-dog ferocity. As heroes, the Krays are more shadow than substance; they're stuck in metaphor.
  43. D.C. Cab
    Not much really happens here, and if you're looking for motivation or reasonable plot evolution or anything more than a night that feels like sitting in the stands at a really rowdy Redskins game, don't hail this cab...It's upbeat, bumper to bumper: squeals on wheels. [16 Dec 1983, p.23]
    • Washington Post
  44. Serial Mom
    A one-joke comedy written and directed by an older, gentler John Waters, the film gets an enormous boost from Kathleen Turner's puckish portrayal of Beverly Sutphin.
  45. The Lonely Guy
    Despite the flailing around, the picture fitfully accumulates a handful of modest highlights and silly brainstorms. [03 Feb 1984, p.E6]
    • Washington Post
  46. Talk Radio
    There's no question that the bigotry and shallowness exist out there in the American night, but there's no proportion in Stone's presentation. Stone strains too hard to make his points and in the process distorts them, undermines them. Still, Stone would probably be proud that he's made a picture that audiences may want to ward off and escape from. In that sense, he seems to see himself as being just like Champlain -- a teller of stern and disquieting truths.
  47. Six Pack
    Smokey and the Bandit meets the Bad News Bears. [16 July 1982, p.11]
    • Washington Post
  48. The Wanderers
    The Wanderers is a well-made movie that leaves a so-what impression. [27 July 1979, p.B1]
    • Washington Post
  49. Vision Quest
    It's the usual dumb stuff -- he strives, he fails, he falls in love, he strives some more, he wins. You need strong hands and a heavy set of nutcrackers to break this tedious shell, but inside there are some surprisingly sharp insights into male teen-age psychology and a marvelous performance by Matthew Modine.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mischief
    As comfortable as an old pair of saddle shoes, and just as worn...But for the persistent nostalgia buff, there are rewards -- five cents on a cash register, a dollar's worth of gas, car hops, submarine races, Howdy Doody, mirror dice, stacks of 45s -- all the froth that's left at the end of the ice cream soda. [8 Feb 1985, p.24]
    • Washington Post
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Oh, God!
    A light inoffensive satire that brings God back to earth as crusty, caring George Burns to tell mankind to stop mucking up the river-fouling the air, killing each other off, preaching exclusive paths to heaven and to get back to the business of loving. [14 Oct 1977, p.11]
    • Washington Post
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Personal Best
    What lends the movie authenticity is that most of the people in it really are Olympic athletes and record-holders, and they show that they know what they're doing. The second lead, Patrice Donnelly, is a former Olympic hurdler.
  53. Runaway Train
    Runaway Train isn't just bad -- it's bodaciously bad, grotesquely overblown, lurid in its emotion, big ideas on its brain. And anyone with a taste for camp will have a glorious good time. [20 Jan 1986, p.C4]
    • Washington Post
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rolling Thunder
    Rolling Thunder certainly has enough to recommend it to Walking Tall fans with strong stomachs. But moviegoers yearning for a sensitive attempt to graft the nation's most recent scar tissue onto the screen will have to wait. [04 Nov 1977, p.11]
    • Washington Post
  55. Brewster's Millions
    It's an amusing vehicle for Pryor and Candy, amiable partners wallowing in monetary ecstasy. [24 May 1985, p.25]
    • Washington Post
  56. Cocoon: The Return
    The Return is a pleasant if superfluous invasion of your local theaters. Everyone in front of the Cocoon Uno camera is back, including Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Brian Dennehy, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Steve Guttenberg and nine others. It's nice to see the old codgers still alive, kicking and making whoopee. But don't look for more than extra-terrestrial homecoming.
  57. Eye of the Needle
    The oddity of this romance and its picturesque setting do a great deal to lend interest to an otherwise minimal (for a spy picture) story. [24 July 1981, p.19]
    • Washington Post
  58. Prince of the City
    The infuriatingly slow pace proves a point, but it makes for a gritty-eyed viewer with mashed potatoes for brains...It's a relief to escape the theater after this one, though it's good for several hours of discussion over dinner. It's not entertaining, but it does fall into the should-see category. Pop a couple of Stress-Tabs before you go. [2 Oct 1981, p.17]
    • Washington Post
  59. Fort Apache the Bronx
    The pace of the film is also on a low level, with episodic sequences rather than ones that build: more suitable to a television series than a feature film. But the accompanying low-keyed acting, mostly in the police parts of Newman, Ken Wahl and Edward Asner, lends the film a sustaining interest. [13 Feb 1981, p.17]
    • Washington Post
  60. The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia
    Such a vehicle is not expected to be completely sound dramatically; and like the couple's truck, it's good enough for a short excursion.
  61. Europa Europa
    The problem is, Europa is episodic rather than cumulative. Europa is about the highlights in Solly's wartime life. But it's not about Solly.
  62. Rudy
    It's a sweet-natured family drama in which years of effort are rewarded by a brief moment of glory. Its corny, cartoonish finale makes "Rocky" look like "Bullwinkle." Still, you'll have to forgive the lump in your throat and the tear in your eye.
  63. Out of Africa
    Africa might have been another Gone With the Wind, blown by passion and buffeted by social upheaval. But in the end it's like a trip to a game park called Extinction. [20 Dec 1985, p.C1]
    • Washington Post
  64. Quartet
    Like their previous movies, it emerges as an interesting disappointment, reflecting a cultivated and audacious taste in material inhibited by a stuffy approach to filmmaking. The advantage of their intelligent, literate, methodical style is that it may accommodate novel themes and impressive performances. [28 Jan 1982, p.C11]
    • Washington Post
  65. Tank Girl
    In making the transition from small page to big screen, Tank Girl gains very little and gives up nothing. Working from a generally faithful script by Teri Sarafian, director Rachel Talalay opts for an approach that emphasizes surface and flash at the expense of depth and coherence -- much like its source. The result is a bracing film that's halfway between a string of MTV videos (Courtney Love put together the edgy soundtrack) and some of that network's over-the-top cartoons. [31 March 1995, p.D07]
    • Washington Post
  66. Club Paradise
    So the laughs don't build -- you watch Club Paradise moment by moment, and it's only as good as its dialogue. [11 July 1986, p.D1]
    • Washington Post
  67. Wise Guys
    There is plenty of dumb stuff in Wise Guys, a rambunctious comedy about two screwballs on the loose, probably more than anyone should stand for. But the doughty will stick around for its small pleasures, most of which spring from the lens of Brian De Palma. [10 May 1986, p.C4]
    • Washington Post
  68. Breaker Morant
    To present a simple progression from crime to trial to death, when a moral dilemma was promised, is a dramatic crime. [01 May 1981, p.19]
    • Washington Post
  69. Punchline
    The road to stand-up Oz is littered with conventional, sentimental banana peel; writer/director David Seltzer avoids much, but not all, of it. His biggest slip-up is creating an unlikely relationship between Hanks and Field. Gold is a young, starving, responsibility-evading, med-school dropout who has psychic energy only for great comedy. As frumpy, mousey, older, married mother Lilah -- who thinks she just might be able to do that comedy thing -- Fields couldn't be more of a mismatch.
  70. DeepStar Six
    Well shot, well edited, well paced, Deepstar Six seems to have gone to the idea-well just a bit too often -- or is that not often enough? While the creature is an average creation, the underwater visual effects are often quite good, if not plentiful enough. [14 Jan 1989]
    • Washington Post
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Great Balls of Fire!
    The acting is superb. Quaid, who practiced piano 12 hours a day (Lewis dubbed the vocals), has Lewis's megalomaniacal theatricality and perverse ignorance down perfectly, and his white-trash accent as well. Winona Ryder turns in a stunning performance as Myra, not only looking but feeling 13. And X frontman John Doe is quietly pathetic as Myra's father and Lewis's long-suffering sideman (along with guitarist Jimmie Vaughn and drummer Mojo Nixon).
  72. Secret Admirer
    Secret Admirer is a cut above the usual teen sex comedy, which is sort of like Caspar Weinberger saying, "Six hundred bucks, sure, but it was a heckuva ashtray."
  73. Someone to Watch Over Me
    What with these pictorial pollutants, he loses sight of plot. "Someone" suffers somewhat from Scott's blind spot, but it's still a reasonably enjoyable romantic thriller with "Platoon's" Tom Berenger on his best behavior.
  74. The Lair of the White Worm
    Say what you will about Ken Russell, his films are usually bonkers. His latest, Lair of the White Worm, will do nothing to alter his reputation as the champion of camp thrash, but at least it's a step or two -- if only short ones -- above such recent efforts as "Salome's Last Veil" and "Gothic."
  75. Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael
    Where the movie sabotages her, though, is by insisting that all she really wants is to be like everyone else.
  76. Cry-Baby
    Basically the filmmaker reminds us of his affection for social misfits, but without much conviction. He's simply too hip to commit himself to his beliefs, and a relentless frivolity prevails. Still Cry-Baby is not without its spit-curled charms, its amusing lines and its funky famous-name cameos.
  77. The Black Hole
    Despite its obviously derivative elements and lack of flair in certain areas, notably writing and casting, the movie is at worst an entertaining redundancy, a brisk and diverting pastiche of familiar science-fiction adventure hokum. [24 Dec 1979, p.C1]
    • Washington Post
  78. Return from Witch Mountain
    Fortunately, the level of pictorial magic improves considerably as the movies rolls along. [28 March 1978, p.B12]
    • Washington Post
  79. The Sandlot
    Kids will understand this stuff. If you can remember your younger, goofier roots, so will you. Sandlot isn't well made but it's alive with dopey, summertime spirit.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Unidentified Flying Oddball
    The plot - obviously derived from Mark Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" - has the customary quantum of Disney cuteness as the story unravels predictably...But it takes advantage of the situation for some funny lines. [11 Aug 1979, p.B4]
    • Washington Post
  81. That Darn Cat
    The new Darn Cat moves faster, has a few more laughs, nonviolent villains who are barely seen, a never-ending car chase climax, and gives more than a passing nod to such phenomena as teenage discontent.
  82. The Three Musketeers
    It's a brisk, colorful, infectiously charming but instantly disposable Hollywood entertainment. It's fun, like watching kids play dress-up in the back yard -- nothing more, nothing less.
  83. Betty Blue
    An extraordinarily sensual movie with its own silly integrity.
  84. Necessary Roughness
    An infectious albeit formulaic game of Cinderella football, this happy athletic romp seems to know just how wheezy it is, but the team grunts "hut, hut," and puts it right on the numbers anyway. It's "Hoosiers" with a pigskin pumpkin and a lot more sis-boom-bah.
  85. Lady in White
    It's the Hardy Boys as id busters, an entertaining though mightily flawed scalp-tingler with a few too many magic moments: shooting stars and star-splashed skies and glittery ectoplasmic motes and ghosts that fly on strings.
  86. Candyman
    Madsen is a much better actress than is usually found in such a role. However, if you don't like splashes of blood or bees swarming out of bodies, you may want to think twice about this one.
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