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.
  101. Alex & Emma
    The inside story is weak, dull and head-poundingly boring, and the outside story is only slightly better, thanks to the lukewarm likability of its two stars.
  102. Hulk
    Belabored, ostentatious, overlong behemoth.
  103. The Hard Word
    Put another movie on the barbie, mate; maybe it'll be better.
  104. Jet Lag
    It's got a subtext but not a subplot.
  105. The Heart of Me
    Terribly tragic, terribly romantic and, ultimately, terribly, terribly dull.
  106. Hollywood Homicide
    The film doesn't even cut it as cheap escapism.
  107. Rugrats Go Wild
    The exuberance of the Rugrats seems nullified by the effete quirkiness of the Thornberrys.
  108. Tycoon: A New Russian
    The movie covers too much ground with too little detail. It manages to be convoluted, complicated, incomprehensible and maddeningly thin all at the same time.
  109. Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd
    I wouldn't want you to consider even renting this thing. It would only encourage another prequel, this time featuring two dumb toddlers who keep walking into doors and become great pals. Call it "Duh and Duh."
  110. The Eye
    Although almost nothing about The Eye is surprising, the movie is nevertheless engrossing, as it mutates from horror movie to ghost story to psychological drama to disaster flick (a late, stunning twist). It casts a spell strong enough that viewers won't want to look away.
  111. Wattstax (re-released)
    A candid, colorful and deeply meaningful sociocultural time capsule, one that captured the black community at the height of its political energy and optimism.
  112. 2 Fast 2 Furious
    It's a kind of "Miami Vice" with many more carz and numberz where all the adjectives used 2 go.
  113. Whale Rider
    Evokes its spirituality with deft strokes and wonderful humor.
  114. The Weather Underground
    A smart, absorbing, often exhilarating documentary.
  115. Together
    Torpid, syrupy melodrama from the Chinese director of 1993's "Farewell My Concubine."
  116. The Italian Job
    It is, as with any cinematic joy ride, not the destination that matters, but the rush of getting there.
  117. Capturing the Friedmans
    Jarecki has created a tour de force of narrative ambiguity, and in doing so has made one of the most honest reality shows ever.
  118. Finding Nemo
    May be a fish tale, but its story of the paradox of love -- knowing when to hold on means knowing when to let go -- is profoundly humane and human.
  119. The In-Laws
    This is a movie that starts silly and just gets sillier -- at one point Candice Bergen shows up with a Buddhist monk -- but its laughs are sweet-natured, and Heaven knows the lead players earn every one.
  120. Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
    An absorbing and inspiring portrait of two musicians whose unerring sense of what's right -- both artistically and ethically -- has not just held them in good stead but driven their particular brand of success.
  121. Grazia's Island
    Its long-winded denouement, in which Grazia runs away rather than be sent to an institution, doesn't bring the story full circle. It just extends it.
  122. Bruce Almighty
    Something between an indiscretion and an atrocity.
  123. The Sea
    There's a little too much over-the-top drama, as well as superfluous detail, in this Icelandic film.
  124. Cinemania
    It's too short, and it doesn't delve deep enough. But it's thoroughly enjoyable.
  125. L'Auberge Espagnole
    It's an exhilarating, funny, very sweet movie.
  126. Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII
    Riveting, gracefully constructed film.
  127. Pokémon Heroes
    Kids who love Pokemon movies are no doubt going to see this movie, and they'll have a blast watching it. Very soon they will become older and more sensible and understand how terrible these movies are.
  128. Sweet Sixteen
    It's a classic story in form, and in this country it used to star Jimmy Cagney.
  129. The Matrix Reloaded
    No, it's not great. No, it's not a disaster.
  130. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
    Brings kinetic, stylistic and even sexy dimension to the Bram Stoker legend.
  131. Only the Strong Survive
    The film could use a little less of the gee-whiz commentary of co-producer/narrator Roger Friedman and more storytelling from the survivors themselves.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Trip
    The movie's heart is in the right place, but good intentions can't overcome dialogue that alternates between melodramatic and cliched.
  133. Man on the Train
    What a good movie. Sometimes you get tired of 'splaining and you just want to say: Hey, this one's really very good. That's all, folks. It's a damn good movie.
  134. Daddy Day Care
    An easy-on-the-sensibilities family film, Eddie Murphy practically assumes the easygoing manner of Mister Rogers, a character he used to wickedly lampoon on "Saturday Night Live."
  135. The Shape of Things
    At best, the movie is a problematic chamber piece; at worst, a misdirected, slightly misanthropic pretension.
  136. Down with Love
    The parodistic romantic comedy makes the fatal mistake of so much middlebrow satire: It becomes that which it mocks.
  137. Charlotte Sometimes
    Wonderful images, hues, sensations and faces.
  138. X2: X-Men United
    Of the many comic book superhero movies, this is by far the lamest, the loudest, the longest. Good Lord, what an epic sit. My rear end deserves a medal...I wish I could say it wasn't so, but for most of us, this "X" marks a splat.
  139. The Dancer Upstairs
    The only reason this dilemma has any import is thanks to Bardem, who almost single-handedly drags the film along.
  140. Owning Mahowny
    Kwietniowski has managed to create a surprisingly engrossing and suspenseful narrative without resorting to cosmetics, melodrama or hype.
  141. Blue Car
    Certainly no feel-good flick of the summer. But it's always tough and honest.
  142. The Lizzie McGuire Movie
    If your kids are too young to sit unsupervised, get together with other parents and pay an older sibling or sitter to go.
  143. New Suit
    New Suit is devilishly good fun.
  144. Spellbound
    Could hardly be more suspenseful if it were scripted.
  145. Marooned in Iraq
    Mostly, though, it's a film about that hollow feeling that hits you when the tears have all dried up and your face hurts way too much to even crack a smile.
  146. The Real Cancun
    A 90-minute confessathon minus the bleeped-out cuss words and pixelated breasts.
  147. House of Fools
    There doesn't seem to be much purpose to it except a half-baked notion that the histrionics of the mentally insane (or a moviemaker's idea therein) are eminently cinematic. They aren't.
  148. City of Ghosts
    The story, a half-baked one about treachery and greed, meanders to an unsatisfactory ending with a punch line that, well, doesn't punch very hard.
  149. Manic
    It's without posturing or phony outrage, and offers instead something far more affecting: a deep sense of melancholy. This is the way it is, it says, and not much can be done about it.
  150. Confidence
    It's great to watch the cat-and-mouse of it all -- even when the movie might not be firing on all points.
  151. Identity
    Something fresh, clever and confident.
  152. It Runs in the Family
    Schmaltzy.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Winged Migration
    Mysteries still surround many aspects of bird migration. This film unravels exactly none of them. Rather, in some of the most remarkable footage you'll ever see, the film lets you look over the shoulders of migrating birds.
  154. Lilya 4-Ever
    Lilya's struggle to make a life for herself is both heartbreaking and heart-stirring.
  155. Malibu's Most Wanted
    Wanted isn't quite the real Slim Shady of hip-hop comedies. But you might lose yourself in a few of its amusing moments.
  156. Love and Diane
    It is a movie about the real challenge of heroism.
  157. A Mighty Wind
    There's an extra dimension here, not present in the other comedies. Not only is the material amusing, it's charmingly engaging.
  158. Bulletproof Monk
    It never makes much sense.
  159. Chasing Papi
    So resoundingly awful, there may be grounds to sue for mental suffering.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    XX/XY
    Anyone who's ever sat through a Neil LaBute film knows you can make a movie in which all the characters are unsympathetic, but this trio is uninteresting, to boot.
  161. Better Luck Tomorrow
    Although this movie shows Lin's promising moviemaking sensibilities, its point of view feels coldly amoral and dismissive.
  162. Anger Management
    It's a remarkable, if appalling, spectacle of self-abasement. But of course, that's Sandler's specialty.
  163. DysFunktional Family
    Wickedly funny.
  164. The Man Without a Past
    It's a gentle, surprising little movie whose rewards lie in what its characters don't say as much as in what they do.
  165. Phone Booth
    What keeps Phone Booth going, despite its premise, is the acting and the writing, both of which are top-notch.
  166. What a Girl Wants
    It's uninspired and insipid all the way.
  167. Levity
    So solemnly paced and deliberately performed that it seems to solidify before your very eyes.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    A Man Apart
    It really should be arrested for impersonating an interesting movie.
  169. Cowboy Bebop the Movie: Knockin' on Heaven's Door
    The atmospherics are wonderfully dark and film-noirish, if overly violent.
  170. Cet amour-là
    There is one reason, and one reason alone, to watch Cet Amour-La. It is Jeanne Moreau.
  171. Fellini: I'm a Born Liar
    And if the movie's not particularly visual -- apart from the excerpted scenes from Fellini's extremely visual films -- it's entertaining for the ears. Fellini talks and talks. And like many directors, he talks a good life.
  172. The Good Thief
    In the end, what started off as playful becomes tedious.
  173. Stevie
    By the film's self-congratulatory final shot, Stevie has become less a portrait of a sorry young man's difficult life than the story of auteurist arrogance and self-deception run amok.
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