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 5.4 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. Assassination Tango
    Someone forgot to remind Duvall to write an ending.
  2. The Core
    This sloppily made, poky, extra cheesy adventure is virtually a remake of "Armageddon."
  3. Head of State
    Though the comedy falls short of a debacle -- which is what such egocentric projects tend to be -- it isn't as sharp, fast or funny as Rock's stand-up routines.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Raising Victor Vargas
    As fresh -- and as restorative -- as a lemon ice on a hot day.
  5. Basic
    They made a movie without one basic ingredient: the story.
  6. Flickering Lights
    As it stands, this movie seems to have conflicting desires: to endear itself to the audience and then repel it.
  7. Piglet's Big Movie
    Sure it's slight, but also as cute as the curly tail on its tender protagonist.
  8. Boat Trip
    A smutty, imbecilic farce.
  9. View from the Top
    There's not much zest here, even with Mike Myers's energetic attempts to steal the movie as a cross-eyed flight instructor.
  10. One Swallow Brought Spring
    The movie, which Carion wrote with Eric Assous, has a calming quality. The story moves slowly but, given the milieu and pace of life, this seems perfectly appropriate.
  11. Dreamcatcher
    All in all -- well, there is no all in all. There are just parts. Some fit, some don't. Some are cool, some aren't. It's the craziest thing you ever saw.
  12. Willard
    This is a one-riff movie and instant cult classic.
  13. The Hunted
    Has so little going for it, you wonder if you've missed something.
  14. Agent Cody Banks
    If you only live twice, spend both lifetimes avoiding it.
  15. Spun
    The title (which translates, essentially, as "burned out") is an apt description of the film itself: a hot and smoldering shell.
  16. Bend It Like Beckham
    You seldom leave a theater walking on air, much less float all through a movie. But the joyous Bend It Like Beckham never lets you down.
  17. Laurel Canyon
    McDormand is the best thing about Laurel Canyon. She's also the most unfortunate victim of a film that seems unable or unwilling to give even its most intriguing and compulsively watchable character her due.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Nowhere in Africa
    What rescues the film is Gernot Roll's spare, almost aesthetic cinematography, and the quality of the acting.
  19. Bringing Down the House
    The rare film that is capable of offending both Trent Lott and Al Sharpton.
  20. The Safety of Objects
    None of them is nasty enough to be interesting, nor nice enough to be sympathetic.
  21. Irreversible
    Fails because of its gratuitous rape and violence and also because of its pretentious and intellectually one-dimensional grounds, which make the violence at the end feel even worse.
  22. Tears of the Sun
    This is an odd amalgam of bleeding-heart sentimentality and over-the-top guts-and-glory action. You're not sure how to feel. But you're certainly not as moved and stunned as you were in "Black Hawk Down."
  23. Ten
    Shows us, in an extraordinarily simple way, the hopes and frustrations of one woman's life.
  24. Cradle 2 the Grave
    It's saying something when Tom Arnold's performance is among the movie's highlights.
  25. Horns and Halos
    A thoughtful and surprisingly affecting portrait of a screwed-up man who dared to mess with some powerful people, seen through the eyes of the idealistic kid who chooses to champion his ultimately losing cause.
  26. Open Hearts
    Like the director, the cast seems to have burrowed into the material, made all the more wrenchingly realistic by Dogme precepts.
  27. Till Human Voices Wake Us
    I'd recommend you actively or passively forget this one.
  28. Dark Blue
    The movie ends not with a bang but a wimp.
  29. Lawless Heart
    It's an intriguing experience.
  30. Gods and Generals
    Less a movie than a meticulously, tediously accurate Civil War reenactment committed to celluloid.
  31. Old School
    A dumb guy comedy about dumb guys by dumb guys and for dumb guys.
  32. The Life of David Gale
    Another tediously sanctimonious message movie from Alan Parker.
  33. Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony
    Viewers will leave Amandla! moved by the music, impressed by the musicians and dubious about the possibility of political and social healing.
  34. The Ballad of Bering Strait
    The documentary never gets more than skin deep. It rarely delves into the troubling regions that are the very orchards of documentary.
  35. Painted Fire
    It is quietly observant, with a detached eye for the telling moment, and the visual compositions are often exquisite.
  36. The Jungle Book 2
    The franchise is cheapened by Disney's crass commercialism in releasing material that, by rights, should have gone straight to video.
  37. Gerry
    The most screamingly obvious reaction to Gerry is: what a load of pseudo-arty you-know-what.
  38. He Loves Me... He Loves Me Not
    Wickedly clever.
  39. All the Real Girls
    It's a movie of deft impressions and telling human moments. Whether or not those impressions and moments add up to anything is almost beside the point.
  40. Daredevil
    For the most part, Daredevil doesn't take a single dare; it travels the road much trod, even if it's through the midtown air.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Stone Reader
    Like the novel, the film is occasionally overwrought and overwritten.
  42. Deliver Us from Eva
    One-dimensional archetypes, too much predictability and not enough comedy.
  43. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
    Both lead players are appealing and attractive enough to make an otherwise tepid movie at least un-excruciating.
  44. Shanghai Knights
    It's too bad Chan's imagination and delicacy were wasted in this movie.
  45. May
    In visual terms, it's clear McKee has a talent for moviemaking...But he's going to need better stories than this.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Biker Boyz
    Has the stink of man-musk all over it.
  47. Lost in La Mancha
    Like rubbernecking motorists, we can't help but watch with lurid fascination.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Guru
    A spirited rally in the final reel can't quite overcome the damage.
  49. Final Destination 2
    Can't wait for the next sequel . . .
  50. The Recruit
    It's nothing but style and noise, threadbare of content, empty of ideas. Is it anything? Not really.
  51. Chaos
    One heck of a tale of deliciously unladylike payback.
  52. Darkness Falls
    A truly awful and extremely loud scareflick.
  53. Blind Spot. Hitler's Secretary
    Makes for fascinating cinema.
  54. Amen.
    It's not every day that movies present a Teutonic character in SS uniform as an unambiguously moral hero, so enjoy this rarity. And the film.
  55. Divine Intervention
    Antic, puzzling and disturbing film.
  56. A Guy Thing
    Tries desperately to lower the bar for scatological gags, rank sexual humor and cheap physical shots.
  57. National Security
    To call Lawrence a poor man's Richard Pryor libels not just Pryor but also the 33 million Americans currently living under the poverty line.
  58. Kangaroo Jack
    There are two distinctive features to the movie: the mind-numbingly banal plot as one chases another who chases another, and all the offensive material.
  59. City of God
    One of the most startling, grittily brilliant films in recent years.
  60. Crimson Gold
    Unfolds with a marvelously understated humanism.
  61. Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
    Preserves and resuscitates the hard-boiled genre.
  62. Just Married
    You know a movie is in trouble when its biggest laughs come not from its lead players but from a dog and a car
  63. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
    A picture that is surely one of the oddest ever made.
  64. Love Liza
    Sadly, the filmmakers haven't given viewers enough context or information about their protagonist to know whether he's utterly free or utterly unmoored -– or to care very much either way.
  65. Nicholas Nickleby
    Whether the entire production comes off as classy or cloying depends entirely on the viewer's mood.
  66. Max
    Mad Max just sails off into nonsense.
  67. The Hours
    With its deft intercutting of place and time, the film creates a powerful sense of mysticism and fate.
  68. The Pianist
    A beautiful story, told in measured cadences by a master of old-timey narrative compression and expression.
  69. Chicago
    Not since the 1972 'Cabaret' has there been a movie musical this stirring, intelligent and exciting.
  70. Catch Me If You Can
    It's brilliantly acted. But best of all, it's brilliantly made.
  71. The Wild Thornberrys Movie
    Pleasant enough and its ecological, pro-wildlife sentiments are certainly welcome.
  72. Two Weeks Notice
    A numbingly unfunny romantic comedy. I hated every minute of it
  73. Morvern Callar
    As Morvern, Morton is disconcertingly enigmatic, often bordering on catatonic. But she carries the movie effortlessly. And even though we're on the outside looking in, she carries us along, too.
  74. Spider
    An eensy-weensy movie sustained by two utterly gigantic performances.
  75. Narc
    This is a stirring movie, if relentless intensity, handheld camera work, cover-your-eyes violence and ear-splitting yelling matches are what you're craving.
    • Washington Post
  76. Gangs of New York
    Under its scope and reach and passion, Gangs of New York is pretty ordinary stuff.
  77. Antwone Fisher
    Blessedly free of the self-righteous histrionics and sentimentality that so often cheapen powerful personal stories.
  78. 25th Hour
    It's the usual undisciplined, overextended Spike symphony: more fun than it is any good.
  79. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
    Gripping, whole and nourishing. Certainly of the fantasy film series currently in American theaters -– I include "Harry Potter and the Secret Toity" and "Star Trek: Halitosis" -– The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is the best, and not by just a little.
  80. The Guys
    An Upper West Sidey exercise in narcissism and self-congratulation disguised as a tribute.
  81. Evelyn
    As vivid as many scenes are, there are just as many that seem taken directly out of the Cute Irish Movie notebook.
  82. Maid in Manhattan
    This fairy-tale shtick, even when dressed up with a little class-war garnish, is hard to swallow.
  83. Star Trek: Nemesis
    An offering so endearingly lame it seems to have missed the past 10 years' worth of special-effects breakthroughs.
  84. Intact
    Consistently absorbing -- thanks in large part to strong performances from the actors -- but not particularly rewarding.
  85. Drumline
    Shakes, rattles and rolls the house, building to a climax that makes you almost forget you're in a movie theater and not a football stadium at halftime.
  86. About Schmidt
    What gives About Schmidt its ultimate boost, what pushes it into the stirring heavens is Nicholson, who produces the most understated -– and one of the most powerful –- performances of his career.
  87. Analyze That
    So dull and awful, you actually wonder if this is some kind of Andy Kaufmanesque in-joke, a deliberate attempt to douse the spark that made the original film so enjoyable.
  88. Empire
    Doesn't deserve the energy it takes to describe how bad it is.
  89. Equilibrium
    Equilibrium is like a remake of "1984" by someone who's seen "The Matrix" 25 times while eating Twinkies and doing methamphetamines.
  90. Adaptation.
    May not be the first movie to examine the creative process. But it's the most playfully brilliant.
  91. Rabbit-Proof Fence
    Searing dramatization of a story of remarkable courage, stamina and spirit.
  92. Russian Ark
    For the truth is, given the audacity, the organization, the seriousness of purpose, the movie isn't nearly as provocative as you think it might be.
  93. Solaris
    It could hardly be called rip-roaring. I should report that it drives about a quarter of the audience out of the theater before it is half over. That's because it's slower than molasses in Siberia.
  94. Eight Crazy Nights
    In this vile contribution to the animated holiday genre, Sandler proves himself once again determined to get rich by setting the bar just a little bit lower each time out.
  95. Die Another Day
    Beginning to creak not only with age but with the strain of constant self-one-upmanship in giving us exotic locales, explosive geopolitics and unbelievable stunts.
  96. Personal Velocity: Three Portraits
    Embraces reality, humanity and compassion, as leavened by wisdom and wit.
  97. The Emperor's Club
    It's a simpering, ineffective ersatz-drama, so simple-minded and unrealistic and so full of fussy stupidity, it exiles you.
  98. The Quiet American
    Thanks to Caine's subtly nuanced performance, there's a deeper dimension to everything. He's snappily ironic at times, sometimes amazingly delicate, always engaging.
  99. Power and Terror: Noam Chomsky in Our Times
    Its important if inflammatory message will bore all but Chomsky's fellow travelers to death.
  100. Talk to Her
    A movie of technical skill and rare depth of intellect and feeling.
  101. Friday After Next
    Lacks the spirit of the previous two, and makes all those jokes about hos and even more unmentionable subjects seem like mere splashing around in the muck.
  102. The Way Home
    Simple without being slight, and profoundly moving without dipping into mawkishness.
  103. Standing in the Shadows of Motown
    The film is a testament to art, life and survival like the similar but superior "Buena Vista Social Club."
  104. Interview with the Assassin
    It's just a gimmick, right down to its Washington release date.
  105. Half Past Dead
    Here, common sense flies out the window, along with the hail of bullets.
  106. The Crime of Padre Amaro
    May be morally tangled, pessimistic, lurid and foreboding, but it's also humanistic.
  107. Ararat
    Doesn't connect with its audience in the one place that matters most: the heart.
  108. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
    Big, dull and empty -- nobody associated with this production appears to have thought hard about storytelling.
  109. Dieu est grand, je suis toute petite
    Too infuriatingly quirky and taken with its own style to get down to telling a story.
  110. The Bread, My Sweet
    The film would be insufferable if it weren't for the total sincerity and commitment of its players.
  111. Far From Heaven
    The movie has the sense of being embalmed, or pickled. With its stilted dialogue not quite kitschy enough to be funny and not quite authentic enough to be realistic, the whole movie feels as if it's taking place in formaldehyde.
  112. 8 Mile
    There's no doubt that Eminem has the talent and presence of a star. It's just a shame that the filmmakers didn't capture his power with mad skillz of their own.
  113. Femme Fatale
    A passionate film buff's valentine to the two directors he loves most: Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma. The film that this worship has inspired is pretty amusing when the director apes Hitchcock, and pretty awful when he apes himself.
  114. Treasure Planet
    Boasts the purest of Disney raptures: It unites the generations, rather than driving them apart.
  115. Tully
    It resides in that cinematic middle ground of not-bad, not-great, just okay.
  116. Love in the Time of Money
    Manages to make sex look like no fun at all.
  117. Daughter from Danang
    Maybe Thomas Wolfe was right: You can't go home again
  118. The Santa Clause 2
    Allen, who's a natural charmer, seems to be at half-strength here.
  119. I Spy
    Nothing is real, but at the same time, nothing is fake. Nothing is, period. You don't believe a second of it for a second, so banal and predictable is it.
  120. Santa vs. the Snowman
    This is sweet-natured fun for the very young.
  121. Quai des Orfèvres [re-release]
    It is in fact a traditional mystery more reminiscent of Agatha Christie than the reigning film noir aesthetic of 1947. But it's fabulously entertaining.
  122. Frida
    Ultimately, the movie's biggest crime is its inability to convey the delicate, damaged texture of Kahlo's life, but also the triumph of her will over intimidating defeat.
  123. The Truth About Charlie
    At once listless and overheated, giddy and utterly zipless, the current incarnation lacks not just the savoir-faire of its stylish predecessor but also the sex appeal.
  124. Paid in Full
    The direction has a fluid, no-nonsense authority, and the performances by Harris, Phifer and Cam'ron seal the deal.
  125. All or Nothing
    Will probably appeal only to the most committed of Leigh fans.
  126. Roger Dodger
    Takes both its characters and the audience to the depths, but it's a journey Kidd redeems with wit and fluency and, ultimately, a deeply persistent humanism.
  127. Ghost Ship
    Doesn't orchestrate the scares with much finesse.
  128. Fidel
    Castro remains the star of the show. You can't stop watching him.
  129. Le bossu
    Great sword fights, great acting, fabulous sword fights and, of course, really cool sword fights.
  130. Naqoyqatsi
    Pretentious, ponderous and redundant -- You may not need linear narrative to create a great movie, but you do need some original ideas.
  131. Real Women Have Curves
    Handsomely shot by cinematographer Jim Denault, the film immerses the audience in Ana's world, its mosaic of colors and sounds and people, to create a vivid cinematic portrait not only of one girl but of an entire community.
  132. Abandon
    Consider the title your best advice.
  133. The Grey Zone
    Nelson certainly passes muster for sincerity but, unfortunately, his movie doesn't have the same clear-cut quality.
  134. Auto Focus
    It never answers the key question: Why should we care?
  135. The Ring
    Has its creepy moments, but also its cliches.
  136. Formula 51
    Stars Samuel L. Jackson in the worst role of his career -- one hopes.
  137. Stealing the Fire
    The documentary makes an effective and rather chilling case that there is an almost unbroken chain between Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
  138. Comedian
    Despite amazing access to Seinfeld backstage, we don't get a peek into the real man.
  139. Brown Sugar
    Isn't much more than another conveyer-belt romantic comedy.
  140. Pokémon 4: The Movie
    A fairly straightforward, if preachy, tale about environmentalism.
  141. Knockaround Guys
    Will satisfy only those who can't tell the difference between the good, the bad and the ugly.
  142. Below
    It just never began to work for me, and the sub story behind the ghost story is far more interesting than the ghost story in front of the sub story.
  143. The Rules of Attraction
    Oddly compelling.
  144. The Transporter
    Sadly, the last 40-odd minutes are essentially one fight, pushed to the point of absurdity.
  145. Punch-Drunk Love
    The outlandish story and exaggerated colors ... swirl together to create an ethereal, sometimes sinister dreamscape.
  146. Tuck Everlasting
    Rather than sparkle and dance, it plods.
  147. White Oleander
    The worst mistake is the screenplay, which not only cuts everything into superficial pieces but fails to make authentic moments of anything. In the end, White Oleander isn't an adaptation of a novel. It's a flashy, star-splashed reduction.
  148. Bowling for Columbine
    The only thing wrong with Bowling for Columbine is Moore himself.
  149. Swept Away
    The film turns out to have nothing going for it at all, except a small charge for soul-deep Madonna haters.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie
    There are entertaining little anachronisms, amusing lines and enough wacky frenzy to please the little ones. The movie clearly comes from a Christian perspective, but without being overly preachy.
  151. Heaven
    It's a mannered, precious exercise that seems to have less to do with lived moral dilemmas than with the smug piety of its makers.
  152. Welcome to Collinwood
    This ensemble comedy has its inventively funny moments. But ultimately, it gets a little too cute for its own good.
  153. Bloody Sunday
    As a terrifying example of what can happen when too many angry people are crowded into too small a space, it's a gripper.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Red Dragon
    Red Dragon is merely the distant echoes of what we liked about "Lambs."
    • 39 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Just a Kiss
    Clumsily written and numbly performed comedy of yammers.
  156. The Tuxedo
    The result isn't merely ludicrous, it's something far worse. It's drab. It's uninteresting. It squanders Chan's uniqueness; it could even be said to squander Jennifer Love Hewitt!
    • Washington Post
  157. Skins
    Its strength is the documentary-textured depiction of Native Americans in their social environment. Its weakness is a story that's a patchy combination of soap opera, low-tech magic realism and, at times, ploddingly sociological commentary.
  158. Shanghai Ghetto
    Despite the film's shortcomings, the stories are quietly moving.
  159. Biggie and Tupac
    Tends to speculation, conspiracy theories or, at best, circumstantial evidence.
  160. The Man from Elysian Fields
    From the get-go, the story remains bogged down in its rather limited morass.
  161. Sweet Home Alabama
    At the movie's thoroughly expected conclusion, a visual joke has a bedraggled cat licking at the icing on a wedding cake, but it's really Melanie who gets to have it and eat it, too.
    • Washington Post
    • 59 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Moonlight Mile
    It's a combination of good story, nice moments and appealing texture.
  163. The Trials of Henry Kissinger
    Damning legal brief against the former secretary of state.
  164. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
    This movie pulls out so many bad-action-movie cliches, you wonder if this is a how-not-to primer.
  165. The Four Feathers
    The movie's deeper problem and its primary disappointment: its unwillingness to deal directly with the issue of colonialism.
  166. The Banger Sisters
    From opening to closing credits, there isn't a single genuine moment -- as phony as a dime bag of oregano.
  167. Snipes
    Both a snore and utter tripe.
  168. The Ignorant Fairies
    A movie that grows better by the minute.
  169. 8 Women
    A gorgeous, if disjointed, spectacle, made endurable – if not entirely comprehensible – by its eye-popping cast.
  170. Secretary
    In a movie as unrewarding as this, there's really only one burning question: When does the spanking begin?
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