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. Spirited Away
    Old myths and wonder tales spun afresh.
  2. Ciao America
    Its heart is vaguely in the right place.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Experiment
    The film's hysterically pitched action overshadows its more subtle psychological points.
  4. Quitting
    Unfortunately, the experience of actually watching the movie is less compelling than the circumstances of its making.
  5. Igby Goes Down
    A dead-on sense of how rich kids live and talk today, a sense of the melancholy of a dysfunctional family, and some great dark laughs.
  6. Barbershop
    Doesn't always cut it -- and, somewhat embarrassingly, boom mikes hover on screen so frequently they deserve co-billing -- but it's a likable venture that just misses being a lovable one.
  7. Alias Betty
    The good news might be that Huppert wasn't available for Alias Betty, but the bad news is that it didn't stop France from exporting yet one more cold, pretentious, thoroughly dislikable study in sociopathy.
  8. Stealing Harvard
    Here's the best thing about Stealing Harvard: A dog bites Green in the crotch for a really long time. Priceless.
  9. City by the Sea
    Yields the same sort of archetype and the usual results: De Niro's workmanlike in a dismayingly familiar role.
  10. In Praise of Love
    Maybe the easiest thing would be to skip the movie altogether. Godard has created such a hermetic, uncompromising world that only the hardiest cinematic spelunkers are likely to appreciate its depths.
  11. Mad Love
    A bodice-ripper for intellectuals.
  12. FeardotCom
    A depraved, incoherent, instantly disposable piece of hackery.
  13. Red Satin
    Although the movie is slow-going at first, it gradually awakens, like Lilia. And then it dances.
  14. Undisputed
    Even by its own please-the-mob standards, this movie is lacking.
  15. Serving Sara
    As a child, I thought pure hell meant eternal agony in the flames of Satan. Now I know it's looking down at your watch and realizing Serving Sara isn't even halfway through.
  16. The Isle
    "Spring, Summer" fans should only have their appreciation of that film expanded by seeing this rougher take on similar themes.
  17. S1m0ne
    Each plot twist trumps its predecessor into ludicrousness.
  18. One Hour Photo
    Intense and absorbing experience.
  19. Possession
    How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
  20. Mostly Martha
    A sweet, even delectable diversion from the more explosive cinematic fare of the season.
  21. Blue Crush
    A big, sexy, sun-splashed thrill ride, is what a summer movie ought to be: not totally mindless, but more interested in jangling your nerves than engaging your brain.
  22. I'm Going Home
    Viewers who come to this delicate creation with expectations of just another quaint or sad story are in for a surprise.
  23. Secret Ballot
    A psychic journey deep into the very fabric of Iranian (and by extension, all) life.
  24. xXx
    Essentially a dumb guy's day in Heaven. The movie's retrofitted with stunts, fights, explosions, drugs, babes and cars -- not necessarily in that order.
  25. 24 Hour Party People
    The manic swirl of characters (most speaking in thick Northern accents that are sometimes muffled and incomprehensible) may leave you exhausted and confused.
  26. Blood Work
    It's always nice to see Clint, and especially nice to see him play someone whose humanity -- no, whose mortality -- is all too apparent.
  27. Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams
    One overly busy (not to mention shopworn) story, which regurgitates everything from H.G. Wells's "The Island of Dr. Moreau" to the herky-jerky monsters of Ray Harryhausen to James Bond to "The Mummy."
  28. Caravaggio
    Less a movie than an act of vandalism.
  29. The Good Girl
    It's tough, astringent, darkly funny and . . . well, it's also generic, untidy, condescending and mild of impact rather than stunning.
  30. Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
    Lawrence's material runs between mediocre and offensive, and then he rescues it with his physical humor. He's at his best when he lets his face or inflection do the talking.
  31. Full Frontal
    The only way a self-absorbed treatise like this can get any kind of audience (not to mention distribution) is to cast famous people in it.
  32. One Last Kiss
    It's not Fellini, by any means, but it's lively. Never stops moving, even though it crashes into cliches along the way.
  33. Signs
    Even though he shows some master touches throughout the movie, Shyamalan flits a little too lightly across the surface, like a pond skater.
  34. Gaza Strip
    Its one-sidedness flirts with propaganda.
  35. Merci Pour Le Chocolat
    Every moment of the way, there is a delectable sense of subtle menace and, at the center of it all, Huppert's haunting expression, part sphinx, part grace and maybe part scary.
  36. The Kid Stays in the Picture
    Has to be one of the must-see films for any student of Hollywood fame and infamy.
  37. Swimming
    Absolutely refuse to make predictable patterns in the sand. Instead, they set their characters loose.
  38. I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
    The unexpected drama captured puts I Am Trying to Break Your Heart in the good company, if not quite the league, of "Let It Be" and "Gimme Shelter."
  39. The Country Bears
    If you're looking for some good family interspecies entertainment, take the little ones to see "Stuart Little 2" again; in the meantime, you might want to crawl into your cave and sleep through this one.
  40. Who Is Cletis Tout?
    Cletis Tout is both in love with and able to laugh at the conventions it adopts, which is exactly where it goes wrong. It's just a little too self-satisfied.
  41. Austin Powers in Goldmember
    Mike Myers unleashes (or seems to unleash) the entire contents of his comic mind.
  42. Happy Times
    The film's maudlin focus on the young woman's infirmity and her naive dreams play like the worst kind of Hollywood heart-string plucking.
  43. K-19: The Widowmaker
    Despite drawing from one of the most powerful and true stories from the Cold War, K-19 is only moderately moving.
  44. Stuart Little 2
    It's a pleasant experience. But that's what it is: a sequel that replays every aspect of the original movie.
  45. Tadpole
    Doesn't need the passage of time to become a classic. It's one already.
  46. Eight Legged Freaks
    The actual movie is the cinematic equivalent of cheap Chinese egg rolls: all flour and cabbage shreds, maybe half a nibble of pork.
  47. My Wife Is an Actress
    Attal, who resembles a young Robert De Niro, seems as addled as a director as his character is as a husband, throwing all manner of distractions onto the screen in order to divert the audience.
  48. The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course
    When I say this movie's a charm, I'm really talking about Irwin.
  49. Reign of Fire
    A disaster of a drama, saved only by its winged assailants. You know a picture's in trouble when you find yourself rooting for humankind to lose.
  50. Sex and Lucia
    It's still pretty darn good, despite its smarty-pants aura.
  51. Never Again
    A meet-cute whimsy set among divorced fifty-somethings in New York, it blunders on toward oblivion, excruciatingly unfunny and pitifully unromantic.
  52. Road to Perdition
    There's something impressive and yet lacking about everything.
  53. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
    For the first time in 30 years, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars appear on the movie screen as Pennebaker intended. It's almost worth the wait.
  54. Me Without You
    Michelle Williams turns in a performance that is seamless, canny and artistically mature.
  55. Read My Lips
    Fascinating and transgressive love story.
  56. Like Mike
    The frightening myths about adoption that run through Like Mike make even its happiest endings a little bit creepy.
  57. Men in Black II
    Smith and Jones seem like superannuated company men: They're going through the motions, but the zip is gone.
  58. Songs from the Second Floor
    Want to see something strange, funny, twisted, brilliant and macabre? Sure you do.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Powerpuff Girls
    Offers cleverness and charm that are hard to come by in the summertime multiplex.
  60. Lovely & Amazing
    Warmhearted and slightly edgy seriocomedy, these sisters experience some pretty entertaining ups and downs. Entertaining, that is, for people who appreciate irony.
  61. The Cockettes
    An absorbing primer in one of the most fascinating chapters in American social history.
  62. Notorious C.H.O.
    A raunchy and frequently hilarious follow-up to the gifted Korean American stand-up's "I'm the One That I Want."
  63. Hey Arnold! The Movie
    Neither funny nor suspenseful nor particularly well drawn.
  64. Pumpkin
    A brain and a heart, two things that, along with a good story, believable characters and anything resembling style or flair, Pumpkin is fatally missing.
  65. Mr. Deeds
    The projectors in the theater practically shut down with boredom.
  66. Juwanna Mann
    If this sounds like "Tootsie" with a ball, well, it is. Screenwriter Bradley Allenstein should be hauled up in writer's court for his shameless cribbing of that far superior comedy. Someone call a foul.
  67. Sunshine State
    Part of the joy of watching a John Sayles film is to see how he knits together so many people and stories into a densely layered, always absorbing whole.
  68. Lilo & Stitch
    Fresh and rainbowy as a midday Hawaiian sun shower.
  69. Minority Report
    Spielberg's dark side may not be where everyone wants to live, but it's somehow encouraging to know that he has one.
  70. The Emperor's New Clothes
    Charming but slight.
  71. Windtalkers
    For all this potential, and the appealing presence of Nicolas Cage and newcomer Adam Beach, Windtalkers remains almost obstinately flat.
  72. Scooby-Doo
    The gratuitous vulgarity is just one more reason that Scooby-Doo should never have left the pound.
  73. The Bourne Identity
    As for Damon, this may not be a performance so much as an appearance. But he cares so utterly, it works.
  74. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
    Sharp, lively, funny and ultimately sobering film.
  75. Bad Company
    A longwinded, predictable scenario.
  76. Cherish
    This is a downbeat, indulgent and self-consciously quirky little movie.
  77. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
    What is perhaps most disappointing about this ham-handed film, though, particularly since it was directed by the screenwriter of the righteously raging "Thelma and Louise," is its crypto-misogyny.
  78. The Sum of All Fears
    Surprisingly uninvolving, the least effective of Neufeld's Clancy-based movies. Surely he was not looking for this kind of film: one that bombs literally and figuratively.
  79. Undercover Brother
    Some of it is funny in a Zucker brothers slapstick way. And as the Man's geeky lieutenant, Chris Kattan has some amusingly kooky business. But there's not enough to sustain the comedy. Ultimately, the movie's short running time becomes its finest quality.
  80. Elling
    Charming but slight comedy.
  81. Nijinsky: The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky
    Those who are only mildly curious, I fear, will be put to sleep or bewildered by the artsy and often pointless visuals.
  82. CQ
    A charming, spirited movie for cinephiles, or those who aspire to be. It's the kind of movie every kid in film school wanted to make but didn't have the father to produce.
  83. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
    In this movie, only one thing is certain: No one remains the same.
  84. Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
    The movie's big action scenes, at times, make you forget you're even watching animation. There's an in-your-face sequence involving a runaway, crashing train that will make you squirm in your seat trying to get out of the way.
  85. Enough
    In terms of actual social conscience, the movie gets a demagogic, rabble-rousing F. It also gets a failed grade for honest writing.
  86. Insomnia
    In this film, Nolan seems overwhelmed by the budget, the egos of the stars, the thinness of the script, and he doesn't impose much personality on the picture. It's all Pacino.
  87. The Importance of Being Earnest
    The real importance of "Earnest" is the thrill of brilliant repartee. And as we laugh, an amazing thing happens: Oscar Wilde comes alive.
  88. Late Marriage
    Late Marriage is a closely observed, somewhat funny, ultimately very sad movie.
  89. About a Boy
    Hilarious, touching and wonderfully dyspeptic.
  90. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
    It's too long, it's too dull, it's too lame.
  91. The Lady and the Duke
    The effect, in this French period drama, is something like a moving pop-up book, in which characters seem to be two-dimensional cardboard cutouts come to life.
  92. Unfaithful
    In the end, Unfaithful leaves you dispirited and grumpy: All that money spent, all that talent wasted, all that time gone forever, and for what? It's an ill movie that bloweth no man to good.
  93. The New Guy
    A particularly loathsome piece of cultural detritus, a trashy, crass piece of work that panders to the anxieties and desires of adolescents without a scintilla of sympathy or coherence.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Mystic Masseur
    A soft-focused, wistful big-screen art film.
  95. ABC Africa
    This slight but insinuating documentary by Abbas Kiarostami...will do nothing to advance or detract from the reputation of the acclaimed Iranian filmmaker.
  96. Hollywood Ending
    It feels old, tired and given-up-on, maybe three drafts shy of minimal production level.
  97. Spider-Man
    With disarmingly entertaining movies like this, dare I say, who needs big bad superhero movies?
  98. Sade
    Although the movie adheres more closely to history than "Quills," it lacks dramatic punch and depth.
  99. For da Love of Money
    For da love of God, spare me.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Dogtown and Z-Boys
    Using home movies, photos, a brilliant soundtrack and candid, articulate interviews, director Stacy Peralta (one of the original Z-boys) details the birth of a pop culture phenomenon.
  101. Life or Something Like It
    Oh, please. Stop and smell the manure.
  102. Jason X
    A protracted and only sporadically imaginative menu of ways to be murdered.
  103. Rain
    All about undertones, obliqueness and expectancy, about the scent, if you will, of something no one can stop
  104. The Salton Sea
    Far too slick and manufactured to claim street credibility.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 10 Critic Score
    Some Body
    The most surprising thing about Some Body is that any film so lewd could be so thoroughly uninteresting.
  106. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
    It's not art, this movie. But it's much more amusing than you'd expect.
  107. Murderous Maids
    Troubling and powerful film, lingering on screen well into the final credits and in the minds of its audience long after the house lights have come on.
  108. Murder by Numbers
    Isn't a great movie, but it's a perfectly acceptable widget.
  109. Enigma
    First-class in all departments except clarity.
  110. The Scorpion King
    Ultimately undone by its sheer busyness. The screenwriters never get the story to settle down, and it becomes a case of one damn thing after another.
  111. World Traveler
    Anemic, pretentious.
  112. Nine Queens
    When you think you've figured out Bielinsky's great game, that's when you're in the most trouble: He's the con, and you're just the mark.
  113. The Triumph of Love
    Playful as it is, Clare Peploe's adaptation of Pierre Marivaux's romantic comedy coughs and sputters on its own postmodern conceit.
  114. The Cat's Meow
    An elegant drama about power and its frightening uses, The Cat's Meow is the bee's knees.
  115. Human Nature
    After some promising leaps, bounds and swings through a fascinating jungle of possibility, Charlie Kaufman's movie misses an all-important creeper.
  116. Frailty
    The movie is so disturbing that it seems nearly blasphemous. I wouldn't wish it on an anthrax spore. After all, anthrax has feelings, too.
  117. The Other Side of Heaven
    A tad preachy and more than a little bit sanctimonious.
  118. Changing Lanes
    Far richer than you'd ever think possible.
  119. 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.
  120. Lucky Break
    It's what the Brits themselves might call fair to middling.
  121. Les Destinées
    How great can an epic be, when it takes 30 years, including a whole sequence devoted to World War I, for Jean to realize he could be a little nicer to his wife? This is for diehard Francophiles and literate-movie fans only.
  122. High Crimes
    All in all, High Crimes isn't worth the crayons it took to write the script.
  123. American Chai
    This ethnic family sitcom thing is rapidly turning into wearisome cliche, and American Chai doesn't hold a candle to either "Beckham" or "Greek Wedding."
  124. Big Trouble
    This is, after all, the kind of movie in which traffic accidents not only mess up getaways but also liberate goats to wander through the airport. We need more of that stuff.
  125. Van Wilder
    The movie is really just an elaborate excuse to show repeated close-ups of an elephantine dog scrotum.
  126. Crush
    It's about women, but as written and directed by a man, it appears to make no emotional sense at all. It treats women like idiots.
  127. The Rookie
    So unassuming and pure of heart, you can't help but warmly extend your arms and yell "Safe!"
  128. The Piano Teacher
    A disconcertingly assured tango between tenderness and brutality.
  129. Death to Smoochy
    It's so over the top, the top isn't even visible in the rear-view mirror.
  130. Panic Room
    The movie, which suggests a combination of "Wait Until Dark" and "Rear Window," not only takes your breath away on an aesthetic level, it eloquently evokes the mother's and daughter's vulnerability.
  131. No Such Thing
    Burke's face is impressively scaly, his head is adorned with shorn horns. He makes a great monster. If only he had a better movie to growl in!
  132. Clockstoppers
    Benign but forgettable sci-fi diversion.
  133. Margarita Happy Hour
    Feels like a hazy high that takes too long to shake.
    • 25 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Sorority Boys
    To that long list of third- and fourth-rate comedies we can now add Sorority Boys.
  135. Son of the Bride
    Sweet without being saccharine, sad without being maudlin and funny without being forced.
  136. Blade II
    Ghastly yet wonderful at the same time.
  137. Pauline and Paulette
    There is something disturbing about yet another iteration of what's become one of the movies' creepiest conventions, in which the developmentally disabled are portrayed with almost supernatural powers to humble, teach and ultimately redeem their mentally "superior" (read: morally inferior) friends, family and acquaintances.
  138. Harrison's Flowers
    It's part travelogue in Hell, part ineffectual weepie.
  139. Showtime
    So pleased with its own spoofy conceit it stays in annoyingly self-amused, predictable mode.
  140. Y Tu Mamá También
    There are so many good things to say about this film it's hard to find a statement that really nails it. Perhaps we can leave at this: Y Tu Mama Tambien is originality writ large.
  141. Resident Evil
    In the end, it all looks and plays like a $40 million version of a game you're more likely to enjoy on a computer.
  142. Ice Age
    Full of visual dazzle, engaging characters and a reasonably sprightly narrative.
  143. All About the Benjamins
    It's painful watching a talented thespian diminish himself so. It's clear he did it for the Benjamins.
  144. Festival in Cannes
    The only reason to watch this movie is for stargazing, nice shots of the sea and to revel in a world where false promises, lies and empty posturing are actively encouraged.
  145. The Time Machine
    Weirdly disjointed and uncertain as to tone.
  146. Stolen Summer
    The performances take the movie to a higher level.
  147. We Were Soldiers
    Gibson may get top billing, but it's Sam Elliott who steals all the scenes. As Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, a man who fires with his own .45 revolver rather than the standard M-16 rifles, he's full of hilariously colorful comments.
  148. 40 Days and 40 Nights
    The movie is both exhilarating and depressing. The trouble is, I can't figure out which is more important.
  149. Maryam
    High on melodrama. But it's emotionally engrossing, too, thanks to strong, credible performances from the whole cast.
  150. Mean Machine
    I found it a rough night at the flickers.
  151. Monsoon Wedding
    Exploding on the screen in a riot of movement, music and color.
  152. Dragonfly
    Hatched by screenwriters watching "The Sixth Sense" on methamphetamines
  153. Queen of the Damned
    What saddened me, however, wasn't the silliness but recognizing the great Swedish actress Lena Olin under a lot of "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark" makeup. What a waste.
  154. Return to Never Land
    Even if you tap only a little of the magic of "Peter Pan," you'll come away with some pixie dust.
  155. Scratch
    Engrossing and infectiously enthusiastic documentary.
  156. Hart's War
    Follows all these rules, which is why you'll get the enjoyable basic minimum. But not a whit more.
  157. Crossroads
    It does wonders to a critic to know that [Britney] could be a continuing font of teen and post-teen kitsch for years to come.
  158. Super Troopers
    The best thing about the movie is its personable, amusing cast, all members of the five-man comedy troupe Broken Lizard. There's a chemistry among them, which obviously comes from having been together as comedians at Colgate University.
  159. John Q
    This movie, written in crayon by James Kearns, is too dumb to come up with a way of defeating the system by using its own rules.
  160. Scotland, Pa.
    It's simple, sizzly and very funny.
  161. Rollerball
    It has no moments of athletic grace amid the chaos, no apparent sense of strategy. It's basically just mayhem set to rock music.
  162. Big Fat Liar
    An innocent comedic revenge fantasy that somehow manages to be sweet and wickedly satisfying at the same time.
  163. Collateral Damage
    Head-scratchingly ordinary, given Schwarzenegger's need to prove he's still a virile (i.e., non-aging) action hero.
  164. Swiri
    Suffers from all the excesses of the genre: gunfights that go on and on and on, a plot that is almost incomprehensible.
  165. Birthday Girl
    Between bad hair and tonal irregularity, the movie doesn't give you much to like.
  166. Slackers
    Stinks like a cat box that hasn't been changed in a hundred years.
  167. Maelstrom
    Sensual, funny and, in the end, very touching.
  168. The Son's Room
    A deceivingly simple film, one that grows in power in retrospect, as the cumulative impact of so many quiet moments makes itself felt.
  169. The Mothman Prophecies
    One truly, madly, deeply satisfying creep-out.
  170. Storytelling
    The lower your expectations, the more you'll enjoy it.
  171. The Count of Monte Cristo
    A mediocre production that nevertheless will strike a deep and resonant chord with viewers.
  172. Beijing Bicycle
    Too simple for its own good.
  173. A Walk to Remember
    Audiences who have avoided the multiplex these last few years because of the garbage peddled there are the only ones for whom this overly familiar "Walk" will be memorable.
  174. American Adobo
    Tries to cram too many ingredients into one small pot.
  175. Italian for Beginners
    It's all done without special effects, soaring strings or manufactured sentiment. Now, that's entertainment.
  176. Snow Dogs
    The movie's gentle and friendly, but nowhere close to exciting. It would be hard to believe that anyone involved with this production --considers Snow Dogs anything more than phoned-in business as usual.
  177. Brotherhood of the Wolf
    This one's a turkey as big as the Eiffel Tower but it's bad in a particularly American way: It's wildly overdone, it throws in everything in an attempt to appeal to everyone, it's gargantuan and anti-logical, pointlessly ornate and pointlessly violent.
  178. Orange County
    The movie is less than nothing special. The movie veers between pretentiousness (oh, the plight of the instant, start-up Artist) and vacuousness.
  179. What Time Is It Over There?
    The story that emerges has elements of romance, tragedy and even silent-movie comedy.
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