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. In the Name of My Daughter
    In the Name of My Daughter has good intentions of taking a sensationalistic riddle and turning it into a human story. But the pendulum ultimately swings too far, leaving an explosive tale behind in favor of one that fizzles out.
  2. Down and Out in Beverly Hills
    Down and Out suggests the kind of conflict of values that the fish-out-of-water story depends on: wealthy Dave is a workaholic, but Jerry doesn't want to work; Dave is a striver, but Jerry's given up. But the idea is never really pursued.
  3. Timecop
    Timecop is good dumb fun, but it's likely to receive the same sentence most Van Damme projects do: a few weeks in movie theaters and eternity on video store shelves and cable television.
  4. Uncle Buck
    Uncle Buck is competent comedy, a bit simplistic, a bit stale, no gremlins, no gushiness, no surprises. A Hughes movie offers the kind of reliability you expect from major household appliances or a good set of radials.
  5. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water
    The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water is like the family movie equivalent of a Krabby Patty: It tastes fine and will satisfy some cravings. But it’s ultimately a product cranked out to make money and keep our consumer-driven society, much like Bikini Bottom’s, chugging along without significant disruption.
  6. Joy
    Even Lawrence, in the end, is a letdown. As entertaining and committed as she is — and she’s easily the best thing about Joy — the actress ultimately can’t sell a souffle that’s half baked.
  7. About Alex
    The plot is so similar to “The Big Chill” that it almost could be called a remake, except that it isn’t nearly as funny, it follows millennials instead of baby boomers and the characters tweet.
  8. Black Mass
    Even filmmakers and actors as fine as these haven’t managed to solve one of cinema’s most enduring challenges — making criminals interesting without exalting them.
  9. The Notebook
    This adaptation of Agota Kristof’s 1986 novel is impossible to take literally, yet too obscure to read between the lines.
  10. A Letter to Momo
    A Letter to Momo is unquestionably lovely to look at, but viewers may not be able to shake the feeling that they’ve seen much of it before, and done better.
  11. My Old Lady
    Horovitz may have made a questionable decision in adapting this particular play for the screen, but his casting was flawless.
  12. Clifford the Big Red Dog
    Sure, maybe Clifford doesn’t take the cinematic art form to a new level. All the same, it’s funny and sweet. This old dog may not have many new tricks, but sometimes being a good boy will do.
  13. Paper Towns
    If it’s a bit dull, and too dependent on a what-I-learned voice-over to make its points, it can still be applauded for resisting the temptation to overreach.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 50 Reviewed by
      Hau Chu
    Godzilla: King of the Monsters
    The movie does not roar, but rather emits only a serviceable yelp.
  15. No No: A Dockumentary
    “No No” performs the valuable service of elevating Ellis’s legacy beyond one game, reminding viewers of a career during which he was almost always, as one observer notes, “a chapter ahead.”
  16. The Age of Adaline
    The Age of Adaline works best as a simple story of boy meets girl; girl falls in love; girl mulls whether or not to reveal that she’ll stay young forever. Everything else is just a lot of unnecessary noise.
  17. The Croods: A New Age
    The anarchic spirit of the film suggests the screenwriters (brothers Kevin and Dan Hageman, Paul Fisher and Bob Logan) may also have been a little high on bee venom when they wrote this thing.
  18. Men, Women & Children
    To its credit, Men, Women & Children seems to allow for a rational middle ground between technophobic Luddites and the lamentably over-wired. It never turns down the moral panic entirely, but neither does it let it completely boil over.
  19. McFarland USA
    A new sport doesn’t equate to new ground, but there is pleasure to be had in a formula that works.
  20. The Identical
    The music is catchy and sounds sufficiently Elvis-like, and The Identical occupies a neglected niche as a family-friendly movie that isn’t geared just toward kids. But living up to a legend is an uphill battle, and the movie doesn’t ever reach those heights.
  21. But Always
    Snow Zou’s directorial debut does have a few noteworthy attributes: attractive stars, sun-dappled cinematography and an audacious payoff.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Memphis
    [An] aimless but oddly charismatic film.
  23. Triple 9
    Triple 9 feels more like a collection of good scenes than a novel, propulsive whole. Viewers are apt to be entertained by the film’s visceral pulp pleasures, but left apathetic when it comes to its instantly forgettable genre cliches.
  24. All That Jazz
    By the time the film is over, the movie has degenerated with a jaundiced vengeance. Fosse's sour, grandstanding cynicism imposed an intolerable burden of self-pity on his talent, our compassion and the tradition of the backstage muscial.
  25. The Keeping Room
    The Keeping Room raises difficult moral questions, yet it wallows so relentlessly in gloom that it is a challenge to care about what happens to its characters.
  26. A Little Chaos
    Though it purports to be about the delights of disorder, “A Little Chaos” feels like yet another by-the-book period romance, only without the genre’s requisite spark between the main characters.
  27. Black or White
    The performances are fantastic across the board, with Costner acting in his trademark low-key naturalistic style and Spencer as the picture of no-nonsense maternal love. But their efforts can’t make up for overly simplified characters, not to mention melodramatic exchanges that sound exactly like written dialogue.
  28. Beloved Sisters
    Without at least the tawdry pleasure of a little bodice ripping, the film moves along sluggishly, even though it is well acted and handsomely shot.
  29. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
    It’s not a bad movie. It’s like several pretty good ones.
  30. Taken 3
    The film dutifully cleaves to the contours of a well-established and viscerally satisfying formula.
  31. Bitter Honey
    It would be nice to know if the troubling images we see are a sweeping problem or just a small glimpse of a minority.
  32. The Water Diviner
    Crowe clearly seeks to return to classic storytelling values with this sweeping-yet-intimate, serious-yet-swashbuckling, hither-yet-thither picaresque; that he succeeds only part of the time shouldn’t detract from the worthiness of his mission.
  33. I Am Ali
    In the wake of numerous documentaries and a big-budget film, writer-director Clare Lewins can find little fresh material.
  34. 23 Blast
    Despite the decent performances, the script by first-time screenwriter Toni Hoover (who reportedly Googled “how to write a screenplay” after deciding to chronicle the story of her blinded football-playing friend) swings from flat to overly sentimental, while Baker’s rookie direction is predictable and occasionally confusing.
  35. The Last Witch Hunter
    As Kaulder, Diesel does what he does, rumbling out lines of silly dialogue in his subwoofer of a voice. As far as acting goes, there’s not much.
  36. Plot for Peace
    [A] sometimes fascinating, often convoluted, movie.
  37. Captain Marvel
    As shaky and unfocused as Captain Marvel often seems, it manages to reach its destination with confidence. In the end, Larson sticks the landing, albeit with something more muted than absolute triumph. The final takeaway is clear. Mission accomplished: More movies ahead.
  38. Bhopal: A Prayer for Rain
    Some of the portrayals are over-the-top in their villainy, and the dialogue, acting and music all tend to be melodramatic. But all of the overt heartstring-pulling doesn’t add much. Given the awful calamity, the truth would have been enough to amp up the emotions.
  39. Inside the Mind of Leonardo
    Not quite documentary, yet by no means drama, Inside the Mind of Leonardo is what might be called poetic biography: maddeningly fragmentary and idiosyncratic, but 100 percent true.
  40. The Intern
    Meyers seems content to make a nice movie about nice people doing their best to be nice to each other despite one or two not-nice things that happen along the way. That’s all very nice, but not particularly the stuff of potent or rousing entertainment.
  41. The Revenant
    Despite the literal and figurative pains it takes to persuade viewers of its own importance, The Revenant can’t escape the clutches of crippling self-regard.
    • 33 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip
    The movie does nothing special or surprising, but it doesn’t particularly offend, either.
  43. Jason Bourne
    Jason Bourne belongs to Damon and Greengrass, whose admirable — and entirely appropriate — goal of playing it for kicks comes across, this time around, as an oddly joyless chore.
  44. Pete's Dragon
    Despite the vastly improved visuals, the new film is just as soft-hearted — and, unfortunately, just as mush-headed — as the earlier one.
  45. Ghost in the Shell
    This version may not break new ground, but it revisits familiar territory with a vibrant sense of style and welcome restraint. It exemplifies the kind of respectable and utterly unnecessary remake that now defines the Hollywood business model.
  46. Avatar: The Way of Water
    The action in “The Way of Water” is ultimately overwhelming, betraying an uncomfortable truth about Cameron: He might preach environmentalism and balance, calling on Indigenous peoples for their gentle worldviews and material culture. But at heart, he’s just as aggressive and all-commanding as the bad guys he portrays with such oorah swagger.
  47. The D Train
    A modestly funny, little bit dark, occasionally knowing, not entirely cynical comedy that, to the extent that it succeeds at all, does so thanks to James Marsden.
  48. I Am Michael
    I Am Michael, is an intermittently affecting — but not entirely convincing — conversion story.
  49. Sleeping with Other People
    The romantic comedy boasts two winning leads in Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie, as well as some sweet, funny moments amid the Aaron Sorkin-esque dialogue — courtesy of writer-director Leslye Headland — that’s a little too clever for its own believability.
  50. Cop Car
    The film is full of quiet little truths.
  51. I Smile Back
    Although the plot is painfully familiar — and not particularly edifying, compared with similar narratives that have gone before — the novelty here is Silverman, who doesn’t exactly erase her comic persona so much as bring to the surface an inherent darkness that has always lurked in the shadows.
  52. Ten Thousand Saints
    The movie captures the city vibrantly, in moments of beauty and brilliance.... But Jude, our narrator, is paper thin.
  53. Unexpected
    Unexpected would have been enriched by a more generous balance between the two characters’ worlds. But Swanberg shows a sure, sensitive hand in limning the upshots and downsides of life’s most blessed events.
  54. Boy Meets Girl
    Often, it feels conspicuously educational. The movie is far better when it focuses on its intimate story of love between family and friends in a small town.
  55. Blackbird
    The heart of the movie is in the right place. And although some of the acting from the younger stars comes across as amateurish, a few performances truly shine.
  56. Free State of Jones
    As gratifying as it is to see forgotten history brought to light, it’s disappointing, too: There’s an epic story to be told within Free State of Jones, but this white-knight tale isn’t it.
  57. The Danish Girl
    For all of the virtuosity of Redmayne and Vikander’s performances, and for all its sensitivity and aesthetic appeal, The Danish Girl is content simply to present the ambiguities and contradictions of Lili and Gerda’s story, rather than delve into their gnarlier corners.
  58. 3 Hearts
    The gently perfumed air of impending doom suffuses 3 Hearts, a tasteful, mildly intriguing romantic drama from writer-director Benoît Jacquot.
  59. The Magnificent Seven
    The Magnificent Seven is fine as far as it goes, but — especially when the familiar strains of the 1960 theme song begin wafting over the final scenes — one can’t help feeling that it should have gone much further.
  60. The Forecaster
    The bigger mystery is whether the models actually work. Though the Armstrong partisans in the film strongly suggest that they do, director Marcus Vetter struggles to convince the lay viewer.
  61. Hello, My Name Is Doris
    Hello, My Name Is Doris is a weirdly off-plumb little movie, one that manages to be condescending and compassionate, knowing and blinkered, reassuring and unsettling all at the same time
  62. Learning to Drive
    Learning to Drive would be an entirely inert expedition were it not for Clarkson, who plays against Kingsley’s sentinel of propriety with her signature radiance and birdlike gracefulness.
  63. The Human Experiment
    The movie was nicely shot with flashy graphics to explain the data that does exist. But in the end, this film will persuade only those who already believe.
  64. The Secret Life of Pets
    The humor is generic. And the film’s most obvious comparison — it’s been called “Toy Story” with animals — only points up the one thing “Pets” lacks, and that any animal lover will tell you their furred and feathered friends have, in spades: personality.
  65. Aloft
    The characters in Aloft seem to float over their strong passions, like birds riding on columns of air, without ever alighting. I kept waiting for the sharp sting of a talon to take hold of my heart, but it never came.
  66. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
    The film’s subtly observed moments are more powerful than any of its technical wizardry.
  67. Maze Runner: The Death Cure
    Despite a strong cast, striking locations and slick digital effects, the overlong movie lurches from chase to battle to soul-searching quietude — and then back again — in frustratingly generic action-movie style. It’s just one darn thing after another.
  68. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared
    Whimsical, fantastical and self-consciously charming, it slinks around viewers’ ankles like an affectionate cat, purring ever more loudly until the audience can’t help but succumb.
  69. Heaven Knows What
    What elevates Heaven Knows What above other run-of-the-mill wallows in aimlessness and self-destructive compulsion is Arielle Holmes.
  70. Storks
    Storks delivers its package, but it’s a bundle of just-okay, not joy.
  71. Pacific Rim: Uprising
    Uprising is loud, packed with impressive effects and propulsive — or as propulsive as a car with no brakes going downhill — but it lacks the heart of del Toro’s original.
  72. Marie's Story
    The movie by Jean-Pierre Améris milks the tears in the home stretch, making little effort to hold the melodrama at bay. The result is a story that everyone can feel great about feeling terrible about.
  73. Irrational Man
    Irrational Man isn’t a comedy. There are, however, moments that invite rueful chuckles of recognition, especially when Posey’s character is giving Abe the business. She strikes a welcome madcap note in what is otherwise a series of bland medium shots of people talking.
  74. American Ultra
    American Ultra has a clever premise. But it misses several opportunities to at least comment on, if not skewer, the spy movies that it only halfheartedly pokes fun at. As it is, it’s content to generate a low-grade buzz, rather than deliver a true high.
  75. Legend
    Hardy is extraordinarily good at evoking the fraught fraternal connection between the Krays.... But the film is ultimately unable to plumb the Krays’ deepest souls, if they even have any.
  76. Love at First Fight
    The actors make the movie’s memorable characters all the more indelible, even when Love at First Fight loses its sense of originality.
  77. Green Room
    Aficionados of gore and guts may not mind the comfortably lived-in feel of this blood-spattered Green Room. But anyone looking for the ferocious originality, and unexpected humanity, of “Blue Ruin” will be disappointed by Saulnier’s uninspired cover version of a song we all know.
  78. Disorder
    Disorder is, in other words, more of a technical achievement than an artistic one. The movie is at its best when it recreates what it must feel like to be in a constant state of paranoia and pain. If only that feeling were accompanied by one or two other emotions.
  79. Yakuza Apocalypse
    Miike sets up entire sections of Yakuza Apocalypse like an endurance test. If the film’s title and the promise of ear fluid are not deterrents, then maybe you’ll be able to appreciate the sheer energy and audacity of his unapologetic vision.
  80. Big Stone Gap
    Big Stone Gap suffers from some hokey moments, including an ending that’s both implausible and too heavy on the sap.
  81. 3 Generations
    The cumulative effect is closer to a didactic after-school special for troubled parents.
  82. The Equalizer 2
    It’s purely unintentional, but the little numeral dangling, like a broken, mangled finger, from the end of the title of The Equalizer 2 signals more than the fact that this is a sequel to the 2014 action thriller about a violent vigilante. It also lets you know that there are two, and only two, pleasures to be had here.
  83. Daddy's Home
    There are a few laughs here and there. Most come at the expense of Ferrell, who plays the kind of hapless (and occasionally shirtless) straight arrow that the actor could turn out in his sleep.
    • 40 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Pitch Perfect 3
    Although Kendrick’s pint-size dynamo once pushed the Bellas beyond their la-la-la comfort zone, she basically sleepwalks through this third go-round.
  85. Samba
    Like “The Intouchables,” Samba is loosely plotted and is at least 20 minutes too long. It seems ready to end half a dozen times before it finally does, with ironic payoffs for Samba and Alice that are too glib to be satisfying.
  86. Solo: A Star Wars Story
    Solo: A Star Wars Story gets the job done with little fuss, but also with precious little finesse. It might arguably succeed in teeing up the cinematic narrative that would change movies forever. But in both substance and execution, it bears but a whisper of the revolution to come.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Steak (R)evolution
    The meat is supposed to be the most beautiful thing in the documentary, but I found myself more drawn to the lingering shots of shaggy cows, silhouetted on European mountainsides, with their tousled bangs blowing in the wind.
  88. Our Brand Is Crisis
    The movie turns out to be something we’ve seen before: an underdog tale mixed with a redemption narrative.
  89. A Brilliant Young Mind
    A Brilliant Young Mind is less stuffy than the usual cinematic ode to British smarts and schooling. But that still can’t save this tale of eccentric genius from being profoundly conventional.
  90. Sneakerheadz
    Perhaps Sneakerheadz needs a sequel, one that more directly interrogates the shoe manufacturers themselves about the hazards of pumping up so much hype about their product.
  91. The Star
    The movie is sincerely Christian in its outlook, while also a slapstick animal ’toon. It’s a mix that works only intermittently. But when it doesn’t pop, it thuds.
  92. Shanghai
    Shanghai is an exercise in retro glamour, alluring decadence and tough-guy posing, all of which it delivers in sufficient quantities.
  93. Tab Hunter Confidential
    Hunter proves to be an engaging if low-key narrator, whose greatest asset is his refusal to take himself too seriously.
  94. Miss You Already
    When Miss You Already works, it’s because of the cast.
  95. The Warriors
    None of Hill's dynamism will save The Warriors from impressing most neutral observers as a ghastly folly. It seems a little demented to choose gang warfare as a pretext for showing off virtuoso technique. [10 Feb 1979, p.C7]
    • Washington Post
  96. My All American
    My All American plays like an extended highlights reel, not a movie.
  97. Front Cover
    Front Cover is weighed down by heavy-handed dialogue and a melodramatic score.
  98. Hardcore Henry
    The sense of goofy, if gory, good humor [Copley] brings to Hardcore Henry goes a long way toward mitigating the film’s tedious barbarity.
  99. High-Rise
    The overly schematic nature of High-Rise does not entirely diminish its pleasures as a story, which include, in addition to Wheatley’s richly lurid visual sensibility, an effective metaphorical tool in Laing.
  100. Olvidados (Forgotten)
    Despite numerous missteps and contrivances, Olvidados succeeds as an indictment of Operation Condor’s horrors.
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