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. Shadow Magic
    Sumptuous, warm, continually amazing, it's a completely enjoyable couple of hours at the flickers.
  2. Bright Leaves
    A brilliantly amusing couple of hours.
  3. The Station Agent
    The best advice to filmgoers who appreciate smart, mature, humanist movies is, simply, Go.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Calle 54
    This is one fan's valentine to the music he loves. It just happens that the fan is a terrific filmmaker and the music loves him back -- and we get to see it and hear it all. What a treat.
  5. Me Without You
    Friendship matters to those of us who still claim membership in the human race, and Goldbacher's merciless autopsy on it is both illuminating and dispiriting.
  6. Quills
    Profane, sacrilegious, pornographic, sadistic and Sade-istic, titillating and the most honorable movie of the year.
  7. The Magdalene Sisters
    Mullan's movie is admiringly uncompromising. He refuses to augment the horrors with relief.
  8. Go
    The latest furiously paced, perversely entertaining "Pulp Fiction" for puppies.
  9. Road Trip
    I'm talking cheap visual gags, painfully embarrassing moments and other sophomoric humor guaranteed to get you and your friends almost vomiting with laughter.
  10. Auto Focus
    In this admirably unconventional film, director Paul Schrader is interested in just about everything BUT traditional biopic business.
  11. Army of Darkness
    Raimi offers all the fantasy, camp and hardcore horror you devoured in the comics. You can feel the pen-and-ink drawings coming to life. Dipping wittily into myth, the macabre and the modern, it's an effervescent adventure that's as amusing as it is genuinely gripping. [19 Feb 1993, Weekend, p.n38]
    • Washington Post
  12. Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
    For students of cool ... Le Cercle Rouge is required viewing.
  13. Shakespeare in Love
    The movie becomes something quite rare and magical: a text about a text that is also full of life. In other words, it's a true first: It's both postmodern and fun!
  14. American Splendor
    The genius of the film is its utter commitment to the Pekar point of view.
  15. Two Girls and a Guy
    You'll likely come away from this astonishing encounter between the three corners of a lovers' triangle not just amused but enlightened about such not-so-simple issues as fidelity, betrayal, lust, possessiveness, honesty and forgiveness.
  16. The Winslow Boy
    Mamet's graceful, reverent movie adaptation moves along with a deliberating, almost hypnotic flow, strengthened by impeccable, dignified performances from Nigel Hawthorne, Rebecca Pidgeon and others.
  17. 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.
  18. A Fish Called Wanda
    It's a deliciously dishy comedy, but like sushi an acquired taste.
  19. 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.
  20. The Good Thief
    Nolte is not only made for the role, he's also rehearsed it in real life.
  21. Monster
    Theron has rendered herself 100 percent unrecognizable. Not since Robert De Niro morphed into hulk dimensions to play heavyweight boxer Jake La Motta in "Raging Bull" has there been a transformation this powerful and effective.
  22. The Shawshank Redemption
    Remarkable.
  23. Far From Heaven
    Three sterling performances from Moore, Haysbert and Quaid, all of whom grapple with psychic pain in different, touching ways.
  24. Moulin Rouge!
    It's a wonderful postmodern hug of a movie, and never once do you not know you're watching a movie.
  25. Sunshine State
    The scenes unfold with such unhurried delicacy, and the characters are so intriguing, you can ignore the editorial bluntness and savor the smaller, sweeter details.
  26. Divided We Fall
    Profound, powerful Czech import takes a tragicomic approach to the Holocaust, though unlike Benigni's film, the movie does not sentimentalize those caught up in the Nazi dragnet.
  27. 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.
  28. Since Otar Left
    A small film of surpassing beauty and sadness. Yet its bittersweet flavor isn't artificial, but rather the product of the slow ripening of character.
  29. Burn! (re-release)
    I don't think "Queimada" is as great a movie as "Battle of Algiers," but it retains its vitality, its outrage, its savagery and its spirit.
  30. La grande strada azzurra
    Passionate, literally shimmering movie.
  31. Central Station
    Profoundly affecting.
  32. Lilo & Stitch
    The animation, rendered in good old-fashioned watercolors, is appealing. It's easy, rather than flashy, on the eyes. But the best thing about the movie is the humor.
  33. Say Anything...
    It's hard to remember a recent love story -- maybe "Moonstruck" -- that's as involving as this one. This is not to suggest that the two movies are in the same league, but this is a teen movie that transcends its teen limitations.
  34. Aberdeen
    It is difficult to watch, but it's also impossible to take your eyes off the screen. It does not blench at the things that Hollywood routinely blenches at: substance abuse, dying, family dysfunction, love.
  35. Black Hawk Down
    The next worst thing to being there. That's how real it feels.
  36. Read My Lips
    Fascinating and transgressive love story.
  37. The Good Girl
    Aniston delivers an utterly un-Rachel-like performance. It's neurosis-free and unmannered, by turns funny, sad and profound.
  38. Dead Man Walking
    What this intelligent, balanced, devastating movie puts before us is nothing less than a contest between good and evil.
  39. Gosford Park
    Without hesitation, I hand the comic award to Smith. She plays a pinched guest known as Constance, Countess of Trentham, to such a hilarious tee, her tee runneth over.
  40. Iris
    Not just a fitting document of a life brilliantly lived but a vibrant, almost palpitating piece of cinema.
  41. Topsy-Turvy
    A 160 minute work of sustained brilliance and delicacy.
  42. Cruel Intentions
    A witty, raunchy comedy, which proves that a well-written piece of business – oozing with sex, wit and nasty intrigue – works for any generation.
  43. Vanity Fair
    Witherspoon's simply terrific, and it's amazing how quickly and easily she sheds speculation that she was too modern for the role.
  44. The Return
    It's not the sort of film one can be said to enjoy, but it is the sort of film that has the clarity of a dream and lingers for hours.
  45. 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.
  46. Flirting with Disaster
    Writer-director David O. Russell's exhilarating follow-up to "Spanking the Monkey," is even wilder, giddier and more unpredictable than that irreverent debut.
  47. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
    It's a new new thing, classic myth from both literature and the movies, commingled, set to great folk music, and untrammeled by any sense of predictability, urgency, realism or believability but hypnotic, graceful and seductive.
  48. Sense and Sensibility
    This rapturous romance is not only laugh-out-loud funny but demonstrates how little humankind has evolved in matters of the heart.
  49. America's Heart and Soul
    Harbors some indelibly arresting images and characters whose stories, even at their most superficial, manage to be authentically inspiring.
  50. The Battle of Algiers
    The greatness of The Battle of Algiers lies in its ability to embrace moral ambiguity without succumbing to it.
  51. Monsoon Wedding
    Exploding on the screen in a riot of movement, music and color.
  52. Boys Don't Cry
    The longest, hardest sit of the season -- you are stuck there, a single tube of puckered muscle, waiting for the extremely ugly violence to occur -- but it is driven by performances of such luminous humanity that they break your heart.
  53. Fargo
    The brothers, who have always seemed fond of their characters, have never taken quite so overt a stand for life's simple joys.
  54. Spy Game
    The movie is sleek and shiny as a new bullet, reflecting Scott's patented surplus of style.
  55. House of Sand and Fog
    The movie's intense watchability can be traced directly to superb performances by Jennifer Connelly and Ben Kingsley.
  56. Spider
    His story is sad, compelling and morbidly, tragically watchable.
  57. Shall We Dance?
    But the movie has a great deal of zest and charm, and Yakusho gets so exactly that crest of melancholy that is a man’s early 40s, until he decides to go for another kind of life, that the movie is infinitely touching.
  58. 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.
  59. Sunshine
    It's a brilliant, profound movie, but it's almost no fun at all.
  60. Tears of the Sun
    The film is a strictly no-bull proposition.
  61. All the Real Girls
    The movie may take five extra minutes to end and could do with one less sunset but . . . other than that it's damned near perfect.
  62. Festival Express
    A delirious piece of pop ephemera.
  63. Ten
    Shows us, in an extraordinarily simple way, the hopes and frustrations of one woman's life.
  64. American Beauty
    Hilarious, painful and brutally frank.
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