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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    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Evil Does Not Exist
    Visually, sonically and thematically, “Evil Does Not Exist” is a rich and subtle experience.
  2. Seymour: An Introduction
    Seymour: An Introduction gives viewers a soaring, sublime and enduringly meaningful glimpse of a man who is undoubtedly the real thing.
  3. 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.
  4. Up in the Air
    A smart, alert, supremely entertaining movie.
  5. Milk
    What makes Milk extraordinary isn't just that it's a nuanced, stirring portrait of one of the 20th century's most pivotal figures, but that it's also a nuanced, stirring portrait of the thousands of people he energized.
  6. Lilya 4-Ever
    Lilya's struggle to make a life for herself is both heartbreaking and heart-stirring.
  7. Cutie and the Boxer
    It’s a wonder how Cutie and the Boxer, in less than an hour and a half, manages to say so much about love, life and art. Movies twice as long are often half as eloquent.
  8. U2 3D
    In many ways, watching the movie is BETTER than concertgoing. We can enjoy that buzzy feeling of community without the fist-pumping biker obscuring our view.
  9. One Night in Miami
    As a filmed version of a play, One Night in Miami has the same talky, slightly claustrophobic contours one might expect. But that pent-up quality is an advantage for a movie in which the room where it might have happened is a character in itself.
  10. Babe
    A captivating comic allegory about daring to be different in the face of conformity.
  11. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
    Watching Thurman's character "triumph" in a context as joyless and self-referential as Tarantino's is a soul-deadening experience, one that over two hours takes on the same dreary monotone as the cheapest pornography.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Vera Drake
    Sweet, strange and ultimately heartbreaking.
  13. Private Life
    The comedy, while unflinchingly honest and prone to bandying about such terms as “intracytoplasmic sperm injection” and “follitropin,” is never really about technology, though. Rather, and to its great credit, it’s always about the people involved.
  14. Moonage Daydream
    Far from a nostalgic package of greatest hits, “Moonage Daydream” suggests that pop music is at its best when it’s mysterious.
  15. BlacKkKlansman
    Accompanied by an expressively lush jazz-blues score by Lee’s regular composer Terence Blanchard, BlacKkKlansman announces from the jump that viewers are in for a lush, sensory treat as Lee plays with the film vernacular he’s manipulated so adroitly and expressively for three decades.
  16. Janet Planet
    Baker’s delicate spellbinders more often leave their themes unspoken. Her characters grapple with longings and a need to prove their worth, but they rarely share their struggles out loud.
  17. Under the Skin
    With long, quiet takes in which he simply observes Johansson wordlessly taking in the world around her, Glazer infuses the everyday modern world with a surpassing sense of strangeness and doom.
  18. Red Army
    In this swift, smart, often very funny film, Polsky takes an unprecedented look at the legendary Soviet-era hockey program and its life after glasnost, exposing an athletic system that became a crucial symbol of Communist history and politics, but also discipline, grace and brooding, melancholy soul.
  19. The Post
    If the film has an MVP, it’s Bob Odenkirk, who does a splendid and quietly amusing job of playing The Post’s unsung Pentagon Papers hero, assistant managing editor Ben Bagdikian.
  20. The Flat
    A quietly brilliant study in cognitive dissonance, The Flat is a documentary look at Holocaust denial, but not the kind you might think.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Cunningham
    When it comes to exploring the man behind the art, the film’s execution feels out of step with its ambition.
  22. The Magdalene Sisters
    Mullan's movie is admiringly uncompromising. He refuses to augment the horrors with relief.
  23. Superman II
    The thrust of the film is to escalate the Superman idea to the point where the charm is no longer visible. A snide and knowing viewpoint has left a cloud of smudge over the original clean satire. [19 Jun 1981, p.19]
    • Washington Post
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Henry V
    An alert, rousing interpretation of "Henry V," Branagh beats down the doors of high art and drags the sleeping bard into the light of modern day.
  25. Eastern Promises
    Cronenberg's deeper purpose is to pull audiences into an affecting, powerful story about right and wrong.
  26. Footnote
    Most footnotes don't get a passing glance, but this one proves worthy of careful study.
  27. Being 17
    What elevates the film is not just its beautiful setting in the French Pyrenees but also how the beautiful mountain exteriors serve as a metaphor for characters’ inner lives. Téchiné keeps his distance from his subjects, allowing their emotions to reveal themselves and delivering a payoff that is ultimately a delicate one.
  28. Free Solo
    The pure athletics of Free Solo, which chronicles Honnold’s months-long training regimen as well as his subsequent attempts, would be spectacle enough to create an entertaining film.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Trouble the Water
    Weaker in its second half than its mesmerizing first, as the story moves away from the intensity of the storm to follow the Robertses in their efforts to resettle.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 88 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Misericordia
    Even if such murky doings aren’t your cup of absinthe, the skill with which Guiraudie weaves his web is mesmerizing.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
    Made in England is more than a great filmmaker’s genuflection. It’s a welcome introductory immersion for newcomers to Powell and Pressburger and, for old hands, a way to connect the dots of their films and their singular place in the history of cinema.
  32. Mustang
    For all of the outrage that Mustang inspires by its depiction of sexist oppression, it’s still enormously pleasurable to watch, in part because of its enchanting setting (it was filmed in the northern Turkish town of Inebolu) and Warren Ellis’s thoughtful score, but mostly because of Sensoy and her four equally beguiling co-stars.
  33. James White
    James White gets up close and personal in often discomfiting ways, but it’s never exploitative or glib. It hits the highs, and the rock bottoms, and all the damnable stuff in between.
  34. It Follows
    It Follows sticks to you — yes, even outside of the theater — with a grim unshakability that is at once stylish, smart and deadly serious.
  35. Don't Think Twice
    There’s nothing wrong with tackling romantic miscommunication, but Birbiglia’s script leaves little room for surprise or depth. Paradoxically, Don’t Think Twice feels both dramatically thin and overstuffed.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
    Admirers of Stephen Sondheim who have wondered whether a riveting movie would ever be made from one of his stage musicals can put aside their doubts and worries: Tim Burton has finally accomplished it in his ravishing Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    Souleymane's Story
    Souleymane’s Story presents its hero’s life as an open-air prison. Scrupulously researched by Lojkine and co-writer Delphine Agut, it’s brutally frank about the predatory practices of some of Souleymane’s fellow West Africans.
  38. Locke
    Locke is so distilled, such a pure example of cinematic storytelling, that it almost feels abstract.
  39. 20,000 Days on Earth
    20,000 Days on Earth isn’t so much a portrait of the artist as a middle-aged man, looking back on his life, as it is a meditation on the art of storytelling.
  40. The Apostle
    Reminded me somewhat of Archibald MacLeish's famous line that a poem "should not mean but be." That's the reality of The Apostle: It does not mean, it simply is.
  41. Election
    A wonderful, piercing and hilarious examination of high school politics and how bitter and ruinous it can become.
  42. Memento
    Unforgettable, especially in Pearce's startling performance.
  43. Creed
    The themes of love, loyalty, ambition, honor and legacy that lend sinew to the story are delivered with such a clean punch that they as feel as fresh as they did in 1976.
  44. Memories of Murder
    As exciting for its narrative twists and turns as for its Korean textures and rhythms.
  45. Pride & Prejudice
    Lord God, can she take control of a scene, dominate a movie, project to the last seat, radiate power and personality unto the rafters. It's a great performance. I love the way Knightley's eyes light with furious intelligence when she cuts the pompous Darcy a new something or other.
  46. Monsieur Lazhar
    Monsieur Lazhar resembles a clear, clean glass of water: transparent, utterly devoid of gratuitous flavorings or frou-frou, and all the more bracing and essential for it.
  47. Leaving Las Vegas
    Doesn't go down smooth, but it doesn't promise to.
  48. Transit
    All this can make Transit a bit confusing at times, in addition to lending it the patina of metafiction. It’s almost as if the tale is being acted out by people who know they are players in a drama, and not real human beings.
  49. Venus
    Director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi take a deeper, edifying interest in the moral ambiguities that arise between Maurice and Jessie. And thanks to our warm investment in both characters, we're more than willing to sign up for this existential ride. We allow this relationship -- and the movie -- to take us places we'd never usually go.
  50. Dear Comrades!
    In this absorbing and rigorously disciplined account, Konchalovsky proves that a healthy embrace of nuance doesn't need to result in muddled thinking. Indeed, it can lead to something sharp, bright and dazzlingly precise.
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