Washington Post's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. College Road Trip
    Perhaps there will be people who do laugh at Lawrence and Raven-Symon screaming in tandem, or mugging their way along every tortured mile of their road trip, or unwittingly joining a sky-diving club and having to parachute into Washington so Melanie can make her interview. Heck, it was all really funny when they did it on "I Love Lucy."
  2. Run, Fatboy, Run
    Rather like the faltering way Dennis runs the race, Pegg the performer insists that we keep watching, ever hopeful for a decent gag. And we spend most of our time thinking back to movies that better showcased his talents, such as "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz."
  3. 21
    The story may be based on real events, but most of it feels patently false.
  4. Street Kings
    All the movie's treacheries, deceptions and story twists are marred by our lack of innocence. We see the big picture way before the characters do, and that pushes us right out of the movie and back into our seats -- the last place we want to be.
  5. The Forbidden Kingdom
    A movie that jumps between two worlds can be a powerful experience, as any fan of "The Wizard of Oz," "Back to the Future" or "The Terminator" can tell you. But this phoned-in epic is simply a celebration of the inauthentic.
  6. Standard Operating Procedure
    If the movie is meant to uncover any "big scandals," it's a disappointment. The investigator, in one surprising sequence, goes through a number of alleged "torture" photos and acknowledges that the vast majority of them represent "standard operating procedure." That is supposed to be the film's kicker: not what was illegal but how much was legal.
  7. Then She Found Me
    Suffers from, if anything, a lack of pure confidence in the story, the actors or the audience.
  8. The Unknown Woman
    Falters when it falls into exploitation (Irena's flashbacks to scenes of depraved sexual torture) and fatal contrivance.
  9. Meet Dave
    The kind of bland, generic, high-concept midsummer comedy that drives a critic to the thesaurus in search of new ways to say "vapid."
  10. The Promotion
    You have to wonder whether writer and director Steve Conrad, who wrote the films "Wrestling Ernest Hemingway," "The Weather Man" and "The Pursuit of Happyness," had something more hefty in mind before Harvey and Bob Weinstein came aboard and marketed his movie as a laugh riot. Regardless, it's not the stuff of lighthearted summer comedy.
  11. W.
    Why this movie -- a rushed, wildly uneven, tonally jumbled caricature -- and why now?
  12. Phoebe in Wonderland
    Think of Phoebe in Wonderland as "A Beautiful Mind," only for kids. And with Elle Fanning, Dakota's little sister, in the Russell Crowe role of the gifted outsider, tormented by demons within.
  13. Soul Men
    Misbegotten buddy-bonding comedy of errors.
  14. Chandni Chowk to China
    It's a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon that lasts 154 minutes rather than just five, and it's as exhausting as it sounds.
  15. The Pink Panther 2
    My only question is this: In the context of these by-the-book pratfalls, is it funny enough?
    • 45 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fanboys
    The result has a cobbled-together feeling. The Force is not strong with this one.
  17. Angels & Demons
    What the movie is supposed to accomplish -- laying out a fairly complex mystery in a way that creates suspense -- is precisely what it doesn't do.
  18. Fighting
    Fighting isn't very good, but it will make you hope that someday, some great director will give Tatum's pecs the star vehicle they deserve.
  19. Next Day Air
    I wished Next Day Air were funnier. In the end, it's a fitfully amusing, sloppy comedy that doesn't work very hard for your 10 bucks.
  20. The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
    If a few decent actors play their roles and defend their turf, it doesn't matter how preposterous the whole proposition is.
  21. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
    The museum sparkles, but the movie is awfully dull.
  22. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
    Scrat's annoying ubiquity -- is just one piece of evidence that Dawn of the Dinosaurs has been focus-grouped and is now trying to please its presumed young audience a little more than is healthy.
  23. Post Grad
    Boils down, in the end, to the age-old question: Career or life? That Post Grad draws a stark line between the two, and forces its heroine into an untenable decision, might be the most disappointing thing about a movie that never quite succeeds in capturing a generation adrift.
  24. Just Visiting
    A lot of it is low, crude, admittedly comic in the rudest positive sense, which involves a lot of falling down to humorous effect.
  25. Where the Money Is
    The bad news? The story, which rumbles along like an unattended wheelchair on a gently sloping sidewalk.
  26. Me You Them
    The region's stark beauty and the filmmaker's eye for composition compensate somewhat for its predictability and obvious if misguided feminist agenda.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Fast Food Fast Women
    Tries hard to be charming but succeeds only occasionally.
  28. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
    Breaks no new ground.
  29. Light It Up
    Benefits from affecting performances from a gifted cast headed by R&B heartthrob Usher Raymond.
  30. Three to Tango
    The movie's half over before it really starts to whack at the funny bone.
  31. Return to Me
    So phony it makes your gums ache.
  32. An American Rhapsody
    The movie is a little crude for the subtlety of the emotions it plays with.
  33. Boys and Girls
    An adolescent romance that isn't smart enough to mirror "When Harry Met Sally" or crudely amusing enough to get close to "American Pie."
  34. Pokémon 4: The Movie
    A fairly straightforward, if preachy, tale about environmentalism.
  35. 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.
  36. Rules of Engagement
    It is the verdict of this court that it be led to a stockade reserved exclusively for cheap, pandering movies and duly shot.
  37. The Visit
    Unfortunately, the actors seem overqualified for their parts, delivering earnest monologues that come across as clumsy transplants from the proscenium stage.
  38. Birthday Girl
    Uneven, not particularly inspired comic thriller.
  39. Mystery, Alaska
    We know the story will conclude with a crescendo of frozen-north hallelujahs. Cheering is endemic to Disney. They can't help themselves.
  40. 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.
  41. Miss Julie
    Overwritten, overextended and clunkily symbolic
  42. The Crimson Rivers
    The French now proudly prove they can make a big stupid violent cop movie, just like our gifted Hollywood professionals.
  43. Josie and the Pussycats
    Cumming manages to keep the film's pandering in check with every wicked raised eyebrow.
  44. The Bachelor
    Cutesy in the television sitcom sense.
  45. Edtv
    The movie's too slick and obvious about its intentions.
  46. Snow Falling on Cedars
    Never transports you to another place and time, as it intends to.
  47. The Cell
    Riveting in its low way. It traffics in imagery profoundly disturbing.
  48. 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.
  49. Atlantis: The Lost Empire
    For the most part, the movie's a bland disappointment, on many levels.
  50. Kiss of the Dragon
    Too bad the filmmakers -- and here's where the American part comes in -- decided the movie had to have some heart, too.
  51. A Perfect Murder
    The trouble is, we don't really much care about this philandering billionaire glamour puss, who seems perfectly capable of taking care of herself. We don't care about her husband or lover either.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Medallion
    Chan's normally homegrown stuntwork is replaced by a lot of wire fighting and special effects, and this makes one think that the days of "Drunken Master" are far behind him.
  53. Legally Blonde
    Really nothing more than "Clueless" redux but without the edgy, knowing wit.
  54. The Sum of All Fears
    Should carry all the urgency of a film that captures, magnifies and elaborates on the anxieties of its time. Luckily, that movie has already been made: It's called "Dr. Strangelove," and it's available at a video store near you.
  55. Baby Boy
    The movie makes an over-long deal about Jody's immaturity and never seems to get beyond it.
  56. The Hot Spot
    Madsen may not be the most egregiously untalented of the new movie beauties, but she's close to it. As Dolly, she presents a Southern accent as ludicrous as any in captivity; she keeps trying for Blanche DuBois and coming out with Gomer Pyle.
  57. La Femme Nikita
    Parillaud is expressive but rather mundane. She's best at playing sullen, but there are so many French actresses who specialize in this particular talent -- the French have mastered the apathetic pout -- that she seems generic.
  58. Apt Pupil
    Ultimately the movie disintegrates due to its own clumsiness. It's far too coincidence-driven to be believable.
  59. Primal Fear
    The special twist-which Paramount Pictures has implored critics not to divulge-redefines the story completely. It also ruins everything.
  60. Rounders
    And while it's intermittently engaging, the drama's flatter than a sucker's wallet.
  61. Mystic Pizza
    The conflicts are, at best, formulaic. (Tim is married, but unhappy; Charlie is from a different class.) And the filmmakers provide nothing to rescue us from the clichés. You get the general sense that the are better than their material [22 Oct 1988]
  62. The Singing Detective
    Unfortunately, apart from Downey's convincing contribution, the movie feels too contrived, stagy and inorganic to draw any pleasure.
  63. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
    Wastes no time getting very loud and very silly and never really lets up.
  64. The Visual Bible: The Gospel of John
    A dramatization of the life of Christ that takes as its script a word-for-word translation of the Gospel according to John, the adaptation is not so much tedious as pointless.
  65. Donnie Brasco
    Unfortunately, the story isn't inventive and Newell's methodical approach to it verges on monotony.
  66. Hamlet
    A darkly interesting distraction but not much more.
  67. Woman on Top
    Never the magic charmer it sets out to be.
  68. Wonder Boys
    The sad truth is that Wonder Boys is little more than a sentimentalized encomium to the disheveled, childish life it ascribes to writers.
  69. Head Over Heels
    Here's my favorite part: It's only 87 minutes long. But for the most part, this movie is just another bland, fair-to-middling vehicle for two emerging, fledgling stars.
  70. Phantoms
    The effects are murky and the giant worm looks more like a smear on the lens than anything else. Most of the intensity is generated by sudden sound effects like ringing phones, alarm clocks or oven timers.
  71. The Man in the Iron Mask
    The Three Musketeers, a rusty trio of middle-aged retirees, have all but changed their motto from "All for one and one for all" to "I have fallen and I can't get up" in this less-than-rollicking adaptation.
  72. 15 Minutes
    Too busy trying to make remarks to be much fun in the end. But it really only has one remark, which it reiterates about a thousand times, and it's not all that remarkable: Fame is overrated.
  73. Timecode
    A brain-cramping and eye-straining experiment in digital filmmaking.
  74. Lost in Space
    Hardware doesn't make a movie; characters, be they Blawp or human, do. And as so often happens with such outsize undertakings, they are overwhelmed by the gizmos. Technology, one. Astros, naught.
  75. Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
    A respectable effort that doesn't care to do more than course smoothly and effortlessly through familiar waters.
  76. Living Out Loud
    What little grace there is in Living Out Loud (and there isn't much) is all in LaGravenese's script, not on the screen.
  77. Music of the Heart
    Another sentimental mushfest disguised as a movie.
  78. What's Cooking?
    Like too many Thanksgiving dinners, too much squabbling really wreaks havoc on the digestion. Football, anyone?
  79. Mars Attacks!
    With the exception of Burton's jolting sight gags (I may never recover from the vision of Parker's head grafted on to the body of a chihuahua), the comedy is half-developed, pedestrian material. And the climactic battle between Earthlings and Martians is dull and overextended.
  80. The Abyss
    How many times can we be awestruck by Day-Glo Gumbies? And why do these creatures always travel with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?
  81. Planet of the Apes
    The longer I take to review this movie, the more the absurdities loom. So let me finish before I think about the story's stupidly plotted structure or recall how tiring it was to watch apes perpetually pushing humans to the ground or sending them pirouetting into the air.
  82. The Last Castle
    Robert Redford does everything but wear a crown of thorns as the selfless war hero of The Last Castle, a heavy-handed military prison melodrama.
  83. Great Expectations
    Hardly a real pip (indeed, it has been rendered Pip-less), but then this loosey-goosey adaptation isn't aimed at those of us with library cards.
  84. Committed
    Should have never made it up the distribution aisle.
  85. The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle
    Never asks its target audience of self-referential baby boomers and their littles bundles of joy to take it more seriously than it takes itself.
  86. Muriel's Wedding
    Hogan seems skittish about going all the way with the darker side of his material...It's a bright, buoyant comedy about a very sad young woman -- and, regrettably, the mix just doesn't work.
  87. 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.
  88. U.S. Marshals
    By the time it winds down, U.S. Marshals has all but destroyed itself. It's gone pffft! in the night.
  89. Bread and Tulips
    A little too shopworn and pokey to be more than a respectable European diversion.
  90. Groove
    The best thing about this movie? It's short.
  91. Whatever It Takes
    It's still got some panache.
  92. The Bone Collector
    You may have as much fun tearing it apart in its aftermath as you do watching it, but the fun is still genuine.
  93. 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.
  94. Palmetto
    This adaptation of James Hadley Chase's "Just Another Sucker" isn't so bad you'd want to roast it over the coals, but it ain't much good either.
  95. Heartbreakers
    Trust me, you'll want to leave these people to get on with their tedious scams alone.
  96. Johnson Family Vacation
    Cedric the Entertainer is the best (and probably only) reason to take this "Vacation."
  97. Angel Eyes
    The audience hasn't the slightest idea what is going on.
  98. The Wedding Planner
    I suggest you RSVP in the negative to this "Wedding" invitation, unless you consider yourself a friend of the obvious bride to be, Ms. Lopez. But even then, you'll have to focus on her presence, rather than the silly ceremony around her.
  99. Hollywood Ending
    It feels old, tired and given-up-on, maybe three drafts shy of minimal production level.
  100. The Claim
    The film feels inauthentic, a cardboard version of other epics that's cast for distribution to various world markets.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »