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. Darkness Falls
    Not good enough to qualify as classic Gothic horror, not nearly fun enough to qualify as great B-movie camp.
  2. Surrogates
    Surrogates takes an interesting idea -- the triumph of technological convenience over grimy, workaday life -- and buries it under clumsy exposition, unconvincing action sequences and a by-the-numbers conspiracy plot.
  3. Law Abiding Citizen
    A movie devoted to baroque revenge would be, on its own terms, acceptable; what makes Law Abiding Citizen so risible is its humorless conviction that it's got Big Ideas at its core.
    • 23 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Couples Retreat
    Coasts on comic fumes, relying on colloquialisms, foreign accents, racial stereotypes, lemon sharks, Speedos and inopportune erections to supply the funny. Any one of these things might work in a comedy that was less contrived.
  5. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
    Much of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is simply despicable.
  6. The Devil's Rejects
    The movie's signal flaw -- that is, other than its degeneracy, its sloppiness, its love of dark things and pretty stains and arterial spray patterns -- is Moseley as the demonic Otis.
  7. Away We Go
    It's in these vignettes that Away We Go begins to feel less like an authentic exploration of identity than a condemnation of the very community the couple pretends to crave. No one, it turns out, is good enough for Burt and Verona.
  8. Gladiator
    Friends, Washingtonians, countrymen, I come not to praise Gladiator but to bury it.
  9. 300
    It's kind of a ghastly hoot, and while I suppose it does no harm, it also contributes nothing. It's a guilty unpleasantness.
  10. Spider-Man 3
    An overlong, visually incoherent, mean-spirited and often just plain awful Spider-Man 3.
  11. Bruno
    Seems fatally out of tune, with every staged encounter falling as flat as the protagonist's hot-ironed bob.
  12. White Noise
    Hampered by Niall Johnson's script, which is often confusing, muddy and ultimately cliche-ridden.
  13. Elektra
    What it suffers from most is the sense of offhand storytelling that lies halfway between creative laziness and cost-cutting sloppiness.
  14. Are We There Yet?
    The humor's a tad too raunchy for the kids, and the predictable plot won't win over any of the parents.
  15. The Wedding Date
    Amusing premise, not-so-amusing execution.
  16. Son of the Mask
    Lacks "spark."
  17. Cursed
    Wes Craven, who started the "Nightmare on Elm Street" series, should know a lot better.
  18. Diary of a Mad Black Woman
    Sure, I laughed. Yes, I cried. But mostly I just wanted to throw up.
  19. Be Cool
    Where there was effortless cool in the first movie, there is nothing but manufactured posing here.
  20. The Jacket
    The Jacket is doing nothing but sampling elements of "Jacob's Ladder," "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Memento" without offering more than hackneyed solutions, including a rather cheesy conclusion.
  21. The Pacifier
    With no real comedy to enjoy, it's torture to watch Diesel undergo a predictable change from emotionless soldier to loving family man. Makes you want to spit out your pacifier in disgust.
  22. Hostage
    But by the time Willis's character saves this considerably long day, it's filmgoers who will no doubt feel like prisoners, as a movie that promises to be a taut nail-biter devolves into the kind of silly, overblown climax parodied so beautifully by Robert Altman in "The Player."
  23. The Upside of Anger
    It feels like a retread of several better movies, with a nastier, more bitter edge.
  24. In My Country
    This romantic melodrama ... doesn't even get to first base.
  25. Don't Move
    A syrupy Italian power ballad along the lines of the ones on the movie's soundtrack. Its tune is mawkish, bombastic but, in the end, not especially resonant.
  26. Dot the I
    Indeed it looks as if this otherwise straight-to-video endeavor, which was made in 2003, is being released only to cash in on Bernal's of-the-moment-ness in Hollywood.
  27. The Ring Two
    Illustrates the law of returning diminishments.
  28. Melinda and Melinda
    Give Woody Allen credit for ambition. Failing at one movie wasn't enough. Nearly anyone can do that; it happens all the time. He's chosen to fail at two simultaneously.
  29. Steamboy
    The movie never transcended its elaborate production work to achieve an independent reality.
  30. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous
    A predictable and outlandishly contrived take on the Pygmalion myth.
  31. Sahara
    McConaughey remains more buffed than compelling. He's not helped by a two-hour convolution of episodes that are too busy imitating other, better movies.
  32. Fever Pitch
    It's almost too dull to pan.
  33. Kung Fu Hustle
    For all its stylishness, verve and moments of visual poetry, the relentlessly punishing slapstick and overall cruel tone left me cold.
  34. Palindromes
    As a director, Solondz seems to have his own locked-in fate -- to favor caricature over compassion -- and his movies are the worse for it.
  35. A Lot Like Love
    It starts with a bang and ends with a whimper.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    The Game of Their Lives
    It is flat-footed, uninspired and disjointed from start to finish, a glaring disservice to the men who played the game.
  37. The Man Who Copied
    Never better than fair to middling pleasant.
  38. xXx: State of the Union
    Loud, dumb and obnoxious.
  39. The Holy Girl
    Feels like something I know is supposed to be good for me, but that I just couldn't stomach.
  40. House of Wax
    You'll be rooting for these people to get slaughtered out of sheer boredom.
  41. Kingdom of Heaven
    To introduce an archetype like this to western audiences -- as the world weathers culturally and religiously demonizing times -- may have been worth this whole flawed movie. Too bad the story didn't just start with him.
  42. Monster-in-Law
    So tame and limp, it may actually give mothers-in-law a good name.
  43. The Longest Yard
    Whether it's the sight of Reynolds squeezed painfully into a football uniform or the endless footballs-to-the-crotch and tired gay jokes, The Longest Yard has the feeling of mutton dressed as lamb.
  44. Madagascar
    The underwhelming, only fitfully amusing movie left me hungry for more.
  45. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
    The girls in 'Traveling Pants' are only mannequins wearing someone else's clothes. They don't get inside your head, let alone your heart.
  46. Rock School
    Until the last 20 minutes or so of Rock School, the actual playing, while often startlingly good, is kind of boring.
  47. The Honeymooners
    Though Cedric, for all his nimble portliness, is no Gleason, there's plenty of talent to be found here. Too bad it's left to fend for itself against a raging mechanical bull of a script.
  48. Howl's Moving Castle
    Miyazaki, like an evil sorcerer, has plucked the heart out of Jones's story and left it there to die.
  49. The Perfect Man
    A series of cutesy but flat-footed jokes leading up to a foregone romantic conclusion.
  50. Heights
    Heights is nothing more than a second-rate version of several much better movies, all of which are available on DVD and video.
  51. Bewitched
    Regardless of the cute little hats and clam-diggers she wears, it's impossible to believe Kidman as a breathless ingenue; that relentless drive and steely Kidmanesque determination keep jutting through the cotton in flinty, sharp-edged shards.
  52. Herbie Fully Loaded
    For anyone old enough to cross the street without holding hands ... the movie's a reconditioned lemon trying hard to hide its flaws.
  53. Yes
    It's a bold exercise, an interesting experiment, but a movie it ain't.
  54. Rebound
    The movie and its star just aren't that funny.
  55. Undead
    The story is more undead than all of these revenant shufflers. And the orgy of gore and home-engineered special effects doesn't make up for the shortfall.
  56. Dark Water
    Dark, dank, damp, grim, dingy and dour, Dark Water is a tasteful but unremitting bummer.
  57. The Beautiful Country
    Feels like a manufactured Asian "Chocolat," which drives the label 'art house movie' even further into mainstream banality.
  58. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
    The satirical edge has been dulled in a film that is dominated, and ultimately swamped, by its star's mannered, pixilated performance.
  59. 9 Songs
    9 Songs inadvertently proves just how limited experimentation for its own sake can be.
  60. Must Love Dogs
    This is nothing but a dare-to-be-terrible movie.
  61. Stealth
    The dialogue is often drowned out by engine noise.
  62. The Aristocrats
    As long as it stayed mainstream dirty it was okay, but when it got into perversions the American Psychiatric Society hasn't even named yet, it left me behind.
  63. Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
    It's not Deuce's satisfied clientele, but the audience, that gets the shaft.
  64. Asylum
    It's just so darn annoying to watch this attractive, seemingly smart woman throw her life away for some (admittedly rather hot) sex in the greenhouse.
    • 45 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Pretty Persuasion
    It just rings false, like having Hannibal Lecter take up vegetarianism.
  66. Supercross
    A poor man's "Lords of Dogtown," substituting hard-core motorcycle racing for extreme skateboarding and featuring a young cast of television-bred actors.
  67. The Brothers Grimm
    Not terrible so much as terminally silly.
  68. Undiscovered
    Tailored for the readership of Teen People magazine and about as thought-provoking as the average 500-word celebrity profile.
  69. The Man
    Unfortunately, The Man makes the mistake of assuming casting is all it takes to make a good comedy.
  70. An Unfinished Life
    This unusual convergence of stars doesn't amount to much.
  71. Green Street Hooligans
    Soccer needs this movie like Georgia needed "Deliverance."
  72. Just Like Heaven
    Outlandish, uneven, preposterous and often maddeningly morbid.
  73. Stupid Boy
    Should we really be so moved and uplifted that a horny, ignorant young man begins to join the human race? Not when our voice of conscience is an off-screen filmmaker issuing pseudo-profound, and ultimately banal, pronouncements about the true nature of love and seduction.
  74. G
    For anyone to enjoy this starchy, contrived exercise in vanity and product placement, it's best not to have read the book. In fact, it's best not to have read ANY book.
  75. Occupation: Dreamland
    It's a movie with the exciting parts cut out.
  76. Oliver Twist
    The fact that there's nothing wrong with it -- that there's nary a scenic detail or scrap of dialogue or performance that isn't utterly on the nose -- is precisely what's wrong with it.
  77. The Greatest Game Ever Played
    It's such a great story, you have to ask two questions: Why didn't they make this movie before? And why did they make it this way?
  78. Into the Blue
    May look good cavorting prettily on deck, but ultimately it deserves to walk the plank.
  79. MirrorMask
    So single-minded in its reach for fantasy, it becomes the genre's evil opposite: banality.
  80. Two for the Money
    The fight between good and evil feels fixed in favor of Hollywood redemption.
  81. Doom
    A loud, standard-issue sci-fi action film that has a confusing mission.
  82. Stay
    That mind-bending, mystical business was better handled in such films as 1990's "Jacob's Ladder."
    • 38 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Kids in America
    Short on real teenage angst and emotion, the film is long on caricatures.
  84. The Legend of Zorro
    What a waste of talent, time and money. And guess what else? Not only is The Legend of Zorro stupid and boring but -- ta-da! -- it's also really long!
  85. Get Rich or Die Tryin'
    Shockingly inert.
  86. The Libertine
    It doesn't help matters that The Libertine seems to unload every olde English cliche on file.
  87. First Descent
    The stars of First Descent aren't particularly memorable, or even likable. At their worst, they come off as cocky, self-absorbed Peter Pans; at their best, they're sweet but shallow.
  88. The Family Stone
    There are many ways to define the shrieking awfulness of The Family Stone, from the general lack of wit to the cheap exploitation of cancer to its casual cruelty, but it's writer-director Thomas Bezucha's casting that really goes awry.
  89. Wolf Creek
    A nasty bit of counter-programming, Wolf Creek is for people sickened by the sentimental excesses of the day and the holiday season and want to hide from them in mayhem, slaughter, torture and degradation.
  90. Hoodwinked!
    Hoodwinked makes a little sense. Too bad, then, it's so crummy.
  91. Rumor Has It...
    A jarring amalgam of sitcom goofiness and uncomfortable ooginess.
  92. Annapolis
    The only impressive thing about it is the monotony and thoroughness with which it replicates cliches from older, better movies and hammers them into pop alloy to an up-with-me beat beat beat of its musical score.
  93. Final Destination 3
    With a premise as cavalier as this, perhaps director and co-writer James Wong could have found a tone more original than post-Wes Craven cynicism. Instead, he panders to viewers, allowing them to take gleeful comfort in the destruction of the stupid and doomed.
  94. The Pink Panther
    Most of the humor in The Pink Panther derives from Martin's silly French accent, especially when he tries to pronounce the word "hamburger." But zat joke, she ees not funny. And The Pink Panther ees, how you say, ze real dog.
  95. Date Movie
    Date Movie, alas, is here to remind us that slapstick can be just plain bad. These are sight gags best appreciated with a blindfold.
  96. 16 Blocks
    It seems such a waste to go onto the actual streets of Lower Manhattan and shoot a movie this stupid. Think of the money, the logistics, the interruptions in the city's life -- all that trouble for what? For this? For shame.
  97. The Shaggy Dog
    As a comic actor, Allen's palette is limited to varying degrees of beige. He is not only boring, he's obnoxious and narcissistic. Where's the ASPCA -- the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Audiences -- when you need 'em?
  98. Basic Instinct 2
    Where is the suspense part? There is no suspense part. Suspense demands clarity of motive and action, and this screenplay never provides it.
  99. American Dreamz
    Weitz co-directed the wonderful "About a Boy" in 2002, but in "Dreamz" -- a tediously facile satire -- his comic instincts fail him.
  100. Hard Candy
    Though Hard Candy clearly believes pedophiles should be chopped into little pieces and buried in an unmarked grave, its only purpose is exploitative. Sure, it's a cautionary tale for all those sicko wolves out there, but it's nothing more than an unabashed lurk-and-dread fest.
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