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. Star Trek
    This installment has achieved a nearly impossible hat trick. It's a movie that is exegetically correct enough to appease the most hard-core buffs, while opening up the final frontier to a whole new generation of fans who have yet to appreciate Star Trek's ineffable combination of sci-fi action, campy humor and yin-yang philosophical tussle between logic and emotion.
  2. Up in the Air
    A smart, alert, supremely entertaining movie.
  3. The Hurt Locker
    When viewers are ultimately released from The Hurt Locker's exhilarating vice grip, they'll find themselves shaken, energized and, more than likely, eager to see it again.
  4. Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
    Qualifies as the most painful, poetic and improbably beautiful film of the year.
  5. A Serious Man
    May not be "Fargo," but it nestles comfortably somewhere beneath that masterpiece and "Miller's Crossing," yet far above such forgettables as "The Ladykillers" and "Intolerable Cruelty."
  6. District 9
    A sci-fi-fueled indictment of man's inhumanity to man -- and the non-human -- District 9 is all horribly familiar, and transfixing.
  7. The Princess and the Frog
    The Princess and the Frog invite viewers to see the world as a lively, mixed-up, even confounding place, to recognize essential parts of ourselves in what we see, and to say: This is what we look like.
  8. 2012
    2012 takes the disaster movie -- once content simply to threaten the Earth with a comet, or blow up the White House -- to its natural conclusion, the literal end of the world.
  9. Where the Wild Things Are
    In elaborating on the original book so boldly, and repopulating it so richly, Jonze has protected Where the Wild Things Are as an inviolable literary work. In preserving its darkest spirit, he's created a potent, fully realized variation on its most highly charged themes.
  10. Killer of Sheep
    See Killer of Sheep, and see it again and again. It's one of those truly rare movies that just get better and better.
  11. The Beaches of Agnès
    For filmgoers determined to see cinema not just as mass entertainment but as an art form, The Beaches of Agnes arrives like an exhilarating call to arms.
  12. Pan's Labyrinth
    With this film, del Toro seems to have created his manifesto, a tour de force of cautionary zeal, humanism and magic. At this writing, Pan's Labyrinth is the best-reviewed film of 2006 listed on the movie review Web site Metacritic.com, and for a reason: It's just that great.
  13. Up
    The result is a soaring, touching, funny and altogether buoyant movie that lives up to its title in spirit and in form.
  14. The Damned United
    It's more than a detailed account of one man's petty vindictiveness in a bygone era. It's about how our hatred can consume us so deeply that we lose sight of everything.
  15. Sideways
    There's not a false note here, and the entire supporting cast -- is uniformly excellent.
  16. There Will Be Blood
    A searing, apocalyptic and finally breathtaking drama.
  17. The Class
    The Class is not just the best film released thus far this year. It may be the most gripping.
  18. Summer Hours
    Assayas's actors are so fascinating that I wished at times he had given the house less screen time and let his performers explore their characters more freely.
  19. Drag Me to Hell
    As in the best horror movies, Drag Me to Hell keeps the audience on the edge of hysteria throughout, so that every thump sets the heart racing and every joke earns a slightly out-of-control laugh.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Gomorrah
    This vibrantly disorienting cinematic import reinvents the vocabulary of the crime drama with a painterly eye and a feverish documentary style.
  21. Let the Right One In
    In the basest of terms, a horror flick. But it's also a spectacularly moving and elegant movie, and to dismiss it into genre-hood, to mentally stuff it into the horror pigeonhole, is to overlook a remarkable film.
  22. Goodbye Solo
    Goodbye Solo is visually simple and stunning, especially the haunting nightscapes of Solo's perambulations. But more important, Goodbye Solo is driven by deep feeling and sensitivity. Don't miss it.
  23. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    Thanks to Bauby's courageous and honest writing, and Schnabel's poetic interpretation, what could have been a portrait of impotence and suffering becomes a lively exploration of consciousness and a soaring ode to liberation.
  24. Nobody Knows
    [The children's] remarkable lack of self-consciousness ... and Kore-eda's quasi-documentary style give this movie a stunning credibility.
  25. WALL-E
    The idea that a company in the business of mainstream entertainment would make something as creative, substantial and cautionary as WALL-E has to raise your hopes for humanity.
  26. Crash
    This is the rare American film really about something, and almost all the performances are riveting.
  27. Children of Men
    Working with his longtime cinematographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki, Cuaron creates the most deeply imagined and fully realized world to be seen on screen this year, not to mention bravura sequences that bring to mind names like Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick.
  28. The Lives of Others
    To watch "Lives" is not just to enjoy a fabulously constructed timepiece; it's to appreciate a deft cautionary tale.
  29. Waltz with Bashir
    A thinking person's horror movie, about real horror and horrifying echoes: The parallels between the Holocaust and the massacres are pronounced.
  30. Hunger
    McQueen has taken the raw materials of filmmaking and committed an act of great art.
  31. Man on Wire
    Thanks to Marsh's sensitive storytelling, Man on Wire manages to put Petit's performance into another, more ineffable realm: What began as a caper turned into poetry, and poetry became a prayer.
  32. Gran Torino
    If you can survive the F-bombs and the near-constant ethnic invective, Gran Torino is not to be missed, if only as the gutsy, thoroughly unexpected valedictory of an icon fully willing to spend every bit of his considerable capital.
  33. Turtles Can Fly
    It's a soaring achievement, without ever leaving the ground.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sin Nombre
    An elegant, heartbreaking fable, equal parts Shakespearean tragedy, neo-Western and mob movie but without the pretension of those genres.
  35. Murderball
    It's the best sports documentary since "Hoop Dreams," a great piece of work."
  36. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
    This movie is not only a thrilling experience, it closes the book on a truly satisfying trilogy.
  37. The Edge of Heaven
    Oropelled by memorable performances by mostly unknown actors. The most famous of the ensemble, Hanna Schygulla, delivers a by turns serene and shattering performance as a mother struggling with loss, conscience and the first glimmers of unexpected connection. She's only one essential and unforgettable part of a flawless whole.
  38. House of Flying Daggers
    The sheer joy of letting go as a tale overwhelms your senses and drives the known world away -- that's the story.
  39. Atonement
    Nothing comes easily in Atonement, especially its ending, which, both happy and tragic, is as wrenching as it is genuinely satisfying. How fitting, somehow, that a novel so devoted to the precision and passionate love of language be captured in a film that is simply too exquisite for words.
  40. 28 Weeks Later
    As viscerally compelling as smash-mouth filmmaking gets.
  41. Away from Her
    Rarely has love at any age been depicted so honestly on screen. For such a fully realized portrait to be created by a 28-year-old first-time director is even more remarkable.
  42. Sugar
    A film of rare intelligence, beauty and compassion.
  43. A History of Violence
    A sobering reflection on our culture's attitude toward violence.
  44. Capote
    The genius of the film, besides Hoffman's stunning performance, is that it knows exactly how much is enough. It never overplays, lingers or punches up.
  45. Taxi Driver
    It hasn't aged so much as triumphantly metastasized. [20th Anniversary Release]
  46. Sin City
    Two hours and six minutes has never seemed so much like two and six-tenths seconds. It's pure pulp metafiction.
  47. The World
    A movie with the visual expanse of a John Ford western and the ensemble grandeur and long takes of a Robert Altman picture. The movie is definitely Chinese in content, but it exudes American style and spirit.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Saraband
    It would be difficult to identify a single frame in Saraband that is not a distinguished composition in itself; Bergman has the eye of a latter-day Vermeer.
  49. Grizzly Man
    A small masterpiece of a documentary that takes us into the heart of a complex darkness.
  50. The Conformist
    Even if it weren't in pristine shape for its current re-release, it would still qualify as one of only a handful of films made in the past 30 years that truly deserve to be called great. (Review of 1994 Release)
  51. King Kong
    Jackson's big monkey picture show is certainly the best popular entertainment of the year. The film is a wondrous blend of then and now: It honors its mythic predecessor of 1933 while using sophisticated movie technology to seamlessly manipulate the fantastic.
  52. The Fallen Idol (re-release)
    This is an example of a writer and director working in perfect harness, with Reed smoothly ratcheting up the story's suspense and Greene speculating on his cardinal theme of moral ambiguity. They don't make movies like The Fallen Idol anymore, all the more reason to see it now while you can.
  53. Black Orpheus
    A riotous, rapturous explosion of sound and color, Black Orpheus is less about Orpheus's doomed love for Eurydice than about Camus's love for cinema at its most gestural and kinetic.
  54. Army of Shadows
    It's a strange enough film, yet weirdly great. No movie has quite gotten the clammy weight of fear, the sense of hopelessness that would necessarily haunt underground workers. To see it is to sweat through your underclothes. It'll melt the pep out of your weekend.
  55. Marie Antoinette
    Coppola brilliantly conjures the young queen's insular world, in which she was both isolated and claustrophobically scrutinized.
  56. Flags of Our Fathers
    Stands with the best movies of this young century and the old one that preceded it: It's passionate, honest, unflinching, gripping, and it pays respects. The flag raising on Iwo might have indeed become a pseudo-event as it was processed for goals, but there was nothing pseudo about the courage of the men who did it.
  57. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
    The result is a perfect combination of slapstick and satire, a Platonic ideal of high-and lowbrow that manages to appeal to our basest common denominators while brilliantly skewering racism, anti-Semitism, sexism and that peculiarly American affliction: we're-number-one-ism.
  58. Ten Canoes
    Its mixture of wisdom and whimsy -- exemplified by the movie's unnamed and occasionally cheeky narrator -- makes this Australian movie feel as timeless as it is timely. And instead of feeling dutifully cultural as we immerse ourselves in this story, we're genuinely intrigued, touched and even amused.
  59. The Simpsons Movie
    The genius is in the writing and in keeping all gambits created by the individual writers in sync, so the piece has a tonal consistency and a narrative flow. A lost art in Hollywood? It's really one of the best movies of the year.
  60. Eastern Promises
    Cronenberg's deeper purpose is to pull audiences into an affecting, powerful story about right and wrong.
  61. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
    In addition to being a study in great acting, this is a study in great directing.
    • 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.
  63. Chicago 10
    Morgen plunges viewers completely into the anarchic, exhilarating, finally ambiguous world of 1968 America; his final stroke of genius is his choice of music, which includes a breathtaking use of Eminem's "Mosh."
  64. Paranoid Park
    Van Sant is such an assured filmmaker that Paranoid Park is almost inescapably absorbing; he has found a particularly engaging leading man in Miller, whose expressive, even painterly face goes from blank to angelic in the blink of a long-lashed eye.
  65. Flight of the Red Balloon
    Because it's one of the most beautiful films ever. Because it's a work of art on the order of a poem by Yeats or a painting by Rothko.
  66. Chris & Don. A Love Story
    A celebration -- of love, commitment and devotion until the bitter end. Gay and straight viewers alike are sure to be inspired by this lyrical testament to a corollary of Tolstoy's famous dictum: Every unhappy family might be unhappy in its own way, but every genuinely happy family is a triumph.
  67. Happy-Go-Lucky
    Won't break your heart -- it will make it soar.
  68. 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.
  69. The Nightmare Before Christmas
    His dazzlingly brilliant "Nightmare" -- directed by Henry Selick -- is more of a postmodern fractured fable, one he scribbled as a poem-script 10 years ago when he and Selick were working as Disney animators...This is a modern classic that enriches the Christmas tradition by turning it on its head and spinning it like a bob.
  70. Under the Sand
    It's a great pleasure that -- we get to ponder one of the most involving psychological mysteries in recent memory.
  71. The Kid Stays in the Picture
    Has to be one of the must-see films for any student of Hollywood fame and infamy.
  72. The Muse
    The list of great moments is virtually endless.
  73. Our Song
    It's an astonishing movie, with a real-life feel.
  74. The Five Senses
    A brilliant film--vivid, haunting, intelligent and in good taste, wonderfully acted, wonderfully written and directed.
  75. Hoosiers
    Hackman anchors the movie with a performance of remarkable control. You see his hurt in his glances at his shoes, his little phony chuckle; you can feel him carrying his secret -- it's a rage held together with rubber bands. This is the Hackman of "The Conversation," not "The French Connection." [27 Feb 1987, Style, p.c1]
  76. Moonstruck
    A great big beautiful valentine of a movie, an intoxicating romantic comedy set beneath the biggest, brightest Christmas moon you ever saw. It's a monster moon, a Moby Dick of a moon, whose radiance fills the winter sky and every cranny of this joyous love story.
  77. Heathers
    More than just one of the best movies so far this year, it is a revolution in young-adult entertainment.
  78. Dead Ringers
    For those who enjoy cinematic visits to other, darker worlds, this blood's for you. Watching Ringers is not unlike watching a critical operation -- unnerving but also enthralling. [23 Sept 1988]
  79. The Deep End
    An extraordinarily riveting drama.
  80. The Crying Game
    From the performances by Rea, Davidson and Whitaker, to Jordan's endlessly original script, to Anne Dudley's melancholy score, and Lyle Lovett's closing rendition of "Stand by Your Man," The Crying Game enthralls and amazes us. It deserves to be called great.
  81. The People vs. Larry Flynt
    Enormously entertaining and surprisingly touching.
  82. The Opposite of Sex
    It's a terrific movie.
  83. Out of Sight
    In some ways Soderbergh does a much better job than Tarantino. He handles the time shifts more adroitly, always keeping us on track; he goes easy on the violence, and when he does unleash it, it's short, fast and ugly.
  84. Reversal of Fortune
    This engrossing mystery-comedy peeks through the keyholes of the rich and infamous in a manner both droll and delicious.
  85. The Player
    The film, which begins with a single, gorgeously sustained eight-minute camera move, is blissfully out of touch with contemporary trends in moviemaking...surprising, both in style and narrative.
  86. The Apostle
    If you want to sample the sheer bouquet of great acting, you could get drunk on this movie.
  87. About a Boy
    That rare romantic comedy that dares to choose messiness over closure, prickly independence over fetishized coupledom, and honesty over typical Hollywood endings.
  88. Tadpole
    Doesn't need the passage of time to become a classic. It's one already.
  89. A Hard Day's Night
    It doesn't matter how many times you see these images. They're always exciting.
  90. Ran
    The drama itself packs a powerful -- and timeless -- gut punch.
  91. High Noon
    A terrific piece of filmmaking. It's taut, believable as it unspools. It's charismatic, with a slow buildup of tension in near-real time that finally explodes into a blast of violence.
  92. L.A. Confidential
    There are so many things to enjoy here.
  93. Beetlejuice
    Hilarious…The joy of Beetlejuice is its completely bizarre -- but perfectly realized -- view of the world, a la Gary Larson's "The Far Side," or "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." [1 Apr 1988]
  94. Solaris (1972)
    His (Tarkovsky's) pictures, and his sounds -- such as the symphonic drip of raindrops in a wooded pond -- tell more than just the immediate story; they rejuvenate the mind.
  95. Howards End
    Merchant and Ivory have regathered many of the cast and crew from their earlier films to work on this reproduction to exquisite effect.
  96. A Simple Plan
    But [Raimi]'s instructed his fabulous Style to take a hike, and, working from Scott Smith's brilliantly reconfigured script from Smith's own (much darker) novel, delivers a piece that is severe and disciplined in its evocation of the cold terrors of fate.
  97. Insomnia
    Something to treasure: a thriller whose style, structure and rhythms are so integrated with the story, you cannot separate them.
  98. American Movie
    As quintessential a story of American ambition as Welles' own "Citizen Kane."
  99. The Thin Blue Line
    More like a waking nightmare than a docudrama. A true story of murder and justice evidently miscarried, wrapped in the fictional haze of a surrealistic whodunit, it will leave you in a trance for days. [2 Sept 1988]
  100. The Piano Teacher
    Seems less like a fictional story than a tour through Freud's forgotten files.
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