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. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  5. Murderball
    It's the best sports documentary since "Hoop Dreams," a great piece of work."
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 28 Weeks Later
    As viscerally compelling as smash-mouth filmmaking gets.
  11. 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.
  12. Sugar
    A film of rare intelligence, beauty and compassion.
  13. A History of Violence
    A sobering reflection on our culture's attitude toward violence.
  14. 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.
  15. Taxi Driver
    It hasn't aged so much as triumphantly metastasized. [20th Anniversary Release]
  16. Sin City
    Two hours and six minutes has never seemed so much like two and six-tenths seconds. It's pure pulp metafiction.
  17. 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.
  19. Grizzly Man
    A small masterpiece of a documentary that takes us into the heart of a complex darkness.
  20. 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)
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. Marie Antoinette
    Coppola brilliantly conjures the young queen's insular world, in which she was both isolated and claustrophobically scrutinized.
  26. 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.
  27. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. 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.
  30. Eastern Promises
    Cronenberg's deeper purpose is to pull audiences into an affecting, powerful story about right and wrong.
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