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 5.3 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. Galaxy Quest
    Funny without being flip.
  2. The Broken Circle Breakdown
    With its exquisite depictions of suffering, The Broken Circle Breakdown is not always easy to watch. But, as in life, sometimes there’s beauty to be found in the pain.
  3. Bound for Glory
    Regrettably, director Hal Ashby has allowed both the protagonist, folk-singer Woody Guthrie, played with surprising canniness and authority by David Carradine, and the Depression setting to drift away in pictorial reverie and dramatically evasive heroworship. [16 Feb 1977, p.B1]
    • Washington Post
  4. Art Bastard
    The documentary is a compelling indictment of the way commerce drives the art market. But the movie’s methodology is hit-or-miss, jumping from one interview to another, to jarring effect.
  5. King Corn
    It should be required viewing before going into a supermarket, McDonald's or your very own refrigerator.
  6. Hooper
    His witty, endearing performance in the title role of Hal Needham's terrific new pick-me-up, Hooper, a rousing and sweet-tempered sentimental comedy about the professional vicissitudes and fellowship of movie stuntmen, should finally secure Reynolds a preeminent position in the affections of contemporary moviegoers.
  7. Starman
    Despite Allen's sincere face; Bridges' quirky, effective portrayal; some exquisite effects; and many funny moments, the film falters at the finish, if not a little before. Mostly it never delivers what it promises -- an alien with all the right answers. [14 Dec 1984, p.31]
    • Washington Post
  8. Rosewood
    Making a film about mob violence while showing restraint and humanism is a difficult procedure. Singleton and screenwriter Poirier search for some gradations within the white ranks, but for the most part, every cracker's a psycho with a short, smoking fuse.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Vicky Cristina Barcelona
    Vicky Cristina Barcelona is beautiful because Allen is now decidedly in control of this phase of his career, which blends the sharpness of his older dramas with a newly acquired expatriate hipness.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Public Enemies
    It's also a double-barreled bummer. There's no excitement in the bank-robbing, no thrill of the chase, no emotion over justice served or thwarted. Depp's Dillinger is neither charming nor despicable, nor does he occupy that delicious gray area between the two. His spree unspools dispassionately, cold as a Colt .380.
  11. Resurrection
    Resurrection ultimately leaves us, like Gwyn, wondering if the story that’s just been dropped in our laps — a kind of sick, surreal poetry, fashioned out of curdled blood and guts — is a new breed of monster movie or some old-fashioned metaphor of loss made flesh. Sadly, given its acting pedigree, it doesn’t really work on either level.
  12. Tsotsi
    As Tsotsi, Chweneyagae turns his face into a living battle mask -- curved, molded and sandpapered into smooth ruthlessness. But as the story unfolds, Tsotsi's mask begins to crack, and his humanity begins to flow through.
  13. Lost Embrace
    Argentine filmmaker Daniel Burman's shaky-camera, cinema-verite-style dramedy meanders in charming fashion.
  14. Countdown to Zero
    Alternately edifying and alarming film about nuclear proliferation.
  15. Final Portrait
    Rather than probe Giacometti and Lord’s curiously arms-length relationship, Final Portrait is at its best simply watching the artist work — the “artist,” in this case, meaning both Giacometti and Rush.
  16. Her Smell
    Mostly, this is a problem of storytelling, not acting. Moss is riveting, even if the material is not.
  17. Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made
    The film’s most profound subject matter may simply be the passage of time.
  18. The Nice Guys
    The characters in The Nice Guys often ask each other if they’re good or bad, a choice the movie doesn’t want to force the audience to make. Instead it settles for making good on the title, occupying the nice, mushy middle — perhaps unfocused and off-balance at times, but conveying a sense of buoyancy that’s as cheerfully contagious as it is freewheeling.
  19. Bob Roberts
    Robbins, who scripted and directed, creates more than enough on his own. Bob's un-hackneyed character is the prime case in point.
  20. The Brother from Another Planet
    Sayles is no storyteller; despite the verve of its language, The Brother From Another Planet eventually sags of its own weight.
  21. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
    Often astonishingly beautiful, but in a way that's the problem: You wonder what visionaries such as Tim Burton or Michel Gondry might have done with the material. As it is, "Benjamin Button" is little more than "Gump" by way of "Dorian Gray." It plays too safe when it should be letting its freak flag fly.
  22. Smoke
    A celebration of buddies and butts, it's an unconventionally structured, wonderfully acted group portrait of the regulars at a Brooklyn cigar store.
  23. Owning Mahowny
    Kwietniowski has managed to create a surprisingly engrossing and suspenseful narrative without resorting to cosmetics, melodrama or hype.
  24. Girlfight
    A scrappy independent film that packs the same emotional punch as "Rocky."
  25. Cutter's Way
    The intelligence and artistry with which Cutter's Way dresses up the top few cliches of the 1980s is amazing. This is a film with brittle dialogue, complicated acting and visual subtlety in the service of a trite and unworkable story. [20 Nov 1981, p.21]
    • Washington Post
  26. More Than Honey
    It’s an informative, if slightly unstructured, narrative, yet it plays more like a horror story.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Hedda
    There is a ritualistic, even tribal, quality to DaCosta’s telling that suggests a truth to the story untethered to time or place: Any woman confined like Hedda is will strive to escape, one way or another.
  28. Unstrung Heroes
    Diane Keaton's kooky sensibilities as a director are ideally suited to the sweet madness of Unstrung Heroes.
  29. Rodeo
    Rodeo looks like a documentary but finally makes a reckless swerve toward the mythic.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Ty Burr
    The Friend
    The Friend is a better dog movie than it is a people movie, but it’s such a wonderful dog movie that you may not mind that the people are merely fine.
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