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. Ali & Ava
    What’s most satisfying about the movie is getting to know Ali and Ava separately. They’re endowed with warmth, depth and believability by Akhtar and Rushbrook, veteran supporting actors who are rarely cast in leading roles. Ali and Ava may not be entirely convincing as lovers, but they’re both exceptionally likable as individuals.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 75 Reviewed by
      Hau Chu
    Spencer
    For better and for worse, Spencer conveys one thing quite powerfully: the feeling of living in a rarefied, indifferent world that doesn’t seem to value independent women, much less people.
  3. The Alpinist
    There is a revealing narrative here: a conflict, a climax and a denouement that you may not expect. The Alpinist has built-in drama, simply by virtue of who and what it sets out to document.
  4. The Baby-Sitters Club
    A colorful, buoyant, loving tribute to the notion of girlfriends forever.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Julia
    It’s great fun to watch people who knew and loved her reminisce, but mostly it’s a pleasure to spend a little time in the company of the woman who saved America from Jell-O salad.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile
    The title character of Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile may be a coldblooded reptile — in this case, one who sings — but never you worry: This family flick delivers enough pulse-quickening earworms and warmth to melt even the iciest of hearts.
  7. The Humans
    Like The Father last year, The Humans makes the set a character in itself: Karam has concocted a diabolically creaky duplex whose wonky corners and jury-rigged improvements take on an increasingly sinister patina as the meal progresses.
  8. The Tender Bar
    Tender also is an apt description for the gently heartwarming tone of this appealingly low-key, faded Kodachrome coming-of-age story, capably directed by Clooney from a screenplay by William Monahan (“The Departed”).
  9. The Black Phone
    There’s nothing unheard of here: a bad guy, a haunted house, a hero. But it’s what The Black Phone does with those simple parts that sparks a spooky connection.
  10. The First Wave
    The First Wave feels simultaneously hard to watch and vital, tragic and uplifting, like a backward glimpse over our shoulder at a period of conflict and struggle — in more ways than one — that we’re not quite done living through yet.
  11. Ambulance
    So much of Ambulance works like a charm, but acting-wise, it could use a deeper bench.
  12. Paper & Glue
    This is a story about people first, but also about the way we see. And the visual hodgepodge of JR’s images reveals very different perspectives that affect the way we treat each other.
  13. Dog
    While “Dog” is often funny, it’s not a comedy. Though it’s often sad, it’s not a tragedy either. Instead, it’s a sensitive, engaging, realistic look at what happens when a soldier’s toughest battle starts when they come home.
  14. The Bad Guys
    It’s a heist film with heart and humor, and where’s the crime in that?
  15. Cha Cha Real Smooth
    Writer, director and actor Cooper Raiff delivers an ingratiating turn as a cheerful lost soul in Cha Cha Real Smooth, a post-college coming-of-age story of intergenerational lust and the rocky road to adulthood.
  16. Living
    Living mostly avoids sappiness. And it shows an actor at the peak of his powers.
  17. Dual
    Dual takes awhile to get into gear, ending on an unresolved note. But it’s a funny and provocative struggle over the meaning of life.
  18. Thirteen Lives
    Thirteen Lives is a solid achievement, technically and dramatically, using a ticktock timeline and periodically superimposing on-screen maps of the miles-long cave system to build tension. Like its protagonists, it isn’t flashy but is all business. It gets the job done with a minimum of histrionics, yet a mountain of suspense.
  19. Bros
    Like any successful comedy — or movie, for that matter — “Bros” succeeds in its specificity: in this case, gay life and culture that are brimming with foibles, contradictions, triumphs and failures just waiting to be mined for comic gold.
  20. Emily the Criminal
    A kind of gravitational pull emanates from Aubrey Plaza as the title character in Emily the Criminal, a passably diverting crime thriller where, in place of a moral center, Plaza delivers a performance that is entertainingly blackhearted.
  21. Nanny
    The film, despite being mostly set in a huge, expensive apartment that inexplicably seems to be illuminated only by low-wattage lightbulbs, by and large resists the easy tropes of conventional horror. Instead, Jusu focuses, with an assured storytelling that slowly builds a mood of real-world dread, on more corporeal concerns.
  22. Riotsville, U.S.A.
    Riotsville, USA is as much a meditation as it is a history lesson.
  23. Men
    The most fruitful aspect of the film may be its themes, which unbraid and retwist the threads and conventions of the damsel-in-distress narrative even as they superficially follow them.
  24. Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen
    Fiddler’s Journey aims to tell a story that delves into more than creative and technical details. Although it is also about those details.
  25. I Love My Dad
    This is a weird and wonderfully expansive story, adroitly executed by Morosini with the compassion to mine it for humanism rather than droll, oddball quirk. By putting viewers inside the strangeness of what happened to him, he provides the audience the rare privilege of genuinely laughing with his characters instead of at them.
  26. Fire Island
    Actor and screenwriter Joel Kim Booster gives Jane Austen a brisk, lighthearted refresh in Fire Island, a hedonistic — but disarmingly sincere — ode to the eponymous gay vacation spot.
  27. Creed III
    For the most part, Creed III is a matter of clear, straightforward storytelling, with a well-balanced variety of action, feeling, character development and fan-pleasing callbacks. It’s a good movie.
  28. The Last Dragon
    An intoxicating blend of comedy, kung fu, corny romance, special effects and rock videos, it's as electrically sleepless as the New York it's set against.
  29. Broker
    Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s follow-up to “Shoplifters,” his Oscar-nominated 2018 film about a family of liars, cheats and thieves, is, like that unexpectedly heartwarming drama, a story whose darker themes of social dysfunction and fissure are sublimated into a fable of surprising sweetness.
  30. Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story
    There are gray hairs on some of the people in this fascinating film: Jimmy Buffett, Tom Jones (yes, that Tom Jones — he played the 2019 show) and others. But the energy that the film puts out is vital and full of sap.
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