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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    • 81 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Voice of Hind Rajab
    The film tells a multidimensional story of loss, where memory is both honored and exposed as futile.
  2. Ju Dou
    Directed by Zhang Yimou, a maverick of China's "new wave," this disturbing tragedy is as unexpectedly lurid in its way as "Blue Velvet."
  3. Send Help
    McAdams again proves she has real comedic chops that this island, and Raimi’s direction, have only sharpened.
  4. A Cry in the Dark
    Meryl Streep teams with director Fred Schepisi for "A Cry in the Dark," a compelling account of the media witch hunt and subsequent trial of Lindy Chamberlain, an Australian mother accused of murdering her 9-week-old daughter Azaria.
  5. Whip It
    Arriving on the nastier heels of the horror comedy "Jennifer's Body," Whip It plays like that movie's more wholesome twin, delivering the same jolt of anarchic guerrilla-girl empowerment, only with a far less threatening disposition.
  6. (500) Days of Summer
    And what makes this autopsy of a love affair funny is Tom's ironic, morose commentary as he revisits what happened.
  7. The Invention of Lying
    Like Gervais, the audience wants to see a struggle, which here comes down to whether unvarnished honesty or random acts of compassionate deceit will win the day. That alone makes for entertainingly high stakes.
  8. The Hangover
    Sitting through The Hangover is like watching "Memento" featuring the Three Stooges.
  9. New York, I Love You
    A light but enjoyable souffle of erotic vignettes.
  10. The Dark Knight
    You keep waiting for the movie to clarify, to settle down to its archetypal purity: icon of psychotic evil against icon of neurotic good. Music by Wagner in his "Götterdämmerung" mood, screenplay by Nietzsche, with additional lines by Babaloo Mandel. Oh, what a great big movie wallow, what a transformational blast of cine-pleasure. It never quite arrives
  11. A Perfect Getaway
    While A Perfect Getaway, like "The Sixth Sense," recaps itself, to indicate to the audience what they may have missed (and when), there seems to be plot holes large enough that one could paddle through them in an outrigger canoe.
  12. The Time Traveler's Wife
    What makes The Time Traveler's Wife work as drama, though, and certainly better than it might have, is an unhesitating emotional commitment on the part of the actors (and Schwentke).
  13. Twilight
    On the whole, Twilight works as both love story and vampire story, thanks mainly to the performances of its principals, Pattinson and Stewart.
  14. Taken
    A satisfying thriller as grimly professional as its efficient hero.
  15. Cold Souls
    If not always coherent, at least compelling.
  16. Terminator Salvation
    The result is a movie that takes itself far more seriously than the "Hasta la vista, baby" tone of previous installments.
  17. The Cove
    The slaughter is part of a traditional fishing culture, according to the Japanese. But if you succumb to the emotional appeal of this documentary, it emerges not just as a bloody and brutal business but almost as bad as genocide.
  18. World's Greatest Dad
    May not be for everyone, but filmgoers tuned in to its particular, perverse frequency will find much to value in its bent sense of humor and compassion.
  19. Tulpan
    To certain serious world-cinema aficionados, though, Tulpan's combination of understated comedy and documentary-level depiction of rural Kazakh life will be catnip.
  20. Life Is Beautiful
    While it celebrates the triumph of humor, invention and the human spirit, Life Is Beautiful is not the transporting experience it might have been. Benigni knows how to make us laugh, but he has not yet figured out how to make us cry.
  21. The Notebook
    Audiences craving big, gooey over-the-top romance have their must-see summer movie in The Notebook.
  22. The Brothers Bloom
    The Brothers Bloom is all about exploding forms, tropes and archetypes. But it's also a charmer, a witty sandbagging of one's resistance to fairy tale and a movie afflicted with a kind of comic Tourette's syndrome.
  23. Brokeback Mountain
    Brokeback Mountain possesses handsome and sympathetic lead players, magnificent scenery, heartbreaking melodrama, righteousness and cultural import. But as a testament to the importance of following one's passion, it's devoid of one crucial thing: passion.
  24. Departures
    It is as polished as it is heavy-handed, and it leaves one under a spell.
  25. The Proposal
    It's as predictable and comforting as a Happy Meal, but it must be said that The Proposal manages to elicit some genuinely amusing moments.
  26. Superbad
    Christopher Mintz-Plasse steals the movie in his screen debut as a nerd di tutti nerds, a kid whose fake I.D. reads "McLovin."
  27. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
    The three leads, Daniel Radcliffe (Harry), Rupert Grint (Ron) and Emma Watson (Hermione), give their most charming performances to date.
  28. The Wrestler
    As good as Rourke is, and as willingly as he throws himself on the figurative hand grenade, his performance constantly begs the question of whether the story would be worth telling without him. Marisa Tomei, as Cassidy the pole dancer, delivers a courageous performance, one nearly as ego-battering as Rourke's.
  29. State of Play
    Features a handsome production and terrific performances.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ballast
    Ballast, though, is less than completely satisfying in a dramatic sense. Events that seem to be important are dropped and left unresolved. Conflicts from the past are mentioned but never explained, as if key scenes were missing. Given that disinterest in conventional narrative techniques, the abrupt ending may be appropriate, but it feels wrong and arbitrary.
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