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. Michael Collins
    In old-fashioned movie terms, it's enjoyable, thanks mostly to Neeson who, not unlike Jeff Bridges, always eclipses your expectations of him. [25 Oct 1996, Pg.N.42]
    • Washington Post
  2. Boys on the Side
    Like the male-bonding movies upon which it's modeled, it celebrates letting down your hair with your own gender.
  3. Circle of Friends
    It's not a challenging movie or an original one, but it does have its pleasures -- most notably a radiant, soulful debut performance from Driver, who saves Circle of Friends from being merely an Irish ugly duckling story.
  4. Children of the Revolution
    Using a cockeyed, surreal style harking back to Monty Python-ism, writer- director Peter Duncan illuminates the tragedy of all true believers whose faith depends upon keeping ears and eyes firmly shut.
  5. The Bridges of Madison County
    The reason for the film's success is simple. Screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and director Eastwood skirt most of novelist Robert James Waller's excesses.
  6. That Thing You Do!
    First-time writer/director Tom Hanks stays about a half-beat ahead of the cliches with rim shots of boyish enthusiasm and deft comedy.
  7. Romeo + Juliet
    For all of its departures, Luhrmann's largely successful reinterpretation is far from irreverent. He takes liberties with the world, but never the words of this achingly beautiful love story.
  8. Copycat
    Jon Amiel, who previously directed "Sommersby," delivers a taut, gripping thriller and, with the help of his accomplished leads, succeeds in camouflaging some of the mammoth holes in Ann Biderman and David Madsen's otherwise intelligent and inventive screenplay.
  9. Dolores Claiborne
    Taylor Hackford's film version of the Stephen King novel, has a whopping list of shortcomings -- and yet it still manages to be an engrossing, unsettling and, at times, powerful psychological thriller.
  10. Don Juan DeMarco
    [Leven] keeps the film's tone light and ingratiating. And, though the material is thin, the actors do seem to be getting a kick out of playing off each other.
  11. This Boy's Life
    Barkin's succulence and De Niro's showboating lend sizzle and ferocity to the proceedings, but the film draws its poignancy from 18-year-old DiCaprio's performance.
  12. Philadelphia
    It's less like a film by Demme than the best of Frank Capra. It is not just canny, corny and blatantly patriotic, but compassionate, compelling and emotionally devastating.
  13. The Last Emperor
    Pu Yi's personal tragedy has become Bertolucci's three-hour epic of obsolescence, opulently visualized. It's docudrama that dazzles, but basically Pu Yi was a bore.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Grumpy Old Men
    In today's mouse-toting, instant-gratification world, this kind of old-fashioned, character-driven slapstick is wonderfully incompatible. It's a grumpy last hurrah.
  15. The Portrait of a Lady
    With this bold stamp [director Jane Campion] lays claim to the story that follows as wholly her own.
  16. Mary Reilly
    Adapted from Valerie Martin's psychosexual novel, this maudlin film transforms the legend of Jekyll and Hyde into a talky romantic love triangle. [23 Feb 1996]
    • Washington Post
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Bronx Tale
    The story is riddled with absurd coincidences and improbabilities. It doesn't have an original bone in its body. And no one's going to leave this film thinking De Niro should stay behind the camera. But none of these problems stops the movie from being enjoyable. If Bronx Tale feels too familiar, it's at least the familiarity of good Italian movies.
  18. The Flower of My Secret
    The picture seems muted, the flower's petals a little brown at the edges.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Truly Madly Deeply
    In Truly, Madly, Deeply comparisons with "Ghost" are inevitable. But this British production, starring Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman, takes a wide berth around the kind of button-pushing found in "Ghost." It presses with lighter fingers.
  20. Fear
    Fear is pretty much a cheap-thrills fix; the ideas, such as they are, function as window dressing. Still, cheap though these thrills may be, they are genuinely thrilling.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Grand Canyon
    The graceful and affecting Grand Canyon, with its flock of fortysomethings, is much more than just "The Bigger Chill."
  22. Bird
    The movie won't come clear, Eastwood has succeeded so thoroughly in communicating his love of his subject, and there's such vitality in the performances, that we walk out elated, juiced on the actors and the music.
  23. French Kiss
    The caper isn't as passionate as the title suggests—in fact, it's facile—but Ryan and Kevin Kline, as her attractive opposite, are irresistible together.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Swimming to Cambodia
    As lectures go, this may be the most fun one yet.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bram Stoker's Dracula
    It's sexy and bloody and, to my amazement, R-rated, but in a stylized, Grand Kabuki manner that lifts the action (including the sex and violence) from our normal sphere of reality to the realm of timeless, primal tales.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Maurice
    Maurice succeeds because [Merchant/Ivory's] trademark flatness is appropriate for the subject.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Tucker: The Man and His Dream
    What could be a needed and satisfying commercial breakthrough for Coppola.
  28. The Mosquito Coast
    The Mosquito Coast is the only movie you'll see this season that has too much ambition for its own good - its subject, really, is nothing less than the American experience.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crooklyn
    Modulating from heavy to light, from angry to lyrical, and so on, the movie's an enjoyable, emotional symphony.
  30. Friday
    In his [Ice Cube's] dramatic roles, Cube's raised eyebrows usually unleashed a fearsome glare and a hint of danger; here, his expressions are more quizzical, amused or confused. He plays against type, just as the movie itself plays against hype.
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