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. Lumumba
    The movie is visually stirring. And the locations, in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, imbue the story with eerie authenticity.
  2. Cookie's Fortune
    Seems to go sideways as often as it goes forward. Altman can't help noticing things more interesting than the story.
  3. The Contender
    I can recommend the first two-thirds of this movie with great enthusiasm.
  4. Maid in Manhattan
    It's a warm, if pallid, romantic comedy that may not do much more to burnish Lopez's reputation, but will certainly not bruise it.
  5. Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
    For the first time in 30 years, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars appear on the movie screen as Pennebaker intended. It's almost worth the wait.
  6. Billy Elliot
    There's actually a lot going on in this little movie, and first-time feature director Stephen Daldry, turning his talents from the theater, handles all of it deftly.
  7. Margarita Happy Hour
    Feels like a hazy high that takes too long to shake.
  8. Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat
    Lawrence's material runs between mediocre and offensive, and then he rescues it with his physical humor. He's at his best when he lets his face or inflection do the talking.
  9. The Pledge
    Cares not a whit for such arbitrary concepts as justice, crime or punishment. It understands the relativism of right and wrong and takes a kind of perverse pleasure in reminding us that there are some things we'll never know.
  10. Tape
    The smart but slight film implodes under the weight of its own "excessive linguistic pressure."
  11. Blast from the Past
    Like last winter's "Pleasantville," this movie juxtaposes classic virtues against modern mores. The former did so with far more invention.
  12. City by the Sea
    The cast and the direction are too good, in the end, for the rather desultory place the movie ends up.
  13. Collateral Damage
    I liked, too, some late plot reversals, sorely needed after the numbingly simple straight-ahead plunge of the first hour of the movie. Things aren't quite what they seem and the twists are neatly done.
  14. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc
    Never was the case for psychotropic medication more acute than in Jovovich's performance.
  15. Full Frontal
    No matter how much fun it is to watch -- and for hard-core movie fans, it is often enormous fun -- there's a certain relief when it stops and we're popped back out to our banal, one-track lives.
  16. Jakob the Liar
    But the best thing about Jakob the Liar is that it's not "Patch Adams at Auschwitz."
  17. Colors
    The movie lacks a sure sense of purpose and direction, and, watching it, you can't help but feel that Hopper, by stepping back and refusing to assert his own point of view, has on some essential level abdicated his responsibility as a director. [15 Apr 1988]
  18. Dark Blue
    The movie ends not with a bang but a wimp.
  19. Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
    Sad, sobering film.
  20. Thirteen Days
    Like President Kennedy, director Donaldson (who made "No Way Out," another pretty good Washington-seat-of-power thriller) has found a perfect balance of often-opposing forces: between recorded history and the demands of plain old entertainment.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Experiment
    The film's hysterically pitched action overshadows its more subtle psychological points.
  22. Welcome to Collinwood
    This ensemble comedy has its inventively funny moments. But ultimately, it gets a little too cute for its own good.
  23. Smoke Signals
    A well-crafted story with a unique voice. But its literary gifts are outweighed by its pictorial prosaicness. Dimming the screen in every shot is the unmistakable shadow of the page.
  24. Mystery Men
    A live-action cartoon without dramatic focus, a solid structure or discernible theme.
  25. Bittersweet Motel
    You don't have to be a Phishead to enjoy Bittersweet Motel.
  26. Midnight Run
    Too routinely formulaic to be anything more than modestly diverting. But as modest diversions go it cruises along at a reasonably brisk pace and, in the smaller details -- the off-in-the-margins doodling -- it has its rewards. [20 July 1988]
  27. Albino Alligator
    A character study with underdeveloped characters.
  28. Human Nature
    In truth, I didn't care much for it, while respecting it a great deal. It's self-consciously childish and "innocent," and everything is overdrawn to cartoon dimension.
  29. Velvet Goldmine
    In trying to compose a poetic love letter to a time of liberation and freedom, Haynes has merely conjured up memories of druggy excess, egotism and tight trousers. The only mementos worth saving from the experience are available on the soundtrack.
  30. The Spanish Prisoner
    The movie's surface of bright, brittle patter, initially off-putting, comes finally to serve as camouflage for the sinister movement of large and powerful forces.
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