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 5.2 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. White Material
    A lean and hungry thing. With the sparest of storytelling, the French filmmaker ("35 Shots of Rum") devours her audience, swallowing us up in a yarn that is as enigmatic as it is engrossing.
  2. Black Swan
    A near-masterpiece of a film set in the hothouse world of New York ballet.
  3. The Next Three Days
    It plods along dutifully, with the occasional zigzag into contrivance, tidy coincidence and outright preposterousness.
  4. Fair Game
    The kind of taut, serious adult drama Hollywood rarely produces anymore. Quality-starved audiences should flock to it, if only to ensure that more of them get made.
  5. 127 Hours
    Although Ralston's act of desperation is admittedly difficult to watch, viewers who might avoid the film out of squeamishness would be depriving themselves of one of the year's most exhilarating cinematic experiences.
  6. Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer
    Client 9 doesn't make any excuses for Spitzer, who is interviewed extensively in the film and who wisely insists that he alone is responsible for his fate.
  7. Morning Glory
    Even Mary Tyler Moore's sunny but vulnerable Mary Richards or Tina Fey's Liz Lemon seem more fleshily real than Becky.
  8. For Colored Girls
    It's hard to imagine that any self-respecting man would want to sit through two hours - let alone two minutes - of such caustic man-bashing.
  9. Howl
    Howl mixes a number of story lines and aesthetic approaches: We get glimpses of Ginsberg's early days as a poet, including his relationships with Kerouac and Neal Cassady, as well as a depiction of the trial, where a parade of critics and professors pronounced Ginsberg's creation either a work of genius or irredeemable filth.
  10. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
    The final, deeply satisfying conclusion to the trilogy of Swedish thrillers based on Stieg Larsson's bestselling novels.
  11. Inside Job
    If you think you've absorbed all you could about subprime mortgages, credit default swaps and the arcana of elaborate derivatives, think again. Inside Job traces the history of the crisis and its implications with exceptional lucidity, rigor and righteous indignation.
  12. Life as We Know It
    At nearly two hours, the movie feels bloated. It could easily lose 30 minutes, give or take, and live. It would still not, however, live up to its title.
  13. Tamara Drewe
    In addition to all the rollicking, ribald humor, Tamara Drewe also has a couple of flashes of darkly comic violence. In a literary sense, it's poetic justice, really. Punishment meted out for bad behavior.
  14. Hereafter
    It starts out with a tsunami - and ends up standing in a puddle.
  15. Stone
    Say this about Stone: When it's good, it's very good. And this twisty, atmospheric drama is at its best when Edward Norton takes center screen as the title character.
  16. GhettoPhysics: Will the Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand Up?
    Like "What the Bleep," this movie is a bit of a hodgepodge, blending an interview-driven documentary with a less remarkable story-based drama.
  17. 7 Prisoners
    7 Prisoners is an angry film, but Moratto, crucially, reserves his most intense judgment for an inhumane system, not the characters who are trapped by it, each in different ways.
  18. Youth
    The film’s themes mature from adolescent pettiness to adult regret, with several epilogues set well after the main events of the story.
  19. RED
    Unlike "Wild Hogs" or last summer's "The Expendables," this adaptation of the "Red" graphic novel series gets into a cool, sophisticated swing.
  20. Jackass 3-D
    Jackass is also a touching ode to male friendship at its most primal.
  21. Secretariat
    It's tough to guess who will enjoy Secretariat more -- filmgoers who remember the extraordinary events of 1973, when the chestnut 3-year-old won the first Triple Crown in 25 years, or those for whom the story is brand-new.
  22. It's Kind of a Funny Story
    There's very little that's even kind of funny in It's Kind of a Funny Story, which can't accurately be described as a comedy but isn't a true drama, either.
  23. Nowhere Boy
    Even with all this talent and earnestness, though, Nowhere Boy still feels indulgent, slight and almost instantly forgettable.
  24. The Social Network
    The Social Network has understandably been compared to "Citizen Kane" in its depiction of a man who changes society through bending an emergent technology to his will.
  25. Let Me In
    Let Me In wants to make your flesh crawl, and it probably will. But it's unlikely to ever get under anyone's skin, the way "Let the Right One In" did.
  26. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
    Stone has a knack for pacing, detail and atmosphere that manages to feel authentic and fancifully allegorical at the same time.
  27. You Again
    Suffers from an increasingly common movie defect: appealing, sharply drawn supporting characters, and a cast of main characters that is as unlikely as it is unlikable.
  28. Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
    And the action? It's especially hard to determine who's fighting whom in "Legends," because, well, because they are a bunch of owls.
  29. Buried
    A well-made, excruciating exercise in containment and sustained suspense. It's a breakout moment for Reynolds. Is it a fun hour and a half? No. But it succeeds within its own straitened contours. It's an intriguing squirm. Now, please get me outta here.
  30. Waiting for 'Superman'
    Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim's scathing, moving critique of American public education, makes you actually want to do something after you dry your eyes.
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