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. Oleanna
    Like most plays transferred to screen, Oleanna still bears traces of grease paint. Actually, all the cold cream in the world wouldn't make this verbose material in the least cinematic -- not that Mamet has put much effort into adapting the original anyway. Most of the action takes place in the professor's office. Luckily, it has a window through which we, like bored grade schoolers, can escape from time to time.
  2. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
    All too faithfully adapted by Kenneth Branagh, the film is the last thing that one would expect of a contemporary highbrow version of this ageless horror classic. It is, in a word, dullsville.
  3. Double Dragon
    A Ninja turtle soup of computer gimmicks, karate chops and kiddie Confucianism.
  4. Stargate
    By the end, the film’s early promise has pretty much degenerated into routine pyrotechnics.
  5. The Last Seduction
    A spirited attempt at modern film noir, and huge parts of it are enjoyable.
  6. Love Affair
    For all of its old-fashioned discretion, the movie lacks vitality. As a love story it is a complete bust, but beyond that, it is missing a reason to be.
  7. Clerks
    Amateurishly acted, clumsily edited and slapped together out of what looks like surveillance camera footage, the thing bumps along not so much on talent as on audacity.
  8. Pulp Fiction
    The experience overall is like laughing down a gun barrel, a little bit tiring, a lot sick and maybe far too perverse for less jaded moviegoers.
  9. Hoop Dreams
    Hoop Dreams is the most powerful movie about sports ever made.
  10. Wes Craven's New Nightmare
    Happily, Craven knows just how to play off expectations and twist things past predictability.
  11. Dear Diary
    As a celebration of ephemera, the movie is a mixed bag, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tiresome.
  12. The River Wild
    The film would be utterly banal without the novelty of the high-toned Streep in an action role.
  13. Ed Wood
    Burton has evoked the surface of Ed Wood's life, but in a story about a man who loves angora and frilly panties, he has barely unbuttoned Wood's uniform.
  14. Timecop
    Timecop is good dumb fun, but it's likely to receive the same sentence most Van Damme projects do: a few weeks in movie theaters and eternity on video store shelves and cable television.
  15. Quiz Show
    As taut, sleek and guiltily comfortable as the classic Chrysler automobile we see at the beginning, "Quiz Show" is built for entertaining road performance. The facts (at least, the dramatically inconvenient ones) are left on the side of the road. Redford retains the emotional engine of the Van Doren affair and drives this baby all the way—presumably—to the bank.
  16. The Next Karate Kid
    The fourth film in the series, the newest installment has a new director, Chris Cain, and a female Kid, Hilary Swank, but otherwise it reprises the formula established by John G. Avildsen in 1984: A troubled teen conquers self-doubt and the local bullies with the help of an enigmatic karate teacher.
  17. A Good Man in Africa
    With its widely acclaimed source material and a cast of distinguished actors, A Good Man in Africa held the possibility of being a welcome departure from the ordinary. Instead, ordinary is what it rises to at its best.
  18. What Happened Was...
    An uneventful actors' exercise better suited to off-off-Broadway theater.
  19. Fresh
    Fresh is an electrifying, sobering movie, and with it, Yakin announces himself as perhaps the most gifted newcomer of the decade.
  20. The Shawshank Redemption
    Speaking of jail, "Shawshank"-the-movie seems to last about half a life sentence. The story, chiefly about the 20-year friendship between Freeman and Robbins, becomes incarcerated in its own labyrinthine sentimentality.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Killing Zoe
    There have to be better ways of wasting money and killing time than the fashionable nihilism of Killing Zoe.
  22. Natural Born Killers
    Our culture may be drifting toward the sort of calamity that Stone describes in Natural Born Killers, but the hysteria he depicts seems to come from within him. His soul is in turmoil and so he keeps trying to convince us that we're sick.
  23. Color of Night
    A convoluted psychosexual thriller that promises the moon and gives us Bruce's butt.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
    Obviously, Priscilla is a one-note pleasure: Bitches in the Desert! Queens in the Sand! Nancy boys do the Outback!
    • 46 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Airheads
    This film manages to have the feel of an original -- and very effective -- piece of comedy. In part this is due to the delicate touch of director Michael Lehmann ("Heathers"), who never allows the film to slip into a silly mode.
  26. The Little Rascals
    Both director and co-writer of Rascals redux, Spheeris coaxes artless performances from the picture's engaging ensemble of half-pint players.
  27. Clear and Present Danger
    There's nothing "wrong" with this movie but it feels like warmed-over business as usual.
  28. Eat Drink Man Woman
    The movie’s main appeal—beyond stomach yearnings caused by its cuisine—comes from the actors, who infuse their archetypal roles with comedic appeal.
  29. The Mask
    Mike Werb's screenplay -- just a rickety framework for Carrey's consummate clowning -- lacks a propelling plot and has zip in terms of secondary character development.
  30. Barcelona
    Unlike “Metropolitan,” which for all its brittle wit seemed clunky and stagebound, Barcelona is sharply paced and alive on the screen.
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