Washington Post's Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Born in East L.A.
    In Born in East L.A., Marin plays it mostly for cheap laughs and only an occasional touch of pathos. In other words, he's taken the easy way out. And the script is so sketchy, the scenes so disconnected and the ideas so vacuous (even for Marin) that Born in East L.A. is in desperate need of a center it never finds in its 75 unfocused minutes. The film is a series of skits, blackouts and punchlines, but finished it's not.
  2. No Way Out
    In thriller terms it's close to irresistible and enormously entertaining. And the movie's lack of weight is part of what makes it work, part of its gripping purity. What this movie, which as a political thriller has more in common with "Three Days of the Condor" or "Seven Days in May" than "All the President's Men," has going for it is a great premise: the mainspring of this big clock is built to run.
  3. Can't Buy Me Love
    A John Hughes movie without Pretty in Pink director John Hughes, sure makes you appreciate the teens' auteur. Frankly, Steve Rash, who directs this copycat comedy, another nerd-gets-the-cheerleader romance, isn't fit to wear Hughes' hightops. Rash only tinkers with adolescent angst, without the progenitor's empathy for his audience.
  4. The Monster Squad
    Most of what's included in this unapologetically scrambled mixture of Goonies, Hardy Boys adventures, Ghostbusters and Abbott and Costello monster films is bad actors wandering around in bad makeup and rubber masks and two kinds of kids -- cute, intolerably noisy, smart-alecky kids and not-so-cute, noisy, smart-alecky kids. I don't know which kind I liked least.
  5. Lady Beware
    There is a televisiony smallness in its focus -- and while director Karen Arthur treats her story seriously, she has only a rudimentary feel for the medium and fails to bring the suspense elements to a boil.
  6. North Shore
    Only cognoscenti of things wet and wild could conceivably enjoy this B movie about an Arizona wave pool champion who comes of age by riding on water.
  7. Masters of the Universe
    Little kids at play have come up with craftier plots, better characterization and conceivably more spectacular effects -- provided their mothers let them play with matches.
  8. Back to the Beach
    It's deeply vapid, with the emotional consistency of styling mousse.
  9. Who's That Girl
    Technique counts for a lot in directing a picture like this -- more perhaps than in any other genre -- and Foley doesn't have any. His approach here is to toss things up into the air without caring much where they land. And as a result, the noise they make when they land is not a pretty one.
  10. The Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland
    Watching the Care Bears' Adventure in Wonderland, the latest of the teddy superstars' animated movie escapades, is like being pelted mercilessly for 75 minutes with Lucky Charms. It's nonfatal (unless you have a sugar problem, in which case you're likely to lapse into a coma), but it's not exactly my idea of fun either.
  11. Stakeout
    A diverting cops-comedy-cum-action-romance.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Lost Boys
    The film loses courage (or imagination) and hews to the Spielberg school of climactic denouement, so that teen farce and special effects take over. By the time the thing has played out, that subtle scare/laugh mix is a thing of the past and you feel as though you just walked out of "Breaking Away" or Goonies. Ah well.
  13. The Living Daylights
    007's latest, The Living Daylights, a snazzy spy thriller, is all the more alluring for its new conservatism. It's right up there with the early Bonds, though not in the league with Goldfinger. But oh, what a difference.
  14. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
    More sluggish than a funeral barge, cheaper than a sale at K mart, it's a nerd, it's a shame, it's Superman IV.
  15. La Bamba
    La Bamba is a puzzle -- a real mixed bag. Some of it, like the braying, cock-and-bull performance by Esai Morales, is just plain awful. But other bits, like the performances by Rosana De Soto and, as Ritchie's agent, Joe Pantoliano, are unexpectedly vibrant.
  16. Summer School
    Here are some of Summer School's favorite things: idiocy, illiteracy, irresponsibility, drunkenness, dumbness and debauchery. Piqued? [24 July 1987]
  17. RoboCop
    With its droll underpinnings, Robocop does for cyborgs and Detroit what "Blade Runner" did for androids and L.A.
  18. Jaws: The Revenge
    There's more suspense in On Golden Pond. And when the predictable ending comes, it has none of the titanic man-versus-beast struggle of the original. It all happens so quickly, you wonder if you've missed something. But, no you haven't, because there it is -- the familiar calm sea . . . of credits.
  19. Rita, Sue and Bob Too
    The movie's sense of humor is brash and shaggy, and Rita does have a couple of fliply delivered comebacks. But on the whole, there's not enough variety or definition to hold your attention. Too much is all on the same pitch.
  20. Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise
    This is a movie that doesn't just make you feel dumb, it makes you feel as if your head has been hollowed out and pumped full of Cheez Whiz.
  21. Adventures in Babysitting
    Babysitting, the directorial debut of The Goonies and Gremlins writer Chris Columbus, is a sweet-natured, adolescent variation on the big-city black comedy After Hours.
  22. Innerspace
    The film is never inspired; it's not imaginative enough to be any more than an entertainingly good time. But it's an enormously unassuming, likable comedy, and surprisingly uninsistent for a big summer entertainment.
  23. Full Metal Jacket
    We've seen it all before, most recently in "Gardens of Stone," most romantically in "An Officer and a Gentleman," but never more elegantly than here as Kubrick sustains the athletic ballet of obstacle courses and white-glove inspections for a breathtaking 40 minutes.
  24. Dragnet
    There's enjoyable chemistry between the two, but not the sort that sequels are made on. Aykroyd's straight man gets most of the laughs with his hilarious variation on the late Jack Webb's hard-bitten dialogue, with Hanks playing less often off the priggish, ever-positive Friday.
  25. Spaceballs
    Spaceballs is actually a kind of comic black hole. All in all, the movie is about as funny as having coffee spilled in your lap. Except that there's no burn -- just that slightly embarrassing, uncomfortable, all-wet feeling.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Withnail and I
    A cuttingly smart comedy.
  27. Roxanne
    A frustrating update. Take away the comedy and you're left with a pallid version -- a sort of Reader's Digest condensation -- of the original.
  28. Predator
    Frankly, scarier critters have checked into Roach Motels.
  29. The Witches of Eastwick
    Hell's belles! Nicholson's back. And that old Jack magic has us in his spell.
  30. The Believers
    John Schlesinger, who directed Midnight Cowboy and Marathon Man, knows how to weave edge-of-the-seat tension. But Mark Frost's screenplay, based on Nicholas Conde's occult mystery novel The Religion, is a haphazard affair of implausibility and pseudo-Voodoo.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »