From our pages to your pocket – decades of movie criticism from some of the most insightful writers in the industry.
We use four stars in our newspaper,…
Stories
‘Spaceman’ Bill Lee appears in a new movie — and still has plenty to say
“I am the church of baseball, and Jesus was a left-hander.”
‘Rocky Horror’ doc underscores heightened relevancy of a cult classic
“Okay, who in here’s a freak?!” drag entertainer Emerald Van Cartier asked while surveying an eager lunchtime crowd at this city’s legendary gay bar, Oilcan Harry’s, and towering above it all in high heels, a flirty red plaid gown and a bouffant Tracy Turnblad ’60s flip.
‘No Other Land’ won an Oscar without U.S. distribution. Now what?
A filmmaker behind the Israeli Palestinian documentary about forced displacement in the West Bank said U.S. distributors’ reluctance is “completely political.”
The best moments from the 2025 Oscars The Washington Post
At the Vanity Fair party, stars want to touch Oscars and take selfies
Director Sean Baker tried to keep track of his four statues while Mark Hamill begged Cynthia Erivo for a picture at Hollywood’s splashiest after-party.
Why ‘Anora’ dominated the Oscars, including Mikey Madison’s big win
They deserved all their awards, but what is it about the Academy’s love affair with women who sell their bodies?
Sean Baker becomes first person to win four Oscars for the same movie
"Anora" hands its maker a record by claiming prizes for best picture, director, screenplay and editing
The list of 2025 Oscar winners The Washington Post
Lists
The 2025 Oscar winners we reviewed 10 films
If you watched and logged every Oscar-nominated film this year, you did better than us. Please enjoy our list of…
Our favorite Gene Hackman performances 13 films
Gene Hackman, who has died at 95, was a stunner in great movies and the best thing in many bad…
The 25 best movie musicals of the 21st century 25 films
From “Les Mis” to “La La Land,” from “Walk Hard” to “Wicked,” these films show that the musical genre isn’t…
The five worst movie musicals of the 21st century 5 films
The Washington Post’s Naveen Kumar and Ty Burr have ranked the 25 best movie musicals of the 21st century, from…
Ho-ho-horror 15 films
Horror movies to watch while you’re waiting for Santa.
Female rage films 21 films
Movies that encapsulate female rage, because it's not socially acceptable to scream on public transportation.
Recent reviews
“A rabbit hole of a movie, inviting viewers on a dizzying plunge through love, loss and, finally, consciousness itself,” wrote Ann Hornaday in 2004. “How sweetly ironic that it would turn out to be the perfect movie about love's inevitable imperfections.”
Read the full archival review here.
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“With ‘Parasite,’ Bong’s finest work to date, the 50-year-old director clearly articulates a throughline that has been present in all his previous work: there’s no war but the class war,” wrote Hau Chu in 2019.
Read the full review here.
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“The Disney musical sequel ‘Moana 2’ is, like David Lynch’s surreal adult masterpiece ‘Mulholland Drive’ before it, a repurposing of material originally intended for the small screen,” writes Chris Klimek.
PSA: the follow-up to the Dwayne Johnson-headlined hit does not share any other Lynchian traits.
Read the full review here.
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“Pitched high and slow, ‘Eephus’ is as lovely as they come, and it may leave you bamboozled at the plate, happily wondering what the heck just happened,” writes Ty Burr.
Read the full review here.
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“Susan Chardy’s performance is so emotionally removed as to seem abstract at first, and “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” plays games with the viewer by alluding to Shula’s (Chardy) trauma with shards of flashbacks and surreal visions, the most powerful of which sees the house of mourners steadily swamped by a rising tide of water. The actress’s natural regality plays as an aloofness that is tested again and again until it finally melts into righteousness, and director Rungano Nyoni lets the visual and thematic pieces of her film’s dramatic puzzle fall into place gradually,” writes Ty Burr.
Read the full review here.
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“Opus,’ the feature debut of writer-director Mark Anthony Green, appears to have a lot going for it on the surface: an up-and-coming young actress in the lead, an admired older star as backup, a score by a pop music survivor. What it doesn’t have is a story that makes a lick of narrative sense, characters a viewer cares about, laughs to match its jokes, chills to match its scares or an emotional connection to anything that happens on-screen,” writes Ty Burr.
Read the full review here.
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“Even with a gimmick engineered to orchestrate endless bursts of Looney Tunes-style hyperviolence, ‘Novocaine’ lives up to its name, all right — a tedious action-comedy so numbingly bland, you feel the pain of its 110-minute run time even as its protagonist can’t feel a thing,” writes Jen Yamato
Read the full review here.
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“With nothing more to prove and a proper aversion to bloat, Soderbergh has achieved the grace of the old studio greats, turning out film after film with a high rate of return because that’s the reason he was put on Earth. ‘Black Bag’ is a movie about pros made by a pro, and either you’re up to the challenge or you’re not,” writes Ty Burr.
Read the full review here.
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