Nicholas Barber

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For 147 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 44% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 54% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 1.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Nicholas Barber's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 No Time to Die
Lowest review score: 16 Laila in Haifa
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 72 out of 147
  2. Negative: 5 out of 147
147 movie reviews
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Bloated by two or three elements too many, it isn't a "perfect organism", to use the phrase coined by Ian Holm's android character in Alien, but it's as close to perfect as any entry in the series since Aliens in 1986.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Jenkins has said that she would have liked the film to be 15 minutes longer. Some viewers might have liked it to be 15 minutes shorter. But, for most of the running time, they will be happy to be in Wonder Woman's uplifting company. In its old-fashioned, uncynical way, WW84 is one of the most enjoyable blockbusters to be released since 1984.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Casarosa has crafted a modest and gentle yarn about a few good-natured people in a small area, and their enviably simple way of life. His cartoon is aimed at the heart – and the tastebuds – rather than the brain. And it's no less of a delight for that.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Maestro is a warm yet melancholy portrait of someone who is the life and soul of every party not just because he loves company but because he fears being alone.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    It's touching to see this icon of athleticism and positivity in a melancholy film which asks whether training for a championship is really worth the effort.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Directed by Kelsey Mann, Inside Out 2 glimmers with diamond-hard truths about the complex business of being a human being – especially a teenage human being – but it's still a fast-paced and playful comedy adventure with even more jokes and more puns than Inside Out.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    The lurching rhythm of their relationship keeps you on edge, but it's also moving to see how tearful and confused Romy can be, and it's darkly funny to see how she bluffs her way through her double life. Ultimately, though, Babygirl comes to seem genuinely romantic, because Romy and Samuel are fumbling their way towards a deeper understanding of each other. As uncomfortable as the film may be, it's clear that Reijn loves and respects her damaged characters, even if they're not sure of how they feel about themselves.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Anora fizzes with energy and laugh-out-loud moments, but it isn't recommended for anyone with high blood pressure. It builds into the kind of hectic farce in which not just one person is stressed: everyone is stressed.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    The investigation is exquisitely constructed, with a stream of revelations, some pulse-pounding action and continuous glimmers of wry humour. It's also a model of elegance and restraint.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Ducournau's beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy is a nightmarish yet mischievously comic barrage of sex, violence, lurid lighting and pounding music. It's also impossible to predict where it's going to go next.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    It has the ring of a tall tale that has been told in pub after pub, gathering weird new details every time, until it has become a part of Irish folklore. It's a story that you'll want to hear – and tell – again and again.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    As Eggers proceeds steadily and methodically through the events in Murnau's masterpiece, you may admire the intelligence and painstaking craft that has gone into it, but you may also have the feeling that you're watching actors playing time-honoured roles rather than real people in mortal danger. Horror fans needn't worry, though: Nosferatu has its share of gruesome shocks.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    This is a film that is undoubtedly more effective in the dark, with a top-notch sound system and a huge screen, than it would be on a laptop or a television. If, like Evelyn and her family, you are willing to venture out of your home and into the outside world, you could hardly ask for more suitable or more exhilarating entertainment.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    It feels like a tantalising trailer for the longer and presumably richer and deeper film that is still to come.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Perhaps the film could have done with a little more conversation and a little more action, but it's still a quietly affecting, sympathetic tribute to the kind of person who is a supporting character in most biopics.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    The deliberate pacing and sometimes confusing narrative make Monster less engrossing than some of Kore-eda's work, and less likely to win prizes. But it is still a marvel: a minutely observed, profoundly compassionate chronicle of untidy contemporary lives. It's a Hirokazu Kore-eda film, in other words.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    The Room Next Door isn't a weighty philosophical work – as mature as it is, it still has glimmers of cheeky humour and campy melodrama. But it develops into a sweetly heartfelt reflection on ageing, dying, and whether or not it's healthy to find joy in the most desperate of circumstances.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    The nicest surprise is that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is that rare thing, a big-budget comedy which is actually funny. The screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar is packed with knock-out punchlines, and Burton's visual gags manage to be hilarious even while pushing the boundaries of how eccentric and macabre a Hollywood blockbuster can be.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Tom Cruise's seventh Mission: Impossible film is an unusual mix of high-tech and low-tech, of ultra-modern and defiantly traditional.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Set in the military dictatorship of 1970s Brazil, this buzzy crime drama, which has premiered in Cannes, "makes up in pulpy excitement what it lacks in subtlety", and "bursts with sex, shoot-outs and sleazy hitmen".
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    White Noise has so much crammed into its two-and-a-quarter hours that it will take multiple viewings to unpack it all. Luckily, it's all so entertaining that the prospect of those multiple viewings is an enticing one indeed.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    A film with this scope and richness is a splendid achievement, but it's easier to admire than to love. There is some humanity in there somewhere: at heart it's a coming-of-age story about a boy becoming tougher and more cynical on his way to becoming a leader. But will anyone care about the shallow, po-faced characters? They've got exotic names and elaborate costumes, but none of them has much warmth or personality compared to those in a certain other space opera which I won't mention.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Partly because the characters look so healthily pretty, and partly because the mood is so woozy, The Stars at Noon feels more like a stylish pastiche of a Graham Greene novel than the story of real people battling their way out of a difficult, potentially deadly situation. It's beautifully made, but to enjoy it you have to relax, and let it wash over you.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    For some viewers, this frenzied finale will be reason enough to treasure The Substance; for others, it will be reason enough to steer well clear. But no one who sees Fargeat's film will forget it. If she had taken it to its magnificently tasteless extreme 15 or 20 minutes sooner, it would have been a cult classic.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Paddington in Peru offers a fun and lively hour-and-three-quarters in the cinema, and that's not to be sniffed at, but it comes across as the solid third part of an established franchise rather than a stellar pop-cultural phenomenon in its own right
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    More riveting than most thrillers, and more terrifying than most horror films.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    His craftsmanship is so overwhelming that unless you're already allergic to his tics and trademarks, you should get a buzz from the film's many, many incidental pleasures. One thing's for sure: there is nothing quite like The French Dispatch – except Anderson's other films, of course.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    Lanthimos may get carried away, but the results are daringly outrageous and often hilarious.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Nicholas Barber
    It Was Just an Accident is a taut and twisting revenge thriller loaded with heavyweight ethical quandaries. It is heartbreakingly explicit about what the well-drawn characters have suffered, but it asks whether they can ever be justified in using the same methods – abduction, torture – as their oppressors.

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