BBC's Scores

  • Movies
For 321 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 55% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 8.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 Days and Nights in the Forest
Lowest review score: 20 Megalopolis
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 5 out of 321
321 movie reviews
  1. Tommy Lee Jones wisecracks his way after the Black Moon supercar in this intriguing action film that was to prove highly influential for the later "Die Hard".
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Without the aid of mind-expanding narcotics though, El Topo can't help looking laughably ramshackle, the combination of bad dubbing, shoddy camerawork and over-the-top performances making it pretty much unwatchable by modern standards.
  2. The fights are about as sophisticated as watching kids in a playground, and they rely heavily on slow motion, as if that will instantly create tension.
  3. It's true that many viewers have already fallen under its spell, but Zhao and O'Farrell have stripped away so much of what makes the novel magical – the time-travelling structure, the hypnotic prose rhythms, the internal monologues and the tiny, tangible details – that what's left is no more profound or authentic than any other costume drama set in ye olde days.
  4. It’s an original and timely feminist spin on HG Wells’s concept, and a welcome riposte to those thrillers that are fascinated by homicidal maniacs at the expense of their victims. If only the film itself had been clever or scary enough to do justice to its ingenious premise.
  5. This new Rebecca feels as if someone at Downton Abbey were having a bad day.
  6. If The Midnight Sky has the sombre tone of a high-minded art-house project, it has the bland design, sentimental characterisation and flimsy plotting of a children's TV movie. The story may have links with today's reality, but it never feels real.
  7. Renfield is worth watching for Cage, Hoult and Awkwafina's entertaining performances, and not much more.
  8. The one Vaughn trademark that Argylle is lacking is the director's usual adolescent offensiveness. He's taken out all the sex, gore and swearing, which may be a sign of belated maturity, but which leaves Argylle seeming all too close to Ghosted, Shotgun Wedding, Freelance, Murder Mystery, and the other sort-of action, sort-of romance, sort-of comedy films which have been dumped on streaming services over the last couple of years. They're all vapid, anonymous blocks of content, but at least the others offer something vaguely glamorous to slump in front of in your living room when you can't settle on anything more nourishing to watch. Argylle, on the other hand, is being released in cinemas, so the shoddy and derivative nature of the enterprise is harder to forgive.
  9. The Iron Claw's shallowness and eventual treacliness are especially disappointing.
  10. Don't get me wrong. Plan 9 from Outer Space is a terrible film. A dreadful film. An atrocious film. But it does have some elements that are halfway decent, and it's unlikely that it would have a cult following without them.
  11. Formula One enthusiasts may disagree, and they may be delighted that their beloved motorsport has been put on the big screen in such a laudatory fashion. Everyone else: this is not where you want to be.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    While the picture falls well short of the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn comedies it seeks to emulate, it's slick and good-looking enough to while away a few undemanding hours.
  12. Depending on how you look at it, this demythologising exercise is either daring or it's irritatingly smug, but it's definitely not much fun. Phillips seems to be saying that if you fell for Fleck's Messianic self-image the last time around, then the joke's on you.
  13. Not that it is completely uncool or completely un-fun. Birds of Prey is certainly more coherent than Suicide Squad, and more energetic than the lacklustre Charlie’s Angels reboot, which was Hollywood’s last attempt to assemble a trio of action heroines. Perhaps it counts as progress, too, that after so many years when gory, postmodern Tarantino rip-offs were about men, there is finally one that’s about women instead. However popular the film becomes, though, I doubt that anyone will adore it as much as it evidently adores itself.
  14. The film-makers are obviously so sure that they have a can't-fail franchise on their hands that they haven't even bothered with world-building.
  15. The film is fun enough in its chaotic, grungy, rough and ready way. It may not propel Smith back to the top of the A-list, but it proves that he can get through a B-movie. At this stage in his career, that counts as a win.
  16. Knock at the Cabin ends up being no more than a passably tense, low-budget chamber piece that doesn't do justice to its Old Testament conceit.
  17. The combination of Depp and Maïwenn may have seemed like a dangerous one, but on this occasion they're playing it safe.
  18. And so it is that a film that was shaping up to be an intelligent and respectful homage to The Exorcist descends to the depths of a cheesy, straight-to-streaming rip-off. Viewers should do what Victor advises, and leave.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It is frequently rudimentary and repetitious – hammering home the same basic point about gender politics while a dulled supporting cast fails to add much colour to the story's margins.
  19. On one level, I realise, the dullness is the point. . . But I'm not sure that justifies the film's own efficiently plodding approach because it never seems as if Fincher is giving us the inside track on how assassins actually operate.
  20. Bill Murray has a single scene as Lord Krylar, an amalgam of all droll Bill Murray characters. William Jackson Harper is wry as a sympathetic telepath, who unfortunately disappears for much of the film.
  21. It might be best to watch Cocaine Bear at home, where you can skip past the rambling sections and go straight to the laughs and screams. In the cinema, most viewers will wish that it was wittier, faster, and more willing to fulfil the gonzo potential of its in-your-face title. It's definitely better than Banks's last film, Charlie's Angels, but you can't help feeling that she has done the bear minimum.
  22. There is nothing in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom that's fun or thrilling or moving enough to make you wish for any further sequels.
  23. Mescal and O'Connor are nuanced and charismatic, and it's amazing that an Irish actor and English actor should play these most American of roles so flawlessly, but The History of Sound doesn't probe beneath the attractive surface of its star-crossed lovers.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Again and again lines and scenes strain for comic effect, but fail to deliver the goods.
  24. While Pain Hustlers is a perfectly fine title, the film probably should have been called Liza Drake, the name of the sales rep played by Emily Blunt, who single-handedly almost saves this tone-deaf drama from itself.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Nonsense is no bad thing, but here it's poorly executed and from Raimi we've come to expect something better.
  25. It's just a shame that the series' farewell had to be so solemn – and so silly.

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