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For 6,819 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Oppenheimer
Lowest review score: 20 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3,007 out of 6819
  2. Mixed: 3,654 out of 6819
  3. Negative: 158 out of 6819
6819 movie reviews
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  1. The Wild Child
    A typical older male mentore story...told with sensitivity and perceptiveness.
  2. Shadow of a Doubt
    Certainly one of Hitchcock’s most satisfying thrillers, mostly thanks to Wright and Cotten’s believable relationship.
  3. Inside Out
    Inside Out is audacious as it is silly, as funny as it is imaginative.
  4. Sideways
    Brilliantly observed characters are becoming second nature to Payne and Taylor, and the performances here are uniformly terrific. This is wonderful, original stuff.
  5. Meet Me in St. Louis
    Judy Garland's most famous role and her best performance make for entertaining viewing.
  6. Sunset Boulevard
    Subtle, savage and insightful but with such a big heart it is as moving as it is informative about the value of making art that moves.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Apartment
    Delightful comedy romance with a clutch of note-perfect performances.
  8. Apocalypse Now
    Flawed but staggering cinema, the unforgettable Apocalypse Now setpieces are extraordinary.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Gunfighter
    Peck's tired resignation, and the authentic atmosphere and building tension make for a compelling retribution drama of the West.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    We Were Here
    A moving look behind the curtain of a rarely-explored community.
  11. Faces Places
    Whether rediscovering La France périphérique or hurtling through the Louvre, Varda and JR make a surprisingly empathetic team and their collaboration is as provocative as it is poetic and poignant.
  12. Days of Heaven
    Rarely has a film bared itself to simple majesty...it feels epic yet runs barely over and hour and a half. [22 Oct. 1997]
  13. Past Lives
    A transcendent debut for South Korean-Canadian filmmaker Celine Song, this romantic drama is a masterclass in slow, simmering storytelling. It will stay with you, maybe even into your next life.
  14. Chimes at Midnight
    Orson Welles second tribute to Shakespeare is an often-ignored masterpiece. Check it out.
  15. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
    Those who have walked beside these heroes every step of the way on such a long journey deserve the emotional pay-off as well as the action peaks, and they will be genuinely touched as the final credits roll.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Badlands
    Achingly evocative of a time when Hollywood had the courage to invest in complex and morally ambiguous films and an indisputable masterpiece of American cinema. [26 May 2003]
  17. Call Me by Your Name
    A film that’s at once light, joyful and emotionally devastating, with deeply affecting central performances. A full-hearted romantic masterpiece.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Carlos
    Ramirez's outstanding performance and Assayes' superb skill in storytelling make this a mini-series not to be missed.
  19. Marriage Story
    Marriage Story manages to be one of this year’s best thrillers, comedies and romcoms all at once. A tender, taut gem of a film that will make you reconsider love and loss.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The French Connection
    Friedkin's hand-held documentary style was the perfect vehicle for the film's pumped-up verite.
  21. La La Land
    Audacious, retro, funny and heartfelt, La La Land is the latest great musical for people who don’t like musicals – and will slap a mile-wide smile across the most miserable of faces.
  22. Petite Maman
    A story even more delicate and moving than Sciamma’s last effort, this takes an unusual and thoughtful look at girlhood, motherhood and friendship. It’s enchanting.
  23. Lady Bird
    A coming-of-age story like no other, Lady Bird is smart, emotional, funny and completely original. Rarely has a directorial debut been so assured, so singular and so heartwarmingly affecting.
  24. The Magnificent Ambersons
    It's a tragedy that someone else' happy ending is tacked onto his tale, but the film retains enough brilliance to make us glad it's been re-released.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Reversal of Fortune
    An intriguing and absorbing movie, reeking of class and quite packed with powerhouse performances.
  26. Rio Bravo
    Faultless, freewheeling-and very funny.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All We Imagine as Light
    Writer/director Payal Kapadia delivers a memorable and compassionate slice-of-life drama, making a clear statement about the constraints faced by working-class women in India.  
  28. David Byrne’s American Utopia
    Bolstered by Lee’s trenchant, intimate direction, Byrne reframes a peerless setlist of songs as a testament to hope and humanity that implores himself and his audience to keep going. A much-needed source of comfort and joy.
  29. Shoplifters
    The spirits of the old masters pervade this disquieting but deeply moving drama. But Kore-eda stands alone as the chronicler of family life in a country facing an identity crisis.
  30. Duck Soup
    The Marx brothers on top form with their quickfire comedy and banter.
  31. Toni Erdmann
    Set in the unpromising world of German business consultancy, Toni Erdmann is a low-key triumph, especially for writer-director Maren Ade and star Sandra Hüller. A weird, thoughtful, affecting treat.
  32. Uncut Gems
    A monumental thriller, which vividly captures its world’s specifics and calibrates its snaky plot for maximum nail-bitability. Also easily the best film to ever extensively feature Adam Sandler yelling at a TV.
  33. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
    They say that great actors are never knowingly caught acting; Altman's best movies are similarly effortless - experiences to be lived in, rather than simply watched.
  34. Inside Llewyn Davis
    Inside Llewyn Davis throbs with melancholy, hunches under heavy skies, revels in music history's unsexiest scene and unapologetically leaves you dangling. It is also beautiful, heartfelt and utterly enthralling.
  35. The Best Years of Our Lives
    This is intelligent, admirably unsentimental and utterly involving for its full three-hour running time.
  36. Band of Outsiders
    Less audacious than A Bout de Souffle, this is, however, one of Godard's most accessible pictures. A good place to learn how much of a debt modern cinema owes him.
  37. Stagecoach
    What drew the crowds back in 1939 and what has kept them coming is not the film's simmering subtexts but the absolutely fantastic ambush sequence as the stage thunders across the salt flats of Monument Valley. With this, Ford transformed the western.
  38. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1945)
    A wonderful salute to British decency and a touching portrait of a friendship that bridges national boundaries.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Days of Being Wild (re-release)
    Style over substance, but very stylish indeed.
  40. TÁR
    TÁR is a masterwork. A gripping, grown-up movie superbly orchestrated by Todd Field and perfectly played by a virtuoso, career-best Cate Blanchett. 158 minutes rarely flies by so quickly.
  41. Sherpa
    Refocused on the hoof after the catastrophic 2014 earthquakes, Jennifer Peedom's film pulls no punches in exploring the culture and work of this unheralded group, as well as their frequent exploitation by Westerners.
  42. There Will Be Blood
    Uncompromising, intelligent and searing cinema. Along with The Assassination Of Jesse James... and No Country For Old Men, this is the best batch of Western-set dramas in decades. John Huston would have been proud.
  43. The Last Picture Show
    Bogdanovich’s perfect recreation of the sense of time and place, and his ability to mix wit with poignancy that make this such a charming, timeless film.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Do the Right Thing
    As before, Lee's acute observation distils humour from accuracy rather than caricature but his growth as a filmmaker is impressive.
  45. Top Hat
    If you want only one Astaire-Rogers musical, Top Hat is obligatory for Astaire at his most debonair with Irving Berlin's title number and Cheek to Cheek in this screwball confused identities plot.
  46. Crumb
    A biting exploration of family dysfunction and artistic catharsis.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    8½
    A sprawling anything-goes portrait of the artist and the creative process in crisis.
  48. Yojimbo
    Less visceral than the battle scene in Seven Samurai, this is more of a free-for-all, with brute force leaving no room for skill.
  49. The Band Wagon
    A perfect backstage musical.
  50. Late Spring (1949)
    Not as affecting as Ozu's classic Tokyo Story, Late Spring still charms with it's similar theme of development of the parental bond as the children mature and become more independent. Although well acted, the visual are equally arresting but when the themes are so similar a new approach is required to keep it interesting.
  51. Ikiru
    Meticulously constructed, beautifully played and poignant.
  52. The Wizard of Oz
    Oz’s influence is boundless. Spellbinding stuff.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Memoria
    Designed and deserving to be seen big and loud, Memoria is a hypnotic, unquantifiable, occasionally inpenetrable sonic odyssey from a unique cinematic voice.
  54. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    A poignant reflection on what it means to be alive and, visually, a true cinematic experience.
  55. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
    A 50s horror classic that remains a gem of allegorical paranoia.
  56. Platoon
    A touch too heavy on the Faust scenario, this is nevertheless a typically powerful effort from Stone especially strong on the nightmarish aspects of the war, as when a simple misundertsanding instantly becomes a massacre...Gripping stuff
  57. No Country for Old Men
    Violent, poetic, gripping, thrilling and blackly funny: that’ll be the Coens doing what they do best then. Now with added humanity.
  58. Chinatown
    It was Roman Polanski's genius, however, that made the film not merely an intelligent and intricate narrative but a great, disturbing vision.
  59. 35 Shots of Rum
    Superbly played and realised, this stays with you.
  60. King Kong
    None of the humans — not even scream queen Wray — can compete with Kong. But the film remains a perfect star vehicle. It prepares for its hero's entrance with hints of mystery, violence, eroticism and fantasy, then cuts loose with all the action, adventure.
  61. The Florida Project
    Vibrant and brimming with vitality, this is empathic towards its subjects but fiercely critical of the system that victimises them. The performances of Vinaite, Dafoe and Prince will stay with you.
  62. Timbuktu
    Exceptional, human filmmaking.
  63. Frenzy
    Hitchcock's penultimate film deals with many of his previous themes with typical grim comedy and insight into a psychopathic killer's mind.
  64. Brief Encounter
    Beautifully monochrome rendering of a love that cannot be.
  65. Cool Hand Luke
    Paul Newman gives one of his best performances in this prison film, where he inspires life in to his fellow inmates. Has something important to say with several memorable moments and a superb supporting cast.
  66. Apocalypse Now Redux
    Now, it's a slower film, with a little more intellect and sentiment, but perhaps the added time to think will make you feel less overwhelmed.
  67. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
    It’s not an easy watch, but Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a necessary, unflinching portrait of young women trying to do right by themselves in a world seemingly against them at every turn.
  68. Annie Hall
    Arguably Woody's finest, now neurotic intellectuals have a film they can cherish.
  69. The Zone of Interest
    A striking, unforgettable exercise in absence, this is about what we don’t see — and what we choose not to see. The horror is unseen but underlying, and all the more arresting because of it.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Threads
    Horrifying, moving and powerful. Watch it by yourself, late at night and never sleep again. Not a good date movie.
  71. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
    The most purely horrifying horror movie ever made.
  72. Leviathan
    Frustrating, funny at points, heartbreaking and quite magnificently shot throughout, Leviathan is one of the films of the year.
  73. Toy Story 3
    A kids’ movie for grown-ups. A grown-up movie for kids. Exactly what you’d expect -- and hope for -- from the latest, and we’re guessing final, Woody and Buzz adventure.
  74. The Souvenir
    Joanna Hogg paints a precise picture of a woman trying to develop her own artistic vision while caught in the slipstream of a toxic relationship. An understated, exquisite gem of a film.
  75. This Is Spinal Tap
    The greatest laugh-out-loud comedy of the 80s.
  76. The Look of Silence
    As bleak, unflinching and utterly unmissable as its predecessor.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Secret Agent
    With images of violence brushing against understated strength — amid a search for love, safety and self-actualisation — this is an astonishing cinematic experience that lures the past into the present.
  78. Burning
    Slow and difficult to get a hold on, Burning emerges as a brilliantly made one-off; puzzling, intelligent and ultimately mesmerising. And Jong-seo Jun is a revelation.
  79. Drive My Car
    The bizarre intersection between Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, Haruki Murakami and Anton Chekhov makes for a thematically fat, ambiguous, absorbing psycho-sexual drama. It’s not for the impatient, but it’s so precise and delicate, you won’t notice the gear-changes.
  80. Moolaadé
    Poetic, provocative and unstoppably powerful. But, depressingly, it probably won't change a thing.
  81. Saint Omer
    Alice Diop’s documentarian approach to the courtroom drama is fresh and urgent, consistently commanding attention to the women as they speak and listen. A philosophical discourse delivered with astonishing clarity.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Three Colors: White
    Kieslowski plays all this for laughs, and the anti-capitalist satire which fuels Karol's rake's progress remains the most satisfying part of the film.
  83. Time
    Time may be shot in black and white but the world it captures is anything but clear-cut. By turns moving and angry, it’s a thought-provoking hymn to love, family and the power of Black female courage.
  84. The Killing
    Even though he was just staring out, Kubrick instantly mastered the crime genre. A stunning film.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Lost in Translation
    With cinemas dominated by underwhelming blockbusters and formulaic rom-coms, it’s easy to become disillusioned with the state of the movies. Thank the almighty, then, for Lost In Translation, which in 102 wondrous minutes will restore your faith in the power of the medium.
  86. Son of Saul
    It's a film that bores straight into your soul and leaves you shattered, but somehow richer for having seen it.
  87. Frankenstein
    Beautiful photography, a heartbreaking story, and iconic moments from beginning to end. Absolutely unmissable.
  88. Her
    Jonze has made a sweet, smart, silly, serious film for our times, only set in the future.
  89. Little Women
    Not just for women of whatever size. Warm but never wishy-washy, cosy without being cutesy, this is a superb adaptation of the source and further evidence that Gerwig is the real deal.
  90. The African Queen
    A perfect ensemble of cast, photography and screenplay are all subtly handled through Huston's direction, bringing out Bogart and Hepburn's performances beautifully.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Monty Python and the Holy Grail
    A veritable facroy of memorable quotes and scenes.
  92. The Man Who Would Be King
    Huston revels in he opportunity for old-fashioned splendour, granting the film the sunset glow of Lawrence Of Arabia and the swashbuckling cadence worthy of the Errol Flynn days. It’s the artful mix of Kipling’s own writing, flights of fantasy with a political core.
  93. Flee
    An extraordinary blend of personal reflection and inspired craft, Flee is a harrowing child’s-eye adventure that lends lyricism to the plight of migrants while showing there’s always a new way to make a documentary.
  94. All Quiet on the Western Front
    Despite a little dating around the edges this is a truly superb example of its genre and a cinema classic.
  95. Repulsion (re-release)
    If hell is in the details, Roman Polanski has captured it here in his disturbing portrait of falling into psychosis.
  96. Young Mr. Lincoln
    A rose-tinted look at American history, certainly, but still a very entertaining one.
  97. Stories We Tell
    Polley’s fearless personal journey is a huge achievement, a genuine revelation — but the less detail you know beforehand, the better. Go in cold, come out warmed.
  98. Nickel Boys
    Nickel Boys is a triumph. Its unique approach brings a new dimension to its source material, while amplifying the emotional resonance between the present and a horrifying past.
  99. The Boy and the Heron
    Don’t call it a comeback — or another retirement. Do call it an astonishing, sumptuous animated fantasy featuring everything you love about one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
  100. On the Waterfront
    We must salute screenwriter Budd Schulberg (his speech for priest Karl Malden in the loading bay is still stirring). Add the acting/writing heroics a restrained score by Leonard Bernstein and a striking, charcoal look by cinematographer Boris Kaufman, and you have an elegiac portrait of labour relations that feels like a kick in the slats.
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