Empire's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 6,822 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:
6822 movie reviews
  1. It’s enthralling as well as rambling, you do miss the songs, but there is clearly no place for them here. Best to see them as individual films with nothing in common apart from source material, one a classic, the other a strong enough picaresque amongst some decent fabulation.
  2. The Wrong Missy is a little hit-and-miss, but it’s funny and inventive, and Lapkus is good enough to make the word “zany” tolerable again.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    An average movie improved by Cruise's star appeal and accomplished supporting cast.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Beautifully acted, it's a tender love story with one or two belly laughs.
  3. This is a bold, unusual and gorgeously realised take on the very familiar slasher template — even if it doesn’t quite live up to its innovative promise.
  4. Judd Apatow’s broadest film yet is a patchy collection of Covid-themed comedy cock-ups — but a talented ensemble of performers means you’re never too far away from your next laugh.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    An amazing exercise in character development which successfully shows the character as they were in the first film and as they are now. It is flawed in the basics, but often delightful in detail.
  5. Tender and touching, this gay coming-of-ages story is underpinned by a terrific, subtle turn from newcomer Florizoone.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Marked For Death offers a very proficient range of bang-and-break antics ending with a neat twist.
  6. The founding of a comedy institution shot as a madcap thriller, Saturday Night glides over the surface rather than drilling deep, but it’s largely a hell of a fun 109 minutes.
  7. It’s impossible to overstate how much this film owes to Ryan Reynolds. Even if you don’t understand Pikachu’s world, everyone can understand a great joke superbly delivered.
  8. Too many generic tropes for this downbeat, detached melodrama to convince as a work of social realism but a strong central performance and convincing depiction of the compartmentalisation of Argentina's women.
  9. Not one of Nicholson's best, but an enjoyable comedy nonetheless.
  10. It cleaves closely to the familiar, but Finding The Way Back scores points by finding different beats within the formula and from a great Ben Affleck performance.
  11. Rourke and Rockwell make satisfying, complementary villains, while Downey Jr. delivers again. Shame this sequel feels inessential, over-busy and a little, well, mechanical. Nothing they can’t put right for Iron Man 3.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Not a Farrelly brothers classic, and (some testicle-washing aside) not much in the way of their trademark gross-out humour, but the boys from Boston do an admirable job of transferring Hornby's story into the States and onto the baseball diamond.
  12. Well-intentioned if sometimes lacking in subtlety, Enola Holmes offers a fine, spirited reminder that a traditional story can always be retold — although it might need more refined teachings on feminism next time.
  13. This isn't afraid to be a horror movie.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The film's period settings and spectacular on-stage showbiz set-pieces are fabulous, its meandering script much less so. The thing feels like a movie with its heart ripped out.
  14. Anyone looking for a revelatory portrait of an iconic artist might be a smidge disappointed. But as conventional as it is, this is still a strikingly well-made musical drama with pitch-perfect performances. Don’t criticise, as Dylan once sang, what you can’t understand. 
  15. It doesn’t always successfully balance its comic and poignant tones, but yet another powerhouse performance from Olivia Colman makes Joyride a disarming experience.
  16. Could have been a little more darkly comic in places but the performances are superb.
  17. If you do pick up a penguin, you could do worse than experience Michell’s kind of spiritual and moral awakening. Still, the film is thankfully sharper and less cute than it initially appears.
  18. A timely documentary that seeks to amuse and inform as much as alarm.
  19. There's more here for the under-tens than over-, but it's still charming, amusing and energetic enough to win you over.
  20. Elvis not only rocks the city of lights but also showed he could act.
  21. The missing link between '00s wushu, '80s kids' fantasy and '70s chop-socky, this manages to be thoroughly entertaining - and the face-off between Chan and Li is worth the entrance price alone.
  22. A remake that does not disgrace the original, this is sufficiently different to stand alone and just as relevant in its concerns – as well as succeeding (arguably better) as a thriller. And after this performance, are we sure that Keanu Reeves is really human?
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    As the body count mounts, De Palma blurs the line between fantasy and reality with gleeful affrontery, creating a dazzling tapestry of visual cheats and narrative trickery which propels his scarcely credible characters and ludicrous plot - involving multiple personalities, babynapping and homicidal maniacs - through to its nervy conclusion.
  23. Long-in-the-tooth characters detract from the usual high-spirited fun and frolics.

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