Empire's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 6,821 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:
6821 movie reviews
    • 46 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Though Farrell does great work and the film is a visual feast, Ballad Of A Small Player is an impenetrable story of redemption that’s both too obvious and too baffling.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Johansson is no Anne Hathaway in this pleasant but forgettable comedy.
  1. Aniston deports herself competently, here showing us nothing she hasn't on Friends, and Bacon is pretty much on autopilot as the company stud but it is Mohr who actually shines, skilfully giving an underwritten role a genuinely deft sense of nobility and charm.
  2. Lovely to look at and with some fun material not of Seuss' invention, but it's too hectoring, like reading an environmental textbook with jolly pictures.
  3. This big-spy-meets-little-kid comedy isn’t funny enough for teens, but not really suitable for younger viewers either.
  4. Lyne's efforts to be both passionate and artistic are generally successful, although a few sex scenes are disturbing and arguably close to salacious.
  5. Relentlessly juvenile, it will offend moralists while making fans laugh out loud. It's only when demands of storytelling intrude that the film can't keep it up.
  6. Beautifully animated, and about as faithful and affectionate as a corporate cash-in is possible to get — but it still doesn’t come close to the experience of actually playing the games.
  7. The storyline delicately tiptoes along the line of good taste and is embroidered by a first-rate cast. Still, a knockout moment is missing.
  8. As horror, it's a worn-out succession of gory, meaningless, hard-to-enjoy deaths, and too much of the running time is given over to puppets arguing with each other.
  9. Zac Efron makes a convincing bid for movie stardom — and Ratajkowski proves she’s more than just a pretty face — in this flawed but fitfully entertaining film, even if it all goes a bit Pete Tong at the end.
  10. It's just too tempting to dismiss it as extremely long and incredibly disappointing. It's challenging, divisive and has moments of beauty but leaves you cold.
  11. It won't do anything to win over those not already partial to Tarsem's style, but it has more than enough blood, guts and glamour to satisfy – and Cavill looks like a superman.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Open and often disturbing portrayal of life among America's seediest levels of society even if it resorts to cliche a little too often.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Sadly, despite its various attributes and overall funky MTV sensibilities, this never gets quite brutal or blockbusterish enough and the result is a movie both likely to offend the family and infuriate the aficionados in roughly equal amounts.
  12. Superlative performances from Roberts and Hammer almost cover the shortcomings. Like most Tarsem films it's a muddle, but this time not one with enough distracting dazzle.
  13. If TV had a Saga Channel, this intriguing, if never quite gripping, serial killer thriller would play on a loop, in between reruns of Matlock and NCIS.
  14. As with "Stuck On You," this is proof that when the Farrellys are involved (even as mere producers), ribald yet humane comedy can be mined from the most potentially offensive sources.
  15. Despite Cage in a snit, it's a likable if functional summer-show.
  16. Though its themes are overly familiar, this is a fun and charming introduction for newbies to the Addams Family. Once again, it’s cool to be weird.
  17. Sentimental, cliched and at times overdone but a true weepy if ever there was one.
  18. There's lo-fi charm in the musical numbers and heartfelt turns from the young cast but the story drifts along without offering much that we haven't seen before.
  19. Heavy but fascinating creepy drama, that lacks pace in the first half but has some genuinely thrilling moments.
  20. This is Ben Wheatley on a different register: a bigger scale, a more mainstream approach. There’s much to like — but the shadow of Alfred Hitchcock looms large.
  21. There’s a wobble about how committed this is to being a scary movie rather than an inside Hollywood drama, but — like Exorcist III — it springs one great lunge-out-of-an-unexpected-corner-of-the-frame jump scare.
  22. Against the odds of a feeble script and uninspired direction the duo do, in fact, grow on you, and there are a smattering of silly laughs, most notably a sequence involving a large road kill stashed in the back seat.
  23. Verdict Spies, terrorists, remote-controlled bombs… Unlocked’s components are all too familiar, and it doesn’t put nearly enough effort into making them feel fresh.
  24. Unstintingly raw and cynical, this disconcerting and deeply affecting State Of The Union treatise regularly comes dangerously close to caricature.
  25. This is silly and sentimental, but it’s also basically well-meaning and inoffensive. Best watched after quite a few grappas, or with your sprightly grandmother.
  26. An inoffensive if unengaging family romp that somehow manages to make the ultimate day of fun feel like a drag.

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