Empire's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 6,818 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:
6818 movie reviews
  1. A scrappy but soulful delight. Regina Hall brings everything to this nuanced and loving portrait of working women whose stories seldom make their way into the foreground of film.
  2. Sensual, surreal and seriously funny, In Fabric won’t be the right fit for all — but slip it on and you might be surprised.
  3. Making a killer-doll movie out of decent component parts should have been child’s play, but this misses the mark.
  4. Crossbreeding superhero tropes with horror staples was an idea laden with promise. Brightburn is enlivened by trademark James Gunn black comedy, but hamstrung by sketchy writing and a botched sense of dread.
  5. Although sometimes it gets bogged down in the details of drilling, The Hummingbird Project extracts enough entertainment value from an unpromising premise, greatly helped by Jesse Eisenberg finding the humanity in his hustler.
  6. This fourth Toy Story isn’t as essential as the previous films in the series, but there’s no denying the joy of seeing Woody and friends back in action, while once again it’ll likely leave you with a tear in your eye.
  7. Unasked for, unnecessary but unexpectedly enjoyable.
  8. Scorsese is the Bob Dylan of cinema – poetic, truthful, idiosyncratic – and Rolling Thunder, despite some longueurs, is an important document of a major artist – by a major artist.
  9. It sounds like Big Brother on a boat, but The Raft is an absorbing portrait of a bold (or foolhardy) historical experiment that hits many of today’s hot-button topics, dominated by a compelling and complex central figure.
  10. Better than Last Stand or Apocalypse but never hitting the heights of X2, Dark Phoenix thrives when its heroes are front and centre. If this is the end, it’s a solid rather than spectacular goodbye.
  11. Late Night is sharply written and warmly enjoyable, with Kaling and Thompson on endearing form. But a few extra knock-out gags and a clearer focus would really help it in the ratings.
  12. Ma
    There should be something fun in watching Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer drop C-bombs and go apeshit. Instead, Ma is an ersatz, misjudged exercise in psycho-horror that lacks the courage of its B movie convictions.
  13. Dramatically, Thunder Road is a little thin, but the plot’s not the point: this is all about Cummings, who sparkles with charisma and confidence. It’s an unabashed indulgence.
  14. Globe-trotting but not adventurous, action-packed but not remotely exciting, utterly overstuffed and completely paper-thin. Nuke it from orbit.
  15. A sequel that feels less necessary than willed into being, but that doesn’t mean it’s not pleasantly entertaining. There are more fluffy animals than in the first movie, more set-pieces and about the same number of laughs.
  16. Another lavish and largely entertaining Disney re-do, with strong turns from Massoud and Scott. But, appropriately for someone playing a huge, powerful entity trapped in a tiny ornament, Smith’s genie performance feels disappointingly constrained — both by overdependence on the original and some ghastly CGI.
  17. No ceremonious life lessons here — Booksmart lives in a euphoric moment of unapologetic youth that knows what it deserves. Cherish it, revisit the time capsule of our boisterously ambitious era endlessly.
  18. Beats is a truly heartfelt rites-of-passage tale — an immersive, intoxicating portrayal of the rave scene at its peak.
  19. Guerra and Gallego offer a masterful, compelling reimagining of the crime drama within the specific ethnographic milieu of a tribal people weathering dangerous change. Unforgettable images in service of a strange, poignant story.
  20. A sequin-encrusted delight. On paper it reads like a by-the-book biopic; on screen it explodes with the kind of colour and energy that only Elton John himself could invoke.
  21. Showing more enthusiasm than aptitude, this earns ‘could do better if it tried’ on its report card — but it’s a strange enough genre mix to be vaguely worth a look.
  22. A drama of upper-middle-class menace that can’t quite bring itself to be a full-on slasher movie, this has a few too many clichés but offers some creepiness and decent performances.
  23. The Hustle buckles under the overbearing weight of its own vulgarity. Avoid the dirty rubble by all means. An embarrassment to the heist genre, an insult to all existing comedies, a disgrace to feminism.
  24. Combat-heavy pulp of the highest order, this is the most enjoyably over-the-top entry so far. Where else can you get samurai dogs and a Tarkovsky reference?
  25. A film as much about its form as content, Madeline’s Madeline is a difficult-to-watch but heady mixture of raw emotion, big ideas and cinematic fireworks. If for no other reason, see it now to be on the ground floor at the unveiling of a new star: Helena Howard.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Critic Score
    Reeves and Ryder work very hard to make Destination Wedding work, but deeply unlikeable characters and a clunky script means there’s no escaping the fact it’s a disappointing misfire.
  26. A sci-fi thriller starring Robert Pattinson suggests that Claire Denis has gone all mainstream. But High Life is the filmmaker at her most dark, a mesmerising, patience-testing, violent exploration in the darkest reaches of outer and inner space.
  27. A glowing tribute to The Beatles and their music, this is both a toe-tapping pleasure to watch and a smart, occasionally scathing look at how we get things wrong.
  28. Despite lashings of bright red gore and the obvious enthusiasm of its gibbering hordes, Redcon-1 is a hard slog. Nearly two hours of grunts vs zombies feels punitive.
  29. 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.

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