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. With Eastern Promises and Dirty Pretty Things, screenwriter Steven Knight has proved his ear for London's darker rhythms. Here, though, there's little to raise the pulse.
  2. True to the Jackass formula, some gags come off better than others, but there's some doozies in its midst.
  3. A stomping good documentary.
  4. Loveable - especially if you're as fond of a pun as we are - and extremely silly.
  5. A terrific human drama about two boys about to be consigned to the scrapheap, with standout performances from its young leads.
  6. If not quite on the level of Garbus's terrific Bobby Fischer documentary, this still filled with fond recollections of Mazza's life and career. Fans will relish it.
  7. Another quiet delight from Koreeda.
  8. Gordon Green follows up a pair of execrable comedies with a wise and witty slow-motion road trip that catches the sun.
  9. For a long stretch of the second act the film feels like doing a long stretch, but Schwarzenegger’s having a ball as Stallone goes through the motions.
  10. If you want to see Paul Giamatti as a snail - and who doesn't - you've come to the right place. If you don't, wait for Cloudy 2.
  11. Both Greengrass and Hanks are on award-deserving form in a riveting, emotionally complex and hugely intelligent dramatisation of a real-life ordeal.
  12. Unsurprisingly, considering the circumstances, this is less a meticulous study of photojournalist's art than an privileged and emotional look at the life of a friend and colleague.
  13. Writer / director team Kureishi and Michell add to their partnership with an insightful look at life-long commitment.
  14. Disappointingly dull account of a tale desperately in need of a sharper screenplay and some directorial vim. Might as well wait for the Blu-ray, Jules.
  15. Violent, silly, embarrassing, clumsy, confusing, juvenile, occasionally offensive, occasionally a little bit fun.
  16. Pop quiz, hotshot: you’re cut loose 375 miles above the Earth, oxygen is running out, communication is lost, catastrophic satellite debris is heading your way and you have no hope of rescue. What do you do? What do you do? The answer is the film of the year.
  17. It may lack the subtleties and emotional wallop of a lo-fi musical like Once, but Sunshine On Leith delivers a bright, cheery, big-hearted smile of a movie.
  18. A muddle.
  19. Good intentions, vivid setting and TLJ on top form do not make up for a lack of anything truly compelling.
  20. A bulked-up James McAvoy dominates the screen in this razor-sharp Glasgow smile of a black comedy, packed with aberrant sex, hard drugs and maximum David Soul.
  21. Macdonald's film is a noble stab at bringing Meg Rosoff's YA novel to the screen, which sees Ronan in typically watchable form.
  22. However exotic the locations and starry the stars, there’s no escaping this is The Devil’s Advocate of online gambling. Fold.
  23. A thin soup of weak jokes and contrived drama.
  24. Fondly conceived but short of that razor-sharp Jane Austen wit.
  25. A decent, cogent, greyly atmospheric thriller with something to say about War-On-Terror America.
  26. Allen’s best film in years, astute, humane and shot through with keen observations on the state of the world. It may also, in its pondering the price of deceit and the pain of rebuilding a life from nothing, count as broad social allegory.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It’s handsome, involving and stars the cream of British acting talent — but so did Lean’s unbeatable version, and Newell and Nicholls’ safe, schoolteacher-friendly interpretation makes no real case for going down this much-travelled road once more.
  27. High in gloss if not necessary insight, this is manna for fashion fans but a marginally slighter piece of work than The September Issue.
  28. More terrible and tacky than one could have imagined, it will soon be forgotten and consigned to the True Movies channel to play alongside television movies about Karen Carpenter, Jayne Mansfield and Jackie Kennedy.
  29. Confusing and uninspired rather than completely inept, it’s still likely to be swiftly struck from the résumés of all involved.

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