Little White Lies' Scores

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For 1,079 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 42% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 54% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.9 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Asteroid City
Lowest review score: 20 Morbius
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 644 out of 1079
  2. Mixed: 377 out of 1079
  3. Negative: 58 out of 1079
1079 movie reviews
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  1. A Real Pain
    A Real Pain may set out its stall as an empathetic tour of pain, effortlessly exposing the quiet and chaos of the human condition through its multiple characters and the places they visit, but it is also distinctly a film about the boundaries and limits of love.
  2. The Green Knight
    Wild at heart, this quiet epic casts a lingering mystical spell, perfect to usher in the forthcoming autumn nights.
  3. Afternoons of Solitude
    The film offers no explicit commentary or context, but instead allows the images to speak for themselves.
  4. Dahomey
    The film avoids polemic and instead presents itself as informed and inquisitive blueprint for the ways in which we discuss anti-colonialist action.
  5. West Side Story
    It’s a rare, backwards looking misfire for this director who has always been at the vanguard of cinematic innovation. The care and attention that has gone into the making of this film is undeniable, though at times it feels misplaced and others overwrought.
  6. Fiume o morte!
    Fiume o morte! explores the dangerous, empowering nature of fascism, and how certain forms of aggression would seem fair game under a régime that rules by such inhumane edict.
  7. Ash Is Purest White
    Fascinating in its balance between microcosm and aerial view, but the performances definitely raise more emotional heat.
  8. Varda by Agnès
    A memoir writ in moving image, the film returns to her favourite motifs, such as family, feminism and feeling (in the corporeal sense), to unite Varda’s bountiful output across myriad artforms.
  9. The Delinquents
    One thing to emphasise is that this is a very funny film, yet the humour doesn’t ever come from jokes or contrived set-ups. It’s more a sense of looming realisation that this caper – explained and justified over a single pint in a pub – is even more flawed that we ever might have imagined.
  10. Close Your Eyes
    What begins as an apparently modest, small-scale drama, ends in a moment of ethereal beauty, for both characters and viewers.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Novice
    Hadaway paints a deep portrait of mental struggles that soon overflow onto the main character’s body, from the peeling bloody skin of her hands to her slashed ribs.
  12. The Wild Robot
    It’s a moving ecological parable, and its visuals are an encouraging continuation of the general trend in 3D animation towards graphic textures and away from the restraints of realism, even if it’s something as small as a leaf being represented by an abstract splotch of paint.
  13. Alcarràs
    The power of Alcarràs lies in the filmmaker’s care for and understanding of her subject which, as with Summer 1993, is a story taken from her own life and examined on screen with a deceiving charm that gives way to a deeply emotional narrative.
  14. The Taste of Things
    The film doesn’t strain for meaning or metaphor, instead just showing us the events over a certain period and allowing us to sample and chew over them as we would heaving plate of delicious food. Just a wonderful film.
  15. In Front of Your Face
    This is another subtle jewel, wise and charming, insouciant yet measured, and somehow squaring the circle between the overwhelming sadness of lost time and the glint of eternity in a passing instant.
  16. Passing
    Sometimes the filmmaking doesn’t quite do enough to elicit the requisite intensity from some key conversations, but it certainly lands its most important punch, which arrives at the devastating climax.
  17. Honeyland
    Brief and to the point, Honeyland proves more meditative than its premise suggests.
  18. The Beasts
    Even as The Beasts flirts with genre, it also remains largely true to the real-life case from which it is drawn, so that the big three-cornered duel that would be the climax of a western comes here at the half-way point and allows the rest of the film to abandon masculine bluster and focus on a quieter female stoicism.
  19. Two Prosecutors
    It’s a supremely well-made piece of work whose function and message never quite manage to transcend the prosaic. Still, in the strange times we’re currently living through, maybe it’s worth sounding that necessary siren one more time for luck.
  20. Oasis Knebworth 1996
    One might question the need for yet another Oasis doc, but in this case the end the effort is justified, especially if you came of age to these very tunes.
  21. Pillion
    The boldness, nuance and humour with which Lighton navigates BDSM dynamics as well as Colin and Ray’s personal and joint complexities results in a film that’s frequently touching and surprising, less of an adaptation and more of a reimagining that compliments the source material rather than replicates it.
  22. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
    For devotees, it’s a delightful little morsel, lovingly brought to life as only Anderson knows how, and illustrates his creativity when it comes to adaptation.
  23. Decision to Leave
    While Decision to Leave might lack the grandiose scale of Park’s most-lauded work, its intimacy is no less apparent.
  24. The Fabelmans
    The Fabelmans clearly comes from a place of deep sincerity – while it might not be a particularly “deep” film, it is absolutely the Spielberg film about Becoming Spielberg that we’ve been waiting for, echoing the world of child-like wonder and the tenacity to manifest dreams that his whole career has centred around.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Vermiglio
    It’s a hushed yet effectively emotive drama that’s bolstered with the addition of Mikhail Krichman’s stunning cinematography. Yet sadly, it’s hard to overcome the film’s biggest weakness – the ripple effect that comes from its overcomplicated characterisations.
  26. Stalker
    Stalker is a movie to be watched as many times as physically possible, to be picked apart, discussed, argued over, written about, to inspire music, books, poetry, other movies, teachers, philosophers, historians, governments, even the way an individual might chose to live their life. It really is that astounding.
  27. I'm Still Here
    I’m Still Here triumphs in pairing Salles’s intrinsic understanding of the emotional potential of realism with two brilliant performers in Mello and Torres.
  28. The Eternal Memory
    It’s a pleasant film, albeit one which makes its point fairly early on and then restates it in various, sometimes sentimental ways. The film lacks for a strong narrative arc, and instead opts to filter stories and histories through the present moment.
  29. EO
    It’s also shot through with the outré symbolism and impulsivity that have long characterised its director’s long, strange career, particularly its late, nothing-to-prove stages. In short, Jerzy Skolimowski is 84 years young, and he is absolutely vibing.
  30. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
    Rolling with Margaret’s ups-and-downs, Fortson captures every subtlety of growing up with emotional intelligence and versatility.
  31. The Truffle Hunters
    Its gnarled, subterranean subject may be shrouded in a biblical halo, but The Truffle Hunters sublime focus on the natural world and both its flora and fauna inhabitants offers calming reassurance for the unwashed.
  32. The President's Cake
    Filtering the tale through Lamia’s childlike whimsy allows the colourful, polished cinematography to sing.
  33. Sinners
    Sinners elegantly walks a line between enjoyable mayhem as well as a sense of tragedy around this safe haven being ripped apart – but also leverages the classical allure of the vampire for motivations inspired by its reflective first half.
  34. Earth Mama
    On the evidence of the astonishingly-assured debut, Earth Mama, we’ll be seeing work from writer-director Savanah Leaf for many years to come.
  35. Reality
    Were it not for the transcripts, Reality would be a more straightforward addition to the already-oversaturated true crime genre. Satter’s handling of the material and Sweeney’s performance, however, bring this into a more intriguing space where questions of narrative truth, perception and the punishment for honesty are addressed.
  36. BPM (Beats Per Minute)
    This is a Serious Movie that engages the intellect with compelling depictions of place, time and people. The ensemble cast is full of small characters with personalities that reveal themselves through political quirks and related creativity.
  37. Sirât
    Sirât is a truly staggering and major film, one that has to be seen to be believed – a masterful gambit of affectionate character and community building that mutates into a work that deals with the primal instincts of human survival and the idea that we create our own gods through the things that we chose to worship.
  38. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
    Timely, anguished, and ultimately cathartic, the movie meets its moment.
  39. Fire of Love
    Dosa’s film is a slick, moving and cutely Herzogian portrait of this loving, monomaniacal couple who straddled the line between the eccentric and the earnest.
  40. Hamnet
    In Hamnet, art is presented as a two-way whisper, as a codeword for connectivity and as a way to unlock doors to the future, and living.
  41. Dry Ground Burning
    Long takes, discursive monologues, slow pans and stylistic shifts allow the directors to forge an inventive cinematic language out of political consciousness; one that eschews the narrative codes of Western cinema, as it blends fiction and documentary, immersion and observation, to provide a multilayered embodiment of marginalised womanhood in contemporary Brazil.
  42. The Disappearance of Shere Hite
    The film is a celebration of her life and work, but for such a controversial figure it would have benefited from some dissenting voices on the panel of interviewees, or at least gone a little deeper into her homespun methodology.
  43. The Blue Caftan
    Touzani steers clear of easy clichés and pitfalls that the film’s premise might suggest, giving a masterclass in restraint. and it’s Azabal’s exceptional portrayal of Mina, rather than Bakri’s Hamil, that emerges as the film’s beating heart.
  44. His Three Daughters
    How we deal with death in the absolute moment is a fascinating subject, and one that His Three Daughters has many original thoughts about. In the end, it tackles the howling messiness with an earned measure of levity and wisdom.
  45. Balloon
    Tseden directs with a low-slung commitment to a dramatically heightened form of social realism, and this deceptively simple story ends up speaking volumes about how love, sex, marriage and parenting sit at a paradoxical remove from the dictates of the state, and the parochial attitudes of the older generation.
  46. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk
    All we can do is refuse to look away. In bearing witness, we can regard the pain of others as our own.
  47. Between the Temples
    It’s a wonderfully observed and extremely witty film about the faith we have in a higher power and each other, and its uncertain conclusion mirrors the apprehension both Ben and Carla have about where they’re going in life.
  48. Sing Sing
    Often sharing the screen with Domingo, Maclin makes an even more powerful impression; the scenes in which these two circle each other, gradually lowering their defences and letting themselves become vulnerable, are gorgeously tender and dramatically vibrant.
  49. 20 Days in Mariupol
    What we can do, like these journalists, is bear witness to the pain in the hope that it transforms into an urgent, rallying cry, and address our universal capacity to connect with the pain and suffering of others.
  50. Turning Red
    With all of its visual delights and expert use of its colourful onscreen spaces, its ever-a-shame that it’s the latest Pixar movie exiled to Disney’s streaming services – because it’s one of their best animated movies in years.
  51. Lingui, The Sacred Bonds
    With Lingui, Haroun has created a quiet ode to the women who honour their sacred bonds to one another. By centering a mother and daughter united, instead of characters in opposition, he is able to underline the ways we can support each other in the face of patriarchal tyranny.
  52. Prayers for the Stolen
    Huezo’s background as a documentary filmmaker is clear in the way this debut narrative feature so solemnly and matter-of-factly observes a community that exists beyond this fictional ‘slice of life’ representation.
  53. Predators
    It’s uncomfortable and often disturbing viewing, but Osit’s unsentimental, self-critical and refreshingly thoughtful approach makes Predators one of the most valuable entries into a saturated genre, prioritising ethics over emotion.
  54. The Lighthouse
    Eggers understands that fairy tales and superstitions don’t persist because they are true or because they are absolute fantasies, but because they are both at the same time.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Evil Does Not Exist
    So carefully and empathetically constructed – even towards its “villains” – that it feels miles away from didacticism, this shapeshifting ecological tale becomes a yearning rumination on the alienations of modern life, and the quietly violent seams where things in this world are changing and dying rapidly while we lack the language to arrive at the same destination, no matter how much people say they’re listening.
  56. Crossing
    Sweet without being cloying, it’s a love letter to the commonalities between Georgian and Turkish culture; one that encourages empathy and reminds us it’s never too late to change for the better.
  57. Belle
    Fast becoming one of the most exciting filmmakers in Japanese animation, Hosoda continues to build on an impressive body of work, dealing with heavy themes in a sensitive and artistic manner.
  58. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
    It’s a cosy, classic Aardman treat, perfect for Wallace and Gromit fans of any age – and Feathers McGraw remains as menacing as ever.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Misericordia
    Guiraudie successfully fashions his own singular cinematic world.
  60. Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
    It passes the test that all these films must undergo with flying colours: yes, it makes you want to watch those incredible movies.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Holy Cow
    This coming-of-age tale from debut writer/director Louise Courvoisier features its fair share of darkness, but it’s shot through with compassion and humour. The film is a testament to resilience in the face of hardship, and a hymn to the Jura region where Courvoisier herself grew up.
  62. Souleymane's Story
    The tight framing ensures we never lose focus of the anxiety gnawing away at him, while small gestures of humanity are balanced against the harshest measures our punitive society can impose.
  63. Neptune Frost
    Williams and Uzeyman work in a mode of rich ideas and vibes, both so plentiful that the narrative obliqueness feels less alienating and more like an inviting challenge. It earns the attention it demands.
  64. Transit
    With so many layers to unpack, this one stays with you.
  65. Hundreds of Beavers
    Hundreds of Beavers is an immaculately constructed, gloriously bizarre, wholly unique tribute to that basest of comedy pleasures, made by people whose imagination seemingly knows no bounds.
  66. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
    It is profoundly moving to see someone be so open with her audience, the meaning of her lyrics taking on new resonance since first writing them. And we were there, we remember it all.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Peter Hujar's Day
    In concept and design, Sachs channels The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, with its thick, polar white rug, heavy-gloom atmosphere, mosaicked lounging, chamber setting and never-ending exposition; Kiarostami in its tasteful docudrama-crew reveals; and Warhol in its high-concept simplicity. It’s Sachs’ best film yet.
  68. Anselm
    The 3D aspect is often used to mesmerising effect, and dovetails perfectly with an artist whose work often demands the viewer inspect it from multiple angles and vantages.
  69. Afire
    Afire culminates in a magnificent and poetic study of subjectivity, exploring the isolated anxieties of creative labour and a simultaneous entanglement of superiority and inferiority complexes, adding another compelling and precise layer of texture to Petzold’s multifaceted oeuvre.
  70. Riotsville, U.S.A.
    Haslett writes that the riotsvilles were the places, “where the state assembles its fears.” Pettengill’s film is an invigorating indictment of these constructed falsehoods – their fears, their riotsvilles, their scapegoats and their reasons for destruction.
  71. Vortex
    If this is Noé at his most compassionate and vulnerable, it’s telling that Vortex ultimately lacks the raw emotional impact of Michael Haneke’s Amour, another brutally honest, skilfully acted chamber piece about dementia and death, or Florian Zeller’s more recent The Father.
  72. There Is No Evil
    Despite an excessive 150-minute runtime, a fair share of abrupt tonal shifts and a somewhat heavy-handed execution of metaphors threatening to rob the anthology of power and cohesion, the dramatically consistent depictions of contempt, grief and rage bring an adequate sense of uniformity.
  73. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
    In his idyllic city symphony, Koberidze celebrates the serendipity of fate and the rhythms of daily life that bring together what is meant to be.
  74. Grand Theft Hamlet
    The film’s spontaneous spirit is muddied by a sense that some ideas are retroactively staged . . . but what ultimately stays with you is the actor duo’s commendable ability to find inspiration and poetic gravitas in silliness, horseplay and tomfoolery, even (and especially) in the darkest of times.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Joyland
    A beautifully intimate yet open-ended interrogation of the spaces its characters are forced to navigate, Sadiq’s intricate debut is a haunting elegy that mourns the deadly suffocation of desire, elegantly tracing how the liberation of men, women, cis, and trans people is always entangled.
  76. Rye Lane
    Running at just 82 minutes, Rye Lane fills its brief time with an infectious sense of joy and hopefulness.
  77. Rose of Nevada
    It is an experience as moving as it is unnerving, and as the piercing screeching of iron rods announces the Rose of Nevada is to leave port once more, it is we the audience there to wave a pained goodbye, quietly stunned by the ethereal aura of Jenkin’s striking creation.
  78. The Girl with the Needle
    It’s Sonne’s remarkable, multifarious performance that really lifts this one above the pack. She uses her face with the expressiveness of a silent film actress, so when the big emotions eventually come they hit especially hard.
  79. The Teachers' Lounge
    Less productively, more trendily, Çatak’s film becomes a chain-reaction melodrama: acted by self-serious types, scored by tightly wound strings, dependent on characters saying the wrong things and leaving the right ones unsaid with jaws firmly, sardonically clenched.
  80. C'mon C'mon
    The tone never defines the stakes in such grave terms, but that’s the key to the potency of Mills’ cinema: life’s pivotal turns come in idle moments, from inconspicuous sources. All it takes is the willingness to listen.
  81. Challengers
    The film is fun. It’s smart and sexy and engaging.
  82. The Holdovers
    The trio’s company is so embracing that it is hard to say goodbye. The benefit of the Yuletide setting is that Payne has gifted us a film intended to be watched every year. It feels like finding an unwatched classic under the tree on Christmas morning.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    From Ground Zero
    From Ground Zero is a heartbreaking snapshot of an unforgivable moment in history, and as this tapestry of Palestinian life unfolds on our screens, we must heed the call of the artists who made it. Enjoy life, yes, but do something, anything, to ensure that they might enjoy life too.
  84. Pamfir
    This tale of a tough loner forced to test his mettle certainly has political resonance beyond its intimate telling here.
  85. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood
    Smoke Sauna Sisterhood is a window into an enviable cultural practice of solidarity, as the safe communal space provides a place for gossip and laughter as well as the expression of pain.
  86. Little Amélie or the Character of Rain
    With its vibrant use of colour, expressive character design and flights of expressionist fancy, Little Amélie offers a lyrical vision of early-years development and so much more.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Hero
    Amir Jadidi’s haunted-behind-the-eyes performance stays with you, whether or not you want it to.
  88. The Northman
    It’s a film with fingerprints all over it; one that has been crafted rather than manufactured, and rewatches reveal a chance to revel in its sharpness; a scene in which Amleth seeks the counsel of a blind Seeress (the incomparable Björk) teems with intricate set and costume details, while a violent game of Knattleikr – a Viking cross between lacrosse and rugby – proves more adrenaline-inducing than any CGI special of recent years.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
    Ultimately, the lasting message of Lost and Found is discovered in the heart of its subject’s work, and the undeniable power of his uncompromising camera lens – frames transformed into cinema, an abrasive reckoning with the edifice of the past.
  90. The Stranger
    Where Ozon presents as an ironist in much of his work, skewering genres and retro styles, there’s a refreshing seriousness to this mad endeavour that demands attention, even when some of the choices he makes don’t feel entirely right.
  91. The Long Good Friday
    Hoskins performance shows a man who clearly believes that he’s on the right side of history, and once this big, good deal is done, he will have atoned for past sins. The film is brutal in the way it conclusively proves him wrong, right down to its iconic final shot in which Shand sits in the back of a car struggling to settle on the emotion that would amply capture his frazzled state.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Duel
    This is a film stripped back to its bare essentials, and Spielberg thrives in having to get creative to make each moment feel as fresh and energised as the last.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Keyboard Fantasies
    An uplifting tale aided by an incredible soundtrack and captivating subject.
  94. This Much I Know to Be True
    Each shot is framed with tenderness, and the rapport between Cave, Ellis and Dominik is a palpable testament to the depth of their trust for one another.
  95. Weapons
    It’s a shame that the film falls back on old ideas, because Weapons’ first half is genuinely intriguing and some of the film’s scares are effective in both shock value and bewilderment. It’s clear that Cregger has a cinematic spark, and his sick sense of humour is most welcome in these trying times, but two films in, it’s time to find a new boogeyman.
  96. Everything Everywhere All at Once
    The film’s advocate for kindness amidst the zeitgeist generations’ omnipresent nihilism is heartfelt and hard-earned – and not without diving deep first into the dark, sticky terrains of our morals and minds.
  97. Close
    For me, Close gets to the heart of something I know all too well: bone-deep loneliness, grief, sadness and desperation that is hard to articulate, much less as a young child. To show this so masterfully, and without an ounce of judgement, make Close a small wonder.
  98. Chocolat
    It’s astonishing how early on in her career Denis had a handle on her distinct brand of visual composition. Hers is a genius for showing not telling, for laying out surfaces that are rich with implication and for conducting details until there is a heady picture that is minutely observant with a sweep that reaches from heaven to hell.
  99. Godzilla Minus One
    It’s precision-tooled in terms of structure, almost to the point of airlessness, but you’d be hard-pressed to knock back the final 45-minute showdown as anything less than an impressive feat by a filmmaker orchestrating and charting the fine processes of an epic battle.
  100. Godland
    If that first hour or so is where the film resembles debilitating wilderness trek tales such as Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff or Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (in both content and quality), the claustrophobic second half is where valid comparisons to something like Shūsaku Endō’s Silence – though especially Martin Scorsese’s 2016 screen adaptation – come to the fore; where colonial arrogance and perceived enlightenment make for combustible mix ready to blow at the slightest provocation.
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