The Guardian's Scores

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For 6,571 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 5% same as the average critic
  • 54% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 London Road
Lowest review score: 0 Melania
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,490 out of 6571
  2. Mixed: 3,762 out of 6571
  3. Negative: 319 out of 6571
6571 movie reviews
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  1. Luther: The Fallen Sun
    It’s all socked over with great and gruesome conviction, but there isn’t the same character-related interest as the TV series could generate.
  2. Suzume
    It is an absorbing, intriguing, bewildering work: often spectacular and beautiful, like a sci-fi supernatural disaster movie or an essay on nature and politics, but shot through with distinctive elements of fey and whimsical comedy.
  3. Kiss the Future
    This movie is a time-capsule of Europe’s recent tragic past.
  4. Creed III
    The Rocky spin-off series continues to dazzle with another knockout drama with the magnetic Jonathan Majors.
  5. Cocaine Bear
    Not since Snakes on a Plane has a movie promised so much, but despite a great cast the plot is too tame.
  6. Golda
    As a war movie, it’s bafflingly dull; as a political-intrigue drama, it’s lifeless; as a personal portrait of Meir, it’s inert and superficial.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lonesome
    Where Teenage Kicks swung for the canon of LGBTIQ+ coming-of-age films, Lonesome is happy to be a provocative talking point, establishing Boreham as a queer film-maker unafraid of making an important or niche work.
  8. Joyland
    Joyland is such a delicate, intelligent and emotionally rich film. What a debut from Sadiq.
  9. The Survival of Kindness
    The Survival of Kindness has static elements of an art installation, a non-narrative dream state that is part arresting, part frustrating.
  10. The Strays
    British actor/writer Nathaniel Martello-White’s directorial debut nudges at some uncomfortable fault lines of race and class, but tends to over-index unearned suspense for character development or insight.
  11. Disco Boy
    Italian director Giacomo Abbruzzese makes a really stylish debut with Disco Boy, a visually thrilling, ambitious and distinctly freaky adventure into the heart of imperial darkness, or into something else entirely: the heart of an alternative reality, or a transcendent new self.
  12. Inside
    It is a strange, enclosed experience: Dafoe’s mastery of the screen keeps it meaningful.
  13. Stop-Zemlia
    This gentle, authentic-feeling coming-of-age drama from Ukrainian film-maker Kateryna Gornostai premiered at the Berlin festival in 2021. Released in the UK almost a year to the day since the Russian invasion, her film has become unbearably poignant.
  14. She Came to Me
    It’s a likeable confection, and a pleasure to see Marisa Tomei on very good form.
  15. Ocean Boy
    Atkins uses these settings as pretty scaffolding for otherwise ordinary scenes.
  16. Three Day Millionaire
    What’s missing is a sense of what’s at stake – we never quite get a feeling for how desperate these men are, and for the most part they feel a bit too familiar from the Britcom playbook. That said, Burrows brings cheeky-chappie warmth to the character of Curly.
  17. She Is Love
    A waste of great talent, sadly.
  18. Epic Tails
    Nearly everything about Epic Tails feels a bit underwhelming, and limited imagination-wise.
  19. Daughter
    At points I wondered if this is a film that tells us anything about anything. Some of its ideas feel a bit thrown together.
  20. Attachment
    The refreshing – and rare – blend of Jewish humour and horror makes Attachment a fun Valentine’s Day watch for those who like their queer romance with a sprinkle of spooky chill.
  21. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
    The film appears to exist in the Venn diagram-overlap between twee and hipster, which isn’t for everyone – but let it grow on you, and there is a real sweetness and gentleness in its absurdity, a savant innocence and charm.
  22. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
    In his more wistful moments Kang would surely understand the main misgiving with this efficient movie product: the MCU marches inexorably onwards, through “phases” and “sagas”, but what’s the point if there’s no time to pause, reflect and enjoy a joke with old friends?
  23. Make Me Famous
    As a narrative, it gets a bit repetitive by the time we get to France, but the abundance of home video footage from back in the day, and campy dirt-dishing from the interviewees, makes for a touching look at halcyon period in New York history, before the last shabby corners of Manhattan were gentrified beyond all recognition.
  24. Nelly & Nadine
    The film gives us a precious glimpse into LGBTQ+ life in the postwar period.
  25. Nothing Lasts Forever
    Managing to get access to some of the biggest names in the industry, including De Beers CEO Stephen Lussier (who perhaps not coincidentally retired this month), Kohn opens up a bijou microcosm of capitalism in the age of quantum reproduction.
  26. Your Place or Mine
    Even as glossy run-of-the-mill formula, it’s never even close to being as funny or romantic as it needs to be, devoid of fizzy one-liners and hampered by the pair struggling to muster up chemistry during phone conversations that never feel as lived-in as they would for friends with such extensive history.
  27. Women Talking
    The film’s rather abstract conversation doesn’t convey much in the way of urgency or specificity. But there is a sustained moral seriousness in Polley’s work, a willingness to confront pain.
  28. Somebody I Used to Know
    This is an odd combination of broad semi-satirical humour and deeply serious hugging and learning.
  29. Seriously Red
    This is a film that is trying very hard to be liked, while at the same time complacently assuming its likeability is beyond question.
  30. Sharper
    Like the luxury goods that in one scene we see being stolen, the performances are out of the top drawer, and it is a great pleasure to see Moore on such good form: no one cries more needily, and with more nakedly sinister intent, than her.
  31. Magic Mike's Last Dance
    Channing Tatum’s hunky stripper enjoys some sizzling scenes with Salma Hayek but this eccentric threequel feels cobbled together.
  32. True Spirit
    The cast of True Spirit had no such chance: the schmaltz and mushiness overpower everything. The film’s daytime-soap vibes render an unquestionably inspiring true story into an experience that feels so false, so rinky-dink, I had to remind myself it was based on real life.
  33. Saint Omer
    The severity and poise of this calmly paced movie, its emotional reserve and moral seriousness – and the elusive, implied confessional dimension concerning Diop herself – make it an extraordinary experience.
  34. 80 for Brady
    Good company is the name of the game here, both in the nourishing bond between these geriatric besties as well as the chance for us to spend another 100 minutes in the presence of showbiz royalty. But for all its congenial upbeatitude, this salute to blue-hair camaraderie has been molded into the shape of a movie without much finesse.
  35. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
    How bland and forgettable this film is, without in the smallest way harnessing the real performing power of Banderas, Colman, Pugh, Winstone et al.
  36. The Amazing Maurice
    This is a film with a lot of charm, and gives cinema its most lovable rats since Ratatouille. But I did wonder at points who the audience is.
  37. I Get Knocked Down
    Chumbawamba split up in 2012. They’re still mates and come across here as extremely likable, not taking themselves at all too seriously. Scenes of them nattering together, having a giggle now, are lovely.
  38. You Resemble Me
    A strong, muscular, heartfelt film.
  39. Skinamarink
    There is without a doubt something uncanny, almost seance-like, in the way Canadian film-maker Kyle Edward Ball evokes childhood fear of the dark.
  40. Knock at the Cabin
    The Sixth Sense director’s apocalyptic mystery horror is short on both mystery and horror and the ambiguous finale is deeply ridiculous.
  41. Sword Art Online the Movie -Progressive- Scherzo of Deep Night
    Perhaps this works for gamers, or within the context of the larger Sword Art Online mythos, but it seems a painfully rote instalment – a bit like being stuck watching a particularly garrulous and boring YouTube gamer.
  42. Jethica
    Director Pete Ohs and his screenwriting-cast deftly manage the transition from creepy to comic by slow degrees. The two female leads hold down the fort with dry delivery and somewhat haunted-looking expressions; they are bright attractive women who have had to put up with crap like this from leering men all their lives.
  43. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
    Perhaps Fox and the film itself don’t quite put us inside his anguish at first getting the diagnosis and then his decision to go public, but his courage is the more moving for being understated.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Of an Age
    In other hands, Of an Age could have been gimmicky or indulgent but Stolevski imbues his characters with such lived-in specificity that we can’t help but be swept away.
  45. To Leslie
    The ending of this film does not entirely measure up to the standard of tough realism set in the rest of the drama, but what a great performance from Riseborough.
  46. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
    It may not always land and gets lost in itself on the way there, but Jackson has crafted a beautiful experiment indicative of ambitious vision, one whose magic outweighs its weaknesses.
  47. The Disappearance of Shere Hite
    It persuasively makes the case that Hite, who argued that most women cannot orgasm from penetrative intercourse alone, deserves renewed recognition as a feminist trailblazer, particularly in the still-fraught arena of sexual politics, self-knowledge and liberation.
  48. Rye Lane
    Unsubtle and on-the-nose though it undoubtedly is, there is also an amiable, upbeat energy.
  49. Landscape with Invisible Hand
    A bafflingly botched misfire ... Quite what the film is and who it’s for remains a head-scratcher, a stilted jumble of somethings boiling down to nothing.
  50. Passages
    Rogowski makes for a believably odious yet charming cad while Whishaw and Exarchopoulos neatly underplay their heartbreak, subtly showing the toll of putting up with someone who mistreats you and then putting up with yourself for allowing it.
  51. Theater Camp
    For all the grand gestures of musical theater, there’s an odd flatness to Theater Camp, a half-hearted and lackluster comedy from a group of Hollywood friends set at a summer performing arts community.
  52. A Thousand and One
    There are many things working well in Rockwell’s debut, Taylor’s performance chief among them, but the end result doesn’t match her character’s formidable strength.
  53. Pamela, a love story
    Gentle, friendly, faintly bleary – and sans makeup – Pamela Anderson is an authentically likable screen presence in this intimate, if somehow elusive, documentary portrait from Ryan White; it is about her life and times and the super-strength misogyny she has faced from liberals and satirists in the long endgame of her celebrity career.
  54. You People
    Mercifully, Murphy adds a dose of sharpness to the project, wrapping his lines in a delivery so sleek and spirited you’d almost think they were funny. And as for the central couple? The one that just wants to get married, culture clash be damned? They’re nice. So nice. Too nice.
  55. Pathaan
    The film sags a little towards the end, with a few too many implausible action sequences: characters jumping out of helicopters and fighting on top of speeding SUVs, the choreography glossing over the basics of gravity and physics. Still, the cheers kept coming.
  56. Spoiler Alert
    Ineffective leading duo and rote script hamper otherwise affecting true story of a couple tackling terminal illness
  57. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
    Goldin shows that maybe there is always more bloodshed than beauty.
  58. The Fabelmans
    The Fabelmans left me with a floating feeling of happiness.
  59. Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh
    Gandhi Godse Ek Yudh is, at the end of the day, a mediocre effort. Deepak Antani’s Gandhi and Chinmay Mandlekar’s Godse do share a startling resemblance with the real historical figures, but their characterisation in this fanciful piece of fiction lacks any real conviction.
  60. Flora and Son
    An immensely charming Hewson makes it all seem effortless, though, even as Carney’s manipulative string-pulling threatens to get a bit too forceful, an instinctive and quick-witted actor who drags the film’s sillier, flightier moments back to earth.
  61. Eileen
    Oldroyd never seems entirely sure just how pulpy and weird his material is, unable to decide how far to push, the odd stylistic flourish and burst of lurid music ultimately feeling incongruous in a film that’s otherwise visually quiet.
  62. Project Wolf Hunting
    The slaughter does start to get monotonous, but the film rallies in its final third.
  63. Oscar Peterson: Black + White
    This is a documentary that discreetly does not concern itself much with Peterson’s personality, and concentrates on the music, which is entirely worthwhile.
  64. The Wandering Earth II
    At nearly three hours long, The Wandering Earth II is packed with expository science talk, which gets more convoluted and tiring as the clock ticks on.
  65. Past Lives
    Song is a writer of elegant restraint and as the final act progressed, I worried that perhaps this restraint might end up a little too delicate for the years that have preceded and the feelings that have amassed. But then in a bar scene for the ages, we find ourselves floored, a slow buildup that finally hits like a bus.
  66. You Hurt My Feelings
    Holofcener and Louis-Dreyfus again make for perfectly pitched partners.
  67. Sometimes I Think About Dying
    Ridley though is consistent and sort of revelatory, an actor who has struggled to find her footing post-franchise as is often the case, delivering a surprisingly nuanced and deeply felt performance.
  68. Renegades
    Unfortunately, the dialogue sounds as if it was written by one of those newfangled AI chatbots, or maybe an actual human being who aspires to write as well as an AI chatbot but is not there yet.
  69. Shadow Master
    Shadowy it is indeed, but mastery is more questionable.
  70. Magazine Dreams
    Killian’s spiral is intense and unpleasant but we’re not left at the end with much other than respect for technique. The film, like Killian, is all muscle.
  71. The Starling Girl
    The Starling Girl, anchored by a bristling performance from the always solid Scanlen, is at its best when it hews to the combustible suspense of a teenage girl glimpsing her own instincts – for honesty, for autonomy, and most threateningly for pleasure.
  72. Fair Play
    It’s a film of many, many high-volume arguments but Dynevor and Ehrenreich remarkably avoid even the slightest sign of histrionic excess, expertly carrying over their sexual chemistry to the couple’s more horrible moments – a pair you buy in moments of love as much as you do in moments of hate.
  73. Cat Person
    The chillingly unanswered questions of the story are all given the most obvious answers imaginable and relatability is carelessly tossed aside, along with logic and investment.
  74. Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel
    It’s a melancholy, dreamy study.
  75. Bank of Dave
    It’s a film with a decent bit of charm, and it’s hard to argue with the greed-is-bad message.
  76. Shotgun Wedding
    It may be a bit corny, but Hammer keeps the funny lines coming and it has some pep that George Clooney and Julia Roberts’ recent romcom effort Ticket to Ride didn’t.
  77. I Love My Dad
    However grotesquely culpable Chuck has been, you find yourself wanting to hug him. It’s a clever comic trick to bring off.
  78. Alice, Darling
    It’s a very strong performance from Kendrick, who disturbingly conveys the tiny and not so tiny symptoms of emotional abuse.
  79. Missing
    Sighs at incongruously dumb behaviour and groans at the family soap are eventually drowned out by audible gasps at some of the wild twists, the kind that might not make much sense on reflection but do deliver cattle-prod shocks along the way.
  80. In from the Side
    The script gives us less about their emotional connection and to be honest, the will-they-won’t-they-stay-together drama is a bit of a snore. The best scenes are down the rugby club, portrayed with tremendous warmth as a happy-ish semi-dysfunctional family.
  81. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
    Compensating for there being nothing in the way of any Narnia or Harry Potter-style flitting between realities, this film has crunchily animated brawls every five minutes and a playful embrace of sword’n’sorcery hokum that gives it a little lift.
  82. Blaze
    The result is a hot, sticky, trippy fusion of wild style and painfully genuine emotion, with plenty of moments that take your breath away.
  83. Sick
    Williamson knows how to write a horror script – Sick offers moderate to intense thrills delivered in a compact frame whose Covid 2020 specificity adds more to the tension than it distracts.
  84. Plane
    It’s just about diverting enough for the most part but there’s something a little off about its pacing, French director Jean-François Richet (who peaked a while back with his propulsive Mesrine movies) struggling to corral his moving parts, suspense never really arriving as it should.
  85. House Party
    It’s Kid Cudi who salvages the picture playing an even more deadpan version of himself. And he carries the second half of the story through a macabre twist that at least makes the 100-minute feature worth finishing.
  86. The Old Way
    A lot of True Grit-style grizzled-guy-smart-kid bonding that’s hackily written but reasonably watchable thanks to Cage and Armstrong’s screen chemistry.
  87. Beautiful Beings
    Beautiful Beings is shot with real style, with very good performances, but the cliched and consequence-free violence is a flaw.
  88. Alcarràs
    It is a deeply intelligent, humane drama.
  89. If These Walls Could Sing
    It’s a diverting private tour.
  90. Till
    It is as noble an execution of tragic historical record as one could hope for within the limits of a biopic – neither confirmation of doubters nor enough justification to relive it.
  91. M3GAN
    A entertainingly nasty film for the new year.
  92. France
    Whatever its flaws, this movie provides fans of French star Léa Seydoux with a treat.
  93. A Man Called Otto
    Hanks carries the film with his personality and his easy address to the camera, but this oddity of a film never quite comes to life.
  94. The Pale Blue Eye
    As things turn out, this case turns on a rather ridiculous coincidence: but never mind, it’s an entertaining piece of counter-factual noir.
  95. Wildcat
    What an intimate, thoughtful film. I can’t remember the last time I watched a documentary so desperately wanting a happy ending for everyone – human and ocelot.
  96. Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody
    It’s a muscular, heartfelt performance from Ackie.
  97. Charlotte
    This is an absorbingly told story; Knightley’s vocal performance is engaging and Charlotte’s face, in particular, is strongly and expressively drawn. But the film arguably fudges one of the most important issues of Charlotte’s life: her grandfather’s abusive relationshipwith her.
  98. A Love Song
    The landscape has a certain gaunt beauty and so does Dickey’s performance.
  99. Children of the Mist
    From behind the camera, Ha Le Diem attempts to protect Di by reasoning with kidnappers, but is pushed away; she admits to the young girl later that she did not anticipate the tradition could be so brutal. The decision to leave in such details is particularly thought-provoking, fracturing the supposed neutrality of documentary film-makers.
  100. Babylon
    Babylon is a film that’s thinking big, aiming big, acting big: but feeling medium, and finally ordering us to care about the celluloid magic, a secondary emotional response which should be happening without any explicit instruction. Yet it’s always a pleasure to be in the presence of such black-belt movie stars as Pitt and Robbie and there is something funny in Babylon’s wild, event-movie gigantism.
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