The Guardian's Scores

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For 6,581 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: 2,495 out of 6581
  2. Mixed: 3,767 out of 6581
  3. Negative: 319 out of 6581
6581 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. The First Omen
    This 70s-set prelude to the classic satanic horror has flair but struggles with the weight and familiarity of what came before.
  3. Come Sunday
    The good news is that Ejiofor is great even in the scenes that don’t go anywhere. Those who find heaven here on earth in the form of strong film performances ought to commune with Come Sunday. The rest can sleep in.
  4. Wild Diamond
    Khebizi gives a heartfelt performance.
  5. Cargo
    Nevertheless Cargo is a very strong, at times stirring achievement: a zombie film with soul and pathos.
  6. The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil
    Ma, with his natty suits and ruthless glare, brings heft and humour to the proceedings and easily upstages his pretty-boy co-stars.
  7. The Unknown Girl
    The Unknown Woman is an odd, dramatically stilted and passionless quasi-procedural concerning a mysterious death; it depends on a series of unconvincing, and in fact borderline-preposterous, encounters and features a bafflingly inert performance from Adèle Haenel, whose usual spark appears to have been doused by self-consciousness.
  8. The Phantom of the Open
    Rylance is good casting as Maurice: his delicate sing-song voice and sometimes faintly unfocused gaze fit nicely with our hero’s lovably awkward determination, as well as Flitcroft’s sense as a natural comedian that there is something more than a little absurd in the game of golf.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    On Moonlight Bay
    Entertainment as wholesome as mom's apple pie. [13 Jan 2007, p.53]
    • The Guardian
  10. Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
    There’s an undimmed freshness, warmth and freewheeling energy in this 1992 indie gem, and its director Leslie Harris – whose career since has chiefly involved writing and teaching – deserves a far bigger presence in US film history.
  11. Pacific Rim
    Pacific Rim's wafer-thin psychodrama and plot-generator dialogue provides little for the human component to get their teeth into.
  12. The Smashing Machine
    The film does not really permit the various emotional crises and issues to supersede the importance of fighting all that much, and the fighting itself is not transformed or transfigured in the drama.
  13. GoldenEye
    From the current vantage point, this film, not yet entirely dominated by digital effects, looks like a 1960s-vintage second world war film.
  14. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    Overall a very silly movie – though it’s keeping the superhero genre aloft.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Curse of Frankenstein
    Cushing relishes the role of his career as the sociopathic dandy whose passion for science overrides all moral considerations, while Christopher Lee conveys the dire plight of the creature through body language alone.
  16. Black '47
    It is a harrowingly effective film, though flawed by the actions of Weaving’s officer being unconvincingly motivated at the end, and perhaps born of an emollient screenwriting need to split the difference between the Irish avenger-hero and his enemies.
  17. Leo
    Brightly animated and with moments of surprising insight, there’s a warm likability to Leo that radiates, for those still in the classroom and those who left it long ago.
  18. The Lovers and the Despot
    It’s one hell of a yarn, which makes The Lovers and the Despot’s strangely soporific style something of a disappointment.
  19. Plus One
    It needed bigger laughs and more of the big, ironic comedy that Erskine can clearly deliver.
  20. Bonsái
    Jiménez's drama is crisply imprinted; another fine recent Chilean effort.
  21. Touch Me Not
    People will want to make their own minds up about the film, but for me there is something worryingly crass and naive in it.
  22. Please Baby Please
    The film feels over-determined and self-satisfied.
  23. Photograph
    It is weirdly opaque and internalised, and doesn’t ever really come to life.
  24. Last Breath
    Riveting, seamless, at points genuinely shocking, Last Breath exemplifies the possibilities of human collaboration – a feat that has stuck with me and, yes, took my breath away.
  25. Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands
    We leave the documentary loving the films rather than the film-maker.
  26. 100 Nights of Hero
    Gender, sexuality, status and power are all in flux here, a playful effect that is however withdrawn when we arrive at the sacrificial seriousness. It is a sweet tale which floats self-consciously out of the screen.
  27. The Rover
    Michôd creates a good deal of ambient menace in The Rover; Pearce has a simmering presence. But I felt there was a bit of muddle, and the clean lines of conflict and tension had been blurred: the dystopian future setting doesn't add much and hasn't been very rigorously imagined.
  28. True Mothers
    There is a sustained emotional seriousness in this movie, with committed performances.
  29. Suffragette
    Director Sarah Gavron does well to galvanize her story with a degree of urgency: the result of swift, assured camerawork and a brilliantly understated performance by Carey Mulligan.
  30. Coup de Chance
    The strong, credible performances oil the wheels during these clattering shifts of gear and serve to distract from its occasional moments of implausibility.
  31. I Am Bolt
    Raised up on the big screen, the victories look even easier and more jaw-droppingly elemental: flashes of lightning, allowing us to share in the pleasure of watching a fellow human doing something simple preternaturally well.
  32. Digger
    It’s a shame that, as it ramps up, this generational tension isn’t dramatised with the sharpness it might have been.
  33. George Michael Freedom Uncut
    There’s perhaps not enough new material to justify a re-release, but as a whole it’s still great, and a reminder of just what a class act Michael was.
  34. Colours of Time
    For all that this film is about the revolutionary and disruptive business of art, it takes a pretty un-subversive view of art and artists, compatible with the museum gift shop. But I have to admit, it’s executed with brio and comic gusto – the “past” sections, anyway – and Lindon’s performance has charm.
  35. A Desert
    Director Joshua Erkman’s feature debut manages to deliver an impressively creepy horror exercise that’s also a bit of a send-up of horror conventions.
  36. Alien: Romulus
    The resulting movie is a technically competent piece of work; but no matter how ingenious its references to the first film (let down, however, by borrowings from the A Quiet Place franchise) it has to be said that there’s a fundamental lack of originality here which makes it frustrating.
  37. Enforcement
    There are plenty of heart-pumping moments, plus a fair few false notes, a couple of implausible coincidences and some exposition-y dialogue spelling out the film’s message, which is about how the two sides see each other.
  38. Frozen II
    It’s nice to see these figures again, but I couldn’t help feeling that there is something a bit underpowered and contrived about the storyline in Frozen II: a matter of jeopardy synthetically created and artificially resolved, obstacles set in place and then surmounted, characters separated and reunited, bad stuff apparently happening and then unhappening.
  39. 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.
  40. The Apparition
    Xavier Giannoli’s The Apparition is a flawed but heartfelt film about the mysterious workings of divine grace, and things that can’t entirely be explained away.
  41. Thelma the Unicorn
    In a sea of family content that’s more often than not annoying, Thelma the Unicorn surfs, for the most part, above the crowd.
  42. The Vanishing
    It’s a very powerfully performed, intimate piece, perhaps inspired at some level by the classic adventure The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Mullan is very good at suggesting the careworn wisdom of someone who has to be a father figure, or even grandfather figure to men who don’t have his skill in self-control and self-denial.
  43. The Damned
    While it may have more punch as chilly horror-drama than allegory, it’s a decently put together film.
  44. Goat
    The film is a pointed, astute and unflinching look at unbridled machismo and its consequences.
  45. MaXXXine
    West mulches up a thick impasto of pulp, gore, filth and fear and gets away with some colossally self-aware scenes.
  46. Casablanca Beats
    It is all presented earnestly and engagingly, though self consciously, and if the political debates are unsolved, well, that could be because they are unsolved in real life. It’s certainly a heartening demonstration that new ideas can flourish in a religious society.
  47. Enola Holmes 2
    There’s more of the same in Enola Holmes 2, an equally boisterous romp that’s equally as hard to remember once it’s over but one that should keep its many fans engaged enough to warrant further sequels.
  48. Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams
    This is a watchable, if blandly celebratory and unchallenging portrait of a massive rock institution.
  49. Slaxx
    An entertaining skewering of the hidden global politics in retail trendiness.
  50. Ride or Die
    Ride or Die is well-made and engrossing, despite its occasionally meandering pace.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Road to Bali
    As the synopsis suggests, plot is nothing more than an excuse to create a string of humorous set pieces featuring visual gags, snappy one-liners and lively song-and-dance numbers.
  52. The Listener
    This is an intriguing, if undeveloped performance piece, elevated by Thompson’s class.
  53. Sitting in Bars with Cake
    Sitting in Bars with Cake careens from zany bar-hopping to hospital, cake baking ASMR to cancer weepie. You could argue that that’s life itself – a lot of chaos, bathos amid the profound – but that’s giving too much credit to the film’s murkier, underdeveloped bits. Still, it has a lasting bittersweetness to it.
  54. Day of the Fight
    Not a knockout, by any means, but a win on points.
  55. Captain Marvel
    I wanted a clearer, more central story for Captain Marvel’s emergence on to the stage, and in subsequent films – if she isn’t simply to get lost in the ensemble mix – there should more of Larson’s own wit and style and, indeed, plausible mastery of martial arts. In any case, Captain Marvel is an entertaining new part of the saga.
  56. Rental Family
    It is bafflingly complacent in its sentimentality and its sheer, fatuous implausibility, which makes it valueless and meaningless as drama and comedy.
  57. The Eight Hundred
    With so much intense focus lavished on the action, there’s none to spare for the characters’ emotional lives, and it’s hard to care much about who lives or dies.
  58. Unstoppable
    Robles isn’t hard to root for but Unstoppable, a rousing yet overdone biopic, tries too hard to get us there anyway.
  59. undertone
    There’s a swirl of creepy noises in A24’s new hyped-up horror Undertone – screaming, gargling, singing, banging – but nothing is quite loud enough to drown out the swirl of films it’s cribbing from.
  60. Catch Me Daddy
    Opinions will divide as to the film's final moments: some may find it all too much, and the film does not quite digest everything it wants to encompass. But there an energy and boldness in the debut work from Daniel Wolfe.
  61. Layla
    It’s carried by a winning performance from Hasna.
  62. Confess, Fletch
    It’s amiable entertainment, and Hamm may well develop in the character if this becomes a franchise.
  63. Quartet
    Hoffman has delivered a love letter to the elderly thesps of his adoptive country. We can forgive him its falsehoods.
  64. Suitable Flesh
    Despite a very game lead performance from Heather Graham, and some amusing 90s-style erotic thriller mannerisms – voile curtains blowing on a hot summer night while a sex scene happens to a wafting sax accompaniment – this left me not knowing quite where to look.
  65. Prometheus
    Ridley Scott has counter-evolved his 1979 classic Alien into something more grandiose, more elaborate – but less interesting. In place of scariness there is wonderment; in place of tension there is hugely ambitious design; in place of unforgettable shocks there are reminders of the original's unforgettable shocks.
  66. Northern Soul
    Every other scene showcases a northern treasure (Coogan, Thomson, Tomlinson, Stansfield) and looks, feels and – crucially – sounds true to its sweaty-hazy, slightly cramped corner of history.
  67. Goon
    Brutal, bloody and presided over by a portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, the Canadian ice hockey in this movie is a cross between Rollerball and a prison riot: harking back to the robust certainties of Paul Newman's 1977 bonecruncher "Slap Shot."
  68. Meet Me in the Bathroom
    The standout star is the passionate and fierce Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a Korean-American musician for whom music was an escape from racism and sexism.
  69. Always Be My Maybe
    Like Set It Up before it, Always Be My Maybe hits all of the beats we have come to expect yet fails to do so well enough, as if the mere existence of a technically well-structured romantic comedy is better than nothing.
  70. The Lost Bus
    The writing might be disappointingly inelegant but The Lost Bus is forthright and frightening regardless.
  71. The New Boy
    There are many provocative images: a winking statue of Jesus crucified, for instance, and occasions in which the “new boy” experiences stigmata. But Thornton revels in ambiguity and has no desire to provide viewers a clear pathway to understanding.
  72. The Queen of My Dreams
    It slips just a little too easily into the generic pigeonholing of first generation south Asian narratives, but rattles along with fun and energy.
  73. Renoir
    A syrupy drizzle of tasteful prettiness covers this cloying movie about the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (Michel Bouquet) and his film-maker son Jean Renoir (Vincent Rottiers).
  74. The Other Lamb
    Gliding close to genre tropes but moving more comfortably as an uneasy drama about the alarming power of blind faith, The Other Lamb is an intriguing mood piece, strikingly made and well-performed if not quite as powerful as it could have been.
  75. Big Bad Wolves
    The actors lend it a sick heft, and there are droll, region-specific footnotes...but one senses the sniggering film-makers playing variably funny games with our phobia of pedophiles, rather than having anything lasting to say about it.
  76. The Lost Weekend: A Love Story
    It is a vivid snapshot of a troubled private life at the apex of the US music scene.
  77. The Bad Guys 2
    There’s more wit and energy this time around, and a genuinely sweet message about friendship. Even the fart joke (every kids’ movie must have at least one) was a cut above and had the adults giggling.
  78. Bombshell
    It is a strange film in some ways, speckled with powerful, insightful moments but also with some strained acting, pulled punches and fudged attitudes, unable to decide if its heroines are compromised through having been loyal Fox staffers.
  79. Belle
    Amma Asante's second feature tells Dido's extraordinary story in handsome, if formulaic, style.
  80. Suspiria
    There are smart moments of fear and subliminal shivers of disquiet, the dance sequences are good and of course Guadagnino could never be anything other than an intelligent film-maker. But this is a weirdly passionless film.
  81. Swiss Army Man
    It’s coarse and it’s stupid, but it is, thanks mostly the two good performances and some stylish use of music and editing, a little bit moving.
  82. Baby Done
    Baby Done is funny; it’s sweet; it means something. Most of all it’s charming.
  83. Ready or Not
    As a comedy, it’s simply not funny and as a horror, it works better in pieces but not with the consistency a film set over one night would require.
  84. Youth
    Youth has a wan eloquence and elegance, though freighted with sentimentality and a strangely unearned and uninteresting macho-geriatric regret for lost time, lost film projects, lost love and all those beautiful women that you never got to sleep with.
  85. Mitt
    How ironic to realise that the greatest Mitt Romney campaign ad should arrive too late to save him.
  86. Born to be Blue
    Born to be Blue is a curious mixture of fact and fiction, cliche and originality, style and emotion – it never truly soars but by throwing the ingredients of Baker’s life together and producing something different, it’s never less than intriguing.
  87. The Wild Boys
    Mandico has made a wildly strange debut, striking enough to make you sit up and pay attention.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Fury
    Like The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Fury yokes together a spy thriller and a domestic drama while also incorporating elements of SF and horror.
  89. Elvis
    It’s not a movie so much as 159-minute trailer for a film called Elvis – a relentless, frantically flashy montage, epic and yet negligible at the same time, with no variation of pace.
  90. Buddy
    The novelty of a malevolent presence in the wholesome, brightly lit world of a kids TV show can’t quite sustain an engaging 95-minute feature, Kelly not knowing where to take his admittedly attention-securing setup.
  91. Pick of the Litter
    The finale is more of a schmaltzy salute to the guide-dog ethos than intimate documentation of the new owners’ stories. The street training sequences, though – shot in swooping knee-high Steadicam – are thrilling; mini kerbside action movies.
  92. Napoleon
    Phoenix is the key to it all: a performance as robust as the glass of burgundy he knocks back: preening, brooding, seething and triumphing.
  93. Killing Them Softly
    This is an unrepentantly cynical take on the hope-and-change promised to the US in 2008; this year's election race makes it look even bleaker, an icily confident black comedy of continued disillusion.
  94. Downsizing
    This long film is blisteringly brilliant for the first hour or so. Then there are shark-jumping issues.
  95. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
    It’s a breeze of a watch and with the bar for studio comedy being so very low right now, it’s at least mildly inventive and likably goofy, enough to warrant a cautious recommendation (premium rental price: no, next time you’re on a plane: sure).
  96. The Lost King
    It’s a fascinating story but the resulting film insists on a kooky relatability that isn’t really there. A misfire.
  97. Infinitely Polar Bear
    Infinitely Polar Bear is heartfelt and honest, but it's too cute by half.
  98. Notre-Dame on Fire
    Veteran French director Jean-Jacques Annaud serves up some high-octane film-making with this old-fashioned disaster movie, composed in a docu-realist style, about the catastrophic fire that engulfed Paris’s Notre Dame cathedral in 2019.
  99. Along Came Love
    Its fervency and its eroticism give the film its currency.
  100. Miles Ahead
    Cheadle’s got the cred, and the period evocation is tremendous. It’s just that I’m not sure he has all that much to say
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