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. Retaliation
    There’s a kind of blunt brute force to [Bloom's] performance – and he looks almost unrecognisable, as if he’s using certain muscles in his face for the first time.
  2. Beautiful Beings
    Beautiful Beings is shot with real style, with very good performances, but the cliched and consequence-free violence is a flaw.
  3. Wicked: For Good
    What a performance from Erivo; it is genuinely moving when the Prince has to convince Elphaba what we, the audience, have always known: that she is beautiful.
  4. 7500
    For fans of joyless screaming and stabbing, there might be something here worth your time but for those who expect more thrills from their thrillers or at least something close to a purpose, 7500 is a flight worth missing.
  5. Brahmastra Part One: Shiva
    Mukerji’s biggest achievement is getting this relationship to flourish, Kapoor and Bhatt being among the precious few real-life couples with palpable onscreen chemistry.
  6. Heads of State
    Fun, fiery and totally frivolous, Heads of State is a perfect summer movie with great potential for future sequels.
  7. Trishna
    Winterbottom's location work in Jaipur and Mumbai has richness and spectacle, but somehow this does not come fully to life.
  8. The Book of Clarence
    Stanfield is a performer whom you can’t help warming to, although here, as sometimes in the past, I found myself wanting him to bring something extra in the third act, some new level of energy or anger. But maybe it would be wrong here.
  9. The Gorge
    There are touches of above-average streaming craft here, distancing it from the standard Netflix equivalent – an indistinctive yet solid score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, some grand cinematography from Guillermo del Toro fave Dan Laustsen – but the film bears too much of that synthetic Apple feel, as if it was primarily made to show off the abilities of a new iPhone.
  10. Rabbit Trap
    Chainey is certainly skilled at distracting us, drowning his film in atmosphere and mood to offset the devolving half-baked hokum of his plot.
  11. Pet Sematary
    It’s a supernatural chiller about our fear of death - and our longing for death as an end to this fear. This brutally effective and convulsively disturbing story is something to compare with WW Jacobs’s classic Edwardian ghost story The Monkey’s Paw or maybe even Franz Kafka’s stage-play The Guardian of the Tomb.
  12. Armstrong
    This Neil Armstrong documentary feels like unrequired viewing coming so soon after two cracking moon landing movies.
  13. The Incomer
    This specific concoction of absurdism, sentimentality, childish humor and dark punchlines may have stayed off-key for me, but seemed to strike a chord with others, at least judging from the many guffaws at the screening I attended.
  14. My Father and The Man In Black
    For Cash devotees who want a hitherto-hidden perspective on their man, though, this is invaluable viewing.
  15. The Laundromat
    The film’s prize asset ... is Meryl Streep.
  16. The Zookeeper's Wife
    All told The Zookeeper’s Wife is a story worth telling, even if there are a good number of not-so-hot spots along the way.
  17. The Second Act
    It’s a sprightly meta gag, a movie about a movie, or perhaps a movie about a movie about a movie – or perhaps just a movie, full stop, whose point is to claim that reality as we experience it inside and outside the cinema is unitary despite the levels of imposture and role-play we bring to it.
  18. Last Letter from Your Lover
    The central romance here is, on paper, a love for the ages, a story of all-consuming passion. It’s not quite so in practice.
  19. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
    There’s lots of good stuff here, some witty reboots and reworkings of gags from the first film and sprightly update appearances from minor, half-forgotten characters currently residing in the “where-are-they-now?” file.
  20. Dreamland
    Dreamland is no masterpiece but it is a robustly made action drama, with impressive and even daring visual sequences.
  21. Birds of Paradise
    Birds of Paradise, then, settles into a weird, slightly unsettling middle-ground – beautiful yet hollow, intriguing yet distanced, skillfully performed without much of a beating heart. Like its principal dancers, its a portrait of contrasts, though the friction here doesn’t generate much heat.
  22. Ip Man 3
    Unassuming, likable entertainment.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Thing
    The menace of the dark polar night and the claustrophobic confines of the base are utilised to raise the fear, tension and paranoia to unbearable heights. This is a creature that doesn't just hide in the dark, but could be your friend, your colleague, or the girl beside you whose hand you are breaking in a terrified vice-like grip.
  24. India Sweets and Spices
    The impossibility of ever really knowing our parents is a familiar storyline, but it’s told here with real generosity and warmth. Malik slyly pokes fun, but never meanly. This is satire with the thermostat turned up to 22 degrees.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ocean's 11
    Ocean's Eleven is devoid of morality other than a dedication to honour among thieves; it's consistently funny in a way that invites appreciative smiles rather than loud laughter; it's exciting without bringing disagreeable sweat to the palms; it's engaging, but never does anything as vulgar as taking us out of ourselves.
  26. I Came By
    Bonneville’s performance will linger, the film not so much.
  27. The Woman in the Fifth
    This film has to be indulged a little, and you'll have to negotiate the stumbling block that is Hawke's stodgy, dodgy French accent.
  28. The World Is Not Enough
    Brosnan brings an intelligence and wit, together with a lightness, to the role - his softly Celtic vowels pleasingly reminiscent of Sean - along with a plausible virility Roger Moore never quite managed. And Pierce wears some beautifully tailored suits as to the manor born.
  29. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them
    While Benson treats his characters with care and respect, his depiction of grief can feel studied and not felt.
  30. The Hole
    With playful touches of Spielberg, Shyamalan and even Hitchcock, veteran director Joe Dante has confected a neat little scary movie, not explicitly violent, but pretty scary nonetheless.
  31. Dicks: The Musical
    Every second Mullally and Lane spend onscreen should be preserved in the library of Congress so that future generations of thespians might learn from their example.
  32. Bram Stoker's Dracula
    This Dracula isn’t from Coppola’s great 70s/80s period, but it has a melodramatic and operatic energy and draws on the look and feel of Hollywood’s pre-Code salaciousness and the silent movie madness of Nosferatu – though the expressionist shadows are blood-red, not black.
  33. And Their Children After Them
    Class and racial tensions come to the boil in this potent tale of disaffected youth in smalltown France.
  34. Me and You
    A slight but engaging two-hander.
  35. Roommates
    Roommates might not rival the fizzy, formative teen films it both references (Clueless) and often directly cribs from (Mean Girls) but it still belongs in a different league to what we’re mostly served right now. Could someone possibly tell that to Netflix?
  36. The Wedding Guest
    It has an intriguing premise and a gripping first act. But the ending fizzles when it should explode, giving us neither the twisty and suspenseful entertainment that it seemed to promise, nor the serious response to sexual politics in Pakistan that also seemed to be on offer.
  37. Antlers
    There’s probably a semi-decent creature feature here and maybe, with a hefty amount of redrafting, a semi-decent human drama but as it stands it fails at both, a satisfying, coherent film buried underneath copious amounts of animal guts.
  38. Road House
    You come to the Road House for a good time and some knuckle-cracking fights, and on that front, this film delivers, owing to some truly impressive stunt work, a fully convincing performance from Gyllenhaal in Southpaw form, and a crackling screen debut from UFC champ-cum-entertainer Conor McGregor.
  39. Space Jam
    Never was a film so candidly designed to sell products, but it has an archival interest.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Little Buddha
    Bertolucci has recently called himserf "an amateur Buddhist". But he is still very much a professional filmmaker and these two sides of him don't always match up. [08 May 1994, p.27]
    • The Guardian
  41. Heaven's Gate
    It is a demanding film, without a doubt – but a passionate one.
  42. Encounter
    It all adds up to less than we hoped, though Pearce’s direction is never less than confident.
  43. Pedro Páramo
    Strangely, given Prieto’s visual acumen, the film is also a bit bland visually, bar a flashy prologue kicked off by the camera sinking into the bowels of the earth. But the story has enough residual power to deliver a dark night of the Mexican soul nonetheless.
  44. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    Ficara and Requa have an irreverent streak, one that even might strike some as a little flippant against the gravity of the war.
  45. Chemical Hearts
    This elaborately contrived story feels as if it has been cobbled together from a dozen others, and it never escapes cliche.
  46. The Broken Hearts Gallery
    It is something of a letdown: a funny but conventional glossy romcom. But there is no messing with Viswanathan, who is undoubtedly the main attraction.
  47. Army of the Dead
    It’s all just one monumental splatterfest, where the zombies’ army of the dead face off against people who aren’t very alive, and all basically without jokes.
  48. How I Live Now
    A gooey love story is pitted against the end of the world. No wonder the romance comes up wanting.
  49. Our Kind of Traitor
    Director Susanna White favours a generic spy-movie look: those chilly blue filters surely need resting now. Yet she works smartly with her actors: while Skarsgård wolfs down great handfuls of scenery, McGregor effectuates a thoughtful transformation from ineffectual tourist to man in the field.
  50. Archenemy
    Small, imperfectly formed but quite entertaining all the same.
  51. Arcadian
    It’s an effective little thriller that knows the conventions and doesn’t stray too far from them.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    200 Motels
    Thankfully, Zappa was a far better composer than he was a movie director. Whereas the film, with its self-indulgent and incoherent celebrations of drink, drugs and groupies and its tiresomely scatological bent, was largely gale-force gibberish, its sprawling soundtrack, dissonant and atonal but rich in wit and humour, has aged surprisingly well.
  53. The Look of Love
    This is a shallow but watchable movie, and it nicely conveys the world of semi-respectable Soho porn, sadder and tattier than its sleazier end, with its desperate champagne lunches and dreary afternoon hangovers.
  54. I, Olga Hepnarová
    Even if you go into this film knowing absolutely nothing about the true story on which it’s based...you’ll sense something dreadful is going to happen because so much of it is crushingly dull.
  55. Simple Passion
    Dosch brings a wonderful humanity and sensitivity to the role.
  56. Instant Family
    Instant Family retains the obvious appeal of watching basically nice people attempt a fundamentally decent thing for a few hours. The shamelessly optimistic finale may even leave you with something in your eye, dammit.
  57. Extraction 2
    The first Extraction was entertaining enough but this new one is just cynically about extracting the cash.
  58. Land of Bad
    Despite quality performances from both leading lads, Land of Bad won’t exactly knock anyone’s socks off.
  59. Happy Death Day 2U
    An inevitable yet staggeringly unnecessary follow-up to the surprise horror hit turns a nifty concept into an exhaustingly convoluted mess.
  60. Shirley
    Shirley gets the job done, though I wish it was more worthy of her complexity.
  61. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
    We get the playfulness of seeing quirky magic powers mixed with the familiarity of how a time loop plays out. Add in Burton’s authorial visual stamp and what we’ve got is an extremely pleasing formula. It gels as Tim Burton’s best (non-musical) live-action movie for 20 years.
  62. Piranhas
    Giovannesi’s movie is watchable enough, but often looks like a smoothed-out, planed-down version of Garrone’s Gomorrah: Gomorrah without the rough edges, like a classy television version.
  63. Evil Dead
    It is nowhere near as creepy as the recent indie horror "V/H/S," but it is a full-bloodedly grisly and macabre film that zaps over a few scares.
  64. Thor: Love and Thunder
    The film is probably on its strongest ground with the most purely absurd touches.
  65. The Burnt Orange Heresy
    A sprightly and mischievous cameo from Mick Jagger is one reason to enjoy this movie.
  66. The Maze Runner
    The Maze Runner is not a good movie, but it wins points for omitting much of what makes typical teen films excruciating.
  67. Strange Weather
    Katherine Diekmann’s Strange Weather is a fairly simple melodrama, and one that could use a few reminders that it is better to show not tell. But as a showcase it’s a role that would fuel actors’ dreams.
  68. Klown Forever
    Klown Forever has even less of a plot than the first film, which is a bit of a problem.
  69. The Festival
    Very soon, O’Doherty will be the headline act in comedies like these, but this good-natured crowdpleaser generously lets her steal whole stretches.
  70. The Dive
    What follows is a race against the clock, cleverly constructed by director Maximilian Erlenwein and co-writer Joachim Hedén. Their script throws in plenty of calamities to nobble the diver’s escape, but didn’t quite manage – for me at least – to spark a vertiginous clammy terror.
  71. Another Day
    This is a very glib and unsatisfying drama, whose essential naivety becomes apparent when the lead character is forced to confront the crisis in her life.
  72. Our Friend
    While the screenwriter, Brad Ingelsby, does root us in the minutiae of the trio’s day-to-day, it’s never in particularly interesting ways, and over an indulgent 135-minute runtime, we gradually grow tired of them, often questioning exactly why we need to know so much about their lives.
  73. Days of the Bagnold Summer
    Here’s a movie that tells us that the days of summer, like the boys of summer in Don Henley’s song, are going to get outlived by the love they inspire. It’s what happens in this thoroughly sweet-natured, charming and unassuming British film.
  74. France
    Whatever its flaws, this movie provides fans of French star Léa Seydoux with a treat.
  75. Cold Pursuit
    Even without Liam Neeson’s bizarre promotional “rape revenge” anecdote, this violent movie would leave a weird taste in the mouth, lumbered as it is with odd sub-Coen, sub-Tarantino stylings.
  76. The House with a Clock in Its Walls
    It is reasonably inoffensive, a bit like the recent Goosebumps, in which Black played a comparably defanged role, but it looks as if it was produced by some computer programme, devised by accountants and market researchers.
  77. Dog Pound
    Perhaps this tells us nothing new about life on the inside in the US (there are rapes, riots and suicides), but it at least handles its brief with pace and precision.
  78. Mekong Hotel (2012)
    The ideas here were far more interestingly rehearsed in movies like Tropical Malady and his Palme-winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. A diverting footnote to the main body of work, no more than that.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    First Knight
    A somewhat double-edged Arthurian romance. There's a sharp side, with Sean Connery the noblest of kings, Julia Ormond an impressive Guinevere, and some genuinely epic imagery; on the blunt side, the tragedy is Camelot-via-Tinseltown: Richard Gere's Lancelot is far from convincing and the armour is just too shiny. [31 Dec 2005, p.49]
    • The Guardian
  80. Charlie Says
    It has none of the brilliance and insight of Emma Cline’s 2016 novel The Girls, on roughly the same subject.
  81. Tornado
    The pure strangeness of the movie commands attention and there is a charismatic lead performance by Japanese actor-musician Mitsuki Kimura, or Kôki.
  82. Snow White and the Huntsman
    The result is tangled and overblown.
  83. Finch
    An adorable trio pootle around a post-apocalyptic world in this sentimental sci-fi that curiously lacks any sense of danger.
  84. 1,000 Times Good Night
    Binoche's performance – tiresomely radiating a martyred integrity – is mannered and self-conscious, and her character's professional work is naively imagined.
  85. 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.
  86. The Perfect Find
    The Perfect Find is as much a tribute to Black love as it is a salute to the Roaring 20s – a fine romance to build a night in around. It meets the give-me-something-old-but-different Hollywood brief with style and wit, and takes care of anyone who might find family here.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Quiet One
    It would have been nice if he [the director] got meatier, or rarer, material from Wyman regarding what the film’s potential audience cares about most – the story of the Stones.
  88. Somebody I Used to Know
    This is an odd combination of broad semi-satirical humour and deeply serious hugging and learning.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl
    At times it really does feel a lot more like an SD card dump than an exercise in storytelling.
  90. The Dinner
    The sclerotic staginess of The Dinner means this is one to miss.
  91. Sting
    Sting, black with a lethal red stripe, is never silly looking, though some of horror references feel a bit obvious and fanboy-ish.
  92. Memoir of War
    Mélanie Thierry does her best in the lead as Duras, but her character is maddeningly flat and dull.
  93. Wrath of Man
    Ritchie mostly moves his mixed bag of pieces around the board with flair, showcasing his well-rehearsed knack for gnarly violence and chaos, giving us a sinewy B-movie that warrants a watch on a screen bigger than the one in our homes, another welcome shot of adrenaline for us and for the industry. I’m craving my next dose already.
  94. Jules
    This is a sentimental and folksy film, and the ending is a little garbled, but there is a gentleness and sweetness there, and Kingsley carries it off very well.
  95. The Ritual
    Spall is good casting in the lead: miserable, hangdog, humorous and scared, like a handsomer version of Josh Widdicombe. James-Collier is a fierce screen presence: some film-maker needs to find something more for him to do.
  96. Butterfly Jam
    Butterfly Jam is contrived, tonally uncertain, implausible and frankly plain silly in its underpowered kind of magic-unrealism, with some clunky secondhand Mean Streets mob-fraternal dialogue and pedantic ethnic-foodie cred, and elliptically positioning key scenes off camera for no obviously satisfying reason.
  97. Mama
    It has been converted into a proficient, machine-tooled horror flick, stuffed full of shocks and buttressed with back-story. Mama got so flabby the second time around.
  98. Them That Follow
    It’s competently made but utterly vacant, a forgettable indie fading fast.
  99. Burden
    This movie is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, with no shortage of cringeworthy moments and an uninteresting lead performance.
  100. Lost Girls & Love Hotels
    The film isn’t perfect, and there is a touch of orientalism about the obsessive-affair-with-Japanese-man trope (which surfaced also in Wash Westmoreland’s The Earthquake Bird in 2019). But there is also something well controlled in the movie as it maintains its cool, even pace and Alexandra Daddario’s performance as the vulnerable, secretive yet emotionally open Margaret is smart.
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