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. Thelma
    Squibb is however really good: no other casting is conceivable, and it is good to see her get the lead turn she deserves.
  2. June
    This is a respectful film, but it does pick a little at the myth of the Johnny’n’June love story.
  3. Kneecap
    The film really comes to life in the actual hip-hop scenes; the musical sequences have originality, comedy and freedom. The rest of the time, the film looks worryingly like a late 90s-early 00s cool Britannia geezer-gangster romp.
  4. Rob Peace
    Rob is turned from stereotype to person, thanks to Will’s incredible work and Ejiofor’s unwavering commitment to capturing a full life, supported by Rob’s mother off screen. It’s an involving yet troubling tribute.
  5. Layla
    It’s carried by a winning performance from Hasna.
  6. Sujo
    A strongly intended and conceived film, but without the passion of the earlier work.
  7. 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.
  8. Monkey Man
    If you have the stomach for singularly focused revenge and some truly graphic, visceral hand-to-hand combat, Monkey Man delivers the goods.
  9. Sleeping Dogs
    This is certainly not a crime thriller in the dourly realistic “cold case” vein; it is outrageously over-the-top at all times, with crazy and almost dreamlike convolutions of plot, and yet its silliness is enjoyably dramatised.
  10. The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
    As another one of the director’s mid-budget, mid-level crowd-pleasers, it mostly works – well-made enough to distract in the moment but not quite enough to last in the many after, unlikely to catapult him to the top or sink him to the bottom.
  11. Shirley
    Shirley gets the job done, though I wish it was more worthy of her complexity.
  12. Unfrosted
    As a whole, it’s not exactly a masterpiece, but amiable and funny in a way that’s much harder to achieve than it looks.
  13. 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.
  14. The Union
    The mood is light, the stunts impressive and, mercifully, the film is not nearly as cheap-looking nor dull as Netflix brethren such as The Man from Toronto or Lift.
  15. Trigger Warning
    Alba hasn’t always made the strongest impression as an actor but this mode works well for her, convincing both in her many hand-to-hand combat scenes (her weapon of choice is a knife rather than a gun) and as an old-fashioned movie star, light on emotional depth but heavy on charisma.
  16. Cuckoo
    But as effective as the film might be in the moment, Singer’s increasingly sloppy plotting starts to get in the way of the bigger picture by the frantic last act, which is both strangely filled with exposition info dumps yet still lacking in much sense.
  17. Joy
    It’s a somewhat stagey reconstruction but an approachable and humane account of a great moment in scientific history.
  18. Lonely Planet
    It’s better, more grounded and self-aware than expected, enough to overcome the cliches and occasionally clunky dialogue. It’s a mostly enjoyable addition to the welcome sub-genre about 40-plus, desiring women as considered, desirable subjects.
  19. Meet Me Next Christmas
    It exists in Netflix festive movie world, an ever-expanding place of ever-diminishing returns, and while this won’t be a film someone would consider returning to next Christmas, it’ll just about do for now.
  20. The Piano Lesson
    The ensemble cast work wonderfully and intuitively together; I loved the surges of emotion, and then the palate-cleansing moments of silence and calm. The song is a tremendous setpiece and the dialogue has a music of its own.
  21. Suspended Time
    It’s a movie which reminds us that for all the anxieties, this period of enforced inactivity was for grownups of a certain age and financial security not entirely unpleasant – a reminder of the endless, aimless summer days of childhood, an Edenic existence outside time which workaholic media professionals thought never to see again. A kind of miracle.
  22. Hard Miles
    I warmed to its sensitivity; it possesses an insistence that these difficult boys are vulnerable and scared kids (undermined only slightly by the fact that the actors playing them look well into their 20s).
  23. LaRoy, Texas
    If Atkinson isn’t quite the Coen inheritor he aspires to be, this hectic flurry of schemers, snatchers and low-lifes puts him three-quarters of the way to inventing a new genre: Texan noir farce.
  24. Arcadian
    It’s an effective little thriller that knows the conventions and doesn’t stray too far from them.
  25. Silver Haze
    Silver Haze is a sombre, thoughtful film about depression and what is (and isn’t) likely to promote emotional healing, performed with openness and honesty.
  26. Y2K
    Mooney and Winter’s horror comedy may be all over the place, and unserious to its own detriment, but at least they commit to the bit.
  27. Sting
    Sting, black with a lethal red stripe, is never silly looking, though some of horror references feel a bit obvious and fanboy-ish.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Boston Strangler
    Harrowing, low-key dramatisation of the serial killer's reign of terror in Boston in the early 1960s. [07 Aug 2004, p.53]
    • The Guardian
  29. Food, Inc. 2
    Like I say, there’s nothing new here for even casual followers of the food crisis. But it will make you think twice about what you put in your supermarket basket.
  30. Bob Trevino Likes It
    To knock its sentimental failings would be like kicking a puppy – and there are actual puppies in the film just to ensure it snags the heartstrings. Resistance is futile.
  31. Timestalker
    The throwaway gags and throwaway ideas reminded me pleasantly of the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore comedy Bedazzled from 1967. Lowe’s comedy has bite.
  32. The Uninvited
    We’re invited to laugh at the characters gently but The Uninvited never goes for all-out satire and is all the better for it, even if the last act is overly neat.
  33. Turtles All the Way Down
    The successes are in large part owed to Merced’s sensitive, grounded performance, her open face able to pass amusement, anxiety, self-loathing vitriol, panic attack and relief like quicksand. Her performance alone can absorb the film’s rougher edges, vaguer lines and dramatic whiffs, especially when assisted by a strikingly natural Cree.
  34. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
    The film is watchable and barrels along capably enough, but perhaps there isn’t enough of the humanity, humour and extravagant space melodrama which has made and continues to make Star Wars lovable.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Beach Boys
    Perhaps the last 48 years are omitted for reasons of space. The film would need to be twice as long to cover them, and the second half would feel more like a particularly lurid soap opera than a music documentary. But it seems more likely it’s out of a desire to append a happy ending on to a story that doesn’t really have one.
  36. The Phoenician Scheme
    It is always entertaining, and delivered with the usual conviction and force but with less of the romantic extravagance than we’ve seen before, less of the childlike loneliness that has been detectable in his greatest movies.
  37. Damaged
    Damaged isn’t trying to be a meme, it’s playing things completely straight, and trying to be a serious police procedural in the vein of 90s thrillers such as Se7en or Primal Fear. That sincerity, and the apparent genuine commitment of top-tier performers like Jackson, is what makes this ripely absurd film at least half-worth watching.
  38. A Forgotten Man
    This is a watchable, if somewhat stagey film, and these jump-scare visions, leaping out of the ambassador’s tormented subconscious, might have worked better in the theatre.
  39. Seize Them!
    There’s a mega-helping of daftness, silliness and goofiness in this wacky British comedy of Ye Olden Medieval Dayes from screenwriter Andy Riley and director Curtis Vowell.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Slow
    Elena and Dovydas’s relationship unfolds at a gentle, unhurried pace, their growing attraction indicated by small details – coy glances, long, loaded pauses between conversation – that reward attentive viewing.
  41. 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.
  42. The Final: Attack on Wembley
    Attack on Wembley does convincingly convey the ugly, feral atmosphere around the stadium that day.
  43. You're Cordially Invited
    The real win here is watching Witherspoon and Ferrell show off, both unrestrained by a harder rating and a more raucous script than the norm and while their escalation of bad behaviour might not be quite as bad as it could have been, they both make for wonderfully petty antiheroes.
  44. Wild Diamond
    Khebizi gives a heartfelt performance.
  45. The Way, My Way
    The Way, My Way is hardly riveting viewing – but its softly inquisitive, life-affirming spirit is hard to hate.
  46. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
    While it’s such an intriguing idea, an almost absurdist scrutiny of what avoidance looks like and how families choreograph their collective denial, there is something a little bit contrived in it and, though always engaged, I found myself longing for some outright passion or rage or confrontation.
  47. When the Light Breaks
    The two women’s scenes together give the film its most interesting moments.
  48. Emilia Pérez
    Audiard brings his usual ambition and sweep, energy and attack; although I wondered at certain points if the musical numbers functioned at some level as an alibi, to pre-empt objections about being the film being contrived.
  49. M3GAN 2.0
    It doesn’t always work – a two-hour runtime that’s a little too long, world-saving stakes that are a little too big, funny lines that are a little too not funny – but it’s a mostly watchable second-tier event movie that, in a world of inconsequential sequels that fail to justify their existence, will do.
  50. Flight Risk
    The film is, of course, very silly, but diverting and ingenious, and contains game performances from Wahlberg, Dockery and Grace.
  51. Rumours
    A droll account of the world’s whimpering end.
  52. The Count of Monte Cristo
    The pay-off is a fast-moving, good-looking gallop of Mission: Impossible-style mask play, languorous conniving in courtyards and occasional outbreaks of derring-do that chews up three hours without pausing for quail sandwiches.
  53. The Other Way Around
    Afterwards, everyone smiles reassuringly – then one man pipes up: “Don’t take this the wrong way, but …” and a begins a pretentious intellectual takedown. Like the film it’s a funny-smart moment, witty and grownup.
  54. Wolfs
    The film itself never amounts to much more than a silly, self-satisfied crime caper, but the headline stars look as though they are enjoying themselves and their sense of fun, by and large, is infectious.
  55. The Nature of Love
    The fussy visual style that keeps drawing attention to itself does its best to prevent us from becoming absorbed in this tempestuous romance.
  56. Bugonia
    Yorgos Lanthimos’s macabre and amusing new film has a predictably strong performance from Emma Stone, an intestine-shreddingly clamorous orchestral score from Jerskin Fendrix and, most importantly, a wonderful montage finale – but frankly it’s a very, very long run-up to that big jump.
  57. Lumberjack the Monster
    Like so many Miike films, this is a firework display of strangeness, alienation and nihilism. It’s quite a spectacle.
  58. It Ends with Us
    The life lessons being taught here about self-acceptance, self-love and self-worth might be a little pat and some of the darker elements could have afforded a tad more darkness, but It Ends with Us leads with heart first, everything else later. It’s a film of huge, sometimes hugely unsubtle, emotion but it has an effectively forceful sweep to it.
  59. 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.
  60. Faye
    Faye isn’t an exposé. It’s a misty-eyed homage made in collaboration with its subject – and one that relies too heavily on allusion and inference to be truly candid or revelatory.
  61. The Damned
    While it may have more punch as chilly horror-drama than allegory, it’s a decently put together film.
  62. Apocalypse Clown
    Director George Kane keeps the energy up throughout, helped along by a game-for-it cast that know exactly how to pitch the material.
  63. Despicable Me 4
    It isn’t a masterpiece, and no one needs Despicable Me 5, but being unassumingly enjoyable isn’t easy.
  64. blur: To the End
    Throughout the film, the band remain affable company.
  65. Smile 2
    As stylishly made as these films might be, there’s still not enough of a distinctive identity away from its inspirations and not enough away from the (very loud) sound and fury to give us hope that this is a story worth retelling time and time again.
  66. The Front Room
    The Front Room does capture one delicious, rich truth: hell hath no fury like a mother-in-law scorned.
  67. The Sheep Detectives
    The film scoots smartly past the death and brings us briskly on to the entertaining business of sheep-oriented crime detection. It’s all very silly, although, as with Babe, I have to confess to agnosticism about digital talking animals, even if the technology here is next-level. It’s an entertaining tale of ovine law enforcement.
  68. Place of Bones
    It’s pretty evident that this is a fairly low-budget film, with that faint sense of hired costumes about the western gear. But it’s entertaining enough and keeps you guessing.
  69. Wilding
    Knepp is a heartwarming speck of biodiversity good news among the depressing headlines.
  70. Heretic
    Heretic might not be good clean fun but Grant makes it worth us getting dirty.
  71. Here
    The dreamy quirkiness keeps you watching and the folksy warmth of performances from Tom Hanks and Robin Wright encourage you to cut it some slack.
  72. Skincare
    Skincare is a worthy contribution to the growing microgenre of female-led beauty-themed horror, and some of us out here are ready for more.
  73. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
    The film is very silly and always watchable in its weird way.
  74. The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie
    It never provokes full-on out loud laughs, but there are wry chuckles to be had and the ferocity of the execution is pretty fun.
  75. Only the River Flows
    This film is an intriguing and well-made diversion, a puzzle whose missing pieces make a disquieting pattern.
  76. Unicorns
    Co-directing Unicorns with James Krishna Floyd (the star of My Brother the Devil), who wrote the script, El Hosaini brings a streak of hopefulness to gritty social realism, with the added attraction of superstar drag queens.
  77. Swan Song
    By the end, ballet as practised here does indeed look a bit punk rock.
  78. We Live in Time
    I felt that the film was evasive about the uncinematic reality of what serious illness and death actually looks like, and the final choice is too simplistic. But the film is still something to see, if only for the marvellous performances from Garfield and Pugh.
  79. Hounds
    The film is perhaps flawed by its ending, which loses a bit of narrative momentum and insists too strenuously on the metaphorical properties, but there is a tang of real evil in the story’s chaos and its final image.
  80. Never Let Go
    [Aja's] never quite sure if he wants to trick us with a jump scare or make us ponder weightier issues and, unable to do both efficiently, the film becomes lost in the murk in-between. Berry is, as ever, a strong anchor but by the time the credits roll, we’re ready to let go.
  81. Bonus Track
    It’s an entertaining and sympathetic movie, if a bit route one, and audiences might possibly feel that TV shows like Sex Education and Heartstopper go a bit further and with more contemporary nous. But nice performances from Anders and Small bolster this movie’s likability factor.
  82. Hell Hole
    Existing as a labour of love isn’t enough by itself to earn any film a pass mark, but when the result is a committed piece of indie genre work with a suitably silly sense of the macabre, this gets the job done.
  83. The Killer
    It humbly presents the optional but delightful spectacle of watching John Woo have fun again.
  84. Coup!
    The film is fun, broad and exuberant, like a primetime Marxist sitcom, although it does feel indebted to a number of recent, better films around the same theme.
  85. Bookworm
    This is a shameless heartstring plucker. But it’s charming and sometimes very funny.
  86. Black Bag
    Steven Soderbergh’s downbeat, affectless tongue-in-cheek spy comedy (“caper” isn’t quite right) is in this new mode, though taking itself to the edge of self-satire, with a few 007 refugees in the cast, efficiently scripted by David Koepp.
  87. The Thicket
    It is an odd, mostly compelling yarn, and acted with gusto and shot with real physical commitment to the wide open spaces and raw chill of the elements.
  88. Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie
    It’s all manically enjoyable, especially for the core demographic (my seven-year-old niece said she would give the film four stars). For general viewers, it may not pack as much of an emotional punch, but like SpongeBob himself, it’s thoroughly absorbing.
  89. Transformers One
    Breezy, comically self-referential and totally likable. But its charms nevertheless feel like they came off an assembly line – one that has been engineered to deliver Marvel-like results, in animated form of course.
  90. The 4:30 Movie
    By far the best thing in the film is Ken Jeong as the theatre manager, preening and ridiculous, dispensing putdowns with surgically precise comic timing.
  91. Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes
    However partial, though, and however little new material it has to offer, even for the amateur fan like me, the film remains a heady treat. Because it is about Elizabeth Taylor. They don’t make them like they used to – and they probably never will again.
  92. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
    Much of that war is waged with a combination of fists, feet, blades and assorted ironmongery; people are routinely hurled through walls, thrown off rooftops and otherwise beaten to a pulp, and the athleticism and fight choreography is impressive, even if the action is edited so frenetically that it’s almost impossible to follow.
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