The Guardian's Scores

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For 6,573 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 2.3 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: 2,491 out of 6573
  2. Mixed: 3,763 out of 6573
  3. Negative: 319 out of 6573
6573 movie reviews
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  1. Francofonia
    Francofonia is a fascinating essay and meditation on art, history and humanity’s idea of itself.
  2. The Forbidden Room
    Maddin’s zeal for old cameras and stocks is matched only by his revelry in evoking an entire genre with a single image. The film’s apogee literally opens up The Book of Climax in a sequence of pure, knowing cinematic joy. Film-lovers, this ludicrous movie is for you.
  3. Evolution
    It’s a quiet, deliberately paced film, but exquisitely shot, with nuanced performances and visual invention.
  4. 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.
  5. Stonewall
    An outrageously misjudged drama that flirts with the story of the birth of the gay rights movement.
  6. The Man Who Saved the World
    Sergey Shnyryov is superb as Petrov’s fictional counterpart, and the present and the past are smoothly sutured together by deft editing and an insistently mournful string score, although it’s sometimes a bit repetitive.
  7. Miss You Already
    Collette is a potent, unsentimental presence and Hardwicke and Banks know how to connect with the audience.
  8. Maggie's Plan
    It’s unpredictable and a bit of a mess. And that’s what makes Maggie’s Plan such a delight.
  9. Trumbo
    [Jay Roach] wants the film to be fun, while the story is serious. It’s a good idea and an admirable intention. But it does suffer the odd wobble.
  10. Truth
    As high-class cheese goes, Truth slips down fine. It’s a noisy, one-note rally for the converted that gets your pulse racing even if you’re rolling your eyes.
  11. The Visit
    This tardy rehash of fairytale tropes finds sometime genre innovator M Night Shyamalan clinging in abject desperation to the found-footage movement’s careworn coattails.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Rams
    Rams is as curiously captivating as the bleak landscape in which the two protagonists site themselves.
  13. High-Rise
    Wheatley has made High Rise his story, instead of Ballard’s. That’s fine – but, unfortunately, it’s a less interesting take.
  14. He Named Me Malala
    Guggenheim largely dodges lodging her story within a greater political context; a choice, but a shame, for when he does, the movie gains tension.
  15. Freeheld
    A film that should feel urgent and of its time, but instead is rendered cliched and dull by Sollet’s amateurish handling of the material.
  16. The Program
    It’s a fluid and nippy telling of a tale that still seems strangely urgent.
  17. The Dressmaker
    The film is a tonally uneven, genre-shifting hurricane of a thing, wildly careering off the rails and smashing into everything in its view.
  18. The Family Fang
    Saturation point when it comes to quirkily dysfunctional families in over-soundtracked dramedies was reached long ago.
  19. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
    This film is making a wheezing, spluttering sound: the sound of a profitable YA franchise running out of steam.
  20. 3 Generations
    The script is sensitively handled and it’s unarguable that showcasing stories such as this is an important way of educating the masses about a difficult process. But while it’s hard to hate, it’s even harder to like.
  21. Eye in the Sky
    Eye in the Sky aims to thrill and covertly manages to inform simultaneously.
  22. Equals
    Equals doesn’t really work as either a plausible attempt at rendering some sort of future society, nor as a really convincing thwarted-love story.
  23. A Bigger Splash
    As with I Am Love, Guadagnino has put together something utterly distinctive here, a cocktail of intense emotions, transcendent surroundings and unexpected detours. A real pleasure.
  24. Anomalisa
    Anomalisa is a movie with wit to burn (look out for the Sarah Brightman line and the meeting room pit) and enough incidental touches that the total achievement feels immense.
  25. Our Brand Is Crisis
    The film is in need of an edge that Peter Straughan’s screenplay fails to deliver.... Yet Sandra Bullock seems blissfully unaware of the film’s faults and delivers a performance that expertly plays on her strengths.
  26. Pixels
    Pixels is a casually sexist, awkwardly structured, bro-centric comedy, starring some of Sandler’s buddies. The only difference this time is that state-of-the-art CGI has been added to the mix.
  27. Listen to Me Marlon
    Director Steven Riley’s film is a fascinating collage which profoundly probes its subject’s psyche.
  28. Victoria
    Despite the strong performances, it’s Schipper’s single-shot conceit - and the fact that he and his team pulled it off with aplomb - that makes Victoria such a bracing triumph. While the entire enterprise is inarguably a stunt, Victoria manages to overwhelm in ways that few films do.
  29. The Martian
    A wide-eyed tribute to human ingenuity that packs enough snark to pull itself out of the black hole of earnestness, even if its fuel runs out partway through.
  30. Where to Invade Next
    Where to Invade Next is a romantic film, equally affecting and annoying in its simplicity.
  31. Demolition
    A frustratingly aimless soul-search that veers uncomfortably between quirk and melancholy.
  32. I Smile Back
    This is a case of good acting saving a movie from its own poor choices.
  33. Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision
    It is superlatively well performed and well directed with a real narrative grip.
  34. 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.
  35. Steve Jobs
    Sorkin’s heavily heightened sense of drama works best when the stakes are equally aligned but, despite the film constantly informing you of just how incredibly important everything all is, it’s disappointingly difficult to truly care about what’s taking place.
  36. Room
    There are some plausibility issues in Room, but this is a disturbing and absorbing film, shrewdly acted, particularly by Larson. It lets the audience in; it does not just let the nightmare stun them into submission. You make a real emotional engagement.
  37. Wolf Totem
    Annaud’s film can’t help itself galloping off in allegorical bursts barely under his control, and intriguingly off-course from the kind of bold messages of national conciliation officially sanctioned Chinese films tend to convey.
  38. The Danish Girl
    Well-meaning and polished as it is, The Danish Girl is a determinedly mainstream melodrama that doesn’t really offer new perspectives on its theme.
  39. Black Mass
    Scott Cooper’s Black Mass is a big, brash, horribly watchable gangster picture taken from an extraordinary true story and conceived on familiar generic lines.
  40. Legend
    It’s a disappointingly shallow take on a fascinating period of time and leaves us sorely uninformed, as if we’ve skim-read a pamphlet. The legend might live on but Legend certainly won’t.
  41. Spotlight
    Spotlight never hits the heights of passion, but capably and decently tells an important story.
  42. Beasts of No Nation
    Fukunaga brings flair, muscular storytelling, directness and a persuasively epic sweep to this brutal, heartrending movie.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Walk in the Woods
    A Walk in the Woods is certainly no Butch Cassidy, but it is interesting to check in with these two still-compelling codgers.
  44. Everest
    Everest is a frustrating movie in many ways – despite some lurches and shocks, it doesn’t quite deliver the edge-of-your-seat thrills that many were hoping for, and all those moderately engaging characters mean that there is no centrally powerful character.
  45. War Room
    One can always keep praying that the next of these films will be a little better.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Welcome to Leith
    It is as well-balanced and observed a documentary as there is, even if no sane human being could side with Cobb and his people.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Finders Keepers
    Finders Keepers pays as much attention to the comedy of the story as the humanity. What could easily be a silly saga or a simple indictment of the culture of fame becomes something diabolically more insightful and uplifting.
  48. The Golden Dream
    It's a tough, absorbing and suspenseful drama, excellently acted by its three non-professional leads.
  49. The Mend
    Many a first-time film-maker thinks they are too good to follow any sort of rules, and blends genres by writing from a purely instinctual level. More often than not, the result is unpalatable. The Mend, somewhat miraculously, is here to buck the trend. Let’s just hope that not too many people decide to follow its lead.
  50. Jafar Panahi's Taxi
    Taxi grew on me. It is not as angry and painful as his previous work, the samizdat This Is Not a Film, but it is subtle, humorous and humane. It tells you more about modern Iran, I think, than you’ll discover on the news.
  51. Station to Station
    The artists’ blathering about the creative process and the nature of existence gets monotonous. It’s the ordinary folk that keep the film on-track.
  52. Hitman: Agent 47
    This vaguely science-fiction action picture based on a video game (and not a sequel to 2007’s Hitman) is an idiotic mess with a bafflingly dense prologue, an endless final battle, lifeless performances and anticlimactic twists, but it does have a degree of visual flair.
  53. American Ultra
    Unfortunately both Eisenberg and Stewart, both frequently brilliant, are on unsure footing here. The movie simply doesn't know if it wants to be Jason Bourne or Cheech and Chong.
  54. Learning to Drive
    [A] touching, insightful and, at the end of the day, extremely well-meaning film.
  55. Tom at the Farm
    The psychological thriller form has imposed on Dolan some discipline, and brought out his talent and energy.
  56. The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
    There’s some nice early-60s period production design and the whole thing moves along smoothly, if unhurriedly. But it never delivers anything like the punch of Tom Cruise’s M:I adventures, nor the wit and distinctiveness of 007.
  57. The Gift
    The debutant director applies himself with the same quiet assurance and attention to detail he’s displayed in his acting projects.
  58. The Falling
    This is terrific film-making – enough to bring a rush of blood to the head.
  59. Fantastic Four
    The cast are some of the most promising actors of their generation, but what chemistry there is between them is swept away by wave after wave of expository dialogue and ludicrous exclamation.
  60. Ricki and the Flash
    Ricki and the Flash’s emotional intensity creeps up on you, and it’s all due to the performances. Everyone’s sympathetic, everyone’s got depth.
  61. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
    It's solid entertainment.
  62. Straight Outta Compton
    The first half of Straight Outta Compton, F Gary Gray’s two-and-a-half hour opus about the birth of west coast gangsta rap, is bursting with energy, exuberance and inspiration. The second half is immobilised by bloat and sanctification.
  63. The Kindergarten Teacher
    One of the most fascinating, if inscrutable films of the year.
  64. A Brilliant Young Mind
    This is an attractively unparochial drama with a bracing interest in excellence.
  65. The Seventh Dwarf
    The script balances kiddie-friendly winsomeness and knowing winks for grownups, and is more tightly constructed than you’d expect, with even fleeting throwaway gags delivering plot payoffs later on.
  66. Vacation
    Helms, a funny performer, is just the face of a mining expedition for easy yuks out of a recognised title. What that says about our regurgitative culture is rather depressing. There’s so much nostalgia on our screens right now. I could really use a vacation.
  67. Zipper
    What’s ultimately frustrating about Zipper is that it seems like it has something important to say about infidelity and the sex industry, but can’t decide what that should be.
  68. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
    A sequel that is slick with silliness, but peppered with enough wit and peril to sustain the franchise’s momentum.
  69. Paper Towns
    The best parts of Paper Towns are also the best part of being young – just hanging out doing nothing with friends who know you too well to allow for any lies.
  70. A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile
    Bagaria’s personal journey has none of the gravitas on screen that the director wants it to have, especially when set against the backdrop of actual human rights crises in Damascus.
  71. Samba
    It is refreshing that this story does not simply unravel into miserablism, but the film’s weird narrative leaps are implausible and jarring.
  72. Phoenix
    It’s a testament to Petzold’s sane head, steady hand and effortless storytelling skill that implausible plot-points are smuggled past us in their own blood-soaked bandages.
  73. That Sugar Film
    Garneau with his Smeg fridge and smug affect grows more irksome over the course. Moreover, engagement with issues around poverty, capitalism and public policy kicks in a bit too late.
  74. Partisan
    You’re never sure what the characters are capable of achieving and the bottled-up energy that comes out of that feeling runs throughout.
  75. Gabriel
    Howe’s film is drenched in empathy, where violent actions aren’t exactly excused, but at least framed with understanding.
  76. Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor
    The result may honour the daily reality of medical professionals – the finale’s a credibly fractious staff meeting – but it makes for a patchy, hesitant dispatch, more “er …” than ER.
  77. Trainwreck
    While there are things to quibble with, there is also so much to like, and Trainwreck is still an important film. The romantic comedy, which it ultimately becomes, has been a dying genre of late, and Schumer’s effort, while flawed, is a reminder of what can make the genre so likable
  78. Ant-Man
    Ant-Man is a cut-and-shut muddle, haunted by a ghost, produced by a high-end hot dog factory, by turns giddying and stupefying. Watching it is like channel-surfing between "Hot Fuzz", a duff early 90s Michael Douglas drama and the very schlockiest bits of "Interstellar".
  79. What We Did on Our Holiday
    It’s impossible not to enjoy this big-hearted and sweet-natured British family movie.
  80. Stations of the Cross
    It is all intensely controlled, although this is a drama that goes by the book, in all senses; there are no unabsorbed events to disorder the parable’s secular/religious alignment, and the Greeneian miracle it eventually conjures is arguably a little too pat. Yet it is also strangely moving.
  81. Self/less
    Ryan Reynolds does the best he can with the material.... But any intelligence is tossed once we get mired in a series of dull chase scenes.
  82. Terminator Genisys
    Salvation was boring, but Genisys makes you sad. Risk-averse Hollywood has made a crash-test dummy of a once great franchise, simply throwing everything at it to see what it stands.
  83. Magic Mike XXL
    We’re always waiting for something important or interesting to happen, but it never really does.
  84. The New Girlfriend
    The tone wavers between psychological thriller and absurdist melodrama, and perhaps suffers for not settling on either, but it’s grounded by two terrific leads.
  85. Any Body Can Dance 2
    ABCD2 is the latest film to recognise that – however you gender your gaze – there is an abiding pleasure in watching bodies in motion, and choreographer-turned-director Remo d’Souza keeps nudging more of them on.
  86. Ted 2
    The Ted franchise is perhaps unstoppable if MacFarlane sets his sights a bit lower, finds a way to streamline the plot mechanics and just give moviegoers what they never knew they wanted: time hanging out with a foul-mouthed anthropomorphised soft toy.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets
    Davis’s parents have called for stricter gun control laws in the wake of their son’s death. Silver has provided them with a powerful tool for their cause in this shocking, moving and relatively unbiased account of the tragedy.
  88. Hamari Adhuri Kahaani
    Suri is also testing the modern audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief, and the material he’s working with here – unfolding the happenstance-heavy mystery of a woman at the mercy of the men around her – proves barely fit for this purpose, or any other.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Grandma
    Grandma is fun and brisk, though sometimes the encounters seem a little pat, and Elle’s grief about the death of her partner a year earlier is way overdone.
  90. Jurassic World
    A terrifically enjoyable and exciting summer spectacular: savvy, funny, ridiculous in just the right way, with some smart imaginative twists.
  91. Alléluia
    Fabrice du Welz's serial-murder jolly doesn't quite dramatically press its central relationship enough to prevent the film from devolving at the last into a default bloodbath. But it's disturbingly credible for a long time.
  92. United Passions
    Even without the current headlines, United Passions is a disgrace. It’s less a movie than preposterous self-hagiography, more appropriate for Scientology or the Rev Sun Myung Moon. As cinema it is excrement. As proof of corporate insanity it is a valuable case study.
  93. Entourage
    Entourage is like an enthusiastic puppy, slightly tipsy on beer, humping on a stripper’s leg, but desperate to please nonetheless. It is a film designed to be liked – which makes it hard to hate.
  94. Results
    Although not as strikingly original as Bujalski’s earlier work, there’s something endearing about the characters, the film’s laconic, stoner rhythms and quirky plotting. In the end, it has something wise and kind to say about loneliness and the cult of personal improvement.
  95. Chronic
    Tim Roth is excellent as David: impassive and enigmatic, withholding the truth about himself, but radiating in repose a sadness and a swallowed pain.
  96. The Assassin
    The movie is a distillation of the assassin’s life of watchfulness, survival and fear. At other times, it has a dreamlike quality: a floating hallucination. The Assassin baffles, but more often it quietly captivates and astonishes.
  97. Yakuza Apocalypse
    For all its berserk energy, you will need a very particular sense of humour not to lose patience with the prolific Takashi Miike’s latest.
  98. Son of Saul
    By any standards, this would be an outstanding film, but for a debut it is remarkable.
  99. Mountains May Depart
    The pure work-in-progress energy of all this is exhilarating, and if the resulting movie is flawed in its final act, then this is a flaw born of Jia’s heroic refusal to be content making the same sort of movie, and his insistence on trying to do something new with cinema and with storytelling.
  100. Macbeth
    There is a lot of sound and fury in this Macbeth, but not without meaning. It’s not perhaps a very subtle version, and I felt that Kurzel should have perhaps worked more closely with Fassbender with the contours of his speeches, and shown the painful mind-changing and nerve-losing in the early stages. There is an operatic verve.
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