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. My Salinger Year
    [A] bafflingly insipid, zestless, derivative film.
  2. As I Lay Dying
    Franco's As I Lay Dying is a worthwhile movie, approached in an intelligent and creative spirit. The ensemble work from the actors is generally very strong, with a star turn from Nelson as the prematurely aged patriarch, and the story is presented lucidly and confidently.
  3. Burn Your Maps
    We can debate if Burn Your Maps merely fetishises a different culture or holds it in true reverence, but I’d like to give it the benefit of the doubt. If nothing else, the performances are terrific all around.
  4. Now You See Me
    Overcooked, overcomplicated and underinteresting, this heist caper turns into a mess.
  5. Witchboard
    Much less convincing are the shots involving a malevolent maine coon that attacks a drug dealer and turns into a blur of fake cat and visual effects. But the moment is so gloriously cheesy and ridiculous that on its own it almost makes this something worth paying for.
  6. The American Society of Magical Negroes
    At its best, the film skewers the potentially eye-rolling concept of white fragility with visual panache and wit.
  7. iBoy
    For me the superpower idea can only work with humour and lightness of touch: and there is a persistent and disconcerting joylessness about this.
  8. Another Mother's Son
    A decent, heartfelt, robustly presented drama.
  9. The Vault
    There’s a reasonable premise to this horror-thriller, but also something straight-to-rental about the look and feel of the whole thing.
  10. Line of Duty
    It’s amiable, but the real action thrills and the chemistry between the leads isn’t there.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Magical Mystery Tour
    The film is a deliberate parody of mass communication so it parodies the techniques.
  12. Nobody's Hero
    The film stands or falls by its claims to deadpan comedy – but this is heavy-handed and unsatisfying.
  13. Street Trash
    Tedious stretches of vulgar banter are interspersed with equally dull interludes during which people melt. Then it finally gets resolved after 85 very long minutes.
  14. Elles
    Binoche rises above the lubricious material by giving a thoroughly detailed and committed performance as the journalist.
  15. The Greatest Hits
    Even the fantastical elements don’t make that much sense, magic with rules that are loose and undefined, leaving us with an eye-roll of an ending we can see from a mile away.
  16. The Purge: Anarchy
    The franchise is a low-risk work-in-progress, but DeMonaco is improving as a shotmaker.
  17. Blonde
    Well, there’s no doubting that de Armas gives this everything she’s got and that is a very great deal, an expert analogue performance digitally deepfaked into various hallucinations. . . . Her performance is great; the film itself is self-satisfied and incurious.
  18. The NeverEnding Story
    There’s no doubt of the rousing urgency and terrific design of this likable movie, and the scene where Atreyu’s beloved horse Artax begins to sink into the swamp is absolutely gripping.
  19. Against the Ice
    Against the Ice is a Danish story flattened for a global audience.
  20. Things Heard & Seen
    Berman and Pulcini bank on suspense, despite a queasy inevitability being the strongest thing this retread of the familiar has going for it.
  21. Black Christmas
    It’s an unwieldy and messy thing, drearily directed and boringly written, taking its agenda seriously yet not providing a robust enough framework to surround it.
  22. Wilson
    As things go bad for Wilson, the movie, unfortunately, loses a considerable amount of steam as well.
  23. Don't Let Go
    Even with an intelligent, credible performance by David Oyelowo, the daftness and utter implausibility of a smartphone so smart it can make calls to the future is overwhelming.
  24. The Life List
    The word “messy” is bandied around by its characters but The Life List is far too clean.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Devils
    There is much to irritate in the film, but it's bold, individual and a landmark in British cinema, with outstanding performances.
  26. Starbuck
    Almost all the charm of the real story is lost through the contrivances and overacting.
  27. Federer: Twelve Final Days
    The tears of Roger Federer, along with the tears of Rafael Nadal and even the tears of Novak Djokovic, are what finally give some point to what is otherwise a pretty bland, officially sanctioned corporate promo for the Federer brand.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    None But the Brave
    The anti-war sentiment is overplayed, but it's a good gritty war drama for all that. [08 Oct 2005, p.53]
    • The Guardian
  29. Georgetown
    Curiously flat ... From the opening few frames through to a clunky introductory sequence, there’s something frustratingly off-balance about Georgetown.
  30. Demolition
    A frustratingly aimless soul-search that veers uncomfortably between quirk and melancholy.
  31. Vacation Friends
    The base ingredients are here – a charming, comically adept cast, a fun culture clash set-up, idyllic scenery! – but they’re carelessly tossed together rather than combined with any thought, care or even slickness.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Great Balls of Fire!
    If you're determined to make a fun, feelgood movie, a marriage between a manipulative bigamist and a terrified minor that spirals off into alcoholism, violence and ruination may not be the ideal subject matter. Even if the music is really, really good.
  33. Sing 2
    It feels like a screensaver, a movie generated by an algorithm, the same algorithm that calculated the likely profit on extending the Sing franchise.
  34. The Sacrament
    Ti West's latest feels both more expansive – choppering Vice reporters into a seemingly progressive tropical utopia raises intriguing social themes – and yet a marked disappointment.
  35. Don't Look Up
    This film could have done something more convincing with that mode of reverse-vertigo hinted at in its title: that fear and willed blindness about what looms over us. But if the movie helps to do something about climate change, such critical objections are unimportant.
  36. Raymond & Ray
    Here is a terribly meagre experience from writer-director Rodrigo García, a silly, pointless movie which never delivers on its promises of drama and comedy and contains not a single funny or believable moment. As a filmic meal, it is pretty much entirely without nutritional or calorific value.
  37. One Direction: This Is Us
    I suspect a previous, wackier idea for the film was ditched in favour of a slick promotional video about their jaw-dropping global tour, but I also have to admit that this is a rather watchable record of a phenomenon.
  38. Out of Blue
    It’s a lugubrious quasi-noir mystery set in modern-day New Orleans, starring a charismatic Patricia Clarkson as Detective Mike Hoolihan; a movie that sometimes seems papier-mâchéd together with layers of mannerism and pastiche, floating along like a two-hour dream sequence.
    • The Guardian
      • Posted Sep 12, 2018
  39. The Fifth Estate
    This is highly competent catnip for the watercooler crowd.
  40. Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock & Roll
    A starstruck Jones hardly pushes his interviewees on it, but somewhere in his naggingly monotonous morass of talking heads is the tale of how the Boss gained a social conscience.
  41. Here Are the Young Men
    There’s certainly an impressive cast lineup for this one, but there’s also something weirdly formless and frustrating about it as well; the film gestures at some dark and disturbing possibilities in human nature without quite knowing if or how to follow through.
  42. Rubikon
    While the ensuing sense of despair that overwhelms the drama is credible, it does bring with it a certain sense of torpor that makes the film a bit of a grind in the midsection.
  43. American Reunion
    Inevitably, the guys wind up sentimentally telling each other they should do this every year. Please no.
  44. Krampus
    It's nowhere near as good as many of the films it so wants to be positioned next to, but it's nasty enough to leave an impression.
  45. The Best Offer
    Filmed in what you might call the international hotel style, Tornatore's idiotic premise is entertaining if you don't inspect it too carefully, or look for anything beneath the portentousness.
  46. 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.
  47. The Gray Man
    Two solid hours of efficient Netflix content is what’s on offer here, the action-thriller equivalent of a conscientiously microwaved Tuscan Sausage Penne from M&S.
  48. Apartment 7A
    James had impressed with her debut, the dementia horror Relic, but any of that film’s texture or creepiness has dissolved on a larger scale.
  49. PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie
    There must be some limit to how much content you can generate from the franchise’s core formula, which always finds the titular pack of talking puppy heroes saving their perpetually endangered home town, Adventure City, from an assortment of perils.
  50. Terminator Salvation
    With much buzzing, beeping and whirring, the Terminator franchise comes to an absolute creative standstill, or even goes clankingly into reverse, with this fantastically dull fourth episode.
  51. Bohemian Rhapsody
    Bohemian Rhapsody honours Mercury the showman but never really gets to Mercury the person.
  52. Ice Age: Continental Drift
    With the fourth film, the Ice Age family animation franchise is looking almost extinct.
  53. Mary Shelley
    Shelley’s mistreatment by the literary elite because of her gender is a compelling, uniquely frustrating element and the film deprives us of the suitably grand exploration that it deserves.
  54. Jet Trash
    Belleville cranks up the colour saturation and ironic Yuletide soundtrack, but all his slo-mo hedonism can’t disguise an otherwise addled story treatment: we chop haphazardly between hemispheres, leaving characters and subplots treading crystal blue water.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
    Global warming? Walter Pidgeon's Admiral Nelson has the answer in this lively, colourful sci-fi adventure. [11 Mar 2006, p.53]
    • The Guardian
  56. La Rafle (The Round Up)
    It's a straightforward, heartfelt drama, well acted and well produced.
  57. Into the Darkness
    If you have 152 minutes to sink into this morass of moral complexity and finely observed period detail, then it may well be worth it, although the ending is bizarrely, perplexingly abrupt. Perhaps there will be a follow-up feature.
  58. Bullet Train
    It rattles strenuously on and on and on with unexciting and uninterestingly choreographed fights, cameos which briefly pep up the interest and placeholder non-lines where the funny material should have gone.
  59. 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.
  60. Amsterdam
    There is something weirdly heavy and foggy in Amsterdam that feels like it’s working against the lightness and nimbleness needed for a caper. It’s the reality of the history, which the movie makes explicit in the closing credits.
  61. Django
    There is something frustratingly subdued and constrained dramatically about this slow and unsyncopated film, which indulges in quite a few cliches about wartime Paris.
  62. Downhill
    There’s a lived-in chemistry that’s missing from the pairing and the film’s great many awkward moments between them don’t feel quite as cutting or as uncomfortable as they should. It’s a dark comedy that feels too light.
  63. The Cellar
    Writer-director Brendan Muldowney is better at contriving striking images of horror, filmed with umbral gloom by cinematographer Tom Comerford, than at the character and story stuff.
  64. The Catcher Was a Spy
    The film isn’t a home run, but with Rudd in the lead in something so out of the ordinary for him, it’s fair to call a ground rule double.
  65. Little
    The comedy is fundamentally hobbled by the split in narrative focus between Jordan and April. We are never sure who is the heroine here, who has the comedy underdog status, who we are supposed to be rooting for.
  66. V/H/S/2
    There are some dull stretches here, but also some grisly instant hits: nasty, deplorable, vulgar and sometimes brilliant.
  67. Spirit Untamed
    It’s a sweet, undemanding film that, despite the title, is tamer than a sedated bunny. That said, the four-year-old I watched with spontaneously yelped “this is the best!” 20 minutes in. So really, what do I know?
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Made in America
    Made in America, from 1993, is essentially an extended episode of a lame, cheesy US sitcom from the late 80s/early 90s – more My Two Dads or Perfect Strangers than Frasier or Seinfeld. It's awesome.
  69. Reminders of Him
    Reminders of Him does, in fact, remind of that earlier time, when It Ends With Us over-delivered on sweeping sentimentality, a brief glow before everything curdled. We cannot go back there, but I’ve heard far less pleasurable echoes.
  70. Stuck in Love
    The sharp edges of the story are sentimentally sanded down; there's a fair bit of slush, and it's a pretty quaint view of what writers and a writer's life are actually like.
  71. Last Looks
    Altogether it would be pretty bouncy and fun if it didn’t have the wretched Gibson in it. Isn’t the industry awash with ageing stars that could fill the role just as well?
  72. Riddick
    The results are by turns boring and bizarre, although Diesel still has some presence.
  73. Spenser Confidential
    A clumsy, unfunny adaptation of a much-loved literary crime series
  74. Everybody Has a Plan
    It certainly doesn't bore.
  75. Welcome to the Punch
    It runs out of steam, with plot revelations visible from a mile away and a bit of a plausibility gap.
  76. Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House
    It’s surprising that a film about Deep Throat could be such an anticlimax.
  77. How to Make a Killing
    A pale imitation.
  78. The Promise
    There’s something rather dusty about The Promise as George pushes his characters through a string of soapy machinations that feel incredibly familiar.
  79. The Lure
    [A] thin, slightly exasperating documentary.
  80. Despicable Me 3
    Despicable Me 3 will certainly keep the younger elements of its audience happy, with its dose of aspartame-rush hyperactivity. But for everyone else it may prove decent rather than captivating.
  81. Flashback
    This pulpy multiverse brain-teaser is reasonably compelling to watch – at least in this reality. In another, it’s straight to video garbage, and in yet another, it’s won the Palme d’Or.
  82. Look Both Ways
    Its affect is warm and reassuring, its methods for affirming that everything’s gonna be all right are cozy and tame, especially in regards to young motherhood.
  83. The Chaperone
    All the corny romance stuff is about as intrinsic to the film’s soft appeal as the scrupulously well-made frocks, encompassing late Edwardian lace and flapper-style dropwaist numbers, and dozens of well-turned cloche hats.
  84. Single All the Way
    It’s pure mass market Christmas cookie cutter stuff that’s only made vaguely interesting in very short bursts because of its queerness.
  85. Godmothered
    Where Godmothered should coast, it stumbles – swerving between unwieldy earnestness to something edgier and settling on something duller than it should be.
  86. Venom: Let There Be Carnage
    It’s at least a short film, clocking it at around 90 minutes, Serkis chopping off any extraneous fat, but it floats by and floats on without ever causing us to sit up and pay attention. Let there be no more.
  87. Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
    As comedy writers and movie actors, the members of Please Don’t Destroy – Martin Herlihy, John Higgins and Ben Marshall – are out of their depth. That’s not a knock on their brand of comedy, which works in small doses.
  88. Silent House
    It's still atmospheric enough, and like the original, has a quasi-theatrical event status. But it feels like a copy.
  89. Hunting Elephants
    Hunting Elephants has its requisite scenes of planning and setbacks, but it mostly settles for old-people jokes (now I know the Hebrew for Viagra: it’s Viagra) and making Patrick Stewart look like an imbecile.
  90. Amaurosis
    When The Unseen works it has an interestingly airless atmosphere, a weirdly disconnected, alienated quality that mimics the couple’s fraught emotional state. But the tension and sense of fear were lacking.
  91. The Salt Path
    Making her feature-film debut, Elliott handles their story gently, with patience – though it might feel a bit slow for some.
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