The Guardian's Scores

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For 6,571 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: 2,490 out of 6571
  2. Mixed: 3,762 out of 6571
  3. Negative: 319 out of 6571
6571 movie reviews
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  1. The Wolverine
    The flat hammerblows of The Wolverine bear little relation to the zing and pop of Matthew Vaughn's colourful treatment. Inconsistency is inevitable in a world that's constantly being dug up and done over, but it leaves us no time to fall in love with anything being flung at us.
  2. Blood
    Originality may be out of Blood's jurisdiction, but it manages to plod on, dutifully walking a tired old beat.
  3. Broken
    There are some good ideas, strong moments and a blue-chip cast in Broken, the feature-film debut from award-winning theatre and opera director Rufus Norris. But they somehow don't come together successfully.
  4. Blancanieves
    It is extremely pleasurable to watch, and shows every sign of having been extremely pleasurable to make.
  5. Citadel
    Foy's talent lies in suggesting horror, not delivering it.
  6. The Lone Ranger
    The spirits fly in and out of The Lone Ranger at random. It's nice to see them come and go. I just wish they'd stay for longer.
  7. Sweetgrass
    This beautiful and hypnotic documentary shows the agony and the ecstasy of herding sheep up into Montana's Beartooth mountains for the summer pasture.
  8. The Stone Roses: Made of Stone
    Meadows is clearly not interested in lifting the biographical lid on anyone, just getting alongside the band, and picking up on their energy, vulnerability and excitement. He has no agenda; he just loves the Stone Roses, and it's a great, heartfelt tribute.
  9. Pacific Rim
    Pacific Rim's wafer-thin psychodrama and plot-generator dialogue provides little for the human component to get their teeth into.
  10. Fruitvale Station
    The robust acting and sharp sense of the Bay Area milieu glides us nicely over the film's few soft patches.
  11. The Wall
    Julian Roman Pölsler's bewitching debut manages to be at once a creepy sci-fi parable, a feminist Robinson Crusoe and a clear-eyed ode to the wonders of nature experienced in solitude. Walden pond with added wall.
  12. Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer
    This documentary by Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin argues that Pussy Riot suffered an old-fashioned Soviet show trial, and what emerges is the effrontery and hypocrisy of Putin's attempt to associate these three young women with the Bolsheviks' suppression of religion.
  13. Paris-Manhattan
    By itself, this would just be one of those workmanlike relationship films the French turn out by the yard; but all the Allen stuff throws its mediocrity into sharp relief.
  14. Chasing Mavericks
    The script's a drowner, the acting's awash. Again and again Butler returns to the sea. He just about survives the buffeting.
  15. The Internship
    There is a creepy, undead feel to this lumbering comedy set in the offices of Google, and Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn have a distinct Baron Samedi look in their eyes.
  16. Now You See Me
    Overcooked, overcomplicated and underinteresting, this heist caper turns into a mess.
  17. A Field in England
    Wheatley's new film is grisly and visceral, an occult, monochrome-psychedelic breakdown taking place somewhere in the West Country during the civil war.
  18. The Crash Reel
    A crash reel – a greatest hits of a boarder's most dramatic falls – is meant to entertain. But Walker takes the cheap thrills of the format and flips it painfully on its head.
  19. This Is the End
    Some funny stuff, but a rental/download only.
  20. 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).
  21. Stand Up Guys
    Some nice touches, though it needs to be indulged.
  22. The East
    The East – a sleek thriller clogged by its noble message – heads south. It becomes sanctimonious, makes you contrary. I left craving a Big Mac.
  23. Venus and Serena
    The sisters themselves reveal a little, mostly because of Serena's unguarded imperiousness; but as a study of sports supercelebrity it's a tad subdued.
  24. Despicable Me 2
    Nothing here to challenge anything from the Pixar golden age, but Despicable Me 2 is a sweet-natured family film.
  25. Thanks for Sharing
    Shame was erotic compulsion turned into opera, full of sombre vibrato. Thanks for Sharing is probably the more realistic, as well as more mainstream, and there's a generous pinch of very funny lines, mostly bestowed on Robbins.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Breathe In
    The story of the ingenue who enters the fold and awakens deep feelings is nothing new, but Doremus makes it all utterly captivating. He mines just the right amount of drama and spontaneous comedy from each moment and the foreshadowing is perfectly weighted.
  27. Adore
    An incredibly provocative piece of work, featuring a brave and vulnerable performance by Naomi Watts (who seems perhaps a little too young) and a career-high acting masterclass from Robin Wright (who is cast perfectly).
  28. Snitch
    Good intentions are all but submerged in nonsense.
  29. Before Midnight
    Before Midnight is intimate and intelligent, and also undemanding in the best possible way,
  30. 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.
  31. Touchy Feely
    The semi-improvised dialogue has the juicy tang of authenticity in the hands of this highly competent cast, and the players and Shelton never sneer at the characters' new-agey beliefs.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Secret Disco Revolution
    Rather than simply charting the rise and fall of disco to a thumping soundtrack, the film presents an unexpected school of thought – that disco was actually a vehicle of liberation, a revolutionary tool used to end the oppression of women and black and gay people in 1970s America.
  33. Admission
    The comic material really isn't there, and the plot transitions feel forced and uncomfortable.
  34. 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.
  35. Man of Steel
    The whole film ends up feeling weighed down: though Man of Steel bounds from one epic setpiece to another, you're left with the nagging feeling that you just can't work out what the central twosome see in each other. And for Superman and Lois Lane, that's hardly ideal.
  36. Monsters University
    A fun, disposable watch.
  37. Grabbers
    It is fantastically silly, often funny, with some unshowy but very serviceable digital effects.
  38. After Earth
    He's done it again. M Night Shyamalan has done it again. Again. Done it. Again. He has given us another film for which the only appropriate expression is stammering, gibbering wonder that anyone can keep making such uncompromisingly terrible movies with such stamina and dedication.
  39. The Last Exorcism Part II
    It's competently made, but pointless.
  40. World War Z
    While some of World War Z is rotten, the whole stands as a punchy, if conventional action thriller.
  41. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
    Despite its moments of charm and caprice, the film is prolix, inert, indulgent and often just plain dull.
  42. The Prey
    Director, Eric Valette, is an exuberant market-stall trader, hawking knock-off ingredients.
  43. Everybody Has a Plan
    It certainly doesn't bore.
  44. The Purge
    The film doesn't develop its one good idea so much as stumble around in the dark with it for 85 minutes, crashing noisily into the furniture.
  45. Call Me Kuchu
    The film-makers have turned what could have been a detached news report into a moving human tragedy.
  46. London - The Modern Babylon
    Temple's film is refreshingly free of cliché. A very heady experience.
  47. American Mary
    It's made with gusto, but there's little dramatic interest for non-enthusiasts.
  48. Something in the Air
    This is a great-looking movie with a sure sense of time and place; it is obviously a personal, and in fact, autobiographical work about Assayas's own youth. But for all its flair, I came away dissatisfied at its colossal self-indulgence and creamy complacency, and the way historical perspective and meaning are permitted to dissolve in its sunlit nostalgia.
  49. Epic
    What stands out is the animation. The microcosmic woodland world is luminous and detailed, and there's a nice disconnect of scale whereby humans appear as lumbering, slow-motion giants.
  50. The Hangover Part III
    This is less a caper than a trudge; a linear adventure that proceeds in fits and starts, with few surprises and fewer laughs. There's barely even a hangover.
  51. Blue Is the Warmest Color
    Blue Is the Warmest Colour really is an outstanding film and the performances from Exarchopoulos and Séydoux make other people's acting look very weak.
  52. Venus in Fur
    Venus In Fur is a playful if occasionally heavy-handed jeu d'ésprit on the subject of sexual role-play, the games we all play, illusion and reality, and directing as a sexual act.
  53. The Selfish Giant
    This is a fine film, which cements Barnard's growing reputation as one of Britain's best film-makers.
  54. The Past
    It is an intricate and often brilliant drama, with restrained and intelligent performances; there is an elegantly patterned mosaic of detail, unexpected plot turns, suspenseful twists and revelations.
  55. Only Lovers Left Alive
    If it is an exercise in style … well, what style. With its retro-chic connoisseurship and analogue era rock, this is a brilliant haute-hippy homage.
  56. The Immigrant
    The Immigrant is certainly different: but Gray seems to run out of ideas and the film is shapeless and unsatisfying.
  57. Grigris
    It is a typically calm, lucid drama, presented in the director's unforced, cinematic vernacular and attractively and sympathetically acted.
  58. The Great Beauty
    This movie looks and feels superb, it is pure couture cinema. But there is also a excess of richness and bombast and for all its sleekness I felt that the spark of emotion was being hidden, and there is a kind of frustration in the operatic sadness.
  59. Jimmy P.
    Scenes have a habit of stopping at any second, with or without whopping soundtrack.
  60. A Castle in Italy
    A strained jeu d'ésprit which is smug, precious, carelessly constructed, emotionally negligible, and above all fantastically annoying. It's a terrible waste of real acting talent.
  61. Borgman
    There's the frustrating sense of ideas bubbling too low beneath the surface, of mordant jokes serving as an end rather than a means.
  62. Blood Ties
    This hoary, hackneyed old cop-opera...is served with such relish that the fun proves infectious.
  63. Bastards
    Denis's drama intrigues more than it actually delivers...Sleight of hand is all well and good. But sooner or later a film must pay up.
  64. 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.
  65. All Is Lost
    Redford delivers a tour de force performance: holding the screen effortlessly with no acting support whatsoever.
  66. Nebraska
    Nebraska may not be startlingly new, and sometimes we can see the epiphanies looming up over the distant horizon; the tone is, moreover, lighter and more lenient than in earlier pictures like Sideways. But it is always funny and smart.
  67. Shield of Straw
    It is put together with technical competence, but is entirely cliched and preposterous, and it implodes into its own fundamental narrative implausibility.
  68. Like Father, Like Son
    This is a sweet-natured, but essentially undemanding film from Kore-eda.
  69. Heli
    The film functions as clammy thriller as well as poetic agitprop.
  70. The Congress
    The Congress contains tricks aplenty and ideas in abundance. The problem comes in herding these scattered, floating elements towards a satisfying whole.
  71. Only God Forgives
    Only God Forgives will, understandably, have people running for the exits, and running for the hills. It is very violent, but Winding Refn's bizarre infernal creation, an entire created world of fear, really is gripping. Every scene, every frame, is executed with pure formal brilliance.
  72. Ping Pong
    Director Hugh Hartford does not patronise his stars, although perhaps there is something too gently celebratory and obviously feelgood about the film. These dynamic table-tennis stars put the rest of us to shame.
  73. In the Fog
    In the Fog is an intense, slow-burning and haunting drama.
  74. Inside Llewyn Davis
    Brilliantly written, terrifically acted, superbly designed and shot; it's a sweet, sad, funny picture about the lost world of folk music which effortlessly immerses us in the period.
  75. Twixt
    It's a film which fatally fails to hold your focus: events seem both predictable and mumbled; the monochrome looks grubby, the splashes of colour and blood joke shop cheap.
  76. Adventures of the Penguin King
    There are some nice images of the teeming penguin population, and great fun to be had witnessing the love life, and indeed sex life, of penguins. It does have to be said, though, there is a fair bit of Disneyfication going on.
  77. The Bling Ring
    The final notes of irony and repudiation may be laboured and obvious, but this is an intriguingly intuitive and atmospheric movie.
  78. A Hijacking
    Danish director Tobias Lindholm spins an exacting drama out of a crisis on this deft, verite-style account of Somali piracy in the Indian ocean. Full credit to A Hijacking for resisting the siren-call of Hollywood histrionics in favour of the nuts-and-bolts.
  79. I Give It a Year
    The result is funny and plausible, with a fair bit of newly modish Bridesmaidsy bad taste, though I kept getting the sense that the romcom template meant Mazer couldn't really let rip with pure comedy pessimism and cynicism in the way he might have liked.
  80. Berberian Sound Studio
    Utterly distinctive and all but unclassifiable, a musique concrète nightmare, a psycho-metaphysical implosion of anxiety, with strange-tasting traces of black comedy and movie-buff riffs. It is seriously weird and seriously good.
  81. You Will Be My Son
    It's all a bit absurd, but Legrand handles the absurdity with some style, and there is something clever in making an apparently minor character responsible for a major narrative flourish. An enjoyable spectacle.
  82. I'm So Excited
    It's all watchable and pretty funny, and the big setpiece is the three wildly queeny stewards Joserra, Fajas (Carlos Areces) and Ulloa (Arévalo) going into a drug-fuelled song-and-dance routine: a rendering of the Pointer Sisters' I'm So Excited.
  83. Gimme the Loot
    Some of the movie doesn't exactly convince, and some of the scenes have an actors-improv feel to them, but there's always plenty of humour and energy.
  84. Dead Man Down
    Director Niels Arden Orpev was in charge of the original "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," starring Rapace, but fails to create a revenge thriller with anything like the same focus.
  85. Star Trek Into Darkness
    People are unlikely to charge out of the cinema with quite the same level of glee as they did in 2009; but this is certainly an astute, exhilarating concoction.
  86. 1st Night
    Grant plays it with manic glee and full-throated gusto.
  87. The Iceman
    As a demonstration of the banality of evil, The Iceman is certainly effective and Shannon's performance gives the film its power.
  88. Bernie
    Black's performance is a revelation: foregoing his usual repertoire of jiggling, tics and head-waggling craziness, Black ensures Tiede is a satirical creation of considerable substance. Really impressive.
  89. The ABCs of Death
    The most intentional fun comes courtesy of N (for Nuptials).
  90. What Richard Did
    What Richard Did is an engrossing and intelligent drama that throbs in the mind for hours after the final credits.
  91. All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
    Mandy Lane feels bogus and compromised: an unreconstructed horror romp in the guise of a nerdish intellectual.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Cockneys vs Zombies
    Like Snakes on a Plane, this is a film that seems content to sit back and let the title do all the work – the flat direction does little to imbue the proceedings with any feeling of tension or surprise.
  93. Lovelace
    Though Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's handsomely mounted period piece evokes the era with impressive detail, Lovelace's journey remains difficult to tell.
  94. Paradise: Love
    Does the film tell us anything we didn't know already? And could anyone expect anything but the most straightforward irony in the title? The answer to both questions is no – but there is undoubted technique, and an authorial address to the audience.
  95. Iron Man 3
    Iron Man 3 is smart, funny and spectacular.
  96. Computer Chess
    Bujalski really has pulled off something extraordinary here.
  97. Arthur Newman
    The flat-out dullness of Arthur is the point of Dante Ariola's debut feature, but it's also its undoing.
  98. Olympus Has Fallen
    Part of the weirdness of this film lies in the fact that the tense North Korean situation in the real world gives it no realism or satirical edge, or prophetic authority of any kind.
  99. Love Is All You Need
    It looks weirdly like a romcom pastiche, not cynical, but not properly inhabited; it doesn't taste of romance or comedy any more than Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup cans taste of soup.
  100. 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.
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