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. Amour
    The icy message may be that love is not a consolation as we face death. Rather the reverse. Love will give your death meaning, but make it no less unbearable.
  2. Happy, Happy
    Like Kaja (Agnes Kittelsen), the wide-eyed Madame Bovary at its heart, Happy, Happy starts out cartoonish and ends up oddly endearing.
  3. Rise of the Guardians
    If Rise of the Guardians is finally never more than the sum of its parts, the parts themselves have real appeal.
  4. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
    Despite all those fierce confrontations and tribal divisions, exhaustively rehearsed and mythologised, nobody's really a bad guy and nothing's really at stake.
  5. La Rafle (The Round Up)
    It's a straightforward, heartfelt drama, well acted and well produced.
  6. In Another Country
    In Another Country looks very much like something written on a napkin and shot in the one afternoon that Huppert could come to South Korea. Slight, diverting, forgettable.
  7. A Royal Affair
    The chemistry between Mikkelsen and Vikander barely simmers, when it should boil. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating affair of state.
  8. Keep the Lights On
    Every frame pulses with hard-gained experience: it may be the most lived-in film of 2012, and certainly counts among the most moving.
  9. For a Good Time, Call...
    The dialogue, penned by Miller with Katie Anne Naylon, is subversively salty: surpassing even those Judd Apatow comedies to which it's indebted, this is almost certainly the filthiest movie ever to bear the Universal logo.
  10. Fun Size
    Someday, all US cinema may come to look like this: indifferently shot random events happening to semi-recognisable TV faces.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Bay
    Levinson has always been acutely interested in the minutiae of human behaviour, and it's this concern that makes The Bay the triumph that it is.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lincoln
    If only modern American politics were remotely as entertaining.
  13. Café de Flore
    Remove the subtitles, and it's one of Cameron Crowe's head-in-the-clouds dramas, as scripted by M Night Shyamalan: an insultingly arbitrary reveal, preceded by vast, wailing washes of Pink Floyd and Sigur Rós. A very vanilla sky, this.
  14. This Must Be the Place
    The Holocaust material was not entirely successful, though certainly transmitted with absolute certainty and sincerity. This Must Be the Place is not my favourite of Sorrentino's films, but it certainly deserved inclusion at Cannes, and deserves to be watched for the glorious Byrne moments alone.
  15. Pusher (2012)
    The Pusher remake may not have the full flavour of the original, but it makes brutally clear how the economics of drugs make paranoia and violence a fact of life.
  16. Beasts of the Southern Wild
    Beasts of the Southern Wild is a vividly poetic and maybe even therapeutic response to one of the most painful and mortifying episodes in modern American history, second only to 9/11.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Flight
    Next to Gump, the film has the moral force of a George Steiner essay, but what lends it that force are not the carefully calibrated moral ambiguities of the script, but the bruised, defiant soul that appears to us in the form of Denzel Washington.
  18. Holy Motors
    Weird and wonderful, rich and strange – barking mad, in fact. It is wayward, kaleidoscopic, black comic and bizarre; there is in it a batsqueak of genius, dishevelment and derangement; it is captivating and compelling.
  19. Skyfall
    All of which works terrifically well up to a point.
  20. Frankenweenie
    It's a likable film, though not a sensational development in Tim Burton's career.
  21. Hotel Transylvania
    Comedy gothic isn't exactly novel, and frankly there is a sense here of a movie coasting along on Halloween hype-marketing, without providing as many laughs and ideas as it really could have done.
  22. Ruby Sparks
    Kazan brings to the role a sweet and dignified vulnerability, keeping rigorously to plausible human behaviour.
  23. The Big Picture
    The direction from Eric Lartigau keeps things moving along fast and furious: preposterous it may be, the movie is carried off with some style.
  24. Two Years at Sea
    What a strange and intriguing film.
  25. Sinister
    The snuff-porn aesthetic might suggest a realist drama, but a supernatural dimension is brought into play, making the plot directionless. There isn't an ounce of ingenuity in the way the movie is concluded, but some generic expertise in the way it is put together.
  26. Taken 2
    The premise is looking pretty tired.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Life of Pi
    Hollywood has been waiting for this movie. Get ready for the year of the Tiger.
  28. The Paperboy
    Nicole Kidman gives her best performance since "To Die For."
  29. Wuthering Heights
    Perhaps above everything else, Arnold returns us to the most potent fact about the Cathy and Heathcliff love affair: it is a love affair between equals, not between a woman with coquettish "erotic capital" and a man with property and status.
  30. Tales of the Night
    The pick-and-mix approach is limiting, but there's no denying these are gorgeous amuse-bouches, likely to be devoured by older, more discerning children and dyed-in-the-wool stoners alike.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Solomon Kane
    There's plenty that's good here: a serious tone, steady ­pacing, muddy and bloody scenery and a convincing turn by Purefoy in his own west country accent. But Kane is an ill fit into the ­origins tale template; it's a story with few ­surprises.
  32. Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel
    She's entertaining enough, and like most fashion documentaries, it's a mine of pop-cultural history, but the unswervingly generous assessment of her achievements and permanently arch vocal style become a little wearying.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Hysteria
    Gyllenhaal rises above the tedium; sadly, not far enough. Great English accent, though.
  34. Savages
    Sadly, Savages plays up to Stone's worst tendencies: machismo, bombast and self-indulgence, and the factor that could conceivably have made this movie tolerable – humour – is off the menu.
  35. Butter
    There's something about this film's churn of goo and grit that lingers ambivalently, difficult to digest.
  36. The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best
    The comedy is at odds, perhaps even at war, with the gravitational downward pull of bittersweet seriousness, and the sucrose content is pretty high by the end. But it's an entertaining film.
  37. Hope Springs
    As the couple try to rekindle the bedroom flame the note of cutesy comedy kicks in and the movie gets phonier and phonier.
  38. ParaNorman
    It's a likable scary story – with hints of Tim Burton and Steven Spielberg.
  39. To Rome with Love
    Baldwin has some brilliant moments as he icily dismisses Monica's posturing: his final closeup – heavy-lidded, undeceived – is fascinating and rather chilling.
  40. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
    The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a perfect fit for its target audience – the Harry Potter kids who are following Emma Watson through her baby steps towards the stronger stuff.
  41. Hyde Park on Hudson
    Sometimes a film takes your breath away by dint of its brilliance. Sometimes it's on account of its ineptitude. And just occasionally, it's for its shamelessness. Hyde Park on Hudson, for all its captivating shots of cornfields and estimable performances, is the latter.
  42. The Impossible
    Part of the appeal of this affecting and powerful drama is that it puts the viewer right in the moment at every stage, using authentic locations and tsunami survivors to hammer home the reality of this tragedy.
  43. Rust and Bone
    What could have been simply bizarre, sentimental or contrived here becomes an utterly absorbing love story.
  44. End of Watch
    Despite the violence and procedural detail, this is about as gritty as Dixon of Dock Green.
  45. Seven Psychopaths
    There are scenes of complete brilliance, Walken is better than he's been in years, cute plot loops and grace notes.
  46. Cloud Atlas
    Tykwer and the Wachowskis' other twist on this karmic hokum - to cast each of their actors in multiple roles across the stories, regardless of age or race - is less successful.
  47. The Queen of Versailles
    Never has grotesque wealth looked so unenviable, or its removal been so entertaining, as in this garishly watchable riches-to-rags documentary.
  48. Anna Karenina
    The Wright/Stoppard Anna Karenina is not a total success, but it's a bold and creative response to the novel.
  49. Argo
    There's a degree of puffery in the writing, however, that makes this drama untrustworthy.
  50. Looper
    Once you commit to the lexicon – to the blunderbusses, the silver, the loops that close and the loops let run – you're in for a breathless ride. It's been a patchy summer for sci-fi, absent of anything that really sticks in the mind. Johnson's deep, distinctive film plays on repeat.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dredd
    In a world of compromised adaptations, Dredd is something of a triumph.
  52. [REC] 3: Genesis
    The dancefloor's full of bodies, the bride and groom have been backed into a corner by relatives desperate for their pound of flesh. Pretty much your average wedding, then.
  53. Girl Model
    This fantastically depressing film ought to be shown in school assemblies, or wherever impressionable pre-teens gather to discuss their dreams of media stardom.
  54. Las Acacias
    Exhilarating and moving. This is a very satisfying love story.
  55. Killing Them Softly
    This is an unrepentantly cynical take on the hope-and-change promised to the US in 2008; this year's election race makes it look even bleaker, an icily confident black comedy of continued disillusion.
  56. The Inbetweeners Movie
    They could have called it British Pie, but this TV sitcom spin-off updates the teen summer holiday formula surprisingly entertainingly, considering it doesn't subvert it one iota.
  57. The Master
    The themes may be contentious, but the handling is perfect. If there were ever a movie to cause the lame to walk and the blind to see, The Master may just be it.
  58. Total Recall (2012)
    It's a bit of a flavourless CGI-fest, without the character and comedy of the Arnie version, and it never really gets to grips with the idea of "reality" as a slippery, malleable concept.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Samsara
    It may be just more of the same from Fricke, but with his unique process, another incredible-looking lap around the world is more than welcome.
  60. Breathing
    The "breathing" of the title becomes a cleverly recurrent motif, and Markovics's script circles around the themes of death and life in thoughtful and elegant ways: it is a well-carpentered screenplay which bears every sign of having been a labour of love, worked on fruitfully over many years.
  61. Little White Lies
    Little White Lies unspools as glossy, high-grade tosh, a sun-dappled Big Chill, without the rigour or insight required to make you care about these people and wonder which bed they will eventually wind up in.
  62. The Expendables 2
    There's some comedy in there, too, intentional – mostly. As a poignant study of the ageing process, it's on a rough par with "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel." For The Expendables 3, they might want to consider enlisting Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Judi Dench.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Lawless
    Star-studded and violent yet empty as a broken whisky bottle.
  64. The Bourne Legacy
    It has plenty of energy and drive, and Jeremy Renner is really good, better as a Bourne-y agent than Matt Damon, tougher and more grizzled-looking, more convincing as the professional soldier who has grown careworn and disillusioned in the public service.
  65. The Green Wave
    Ahadu pulls the curtain back on a government that was willing to imprison and torture its electorate.
  66. The Awakening
    There are some nicely creepy moments, and director and co-writer Nick Murphy interestingly dramatises some of the neuroses feeding the appetite for ghostly phenomena – repressed sexuality, guilt and self-harm.
  67. Beloved
    The movie is at its lightest, most charming and most persuasive in the 60s; as it approaches the present, something inescapably preposterous weighs it down, though Honoré carries it off with some flair.
  68. Chicken with Plums
    Sit in the front – and don't peer too hard – and Chicken With Plums casts an undeniable spell. It is bold, exotic and distinctive, particularly during the animated angel of death sequence.
  69. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days
    It's perfectly workable popcorn entertainment for the school holidays.
  70. Dreams of a Life
    Dreams of a Life is a painful film, a Christmas film with no feelgood message, but one which I think would in fact have interested Charles Dickens. Watching it is an almost claustrophobic experience, but a very powerful and moving one.
  71. Searching for Sugar Man
    This movie might itself make a modest contribution to rewriting the history of white South Africa.
  72. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
    Let's hope Klayman gets to make a sequel.
  73. 2 Days in New York
    We've rarely seen comedy this smart since Woody Allen and Seinfeld left New York.
  74. Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap
    With a very simple premise, rapper Ice-T – this film's presenter and co-director with Andy Baybutt – has created a very enjoyable and often fascinating movie.
  75. Killer Joe
    It is up to McConaughey's crooked cop to carry the picture: a sleek, loungingly casual loner whose hunger for violence, like his hunger for fried chicken, is finally and horribly gratified.
  76. Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
    The endlessly prolific Takashi Miike returns with this superbly acted revenger's tragedy.
  77. The Dark Knight Rises
    The Dark Knight Rises may be a hammy, portentous affair but Nolan directs it with aplomb. He takes these cod-heroic, costumed elements and whisks them into a tale of heavy-metal fury, full of pain and toil, surging uphill, across the flyovers, in search of a climax.
  78. Ice Age: Continental Drift
    With the fourth film, the Ice Age family animation franchise is looking almost extinct.
  79. Magic Mike
    Oddly, Magic Mike somehow looks like a much darker and more challenging movie than is actually the case.
  80. Alps
    Follow the film-maker. Let him lead you by the nose. Lanthimos knows exactly where he's going.
  81. Trishna
    Winterbottom's location work in Jaipur and Mumbai has richness and spectacle, but somehow this does not come fully to life.
  82. The Pact
    Nicholas McCarthy's The Pact is a horror film developed from a short, and unfortunately it splits apart while being stretched out to feature length.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brave
    For the animation studio's debut foray into fairytale, Pixar has delivered a rousing family melodrama.
  84. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
    Bekmambetov directs with gusto, and the forthright absurdity of the story, combined with its weirdly heartfelt self-belief is winning.
  85. Take This Waltz
    In theory, these are twentysomethings we're talking about. But they walk and talk like fortysomethings or fiftysomethings, such is their dullness and self-absorption.
  86. The Five-Year Engagement
    As for Violet, Emily Blunt brings to the role genuine sympathy, and she continues to thaw out the ice-queen hauteur of her earlier movies.
  87. The Amazing Spider-Man
    It's the successul synthesis of the two – action and emotion – that means this Spider-Man is as enjoyable as it is impressive: Webb's control of mood and texture is near faultless as his film switches from teenage sulks to exhilarating airborne pyrotechnics.
  88. Men on the Bridge
    All in all, this is a carefully modulated plea for tolerance and mutual understanding.
  89. Polisse
    A drama with interesting moments, but also some false notes and a wildly bizarre ending.
  90. Rock of Ages
    Doubtless, like The Producers, it will be adapted back into the theatre, some time in 2017, at which time it will be even more bland and tiring.
  91. 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.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Your Sister's Sister
    A captivating examination of criss-crossing relationships permeated by incisive performances.
  93. Dark Horse
    There is little in the film's pitch-black interior that wasn't tackled better – with more bite, wit and abandon – in "Happiness," "Welcome to the Dollhouse," or "Storytelling."
  94. Corpo Celeste
    An accomplished debut.
  95. Bel Ami
    Robert Pattinson has to do an awful lot of hollow-eyed smouldering in this hammily enunciated French period drama, taken from the 1885 novel by Guy de Maupassant.
  96. Snow White and the Huntsman
    The result is tangled and overblown.
  97. Prometheus
    Ridley Scott has counter-evolved his 1979 classic Alien into something more grandiose, more elaborate – but less interesting. In place of scariness there is wonderment; in place of tension there is hugely ambitious design; in place of unforgettable shocks there are reminders of the original's unforgettable shocks.
  98. A Cat in Paris
    It's a slight, attractive tale: a childlike fable of a little girl and her preternaturally intelligent cat that swiftly devolves into a very old-school cops and robbers yarn.
  99. What to Expect When You're Expecting
    Someday Hollywood will think of women as more than fallopian tubes in heels; until then, we're stuck with this kind of project.
  100. Men in Black III
    It's by no means a triumph, but one of the enjoyable things about Men in Black has always been the malleable nature of its reality.
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