The Guardian's Scores

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For 6,577 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 2.2 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: 2,494 out of 6577
  2. Mixed: 3,764 out of 6577
  3. Negative: 319 out of 6577
6577 movie reviews
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  1. 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.
  2. The Stanford Prison Experiment
    Director Kyle Patrick Alvarez deserves all the praise in the world for the way he cranks up this pressure cooker script. The Stanford Prison Experiment begins with giggles but ends in full psychological break.
  3. Tangerine
    There’s real energy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cop Car
    The movie culminates in a tense, protracted standoff that keeps the audience on edge for way longer than is comfortable. I mean that as a compliment.
    • 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.
  6. Last Days in the Desert
    A smart and beautiful meditation of fathers and sons (and the Father and Son) that is slow but never boring.
  7. Brooklyn
    Without Ronan’s performance, Brooklyn might have left a sugary taste. But she is the ingredient that brings everything together: her calm poise anchors almost every scene and every shot.
  8. 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.
  9. Dreamcatcher
    It’s grim, unfussy and deeply moving.
  10. Love & Friendship
    Beckinsale is a hoot to watch as a character with no redeemable qualities, except for her cunning ability to get what she wants. You can’t help but love Lady Susan because of the evident joy she takes in being so duplicitous. Her energy is infectious.
  11. 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.
  12. Futuro Beach
    It’s an immensely likable movie, impeccably acted and wise about the nature of exile.
  13. Eastern Boys
    Robin Campillo’s drama is sweet and neat, as ambitious as it is gripping.
  14. Sicario
    Blunt’s performance has an edge of steel. She brings off a mix of confidence, bewilderment and vulnerability, which functions very well against the alpha male characters higher up the chain of command.
  15. The Lady in the Van
    Smith’s performance, honed from the previous stage and radio versions, is terrifically good.
  16. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates
    Plaza has found her Ron Burgundy: the vessel of a true imbecile in which to pour her strange genius.
  17. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi
    The Last Jedi gives you an explosive sugar rush of spectacle. It’s a film that buzzes with belief in itself and its own mythic universe – a euphoric certainty that I think no other movie franchise has. And there is no provisional hesitation or energy dip of the sort that might have been expected between episodes seven and nine.
  18. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
    This is another really entertaining fantasy with fan-fiction energy and attack.
  19. Experimenter
    Ultimately, Experimenter finds a glimmer of hope by simply revealing itself. Maybe if more people are educated about the dangers of obedience, they’ll put up more resistance. It can’t hurt to hope.
  20. The Founder
    The Founder is an absorbing and unexpectedly subtle movie about the genesis of the McDonald’s burger empire.
  21. Krisha
    It is a bravura debut from a young film-maker, proving that one can still make a movie for no money at a family member’s house and come away with a work of art, not just a calling card.
  22. It's Such a Beautiful Day
    Funny, oddly affecting and cherishably personal.
  23. Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made
    The will-they-won’t-they dynamic of the film grips you and it’s almost impossible not to root for Strompolos and Zala, especially when things on set get hairy.
  24. The Gift
    The debutant director applies himself with the same quiet assurance and attention to detail he’s displayed in his acting projects.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Brand: A Second Coming
    Even if you’re cynical about Brand’s motives, or just think that he’s a bit of berk, the film convinces you of the almost alarming sincerity of his political mission.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine
    Gibney’s film concludes that Jobs had the monomaniacal focus of a monk but none of the empathy of one, and it makes a powerful case.
  27. Learning to Drive
    [A] touching, insightful and, at the end of the day, extremely well-meaning film.
  28. Roar
    There’s really not much going on with Roar storywise. But then you take a step back and think about what it is that you’re watching. My viewing of Roar was set to a soundtrack of “Oh my God!” and “Holy crap!”, all of my own making.
  29. Mia Madre
    Mia Madre is a tremendously smart and enjoyable movie.
  30. The LEGO Batman Movie
    It doesn’t have the heart, the depth or the novelty of the first Lego movie, but it is relentlessly, consistently funny – which excuses everything.
  31. The Nightmare
    More frightening (yet strangely entertaining) than most of today’s narrative horror films.
  32. Cemetery of Splendor
    It is such a strange film in its way, stranger still if you are not accustomed to Weerasethakul’s work, and it needs a real investment of attention. But there is something sublime in it.
  33. Hitchcock/Truffaut
    A fascinating film.
  34. Green Room
    Saulnier’s ability to take a well-trodden road and fill it with grisly surprises is quite something.
  35. 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.
  36. 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.
  37. Our Little Sister
    The film is quiet, understated and gentle, allowing the audience to take pleasure in teasing out its narrative subtleties, and presented with wonderful freshness and clarity.
  38. Dheepan
    This may not be the director’s most immediately electrifying film, but in its understated way, it’s an immensely powerful work.
  39. What We Did on Our Holiday
    It’s impossible not to enjoy this big-hearted and sweet-natured British family movie.
  40. 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.
  41. Gabriel
    Howe’s film is drenched in empathy, where violent actions aren’t exactly excused, but at least framed with understanding.
  42. 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.
  43. Listen to Me Marlon
    Director Steven Riley’s film is a fascinating collage which profoundly probes its subject’s psyche.
  44. The Program
    It’s a fluid and nippy telling of a tale that still seems strangely urgent.
  45. Pitch Perfect 3
    So many movies end with trite sentiments about “family” and “sisterhood” but it doesn’t feel forced here. It looks like these performers are genuinely enjoying themselves, and it’s infectious.
    • 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.
  47. 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.
  48. Beasts of No Nation
    Fukunaga brings flair, muscular storytelling, directness and a persuasively epic sweep to this brutal, heartrending movie.
  49. Solo: A Star Wars Story
    Solo: A Star Wars Story is a crackingly enjoyable adventure which frankly deserves full episode status in the great franchise, not just one of these intermittent place-holding iterations
  50. The Kindergarten Teacher
    One of the most fascinating, if inscrutable films of the year.
  51. Everybody Wants Some!!
    If the lads were insufferable misogynistic pricks, Everybody Wants Some!! would make for horrible viewing. Thankfully they’re all intensely lovable.
  52. 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.
  53. Arabian Nights: Volume 3, The Enchanted One
    What a delicate, elegant marvel these movies have been.
    • 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.
  55. Mustang
    While the subject matter is enraging, the film is not without warmth and occasional levity.
  56. 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.
  57. The Golden Dream
    It's a tough, absorbing and suspenseful drama, excellently acted by its three non-professional leads.
  58. 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.
  59. Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision
    It is superlatively well performed and well directed with a real narrative grip.
  60. De Palma
    So many documentaries about artists just want you to accept that their subject is an innovator. De Palma breaks it down and shows you why he is.
  61. Eye in the Sky
    Eye in the Sky aims to thrill and covertly manages to inform simultaneously.
  62. Maggie's Plan
    It’s unpredictable and a bit of a mess. And that’s what makes Maggie’s Plan such a delight.
  63. Sherpa
    Peedom and her team responded to disaster with a steady hand, in more than one sense, and fulfilled a rare opportunity to make a responsive documentary that is large, beautiful, captivating and exhibits deep respect for the people and environments it photographs.
  64. Evolution
    It’s a quiet, deliberately paced film, but exquisitely shot, with nuanced performances and visual invention.
  65. Francofonia
    Francofonia is a fascinating essay and meditation on art, history and humanity’s idea of itself.
  66. From Afar
    [A] terrifically stylish work.
  67. Meadowland
    What Meadowland refuses to do, to its great credit, is conform to expectations.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Flowers of Shanghai
    The tones are dark, but washed with a rich golden light. The costumes, make-up and domestic props are exquisite. But for all the period detail, there is a genuine spontaneity in the emotions. [21 May 1998, p.2]
    • The Guardian
  69. Microbe and Gasoline
    If this film were a person, you’d want to give it a big hug, as you would a gawky teenager, and reassure it that it will be tough out there, that not everyone is going to get its idiosyncratic charms, but that’s OK because it’s awesome just the way it is.
  70. Mediterranea
    If a movie as rich and understanding as Mediterranea suddenly appeared every time we read about a difficult issue in the paper, maybe all of the world’s problems could be solved.
  71. Orion: The Man Who Would Be King
    Jimmy Ellis’s story really is stranger than fiction.
  72. The Treasure
    Laughs emerge from the recognisable micro-horrors found in modern living, which, if the world was run in the way we all agree it should be run, wouldn’t exist.
  73. Incredibles 2
    Compared to the CGI chaos that tends to engulf DCEU and MCU movies, especially in crossover teamups, the clean zip of Pixar animation feels exhilaratingly rare, like a lost language rediscovered.
  74. Ant-Man and the Wasp
    It buzzes with uncomplicated enjoyment.
  75. Ixcanul
    What’s most striking about Ixcanul is the elegant way in which it is shot. Scenes are given space, and the audience is allowed ample time to soak up the atmosphere.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Russian Woodpecker
    Gracia succeeds brilliantly in delivering a chilling warning about where Putin and his spooks might go next, by giving Fedor full licence to act the biblical prophet.
  77. Godzilla vs. Kong
    The much-hyped battles deliver the giddy thrills we demand but in the moments when the pair aren’t at war there’s also a staggeringly well-built and extensive universe to explore and one that’s barely been teased in the trailers we’ve seen.
  78. Field Niggas
    This movie is foremost an ethnographic exercise, and whether it is a rallying cry or poverty porn is for the viewer to decide.
  79. Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art
    You might argue that there is a kind of hubris in all this, and its very giganticism condemned it to marginal status and a kind of cultural smallness. But what excitement there is in these folies de grandeur.
  80. McCullin
    McCullin emerges as an unsentimental, plain-speaking, thoughtful man, disgusted at the inhumanity of war – and yet candid about how he is also personally and professionally drawn to its drama.
  81. Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (1971)
    Out 1: Noli Me Tangere is confounding at every level.
  82. It's Only the End of the World
    Xavier Dolan’s It’s Only the End of the World is histrionic and claustrophobic: deliberately oppressive and pretty well pop-eyed in its madness – and yet a brilliant, stylised and hallucinatory evocation of family dysfunction.
  83. Prem Ratan Dhan Payo
    If the plot’s familiar, no imagination or expense has been spared in mapping the kingdom it winds through.
  84. Very Semi-Serious
    It’s a minor work that knows its place in the margins, but is thought-provoking and surreptitiously insightful – and very funny.
  85. Dreams Rewired
    First with the telephone, then early cinema, the magic of wireless radio and, finally, television, Dreams Rewired bombards the senses with a thorough and clever montage of found footage from the 1890s to the pre-war era.
  86. Doctor Strange
    It’s a tremendously engaging and likeable superhero ride, in which the classiest of casts show they know exactly where to take it seriously – and where to inject the fun.
  87. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    However preposterous, The Rise of Skywalker is socked over with such energy, such euphoric certainty. And it’s such fun: full of the rackety exuberance of the now forgotten Saturday morning movie serials that were an influence on George Lucas.
  88. The Ones Below
    The Ones Below is an intimately disturbing nightmare of the upper middle classes, with tinges of melodrama and staginess, entirely appropriate for its air of suppressed psychosis.
  89. Dark Horse
    With its sheer warmth and likability, this good-natured documentary won my heart.
  90. The Brand New Testament
    The Brand New Testament is a peppy, original and (importantly) very sweet story.
  91. We Are Many
    A very valuable film.
  92. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
    Ficara and Requa have an irreverent streak, one that even might strike some as a little flippant against the gravity of the war.
  93. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
    It’s the kind of seemingly effortless success that makes producing a good superhero movie look easy: find a likable hero and a colorful villain, hire someone who knows how to write a punch line, and for Stan Lee’s sake, keep it fun.
  94. Early Man
    It’s impossible not to laugh at the inspired silliness and charm of Park’s universe. Early Man is a family film that doesn’t just provide gags for adults and gags for children: it locates the adult’s inner child and the child’s inner adult. It’s a treat.
  95. Tallulah
    Yes, the story has the makings of a Lifetime movie; what grounds it are the terrific performances and Heder’s rich direction and screenplay.
  96. 10 Cloverfield Lane
    All three actors are tremendous, and director Dan Trachtenberg, making his feature debut, must be commended for keeping things tightly focused.
  97. Certain Women
    Like Reichardt’s directorial hand, the performances are understated across the board, but deeply felt.
  98. Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures
    It forces viewers to take long looks at his most controversial imagery, proving that he still has the power to provoke, seduce and enrage.
  99. Wiener-Dog
    Wiener-Dog doesn’t find Solondz going light to deliver an inspirational medley. Instead, he’s created arguably his most caustic film since Happiness.
  100. Goat
    The film is a pointed, astute and unflinching look at unbridled machismo and its consequences.
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