The Guardian's Scores

For 6,656 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:
6656 movie reviews
  1. The Invisible Man boasts a brilliantly chill and confident performance from (an almost entirely unseen) Claude Rains and a gloriously over-the-top supporting turn from Una O'Connor as his inquisitive landlady. Moreover, its tart, acid tone largely honours the spirit of the novel.
  2. In acting terms Tom Hulce's shrieking, giggling Wolfie was easily outclassed by F Murray Abraham's brooding Iago-like villain, but Forman's distinctive central European locations, painterly night-time exteriors and period crowd scenes still look terrific. [2002 Director's Cut]
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Superbly photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond in a desaturated colour that echoes a bygone age, The Long Goodbye is an elegant, chilly, deliberately heartless movie.
  3. Chahine conducts his big cast with uproarious energy, immediacy and freshness; he has tremendous stylised set pieces, including a railway-carriage rock'n'roll number performed by a group gloriously credited as Mike and his Skyrockets.
  4. As ever, Almodóvar has made a film about pleasure, which is itself a pleasure: witty, intelligent and sensuous.
  5. This exquisite, exemplary science documentary, directed by Irish editor turned helmer Emer Reynolds, recounts the rich and fascinating story of the Voyager mission, arguably Nasa’s finest, noblest contribution to scientific understanding.
  6. Love for the moving image – and love for artistic creativity – marches hand in hand with the fight for political freedom.
  7. It's beautiful and strange, with its profoundly disturbing ambient sound design of industrial groaning, as if filmed inside some collapsing factory or gigantic dying organism.
  8. This is a ramshackle, exuberant affair, peppered with larger-than-life inhabitants, ludicrous scenes and quotable dialogue that have long since grown worn from frequent use.
  9. The implacable forces of nature, nurture and destiny are what this movie grapples with; it is a really emotional and absorbing drama about adoption with terrific performances (many from nonprofessional first-timers) and compelling soundtrack musical cues.
  10. This is a great documentary about people who are serious about music and serious also about art, and what it means to live as an artist.
  11. Shaunak Sen’s documentary is a complex, thoughtful, quietly beautiful film about the ecosystem and human community.
  12. It’s tender and sometimes beautifully made, but also contrived and occasionally features some too-good-to-be-true caring characters. Frankly, it’s rather precious.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Medium Cool encapsulates the divisive issues of race and poverty that remain as urgent today as they did in 1968. It also makes us think about the way the media shape our lives and are used to deflect public attention from sustained political action.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The film is almost totally schematic and this weakens it. What strengthens it is the sheer emotional power of its making.
  13. The sleek, stark images of this film are hypnotic; the faces are compelling and the hallucinatory finale is rather inspired. An arresting piece of work.
  14. Mulholland Drive is as brilliant and disquieting as anything Lynch has ever done. It is psychotically lucid, oppressively strange, but with a powerfully erotic and humanly intimate dimension that Lynch never quite achieved elsewhere. It is a fantasia of illusion and identity, a meditation on the mystery of casting in art as in life: the vital importance of finding the right role.
  15. Fire at Sea is masterly film-making.
  16. Over two-and-a-half hours, you get a lot of deafening bangs for your buck, and the tourist location stunts are impressive - but there isn’t as much humour in the dialogue as before.
  17. F for Fake is a minor work in some ways, but there is fascination and poignancy in seeing Welles's elegant retreat into this hall of mirrors.
  18. A pioneering glory of the new wave.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Not just my favourite Bond movie, but the standard by which all other Bond movies must be judged. It has Sean Connery, of course, and the best theme song, incorporating Shirley Bassey and lashings of John Barry brass...And it has the best villain.
  19. This is Boseman’s final performance on screen, and what a glorious performance to go out on. It is a head-butting confrontation of the galácticos: Davis and Boseman are each the immovable object and irresistible force.
  20. This is a sweet, fuzzy movie, possibly a little soft-hearted. Still, I dare anyone to watch the final moments without a lump in the throat.
  21. The treasure in this story is not a sunk vessel, as the interviews with its more literal-minded subjects might suggest, but a sense of justice and equilibrium that has been denied to a people that have been passing down their trauma from one generation to the next.
  22. This is a suspense classic that leaves teeth-marks.
  23. A stirring classic.
  24. This is an immersive experience, like being plunged back into the 70s. There is passion there. No matter how chaotic or bleary things get, no one is in any doubt that the music counts.
  25. About Endlessness contains moments of devilish wit, but at heart it is a sad, sweet picture, threaded with themes of estrangement and separation. Andersson isn’t exactly asking us to laugh at or pity these people. Instead, we’re being encouraged to wonder at their predicament – and perhaps relate it to our own.
  26. It is an intensely disquieting, utterly distinctive film and a superb final panel to his triptych.

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