The Guardian's Scores

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For 6,576 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: 2,493 out of 6576
  2. Mixed: 3,764 out of 6576
  3. Negative: 319 out of 6576
6576 movie reviews
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  1. The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz
    Essential viewing for anyone interested in what freedom of information means in the digital age, this passionate, fascinating, unapologetically partial but fair documentary celebrates Aaron Swartz.
  2. Manuscripts Don't Burn
    Putting aside the worthiness of its politics, this is also a crackling, tense thriller, graced with beautifully measured performances, that explores with wisdom and sorrow the best and worst in human nature.
  3. Soul Boys of the Western World
    Fans of the band will undoubtedly love the package, which puts the group front and centre. Those who are more agnostic about the music but nostalgic for the period will enjoy the peripheral material.
  4. The Way He Looks
    You can’t help feeling you’ve seen variations on this coming-out story too many times (which applies to the gay theme as much as the disability one), and everyone is just a little too nice to be true, even the bullies.
  5. Son of a Gun
    McGregor, who is having a bit of comeback moment right now, is kind of great as the ruthless antihero, and the action set pieces have plenty of fizz.
  6. Coherence
    Byrkit’s parable about choices and how they make us who we are has an eerie potency.
  7. Kung Fu Killer
    The fight scenes are terrific, but the haphazard plotting, off-the-peg characterisations and drippy music elsewhere lack flavour.
  8. The Signal
    A banal and credulity-stretching finale that feels like a bad Twilight Zone episode, but the first hour or so is terrific.
  9. I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story
    It’s tremendously reassuring to find out that Spinney is just the sort of kind-hearted sweetheart you’d expect, a man who’s spent a lifetime making children happy. And it’s a kick to see archive footage and interviews with some of the old, non-puppeteer cast members.
  10. Futuro Beach
    It’s an immensely likable movie, impeccably acted and wise about the nature of exile.
  11. Song of the Sea
    Folky music and Studio Ghibli-level flights of eerie fancy are obvious pleasures, but even more subtle and entrancing is the way Moore and his team use echoed shapes to suggest hidden patterns in nature and parallels between the real and the mythical.
  12. 52 Tuesdays
    The use of video diaries and the expository speeches are painfully on the nose at times, and dramatically spins a bit out of control by the end, while some of the acting is patchy. Still, one can’t but fail to be impressed with the film’s commitment to investigate its issues with subtlety and frankness.
  13. Demonic
    Fashioned out of well-worn, if not hackneyed, horror tropes, Demonic is no meta-level deconstruction of the genre, but it’s a more than competent, fugue-like manipulation that freshens familiar components with a tricky structure.
  14. Cartel Land
    There’s no doubting Heineman and his crew’s audacity as they venture close to the line of fire, but the commitment to observing dispassionately at all times starts to feel a bit like a cop-out.
  15. How to Change the World
    There’s no missing the polemical points being made or doubting the film is meant to inspire further action, but even hardened whale-eating oil oligarchs are likely to be charmed by the idealism and smarts of these audacious activists.
  16. Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger
    Dense thickets of information, told via rostrum-shot photos and documents plus angry mob’s worth of witnesses, become a grind after a while, as does the trite guitar-led mystery music.
  17. Extraordinary Tales
    Animator Raul Garcia’s 70-minute anthology of five Poe stories, Extraordinary Tales, has its moments, and will be a welcome respite for any middle schooler sitting through a boring lecture. But if we were ever asked if we wanted a second viewing, we’d have to quoth the raven: nevermore.
  18. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
    It’s a test of one’s tolerance for watching predominantly empty frames – the anonymous performers scarcely count – in the hope something will jolt us from mounting tedium.
  19. Tokyo Tribe
    Amusingly tacky and offensive though it is, proceedings grow a bit monotonous, because all the tunes have pretty much the same beat and everything is pitched at the same hysterical, OTT level.
  20. The Sound and the Fury
    So bogged down by form, Franco fails to get his head up enough to think about content.
  21. Jem and the Holograms
    This movie sure means well, and it’s just entertaining enough to (slightly) slip off the shackles of the great cultural conformity factory it ultimately represents.
  22. SPECTRE
    It’s deeply silly but uproariously entertaining. At the end, I almost felt guilty for enjoying it all quite so much - almost.
  23. 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.
  24. Rock the Kasbah
    There’s a special variety of infuriating that comes from a bad movie by talented people.
  25. Difret
    It’s tempting to give this more of a pass because the subject is so noble and so few African-made films make it over here, but it has to be admitted that the some of the acting is a bit ropey and the script is a little too on-the-nose at times.
  26. Kill Your Friends
    The difficulty with black comedy is avoiding overkill and Kill Your Friends is a dictionary definition of the word.
  27. 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.
  28. Cut Snake
    Performances are uniformly impressive, with Stapleton guaranteed a place in the pantheon of creepily charismatic Australian screen criminals.
  29. Crimson Peak
    Guillermo del Toro’s gothic fantasy-romance Crimson Peak is outrageously sumptuous, gruesomely violent and designed to within an inch of its life.
    • 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.
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