The Guardian's Scores

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For 6,556 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: 2,481 out of 6556
  2. Mixed: 3,756 out of 6556
  3. Negative: 319 out of 6556
6556 movie reviews
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  1. The Life List
    The word “messy” is bandied around by its characters but The Life List is far too clean.
  2. Warfare
    The movie is its own show of force in some ways, surely accurate in showing what the soldiers did, moment by moment, though blandly unaware of a point or a meaning beyond the horror.
  3. The Woman in the Yard
    Deadwyler remains credibly frazzled, pushed towards monstrousness in ways that will be familiar to anyone who homeschooled during Covid, and the bundled figure closing in on her is genuine nightmare fuel. Yet the rest of this hotchpotch never matches it, and flails in trying to explain it away.
  4. A Working Man
    Some of the movie’s cartoon mayhem is fun enough. The rest feels like, well, work.
  5. When Fall Is Coming
    It’s an interesting, strange film, with a key moment withheld from the audience – and yet its omission, and the resulting ambiguity and mystery, is something we are almost supposed to forget about.
  6. That They May Face the Rising Sun
    Despite its somewhat diffuse centre, Collins’ film still has a straightforward poignancy, with subtle and dignified performances across the board.
  7. Santosh
    Writer-director Sandhya Suri has made a tense, violent and politically savvy crime procedural set in India: a film about sexism, caste bigotry and Islamophobia that doubles as a study in the complex relationship between two female cops, a cynical veteran and a wide-eyed rookie.
  8. Flow
    As visions of apocalypse go, it’s rather lovely: a world lush with nature, animals learning to get by together.
  9. Ne Zha 2
    Forget the adulterated, Communist party-sponsored attempts at blockbusters of the past, self-taught animator Jiaozi’s film is an utterly self-assured pageant of Chinese mythology that, with head-spinning visuals, is a fine technical advertisement for what the country is capable of, in this case on a comparatively small $80m budget.
  10. Brief History of a Family
    This works well just as simple drama, directed and performed immaculately, and as a glorious promise of films to come from Lin.
  11. Snow White
    This fudged, pseudo-progressive approach is so tiring you’ll want to put your head in your hands.
  12. The Alto Knights
    There is a kind of solidity and force to the film in its opening act, but its interest dwindles and we get little in the way of either ambition or moment-by-moment humour.
  13. Bloody Axe Wound
    Unfortunately, Bloody Axe Wound doesn’t have quite enough distraction technique, giving the audience far too much time to start wondering how on earth any of this is supposed to hang together.
  14. Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
    Her poems, read by Giovanni herself and the actor Taraji P Henson, made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
  15. The Parenting
    As a comedy, it stops being funny and as a horror it never starts being scary with Johnson’s direction far too drab and lifeless for something so cartoonish and schlocky. Big swing, bigger miss.
  16. The Rivals of Amziah King
    McConaughey may be a capable driver, but this is an unwieldy vehicle – oversized, overlong and altogether way too many parts to run smoothly.
  17. O'Dessa
    Everyone’s stumbling along in a vaguely defined universe, which really only serves as a backdrop to catchy musical numbers that evolve from folk to pop rock.
  18. A Sloth Story
    It’s perfectly adequate for little kids but with little character of its own and a straight-to-download-style blandness.
  19. September Says
    This is a movie that strains and contorts for its effects; the performances are strong – strong enough to carry the big twist – and Labed might have absorbed Agnieszka Smoczynska’s comparable film The Silent Twins, although that was unselfconscious and heartfelt in a way that this isn’t. It’s a film that feels actorly rather than real.
  20. Cold Wallet
    The film is to its credit much more interested in psychology rather than tech, and the fine lines between avarice, rage and impotence that make the capitalist world go round.
  21. Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods
    This has cosmic charm aplenty.
  22. The Rule of Jenny Pen
    Film-maker James Ashcroft has created a scary and intimately upsetting psychological horror based on a story by New Zealand author Owen Marshall set in a care home, a film whose coolly maintained claustrophobic mood and bravura performances make up for the slight narrative blurring towards the end.
  23. In the Lost Lands
    German screenwriter Constantine Werner has adapted a story from fantasy author George RR Martin and the resulting dialogue lands like a series of sandbags on a concrete floor; director Paul WS Anderson handles the material with stolid determination.
  24. Sister Midnight
    It’s a great comic turn from Apte who deserves to be better known.
  25. Novocaine
    There’s also not really enough fun here, the repetitive nature of the fight scenes – quip, laugh, injury, wince – growing tired fast.
  26. Holland
    It squanders the talents of its star, especially for this particular brand of unsettling, on a bizarrely paced script that adds up to nothing.
  27. American Dreamer
    This low-key oddity has the potential for some proper horsepower given the odd but intriguing casting of Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine, but it never manages to build up much comic or dramatic speed – much like Dinklage’s electric scooter, his main mode of transport throughout.
  28. Marching Powder
    Over-the-top it may be, but Love’s film-making has an attacking force that some of the more respectable Brit films are lacking.
  29. Drop
    [Fahy's] dialed-in performance is thankfully matched by an overarching crispness to the proceedings – just enough flourishes, an enjoyable but not unbearable amount of stress, no wasted time, a perfect match of star, script and style.
  30. Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.
    As a thriller, this is not really thrilling enough. And as a biopic, it’s not necessarily representative of the spirit of the man. But it’s solid enough film-making in a traditional no-frills mode that will always find an audience – even if it’s not particularly trendy.
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