The Guardian's Scores

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For 6,594 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: 2,497 out of 6594
  2. Mixed: 3,778 out of 6594
  3. Negative: 319 out of 6594
6594 movie reviews
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  1. The Mole Agent
    Sergio himself has real gentleness and is a lovely character, and there is some amiable comedy about how he is starting to enjoy himself in the home. But he is marooned in a tricksy, gimmicky film.
  2. Monday
    All of this film’s various moods – erotic, euphoric, tragic – are unearned and despite what is clearly strenuous effort from the performers themselves, the acting is hammy and undirected.
  3. Pieces of a Woman
    The film is like an intensively bred hothouse flower that can’t exist in the open air.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Space Dogs
    It’s hard to shake the feeling that a genuinely arresting documentary was cast adrift somewhere along the line.
  5. Hopper/Welles
    The restored footage is an intriguing relic – an offcut, raw copy. There’s something pleasingly voyeuristic about the experience of being allowed behind the velvet rope to watch these blusterers hold forth, although I expect their charms may be limited to die-hard devotees.
  6. 2067
    If all the money in the world is no guarantee of a good story, all the technical innovations – the dressing of sets, the creation of effects, the careful management of what is in and out of the frame – is of course no guarantee of one either.
  7. Penguin Bloom
    There is a great, moving story to tell about the real Sam Bloom – but this film only gets part of the way there.
  8. Akilla's Escape
    This tale of freelance underworld fixer Akilla Brown, played with careworn wisdom by Saul Williams, doesn’t live up to its sharp tailoring and has too much faith in fatigued beats from the gangster-film locker.
  9. The Last Shift
    It’s a mismatched buddy film, but not entirely unsuccessful thanks largely to Jenkins, who can play a role such as this with his eyes closed, and McGhie who captures a mixture of righteousness and despondency.
  10. Evil Eye
    With scant visual bite, perhaps it should’ve been called Evil Ear.
  11. Beginning
    Kulumbegashvili’s style is confident, if derivative. Her technique now has to evolve away from these self-conscious influences.
  12. Deep Water
    Just occasionally, Lyne brings the right kind of flash, brash and trash to this fantastically silly and unbelievable story. But the film plods along in such a disconcerting way: there is no ratcheting up of tension, or plausible psychology.
  13. The Devil to Pay
    Deadwyler’s soulful performance really grounds The Devil to Pay even as it cranks into revenge-movie mode. That said, if you want a slice of grim Americana to hunker down with, I’d go with Winter’s Bone or Frozen River.
    • 18 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Mr. Nanny
    This is a new twist on Home Alone, but not a very convincing one. [01 Apr 1993, p.4]
    • The Guardian
  15. Don't Look Back
    The directing is serviceable, but some rote imagery – especially the ominous crow of death – also likes to hit us over the head. Reddick should have concentrated on giving the characters that kind of treatment.
  16. The 355
    Films such as The 355 live and die by the quality of their action set pieces and while there’s a propulsive pace to the proceedings, there’s never quite enough genuine excitement.
  17. Wild Mountain Thyme
    There’s a sublime awfulness and condescension to this American vision of Ireland, adapted by writer-director John Patrick Shanley from his Broadway stage hit: a mind-boggling stew of bizarre paddywhackery that makes John Ford’s The Quiet Man look like a documentary about crack dealers.
  18. Hillbilly Elegy
    This is a well-meant story of someone pulling himself up by his bootstraps, with some help from his grandma. But it feels contrived and self-conscious.
  19. Jiu Jitsu
    The entertainingly frazzled presence of Nicolas Cage provides a reason to pay some attention – but not much – to this otherwise uninspired and by-the-numbers martial-arts action-sci-fi crossover.
  20. Dating Amber
    It’s all a bit earnest and derivative and sometimes a bit lachrymose, despite some perfectly decent performances.
  21. Black Beauty
    It’s a sonorously well-meaning film that bathes everything in the bland, buttery sunlight that Disney always produces and in which the human performances are as opaque as the ones given by the horses
  22. Audrey
    By and large, it’s an exasperating, simpering, Hello-magazine-interview of a film, blandly celebrating her “iconic” presence in the horribly overrated Breakfast at Tiffany’s, in which she was absurdly unrelaxed and self-conscious.
  23. The Midnight Sky
    Clooney guides the performances competently, but the story drifts pointlessly into space.
  24. Spell
    There’s a cinematic slickness to the film (it was intended to be released theatrically until the pandemic) that separates it from its more noticeably shoddier fright night competitors but it’s mostly a familiar, if not entirely fruitless, trudge down a well-trodden path, one that takes us into, at times, questionable territory.
  25. The United States vs. Billie Holiday
    Day’s rendition is heartfelt. But the direction and storytelling are laborious, without the panache and incorrectness of earlier Daniels movies such as Precious (2008) and The Paperboy (2012). A cloud of solemnity and reverence hangs over it, briefly dispelled by the music itself.
  26. Vanguard
    The scene with a jetski on the edge of a waterfall deserves points, but this feels disposable: the Chinese New Year is earnestly referenced as part of the film’s strident and faintly humourless patriotism.
  27. Earwig and the Witch
    There are some nice touches here and there, like the whirling little demons with batwings who are devoted to Mandrake. But the script ignores all the interesting bits of the story – who are the witches chasing Earwig’s mum and how does she shake them off?
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    A Bridge Too Far
    A Bridge Too Far is a fantastic historical and cinematic achievement but, if you're not a die-hard war obsessive, prepare to snooze.
  29. Music
    The autistic characters feel more like dramatic tools to improve the circumstances of neurotypical people, rather than fully-fledged humans who think, feel and act on their own terms.
  30. Godmothered
    Where Godmothered should coast, it stumbles – swerving between unwieldy earnestness to something edgier and settling on something duller than it should be.
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