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 Coens are back with a vengeance, showing their various imitators and detractors what great American filmmaking looks like, and they have supplied a corrective adjustment to the excesses of goofy-quirky comedy that damaged their recent work. The result is a dark, violent, and deeply disquieting drama, leavened with brilliant noirish wisecracks, and boasting three leading male performances with all the spectacular virility of Texan steers.
  2. 300
    It has to be said that there is a level of cheerfully self-aware ridiculousness, which means that 300 is not entirely without entertainment value.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The characters are entirely credible and likable, the simply drawn figures highly effective against the lush background artwork. Time travel has rarely seemed so joyous.
  3. Though this is familiar Lynch stuff, it is never dull, and I was often buttock-clenchingly afraid of what was going to happen next and squeaking with anxiety.
  4. It is all ridiculously enjoyable, because the smirking and the quips and the gadgets have been cut back - and the emotion and wholesome sado-masochism have been pumped up.
  5. The film is a sharp reminder that the Queen has doggedly survived, because she has never been required to expend mental energy and political capital in shows of sincerity.
  6. This is a heartfelt movie, a documentary unafraid to spread itself across its vast subject matter, and a fierce denunciation of the arrogant political classes, still in denial about one of the biggest tragedies in American history.
  7. Refn delivers some shocks - but not the shock of the new.
  8. Paul Greengrass and his cinematographer Barry Ackroyd have created an intestinally powerful and magnificent memorial to the passengers of that doomed flight. It is the film of the year. I needed to lie down in a darkened room afterwards. So will you.
  9. Part of the film's brilliance is its stunning and unforgiving transmission of the great truth that for most of us, death is not a single, flatline moment, but a gradual, insidious process of deterioration.
  10. The cast certainly seems to be in on the whole joke, or at least must have felt all those hours in the makeup chair getting swaddled in latex was worth it in the end.
  11. Caché is Michael Haneke's masterpiece: a compelling politico-psychological essay about the denial and guilt mixed into the foundations of Western prosperity, composed and filmed with remarkable technique. It is one of the great films of this decade.
  12. Memories of Murder is a great satire of official laxity and arrogance, and its final scene is very chilling.
  13. It's a movie that you feel you're not so much watching on screen as having beamed directly into your skull from some malign, alien planet of horror.
  14. This is an entertaining venture with energy, fun and immature bad taste in abundance.
  15. It is a beautifully acted, exquisitely considered chamber drama of subtlety and nuance: spellbindingly tender and utterly involving
  16. This could be projected on to a wall at a club, but actually being made to sit down and watch it in a cinema is a weird experience.
  17. Elf
    The film’s old-fashioned charm and sweet-natured Yuletide spirit has held up, although it interestingly seems attractive now more for these softer-edged qualities than for the straight-ahead SNL-type Will Ferrell comedy that it seemed to promise back in 2003.
  18. Sofia Coppola's second movie as a director is more than a breakthrough: it's an insouciant triumph. She conjures a terrifically funny, heartbreakingly sad and swooningly romantic movie from almost nowhere and just makes it look very easy - as well as very modern and very sexy. It is a funky little Brief Encounter for the new century.
  19. What makes the film so compelling is the ferocious ingenuity with which Moodysson ratchets up the fear and astonishment that accompany Lilya's all too believable descent.
  20. It’s a documentary that should be shown in all film schools.
  21. Tamahori, director of Along Came a Spider, does a competent, if over-fussy job, but the pace flags in the showdown in Iceland.
  22. Spirited Away is fast and funny; it's weird and wonderful. Mostly wonderful.
  23. It remains among the strongest of the wave of gay-themed Chinese features from the late-20th and early-21st century (along with Fish and Elephant and East Palace, West Palace), elegantly interleaving its social and political commentary.
  24. The political and the supernatural come together beautifully (and violently), and the unsentimental portrayal of childhood is refreshing, with terrific performances from the boy actors. It’s altogether a supremely satisfying tale.
  25. It’s still a very entertaining and spectacular movie, with a rush of nostalgia to go alongside the exhilaration of fun.
  26. 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.
  27. Werckmeister Harmonies may be Tarr’s masterpiece.
  28. It’s fair to say Washington has never quite topped this performance. It’s an unparalleled treat to watch him messing with the bewildered Hoyt at their first meeting at a diner, and then to watch the two men striding out to the car, filmed from a low camera angle. It is all thrillingly ominous.
  29. There's some great Pinteresque dialogue, and the murky gloom is illuminated with flashes of genius. [07 May 2004, p.15]
    • The Guardian

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