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. An unclassifiably brilliant gem of American independent film-making.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    An outstanding piece of work.
  2. It is a demanding film, without a doubt – but a passionate one.
  3. I can still remember my 19-year-old self's awe at how Jake provokes a gorgeous, reluctant smile from the incandescently beautiful Moriarty. Throughout university, I was obsessed with this film, and watched it about once a month.
  4. It is an absorbing and satisfying drama, and Hurt’s Merrick is very powerful.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This grim picture of borstal life packs a real punch. And kick, and headbutt. [13 Feb 2010]
    • The Guardian
    • 74 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This ingenious erotic thriller full of unexpected shocks is best seen with no foreknowledge and even better at a second viewing.
  5. The stunts are still awe-inspiring, and there's plenty of laughs. They really were thinking big.
  6. The unhurried pace, extended dialogue scenes and those sudden, sinister inter-titles ("One Month Later", "4pm") contribute to the insidious unease. Nicholson's performance as the abusive father who is tipped over the edge is a thrillingly scabrous, black-comic turn, and the final shot of his face in daylight is a masterstroke...Deeply scary and strange.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A cast-iron, self-evident hit, but also just a tiny bit boring, perhaps?
  7. John Huston's hellfire burlesque is one of the great lost films of the 1970s and a movie to stand alongside his Maltese Falcon or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
  8. Mad Max has always radiated an otherworldly vibe, a slightly sickly sensation that something at its core is fundamentally wrong.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Like Woody Allen's "Take The Money and Run", The Jerk is basically designed to allow Martin to use as many of his standup jokes and routines as possible, but his charm and timing makes this cleverly constructed movie seem fantastically loose and easy.
  9. It’s a bit overextended but very watchable with flourishes of exotic invention.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mysterious, complex and brilliant: the disquieting portrait of a serial killer, seducer and con-man in Japan whose motivation remains an enigma. [9 Sept 2005, p.13]
    • The Guardian
  10. This is Herzog's journey to the heart of darkness, a film that specifically echoes his earlier offerings The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and his South American odyssey Aguirre, Wrath of God.
  11. But what a triumph this film was for Chapman, who gave a convincing, touching performance as the bewildered everyman who decides to make a stand, and in his battle with the evil empire makes a Luke Skywalker-style discovery about his lineage. Life of Brian is an unexpectedly earnest, sweet-natured hymn to the idea of tolerance.
  12. The film itself is a kind of free spirit, and one that has made an indelible print on Australian cinema.
  13. A film that needs to be seen on the big screen.
  14. The film is fun and stirring; a robust portrait of youth at the crossroads and a bittersweet salute to the town at its centre.
  15. Editors Terry Rawlings and Peter Weatherley cut the film so cleverly so that we never have a clear notion of what the alien actually looks like until the very last shots.
  16. Dirty Harry director Don Siegel reunited with Clint Eastwood for this taut 1979 thriller about real-life bank robber Frank Morris, who led the one possibly successful (bodies were never found) escape attempt from the notorious maximum-security prison on San Francisco's Alcatraz Island.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    If Ferrara is indeed a Van Gogh, then The Driller Killer is his Potato Eaters – an early work that displays, in rudimentary form, all the groundbreaking innovation of the mature works.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Above all, everyone in a Meyer film looks like they're having an absolutely great time.
  17. A masterpiece in minimalist horror.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Very convincing, deeply disturbing tale. [31 Dec 2005, p.49]
    • The Guardian
  18. This Superman alludes explicitly to its origins in the Depression-era comics, and Clark has a quaint 30s habit of using the phrase “Swell!” from his boyhood. Maybe now this movie looks quaint in the same way. But there’s still a surge of adventure and fun.
  19. The idea of sacrifice permeates everything, along with the cruelty and horror. This is Cimino's masterpiece.
  20. The unmasking "reveal" at the beginning of the movie is a great coup, and the film continues to be very scary, helped by Carpenter's own theme: a trebly plinking of piano notes and that buzzy synth in low register.
  21. The silence of Jeanne Dielman is the film’s weather and its atmosphere. It is a silence of terrible loneliness, and a silence in which a storm is gathering.

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