The Guardian's Scores

Select another publication »
For 6,571 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: 2,490 out of 6571
  2. Mixed: 3,762 out of 6571
  3. Negative: 319 out of 6571
6571 movie reviews
view
per page
  1. A Tale of Two Cities
    Vintage screen Dickens with a cutting edge: the French terror is vividly, hauntingly realised, all chaos and guillotine ghouls. [16 Aug 2000, p.23]
    • The Guardian
  2. Top Hat
    Top Hat reflects a transatlantic kind of universe, the Brit dimension absorbed into American waspy class, and sweetened with some mannered comedy; this was a Hollywood that loved PG Wodehouse.
  3. The 39 Steps
    It is witty, daring and exuberant; like his hero, Hitchcock shows himself to be energetic and resourceful in dealing with changes in locale. [11 Apr 2008, p.10]
    • The Guardian
    • 95 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Bride of Frankenstein
    Bride is a wild ride, even today. It flits between the classical and the gutter, the camp and the serious in a manner that's hard to pin down.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Roberta
    Scintillating partnership of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, here still in supporting roles (to Irene Dunne), gives substance to otherwise flimsy fashion-set musical. [04 Oct 1990]
    • The Guardian
  6. It Happened One Night
    As buoyant and elegant as bubbles in a glass of champagne, Frank Capra's sublime 1934 comedy, written by long-time collaborator Robert Riskin, survives triumphantly because of its wit, charm, romantic idealism and its shrewd sketch of married life.
  7. Duck Soup
    The sheer silliness is inspired.
  8. The Invisible Man
    The Invisible Man boasts a brilliantly chill and confident performance from (an almost entirely unseen) Claude Rains and a gloriously over-the-top supporting turn from Una O'Connor as his inquisitive landlady. Moreover, its tart, acid tone largely honours the spirit of the novel.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Horse Feathers
    The movie is packed with brilliant, logic-chopping dialogue and surreal visual gags that, though familiar and often quoted, come up fresh at each viewing, none funnier than Harpo getting money from a phone as if it were a fruit machine.
  10. Freaks
    Freaks is filled with poignancy; it offers a premonition of eugenics, as well as a provocative comparison with the alienated condition of women and the freakish nature of all showbiz celebrity. It is a work of genius.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Shanghai Express
    This melodrama the director weakens by mistaking postponement of event for suspense. But the film has compensating strength in the star, who photographs more beautifully than before and, though she is acted off the screen by Anna May Wong, shows herself unique in Hollywood by being majestically beautiful.
  12. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
    A classic, not to be missed.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mata Hari
    Garbo is deliciously watchable in this fictionalised but nonetheless well-researched biopic.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Public Enemy
    The deepest appeal of this 74-minute study in insolence is that Cagney is cock of the walk.
  15. All Quiet on the Western Front
    An ambitious epic of tremendous sweep and scope, with trench-warfare battle scenes comparable to Kubrick's Paths of Glory.
  16. Man with a Movie Camera
    The combustion engine gave humanity the new experience of speed; now the movie camera gave us a dizzying new speed of perception and creation.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Passion of Joan of Arc
    The last silent film by Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer, it largely eschewed traditional master shots for a dazzling range of expressive, character-probing close-ups: no historical biopic has ever felt quite so unnervingly intimate.
  18. The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
    Hitchcock's 1926 silent melodrama offers a gripping prehistory not just of his own work, but the Hollywood thriller itself.
  19. Sunrise
    FW Murnau's classic 1927 silent is one of the first movies with a really substantial feature-length narrative: an exuberant pioneer picture conceived on a big canvas, blazing an inspirational trail for just about everything Hollywood has done since. [06 Feb 2004, p.15]
    • The Guardian
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Ring
    The Ring is a showcase for the young Hitchcock's editing panache: the experimental, Soviet-influenced montage that would surface so violently in Psycho. [04 Jul 2012]
    • The Guardian
  21. Battleship Potemkin
    Eisenstein's film still has a hypnotic urgency.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate
    A Woman of Paris is a remarkable film, an historic film, a film to see and consider. But, it is wintry, and not everyone will find it to his liking.
    • 99 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Intolerance
    A powerful humane statement and a towering work of art.
  24. Return to Ithaca
    It is a bit stagey, but heartfelt and well acted.
  25. The Lure
    [A] thin, slightly exasperating documentary.
  26. Distance
    This is a diffuse film, and lacks Afterlife's clinching motif. It is uncertain in both its tone and its message - if, indeed, any such message exists, or even needs to.... There is something melancholy and resonant about this film, and it has its own subtle, unsettling effect. [22 Aug 2001, p.12]
    • The Guardian
  27. The Odyssey
    It’s a handsome film, but in the end perhaps Wes Anderson’s pastiche approach in The Life Aquatic (in which Bill Murray’s character is a tribute to Cousteau) more vividly brought to life the era of the last great adventurer-superstars.
  28. I Love You, Daddy
    It contrives to be a very funny and recklessly provocative homage to Woody Allen, channelling his masterpiece Manhattan and brilliantly finding a fictional way to tackle his personal reputation head-on.
  29. The Jungle Bunch
    Loud and zappy, The Jungle Bunch trots out predictable be-kind-be-brave platitudes, but lacks anything distinctive of its own.
  30. The Seventh Continent (1989)
    A chilling and utterly brilliant film whose final, excoriating sequence is frankly sufficient on its own to justify the genius tag.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »