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. It's a Wonderful Knife
    It’s a Wonderful Knife is diverting enough to start with, as the plot clicks efficiently into motion with the requisite stabbings and impalings. Unfortunately, there’s not enough fuel in the engine – the characters don’t have quite enough to do, we can’t care quite enough about them, and the world-building is nearly-but-not-quite convincing.
  2. There's Something in the Barn
    It’s a silly horror that’s not as good, or as bad, as you’d hoped: neither funny enough nor ever properly scary. That said, there are some cheerfully gory bits and a smattering of decent culture clash gags.
  3. Teddy's Christmas
    This one has all the Norwegian drama of Yuletide in one tidy package, yes sir.
  4. Leave the World Behind
    As the catastrophe escalates, the movie’s mood music of imminent horror gets gradually and continuously louder, without ever quite reaching a climax of fear – or meaning.
  5. The Kill Room
    Nicol Paone’s flat direction and Jonathan Jacobson’s listless screenplay leave the cast painting by numbers.
  6. American Symphony
    Batiste is a cheerful and inspiring presence but there’s a guardedness to him that keeps us at a respectful distance. His relentless optimism, so integral when he’s trying to keep everyone’s spirits up, can also function as a shield.
  7. Another Body
    This is a powerful and important documentary, though I have one tiny qualification.
  8. Genie
    It’s as if everyone involved is terrified of actually making people laugh in case that gives offence somehow, or disrupts the algorithmic calculation that theoretically makes this a palatable piece of content. The whole thing is as bland as cellophane.
  9. Lost in the Night
    Escalante’s storytelling vigour and his way with an unsettling image keep this film’s voltage high.
  10. Leo
    Brightly animated and with moments of surprising insight, there’s a warm likability to Leo that radiates, for those still in the classroom and those who left it long ago.
  11. Aurora's Sunrise
    Perhaps the most remarkable moment comes at the end when the elderly Aurora reflects that she doesn’t want revenge, she just wants those connected to the genocide to be made accountable for it: “sat in the chair” of justice.
  12. Wish
    Watching all the tried-and-tested elements fail to coalesce just makes us nostalgic for the classics instead. Let us all wish Disney can find that magic again.
  13. Control
    Perhaps Control will gain cult status – or inspire a remake. But Spacey’s eerily detached, jaded presence does not do much for his putative comeback.
  14. Dashing Through the Snow
    In film-making as in gift-giving, it’s the thought that counts, and there’s not much to go around in here.
  15. Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain
    As comedy writers and movie actors, the members of Please Don’t Destroy – Martin Herlihy, John Higgins and Ben Marshall – are out of their depth. That’s not a knock on their brand of comedy, which works in small doses.
  16. Mami Wata
    The sleek, stark images of this film are hypnotic; the faces are compelling and the hallucinatory finale is rather inspired. An arresting piece of work.
  17. The Lost Weekend: A Love Story
    It is a vivid snapshot of a troubled private life at the apex of the US music scene.
  18. Best. Christmas. Ever.
    At less than 80 minutes, it’s barely even a movie, more one long montage of bits that never run on long enough to be defined as scenes.
  19. Eismayer
    The film is a surprisingly gentle, touching story about acceptance, though it is less than sizzling as a romance.
  20. Thanksgiving
    Roth thinks in hooks and punchlines, which keeps the copious slayings inventive and gratifying while also enlivening the connective tissue between them.
  21. Journey to Bethlehem
    If you feel the need to watch a faith film, you could do far, far worse than this one, a decently staged musical treatment of the nativity that feels like a Christian version of a live action Disney movie.
  22. Mafia Mamma
    Not even the fierce wattage of Toni Collette’s talent can light up this hokey crime comedy.
  23. Napoleon
    Phoenix is the key to it all: a performance as robust as the glass of burgundy he knocks back: preening, brooding, seething and triumphing.
  24. Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose
    In the end, the film looks like something that’s been salvaged in the edit, as it muses boringly on life’s great imponderables.
  25. Stamped from the Beginning
    The film’s particular innovation is to privilege Black women’s perspectives on the history of American racism, and with the exception of Kendi himself, every expert commentator here is a Black woman.
  26. Driving Madeleine
    Both of the leads keep it low-key, with 95-year-old Renaud’s unfussy reminiscences dotted with defiant irony, and the initially unforthcoming Boon opening up under her cajoling as naturally as a flower.
  27. Queens of the Qing Dynasty
    It’s a disorientating, unrelaxing two-hour experience, but rewarding.
  28. Desperation Road
    The direction by Nadine Crocker has all the authenticity of a daytime soap opera. But all the same, there’s no denying that Hedlund and, to a lesser extent, Fitzgerald are pretty good, offering better performances than the film surrounding them deserves.
  29. Inside Man
    In the end this feels a bit too much like a knockoff of a superior product, like something one of these guys would sell out of the boot of their car.
  30. The Mission
    Though effective in filling in the gaps of Chau’s story, the impressionistic animation dramatising his final moments commits a similar sin as the swashbuckling tales of yore, and makes a spectacle out of a tragedy that is ultimately not all that mysterious or abstract – but in fact grounded in material sociopolitical contexts.
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