The Guardian's Scores

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For 6,576 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 2.2 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: 2,493 out of 6576
  2. Mixed: 3,764 out of 6576
  3. Negative: 319 out of 6576
6576 movie reviews
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  1. Rustin
    It’s when the script leans into the story’s specificities that the film is at its most compelling – when intersectionality causes ruptures within the group, when we see civil rights giants fail to understand the hypocrisy of their homophobic bigotry, how Rustin manages his queerness in public and in private – and these moments help to provide depth to some of the flatness that’s in the more standard-issue scenes.
  2. Dark Asset
    Dark Asset finally finds a semi-satisfying groove as John’s grand design is revealed, even if it consists of too many borrowed parts to be a real quantum leap.
  3. Bolan's Shoes
    Spall keeps the performance tight, projecting not just Jimmy’s damaged psyche but also his wit.
  4. Rally Road Racers
    This is very bizarre stuff, even within the traditionally weird parameters of cultural representation in cartoons, but kids won’t mind as it’s one non-stop riot of colour and vroom-vroom movement.
  5. Elevator Game
    Cardboard characters aside, Elevator Game is also pretty sluggish, despite its relatively short runtime. Plodding through an endless string of dull shot/reverse shots between the quarrelling vloggers, the film finally reaches the dreaded fifth floor, but the payoff is tame and bloodless.
  6. Pain Hustlers
    Blunt remains committed to the end but even she can’t add a shine to the drab last act, the pleasure of seeing her on screen replaced with the pain of another undeserving project.
  7. The Critic
    The fizz of the first half might not go completely flat in the second but that’s only because of McKellen, who relishes another devious character to sink his teeth into, devouring every scene, a deliciously caustic turn that will provide him with nothing but the finest notices.
  8. Khan's Flesh
    Considering the complex sociopolitics of the region, this representation of community and geographical identity is much more fragile than it seems, and should not be taken for granted.
  9. The Holdovers
    There’s an emotional restraint in both the performances and the film surrounding them, despite the time of the year, and when a light sprinkling of sugar does come in the last act it feels earned.
  10. The Pigeon Tunnel
    Perhaps there is nothing very new in this film, but it’s a very civilised experience.
  11. Next Goal Wins
    The film is a shoddily made and strikingly unfunny attempt to tell an interesting story in an uninteresting way.
  12. Wicked Little Letters
    There’s something equally impressive and depressing about the squandered potential of misfiring period comedy Wicked Little Letters, a joyless waste of cast, premise and setting.
  13. Lee
    The life it’s focused on, that of model turned second world war photographer Lee Miller, is an undeniably interesting one, but it’s only in the briefest of moments that the film justifies why it’s a narrative endeavour rather than a documentary and every one of those moments comes courtesy of its lead.
  14. Woman of the Hour
    It’s a fascinating and frightening stranger-than-fiction tale and is an unusual choice for Kendrick’s directorial debut. She makes a convincing first-time film-maker, capturing the feel of a time and a number of places with ease.
  15. American Fiction
    With American Fiction, Cord Jefferson crafts a hilarious and withering satire about an African American novelist chafing against an industry that limits Black storytelling to trauma and poverty narratives.
  16. One Life
    It’s in the scenes from the late 80s, which slowly start to take centre stage, that the film finds more original footing, exploring with nuance the realities of living with the weight of doing so much yet thinking of it as so little.
  17. Les Indésirables
    Rejecting partisanship to affect the appearance of balance doesn’t make sense when dealing with situations defined by imbalance. Both Ly’s Hollywood bombast and impulse to undue generosity in his political convictions fight the vulcanized hardness of his bracing outrage, and ultimately prove little about today’s powder kegs.
  18. A Haunting in Venice
    No amount of spooky jump-scares can save Kenneth Branagh’s latest Christie adaptation, which wastes its atmospheric setting and stellar cast.
  19. Dumb Money
    It’s perilously close to being overstuffed (one more introduction would have tipped it over the edge) but a controlled and nimble script justifies the large ensemble, using each thread to quickly switch back and forth between the anger, ecstasy, disbelief and fear that seeped from conference to dorm room at the time.
  20. Dicks: The Musical
    Every second Mullally and Lane spend onscreen should be preserved in the library of Congress so that future generations of thespians might learn from their example.
  21. Green Border
    Green Border is a tough watch: a punch to the solar plexus. But a vital bearing of cinematic witness to what is happening in Europe right now.
  22. Finally Dawn
    Not a terribly profound film, but delivered with real brio.
  23. Jawan
    A star vehicle that functions like a runaway train, Jawan covers a lot of ground in surprising fashion at full throttle – but that’s also a polite way of admitting it’s utterly all over the place.
  24. Sitting in Bars with Cake
    Sitting in Bars with Cake careens from zany bar-hopping to hospital, cake baking ASMR to cancer weepie. You could argue that that’s life itself – a lot of chaos, bathos amid the profound – but that’s giving too much credit to the film’s murkier, underdeveloped bits. Still, it has a lasting bittersweetness to it.
  25. The Boy and the Heron
    The Boy and the Heron is a gentler and slower though no less soulful addition to his canon.
  26. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
    Its brief, brushed-off moments of anti-levity stand out, maybe because as a director, Vardalos does not have the comic touch required to provide the escapist distraction the movie is going for.
  27. The Nun II
    In neglecting to vary her routine, she is not unlike the film-makers behind this ninth visit to the Conjuring universe – although “universe” is a misleadingly large word for a franchise that is impoverished in all but its box-office gross.
  28. DogMan
    I’m sure there’s a way to make this theoretically fun premise work better, but regrettably Besson hasn’t found it.
  29. Coup de Chance
    The strong, credible performances oil the wheels during these clattering shifts of gear and serve to distract from its occasional moments of implausibility.
  30. Evil Does Not Exist
    It’s a complex drama, a realist film teetering on the edge of the uncanny, whose very title points the way towards the idea that there are shades of grey in every judgment we make.
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