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. Rental Family
    It is bafflingly complacent in its sentimentality and its sheer, fatuous implausibility, which makes it valueless and meaningless as drama and comedy.
  2. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
    This is an exciting, forthright, energised – though very gruesome – film in which there is real human jeopardy and conflict. Non-zombies are more cinematic.
  3. Dreamers
    Writer-director Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s script leans perhaps a little too hard on the show-don’t-tell theory of construction, but she and her team make evocative use of simple but effective flourishes.
  4. The Extraordinary Miss Flower
    Flower herself remains elusive – which is the point, perhaps, since the perspective here is mostly lovers’ projections written on a delirious high, reconstructed from the letters.
  5. People We Meet on Vacation
    It’s a film about wanderlust and romance that should be a breezy sojourn for those of us who need it right now. Why then does it feel like such a slog?
  6. Primate
    Roberts, who also directed hit shark thriller 47 Metres Down and its superior follow-up, is mostly at his savviest and most ruthlessly efficient here, a confident leveling up for a genre film-maker finding his sweet spot. After a lacklustre year for horror, Primate makes for a wildly entertaining start to 2026.
  7. Giant
    Some interesting material here, but the punches don’t land.
  8. Greenland 2: Migration
    Greenland 2: Migration takes itself seriously in all the wrong ways; it wants to maintain a safe distance from the real world, while urging the audience to shed a tear over some imagined nobility.
  9. Hamnet
    This film succeeds, not because it solves the mystery, but because it deepens it still further. It is contrived and speculative, but ingenious and impassioned at the same time.
  10. I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not
    Best of all, Zenovich and her editor, splicing and dicing 50 years of archive material, get across Chase’s abundant talent at its best, particularly his masterly command of the pratfall, and his immaculate comic timing.
  11. We Bury the Dead
    In a genre plagued by a lack of effort, I’ll take a solid try.
  12. David Bowie: The Final Act
    Ten years on, it’s moving to hear Visconti, his lifelong friend and collaborator, talking about recording in secret what they all knew would be his last project. It would be wrong to call it going out on a high, under the circumstances, but it’s heartening that Bowie could craft such a poignant, defiant, dignified exit.
  13. Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros
    At one point, Michel Troisgros insists that cuisine is not cinema, but real life. But Wiseman continually spotlights the importance of close observation in ingredients, taste, preparation and presentation that enables the elevation of the material world into art; from creme brulee forensics, to the staff finicking with the tableware until the setting is just-so.
  14. Holding Liat
    Holding Liat is a valuable work, not least for showing us that Israel and Netanyahu are not synonymous.
  15. The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants
    Whether its spitballing silliness will linger when the lights come up is debatable, but it’s a solid SpongeBob movie.
  16. Song Sung Blue
    This is a never-say-die story and its cheerful optimism makes it a calorific Christmas treat.
  17. Anaconda
    Rudd and Black make the new Anaconda easy enough to accept as a comedy with a dash of clunky effects-based creature action, rather than a full-blown horror-comedy.
  18. Europe's New Faces
    The lack of story, structure, or any clear editorial principle is a serious impediment to empathy for these poor, struggling people; the 159-minute runtime feels like four years.
  19. The Housemaid
    We get some tastily over-the-top acting and some huge rewind POV shifts to explain what has really been going on – and, of course, the heady whiff of gaslight as Millie can’t quite be sure she really understands anything that’s happening. Silly it may be, but Feig and his cast deliver it with terrific gusto; this is an innocent holiday treat.
  20. Avatar: Fire and Ash
    Avatar is as gigantically uninteresting and colossally impervious to criticism as ever: a vast, blank edifice that placidly repels objection.
  21. Silent Night, Deadly Night
    What none of the tonal shifts and story tweaks can do is distract us from his boringly flat direction, failing to justify why something so drab and cheap-looking would warrant the surprisingly wide theatrical release it’s receiving this weekend.
  22. Goodbye June
    There’s nothing wrong with a weepie or big emotional moments, but for me Goodbye June is too unreal, too contrived in its sugary farewell.
  23. H Is for Hawk
    Audiences might, by the closing credits, think they still don’t quite know what happens to Helen and Mabel in the end, or perhaps at any time, but then again real life can feel messy and unfinished in just this way.
  24. Ella McCay
    Ella McCay is, first and foremost, a mess – a clunky collection of incoherent characters and confounding plot that seem to defy basic story logic at every turn, and not in a surprising or intriguing way.
  25. Flathead
    The film’s poetry resides in its thoughtful inactivity, its vernacular spirituality and its gentleness.
  26. Preparation for the Next Life
    It has a seriousness, an unsentimental readiness to look reality in the face.
  27. Christmas, Again
    Poekel’s style is far too authentic-indie and unaffected to get slushy or sentimental about Christmas; through his lens Christmas tree lights blink like police lights. But in its own low-key way, he pitches his film just right for a little squeeze of festive warmth.
  28. Merv
    As it is, Merv is slight and sweet and entirely to expectations. Making a movie about co-parenting a dog is not a bad idea – though I wouldn’t say it’s a great one, either.
  29. Fackham Hall
    This enjoyable silver-spoon romp packs all of its 97 minutes with jokes and bits ranging from the puerile to the genuinely funny, proving that there may yet be more to wring from eat-the-rich satire.
  30. The Tale of Silyan
    Kotevska depicts the growing bond between man and bird with warmth and humour, and while the musical score is a bit on the sappy side, there are enough drolly astringent touches to make this cockle-warming family viewing, if you have a family that likes stories of unhappy agrarian workers.
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