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. With playful touches of Spielberg, Shyamalan and even Hitchcock, veteran director Joe Dante has confected a neat little scary movie, not explicitly violent, but pretty scary nonetheless.
  2. Cox's guardedly avuncular turn might have sustained a more rigorous endeavour, but the attempt to evoke the trauma of the Munich air disaster is rendered wholly insupportable by the trifling hooey around it.
  3. This is Where I Leave You is totally aimble, utterly unmoving filler given a major shot in the arm by its cast, people it’s simply a pleasure to watch, even with the creeping feeling they’re better than this.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It all escalates into an arch, knowing throwback to 80s horror-thrillers that's muddled in parts but never less than entertaining.
  4. Vallée, in collaboration with screenwriter Nick Hornby, gives the film its energy by pulling the narrative apart. They create a two-hour hallucinatory montage of the hike and Cheryl's back story that's wound together with the songs, phrases and poetry that she recited to herself as she walked.
  5. What Cumberbatch delivers is an impressively rounded character study of someone variously kind, prickly, aggressive, awkward and supremely confident. But it's almost too nuanced. Accuracy isn't all, but fumbling in the dark isn't always fun.
  6. Denzel is so cool, so made of pure nails he can make even the most preposterous action scene feel thrilling. But Denzel's strength is also his weakness.
  7. Put bluntly, Tim Story's film wears you down until you relent and say, yes, I like these people and it's fun to watch them all have such a good time.
  8. Embarrassing for everyone involved not because of any squeamish subject matter – quite the contrary, seeing retirement-age characters are refreshing – but because the story structure is so fake and so plodding.
  9. Finding Fela does an exemplary job of explaining, in musical terms, what made Fela standout, a simple enough step that most music documentaries ignore.
  10. Young kids will find the second, more action-heavy half of the film entertaining, but everyone else will want to crawl into their shell.
  11. Life After Beth, a frustrating affair due to its waste of resources, feels rushed and under-rehearsed. It is a style of film-making that hopes it can glide its way into your good graces on ad-hoc performance flourishes, a wall-to-wall audio mix and editing patches. One soon recognizes this all a cover for one key issue: a lack of original ideas.
  12. By the end of the movie few won’t be rolling their eyes or checking their watch, but there’s enough that’s fundamentally good in the meat of film not to wholly reject what The Giver is giving us.
  13. There’s no way around this: The November Man is asinine. It is not without its pleasures – if you like seeing people get hit in the face with shovels, that is – but it might be the most irresponsibly dumb spy thriller I’ve seen in some time.
  14. There is a contrivance to both story and script that grates, rubs up against Murray’s appeal as a loose cannon.
  15. The Judge is a timeless film, in that it could have been made at almost any point over the past 80 years: rote plot, functional support, well-signalled twists. It’s a two-seater star vehicle offering little legroom for other passengers.
  16. The corn in The Identical is as tall as an elephant’s eye – but there’s nothing that says the story of a man torn between his religious upbringing and his desire to be a musician can’t make for a good movie. In fact, considering a little movie called "The Jazz Singer," there’s ample proof that it can be groundbreaking.
  17. It is soulless, like something that has been generated by a computer programme.
  18. Bogdanovich is a formidable figure, but with this movie he’s just coasting. He surely needs to find a screenplay more attuned to his brilliance, rather than a derivative, low-octane comedy.
  19. This is a tough, muscular, idealistic drama that packs a mighty punch, and Shannon and Garfield are excellent.
  20. Pacino's Manglehorn is a subtle master class in neutral shading, with none of the garish flashes that sometimes bedevil his work.
  21. There are some interestingly contrived moments of claustrophobia and surreal lunacy, but this cliched and slightly hand-me-down script neither scares nor amuses very satisfyingly.
  22. The Look of Silence — like The Act of Killing — is arresting and important film-making.
  23. There’s no doubt it makes for a jubilant ride, a galvanic first blast. But it remains a film which feels deeply thought rather than deeply felt; a brilliant technical exercise as opposed to a flesh-and-blood story.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The animation is intricate and beautiful but the narrative is clunky and heavy-handed in places.
  24. There are many attractive parts to this thriller – handsome leads, a meaty Patricia Highsmith plot, Mediterranean sunlight on cream linen suits – but it's no greater than the sum of them.
  25. Yes, the franchise's appeal lies in watching very ordinary boys making prats of themselves – but couldn't the vehicles transporting them to the wider world display slightly more ambition?
  26. This debut feature from the Cambodian-born, London-based film-maker Hong Khaou is heartfelt, intelligent film-making on a shoestring budget.
  27. It's a resourceful, distinctive film that builds to a satisfying crescendo.
  28. It's certainly atmospheric and cool in a new-New Wave way, but really, what's the point?

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