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. The performances of Mara and Phoenix are careful and respectful, though with nothing like the lightning-flash of energy and scorn that they have given to secular roles in the past.
  2. There is a spectacular scene in which someone drives a tank off a bridge, and JK Simmons gives the film some ballast as the guys’ scowling commanding officer, but the rest of the time this resembles a TV movie of egregious averageness.
  3. Infinite Football is an austere 70-minute experience, but the eccentric idealism of Laurențiu Ginghină lingers in the mind.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    This is so much more than a film about a film, it’s about young women breaking the rules set in a conservative country - the process of doing that was a lot more powerful than finishing the actual film.
  4. It is a quiet, subtle story and, as is so often the case when an actor takes their first trip behind the camera, a showcase for terrific performances.
  5. The Kindergarten Teacher is probably the only movie about poetry with an ending as tense as any thriller.
  6. This film is a deeply felt, tremendously acted tribute to courage.
  7. The film places a greater focus on the notion of unwilling complicity than most in the gangster genre, but still struggles to produce much original insight.
  8. Wash Westmoreland’s Colette is exhilarating, funny, inspiring and (remember: corsets!) gorgeous, too.
  9. The Children Act is concerned with love, intimacy and moral responsibility and it is refreshing to see a movie which sets itself standards of this sort. But there is also something a little too neat in the way all these things are wrapped up. Emma Thompson’s performance, so elegant and vulnerable, carries the picture.
  10. [A] gripping, well-acted and sharply-written low-budget drama.
  11. Museum is an oddly genial, garrulous film in many ways – rather like Güeros – and it doesn’t behave quite like a heist thriller, nor exactly like a coming-of-age comedy.
  12. It’s unfortunate that Byrne’s offering such a tremendous performance in a film that is, to put it as bluntly as possible, so very dumb.
  13. No one would accuse it of breaking new ground, or finding fascinating new paths across its well-worn prison yard. But Sauvaire’s drama is lean and trim and unwavering in its task.
  14. This is a gripping and sad drama that puts a tremendous amount of faith in its performers and audience, and for all the emotion and tenderness in the rest of this year’s Sundance crop, this is the first film that left me a complete broken-down mess by the end.
  15. The Third Murder is a captivating puzzle.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This desire to pull punches in presenting his darker side beyond occasional lip service makes for a viewing experience where we often feel we aren’t getting the whole picture for fear of offending the recently deceased.
  16. Despite being about serious matters (labor relations, systematic oppression, racial microaggressions), Sorry to Bother You is slight and raggedy, but when it leans into its surreal, midnight movie instincts it proves engaging and amusing.
  17. Wilson and Stanley are both excellent performers and they are the mainstays of a valuable piece of work, but I felt the ending was contrived and a bit grandiloquent. However, the visual style and fluency of the film are obvious.
  18. Damsel doesn’t go quite where we think it will, but then, surprise detours are rather to be expected in this kind of anti-quest story, and the film sometimes comes across – for all its grotesque, scabrous or surreal touches – as a little more benign than it might have been.
  19. The film isn’t a home run, but with Rudd in the lead in something so out of the ordinary for him, it’s fair to call a ground rule double.
  20. I want more people to see The Tale because it’s such an innovative, honest and important film. It is a landmark, and Laura Dern is absolutely extraordinary. But I know for certain I’ll never watch it again.
  21. Shelley’s mistreatment by the literary elite because of her gender is a compelling, uniquely frustrating element and the film deprives us of the suitably grand exploration that it deserves.
  22. First Reformed is a deeply felt, deeply thought picture; impressive in its seriousness and often gripping in the way it frames itself as a debate and a sermon.
  23. It is a tender and valuable film, well acted, with a shrewd eye for how naive you can be in your early 20s, how impatient, how pompous, how tragicomically un-self-aware.
  24. This is richly satisfying and powerfully acted work.
  25. This tennis film feels like a two-hour baseline rally, and it’s not just the rackets that are made of wood.
  26. [Martel's] film is haunted, haunting and admittedly prone to the occasional longueur insofar as it runs to its own peculiar rhythm; maybe even its own primal logic.
  27. Lean on Pete is at its potent, stirring best during the opening furlough, when it focuses on this makeshift hobo family as it criss-crosses the Pacific Northwest from one racetrack to the next.
  28. The Death Of Stalin is superbly cast, and acted with icy and ruthless force by an A-list lineup. There are no weak links. Each has a plum role; each squeezes every gorgeous horrible drop.

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