The Guardian's Scores

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:
6556 movie reviews
  1. Gracey’s involving and immersive direction sweeps us up and out of our seats, refreshing beats that have grown musty in this territory (does every musician have a bad dad and a drug problem?) with endlessly inventive transitions and montages that find ways to offer something unexpected.
  2. This is a tear-jerker that does not shrink from using plangent piano chords on the soundtrack to tell you when to feel sad, but it also has something interesting to say about intergenerational wealth.
  3. It all could have been fun with a teaspoonful of humour, but everyone concerned behind the camera has calculated (perhaps correctly) that this would be inimical to its commercial success.
  4. There is comfort and joy in the routine and delight in the details. Not just the thumb-smudges and dusty crockery (Wallace has become so reliant on smart tech that he keeps pressing the teapot lid, befuddled, in hope of a cuppa), but the more startling flights of fancy.
  5. Carrey, though, is very good value, getting off a couple of lines that might actually make grownups laugh, and generally putting himself about to decent effect. Without him, this film could have been a lot, lot worse.
  6. All in all, this is not a bad tale from the Disneyfied continent of talking animals, but a minor cousin to the first film’s movie-royalty.
  7. Kerr’s script doesn’t always match the quality of her interesting, layered lead performance.
  8. This Carry-On really could have leaned in more to the classic trappings.
  9. The film moves more freely because of its willed unconcern with the historical implications of the Munich hostage massacre; modern audiences may feel the contemporary context makes it naive or obtuse. But it’s a muscular, well-made picture with the tang of cold sweat.
  10. A strongly intended and conceived film, but without the passion of the earlier work.
  11. The film is bursting at the seams with archival photos, footage and interviews; not to mention outrageous polka dot and bedazzled costumes. The incredible access is expected since Never Too Late is produced by John’s husband and manager David Furnish, who co-directs alongside RJ Cutler. But perhaps that’s why it also feels so precious and tempered.
  12. Only the robust presence of Russell Crowe – and what might conceivably be a sly visual joke about exiled Russian plutocrat Mikhail Khodorkovsky – make this generic slice of superhero action worth watching.
  13. The film’s real power is in the accumulated testimony from others about the Netanyahus’ entitlement and paranoia.
  14. This is a non-fiction film, but one drawing on a tradition of informing fiction such as A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, in which the viewer’s empathy for the poor and/or deserving and their struggles is given an additional prod by the festive backdrop.
  15. War of the Rohirrim is short on fiery floating eyeballs, wizards harnessing the power of the sun and ghost armies rising from caves – the kind of stuff you’d expect anime to go ham with, but perhaps not in director Kenji Kamiyama’s case.
  16. The script, by Roderick Warich and Kröger, isn’t quite as nifty as its famous models, but it has its own grim integrity, especially with the jarring last frames.
  17. There are some lovely playful moments: his favourite elf eats a magic shroom and grows to monstrous proportions. But there is a lot of padding and the decision to stick with the book’s rhyming scheme becomes annoying.
  18. Interestingly the story, despite the classic music-biopic tropes that Mangold did so much to popularise, does not conform to the classic rise-fall-learning-experience-comeback format. It’s all rise, but troubled and unclear. You might not buy Chalamet’s Dylan at first; I didn’t, until that Guthrie bedside scene. There is amazing bravado in this performance.
  19. Alas, you have to sit through a lot of turgid Bible studies dramatisations of bits of scripture to get to the good stuff.
  20. This documentary includes witty and insightful interviews with MI stalwarts like Thompson and Hugh Grant; it is a great pleasure to watch and will send people back to Merchant Ivory films themselves, particularly perhaps their Quartet (1981) and The Golden Bowl (2000).
  21. A brilliant idea, brilliantly executed; hilarious, surreal and, yes, in its weird way, genuinely exciting.
  22. This is a very entertaining account of an actor who appeared to ascend, singly, to a higher plane than all others of the Hollywood golden age.
  23. It’s all smug pointing and nodding rather than anything smarter or more savage, its targets just and understandable – motherhood is hellish, husbands are thoughtless, wider society is misogynistic – but its overly didactic methods repetitive and ineffectual.
  24. It’s the kind of movie that could be charitably described as “educational”, though probably not as much as the magazine article that serves as its source material. At least we know Perry is true to history in one major way: today, as was the case back then, these women deserve better.
  25. A lucid, emotionally honest account of trauma that lies beneath the smiles of family photos and wedding videos.
  26. A sombre, steadfast argument for art’s life-giving properties.
  27. If you’re in the right headspace, the whole thing is quite entrancing. Still, it’s also an extremely rarefied sort of entertainment.
  28. The drama sputters and fails to catch fire; it’s as if Gilford is far less interested in kindling things and prefers to just look at his pretty cast in a variety of lighting schemes from stark noontime sunglare to the golden hues of magic hour. That said, the toothsome cast is well worth watching, especially Plummer with his nervous smile and the incandescent Lindley.
  29. It is an interesting new Nosferatu for our age of pandemic fear, with some beautiful images and striking moments, particularly in the eerie moonlit hallucination sequence at the beginning, which makes the rest of the story feel slightly literal and self-conscious.
  30. The nature of the twist, together with the high volume score, some crowd-pleasing gotchas and some sinister vaping remind us that Conclave is a glossily transferred airport novel first and a deeper drama about the world of religion second.

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