The Independent's Scores

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For 590 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 52% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 66
Highest review score: 100 Dune: Part One
Lowest review score: 20 Snow White
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 289 out of 590
  2. Mixed: 275 out of 590
  3. Negative: 26 out of 590
590 movie reviews
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  1. Licorice Pizza
    Boxing Licorice Pizza inside the realm of juvenile memory more often feels like an excuse than a conceit.
  2. West Side Story
    All those technical triumphs only complicate what feels like an unanswerable question: how can a film look this good, feel so moving, and still come up lacking?
  3. Sirât
    When the real shock occurs, it doesn’t feel cosmic so much as deliberate manipulation by a filmmaker’s hand. The rhythm feels off.
  4. Turning Red
    In its earliest stages, Turning Red is bracingly different, and filled with an earnest warmth when it comes to themes of girlhood and the panic-inducing weirdness of the human body. That it becomes a loud and action-driven spectacle seems disappointingly inevitable for a Disney film.
  5. Close
    Hushed glances between estranged friends give way to maximalist drama and heavy-handed symbolism, as if the everyday horror of growing up needs literal horror to be cinematic.
  6. Conclave
    Conclave turns ritual into the hysteria of a murder mystery, the tension of a political conspiracy, the pressurised force of a criminal heist.
  7. Priscilla
    In her own coolly analytical way, Coppola makes some trenchant points about the way Priscilla is controlled by the men in her life. She is living in a gilded cage. The wealth and luxury she experiences don’t compensate for her complete loss of freedom.
  8. Warfare
    Warfare’s violence feels unmoored without its context.
  9. The Card Counter
    The Card Counter is claustrophobic, certainly – but not always in the right ways.
  10. Blue Moon
    The Texan auteur’s new film – his 22nd, and the first of two due for release in this year alone – boasts a fine, quirky and courageous performance from Ethan Hawke, but it’s a stagey affair which at times becomes very stilted.
  11. Frankenstein
    For all Del Toro’s formal mastery, this Frankenstein is ultimately short of the voltage needed really to bring it to life.
  12. The Substance
    The Substance doesn’t quite gel as it should, but it’s potent.
  13. 28 Years Later
    Even if 28 Years Later feels like being repeatedly bonked on the head by the metaphor hammer, Boyle’s still a largely compelling filmmaker, and the film separates itself from the first instalment by offering something distinctly more sentimental and mythic than before.
  14. Spencer
    Stewart’s febrile, sensitive performance and Larraín’s trademark lyricism give it an emotional kick that such predecessors lacked.
  15. No Sudden Move
    No Sudden Move may be a fairly minor entry in his filmography, but it’s well-crafted and thrilling in a way that feels oddly reassuring.
  16. September 5
    The idea that it serves a film like September 5 to tell its story through an apolitical lens isn’t just wrong: it’s laughable.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Cyclo
    It is a harsh and muddling movie, but often an astounding one. [24 Mar 1996, p.11]
    • The Independent
  18. Belfast
    Branagh doesn’t seem as eager as Cuaron to interrogate his own memories, or to reckon with how the protective veil of one’s parents can shield a child from reality.
  19. Civil War
    We’re never told what this conflict is about, who might be oppressed, or what freedoms have been stolen away. All we’re given is violence.
  20. Rebuilding
    Rebuilding, instead, is a lovely rendering of what feels like half a story. It’s not the action its title promises, but the preceding moment of retreat to lick one’s wounds.
  21. Catherine Called Birdy
    Birdy, in many ways, is basically a pint-sized Hannah Horvath, Dunham’s onscreen alter-ego and the de facto lead of Girls. Both wrestle with the insecurities that stem from never quite aligning with traditional expectations of femininity. Both refuse to ever consider that the blessings and burdens they carry may not be universally shared among their acquaintances.
  22. Armageddon Time
    As imperfect as Armageddon Time is, its director’s honesty is something to be appreciated.
  23. Woman of the Hour
    The takeaway from Woman of the Hour is that this is not the story of an individual evil, but mass complicity from a society that allowed Alcala to continue his reign of terror far longer than it should’ve.
  24. The Duke
    The Duke reminds us once more, [Michell] knew how to get the very best out of his actors without forcing unnecessary dramatics.
  25. Highest 2 Lowest
    If everything seems familiar from countless other crime dramas, at least the film is very slickly and creatively directed by Lee.
  26. She Said
    As Jodi, Kazan gives the film’s standout performance, delicate and affecting, and when we’re in her company, the stakes of the investigation feel gravest.
  27. She Will
    It feels like She Will spends its entire runtime on the very cusp of a completed sentence. I was desperate for an explanation, but the film is frustratingly secretive – those answers, it seems, are still buried deep.
  28. Wham!
    In trying to limit the scope – and offer Ridgeley his moment in the sun – Wham! inadvertently becomes a music documentary without much interest in music. Like the band themselves, this is a breezy watch, but if there’s profundity beneath the perms and the cut-offs, the film struggles to find it.
  29. Wicked
    Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande showcase phenomenal vocal ability in this adaptation of the blockbuster musical, but they’re let down by a film that is aggressively overlit and shot like a TV advert.
  30. Air
    It’s hard to land on a reason for any of this to exist beyond a goosing up of Nike’s own image.
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