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 0.9 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. Dead Man's Wire
    Where in the public consciousness is the line drawn between thief and Robin Hood? Van Sant may ask the question, but his vision’s too narrow to answer it.
  2. Megalopolis
    Ultimately, this isn’t the car crash it could have been. It is, though, deeply flawed and very eccentric.
  3. I Came By
    The film’s distractingly scattered in its attempt to capture the full breadth and width of its social commentary. In fact, it’s so stuffed with tangentially related ideas that even its timeline feels confusing and difficult to follow, signalled only by the erratic changes in McKay’s hair colour.
  4. Minions: The Rise of Gru
    There’s nothing all that special about The Rise of Gru, but it runs like a well-oiled machine.
  5. Amsterdam
    The thing is, there is a great film in here fighting to get out, but it’s drowned out by manic plotting, self-indulgence, and a thickly laid-on, twee message about love and art.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    None But the Brave
    An unspectacular but solid, ensemble (anti-) war movie, considered moderately progressive in its day for the way it describes the war in the Pacific from both sides. [19 Jun 2010, p.26]
    • The Independent
  7. Swan Song
    The film’s most interesting onscreen partnership is Ali and, well, Ali. He essentially delivers the same performance twice, but with variations so minute that you’re left to wonder whether you simply imagined them.
  8. Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
    What’s worked before works here just as well. Tommy Shelby persists.
  9. Honey Don't!
    While Honey Don’t! prods at something new and quite poignant, an idea about how survivors see themselves and that loaded word “victimhood”, it ultimately struggles to make much sense out of itself and its oddball cast.
  10. Luther: The Fallen Sun
    The budget’s been upped considerably. Hollywood’s own Andy Serkis and Cynthia Erivo have been air-lifted in for support. And it’s fun, in the patently ridiculous way these sorts of zhuzhed-up thrillers tend to be.
  11. The Apprentice
    The Apprentice’s most effective takedown of Donald Trump is how unremarkable it makes him seem. This may render Ali Abbasi’s portrait of the early days of the former president and current presidential candidate a little monotonous, but it makes its point succinctly.
  12. Don't Worry Darling
    It is a messy, convoluted affair with some very contrived plotting.
  13. The Tender Bar
    The Tender Bar is uneventful. But its performances have such an easy, lived-in quality that it wouldn’t be fair to call it inauthentic – just a little rosy in its outlook, perhaps.
  14. The Sheep Detectives
    It’s a bit much, to be frank. But at the time, the all-hands-aboard desire to take so absurd a premise and insist it be about something offers its Midsomer Murders-lite world a sense of weight and substance. The melodrama helps land the comedy. And there’s some real charm to be found here.
  15. Rental Family
    With Fraser as her figurehead, it’s certainly a work of broad and deep compassion. But there are self-imposed limitations that you’d wish Hikari and her co-writer Stephen Blahut would cross, if not purely out of curiosity.
  16. 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.
  17. The Pale Blue Eye
    It’s a handsome adaptation, albeit with an unnecessary bit of literary celebrity dragged alongside it.
  18. The Addams Family 2
    These animated outings will always feel like a flash in the pan if they continue to rely on contemporary nods as a source of cheap humour.
  19. 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.
  20. John and the Hole
    Director Pascual Sisto has achieved something a little more clever than pure imitation. He takes his audience’s expectations, that his film can only lead to bloodshed and despair, and leaves them hanging in the air for as long as he likes – it’s both tantalising and deliberately unsatisfying. You’re never given the comfort of knowing what comes next.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Candy Mountain
    There are echoes of Jarmusch and Wenders, yet the film looks surprisingly ordinary, especially given Frank's credentials as a photographer. [28 Dec 1989]
    • The Independent
  22. The Duke
    The Duke reminds us once more, [Michell] knew how to get the very best out of his actors without forcing unnecessary dramatics.
  23. Triangle of Sadness
    That one already notorious sequence aside, Triangle of Sadness feels a little like gnashing at air.
  24. Bad Boys: Ride or Die
    Bad Boys: Ride or Die has learned a few valuable lessons from the Fast & Furious franchise – dumb and loud, executed with right enthusiasm, can feel like a warm hug.
  25. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
    This is about as graceful and fitting an endnote as you could hope for.
  26. Crimes of the Future
    This is a film rich in ideas but with very little tension or passion. At times, it’s more like a cerebral art gallery installation piece than a full-blooded dramatic movie.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Backbeat
    Iain Softley, its first-time director, handles his actors with skill and has a real flair for comedy. But Backbeat also feels lightweight, not a landmark movie - it betrays its long genesis and many rewrites in an overpacked and unfocussed script, so often the weakness of Palace's previous productions. [01 Apr 1994, p.23]
    • The Independent
  28. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
    Thankfully, Quantumania coughs up a decent amount of the mania promised in its title – it’s done a far better job, at least, than last year’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which was miserably sane.
  29. The Wizard of the Kremlin
    In what could easily have been a banana skin of a role, Law is surprisingly sure-footed. The British star has clearly studied his subject closely. He captures the Russian president with metronomic precision – his mannerisms, his cunning, his smirks and scowls.
  30. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    In fact, all the ingredients are perfectly lined up here, and, in the right combinations, and with the pure wonderment of Michael Giacchino’s score, The Fantastic Four: First Steps does shimmer with a kind of wide-eyed idealism. And that’s lovely.
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