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. Frankenstein
    For all Del Toro’s formal mastery, this Frankenstein is ultimately short of the voltage needed really to bring it to life.
  2. 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.
  3. No Hard Feelings
    Behind the lazy, shock-tactic humour lies a streak of genuine humanity, something to carry the film beyond mere butts and boobs.
    • 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
  5. A Big Bold Beautiful Journey
    Kogonada neither wrote nor edited A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, and so we’re largely lacking in the sophistication department, or the soft musicality he’s been able to construct in his earlier films.
  6. Memory
    Together, both actors rise above the most blatant of Memory’s manipulations.
  7. Elemental
    Elemental overcomplicates itself. It’s a straightforward romcom that’s also about culture clashes. And the systemic racism in city infrastructures. And the expectations immigrant parents place on their children.
  8. Flamin' Hot
    The most effective scenes in Flamin’ Hot prod gently at how disharmonious the relationship between the man on the floor and the man in the boardroom can be.
  9. A Haunting in Venice
    Michelle Yeoh comfortably steals the show in this starry adaptation of lesser-known mystery ‘The Hallowe’en Party’.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Danny the Champion of the World
    The cast - Michael Horden, Ronald Pickup, Cyril Cusack - is distinguished, and the film not without sluggish charm. [27 Jul 1989, p.15]
    • The Independent
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. The Bad Guys 2
    The Bad Guys 2 has just enough wit and spirit that you can take your kids to see it without feeling like you’re doing a disservice to their intellectual development.
  14. A Complete Unknown
    Despite the drip-fed reminders of contemporary history (the Cuban Missile Crisis! the Kennedy assassination! Weren’t the Sixties wild, man!), A Complete Unknown struggles to fully engage with Dylan’s relationship to that intersection between politics and music.
  15. We Live in Time
    All emotions here are predetermined. The point is that we’ve simply been given licence to feel.
  16. Sumotherhood
    Sumotherhood is, at times, so overstuffed that it starts to wear on the nerves. Yet, Deacon has also found a wholesome, and funny, heart to his film, circling back to the awkwardly desperate performance of masculinity that drove its prequel, and simply doubling it up.
  17. The End We Start From
    Belo and Birch, and their star Jodie Comer, breathe life and fire into the mothers typically left stagnant on the apocalypse’s sidelines.
  18. The Toxic Avenger
    The Toxic Avenger is funny and charming, with a joke rate as consistent as this year’s The Naked Gun, and snappy editing that mimics the Edgar Wright brand of genre parody.
  19. Lady Chatterley's Lover
    What we get is a film that’s watchable, when it could have been wonderful.
  20. Moonfall
    It’s exhausting. It’s exhilarating. And it’s exactly as absurd as you could ever hope it would be.
  21. The Eyes of Tammy Faye
    The Eyes of Tammy Faye has done right by its subject, but only at the cost of shrinking down her world.
  22. Die My Love
    There is simply no one for Lawrence to bounce off and no structure against which to craft an emotional trajectory. She is dancing on her own.
  23. Steve
    Steve is a thoughtful, impassioned film in practice. Yet it’s deliberately made itself secondary to its source material.
  24. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
    The movie consists of a series of chases and fights linked by ever more improbable plot twists. The action is often very inventively staged. James Mangold, who has taken over directing duties from Steven Spielberg, sets a breakneck tempo.
  25. Moana 2
    Moana 2 would have made for a very nice television series – as it was originally meant to be. But as a reskinned theatrical sequel to one of Disney Animation’s biggest hits, it’s a little harder to justify.
  26. Conclave
    Conclave turns ritual into the hysteria of a murder mystery, the tension of a political conspiracy, the pressurised force of a criminal heist.
  27. No Time to Die
    Cary Joji Fukunaga has made a smashing piece of action cinema with No Time to Die – it’s just a shame it had to be a Bond film.
  28. Fingernails
    As Fingernails goes on, though, it never transcends its leading questions. Instead it maintains a quiet simmer.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ice Station Zebra
    A dated but still serviceable Cold War thriller about a US nuclear sub racing the Russians to the North Pole to retrieve some film from a downed Soviet satellite. [19 Jun 2010, p.26]
    • The Independent
  30. Is This Thing On?
    It’s small in scope and may prove relatively minor in Cooper’s filmography. But, still, the intentions of Is This Thing On? feel worthy. Here’s a filmmaker fully invested in what divides the personal from the creative, and willing to look at it from all angles.
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