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. Mufasa: The Lion King
    The Oscar-winner behind ‘Moonlight’ and ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’ can barely be found in this dreary and anonymous bit of franchise mining.
  2. Minions: The Rise of Gru
    There’s nothing all that special about The Rise of Gru, but it runs like a well-oiled machine.
  3. Alpha
    Alpha has some tremendous moments, but the movie is undermined by its own dense and impenetrable storytelling style. It would surely have worked far better as an immersive installation piece than as a two hour feature.
  4. Nightbitch
    When its conclusions end up so tidy and emotionally pat, you can’t but wonder what it’d be like if Nightbitch were actually allowed to run free.
  5. Deadpool & Wolverine
    Hugh Jackman’s return as Wolverine is appropriately intense – but shortchanged by the fact that the character went through the exact same emotional beats in 2017’s ‘Logan’.
  6. 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.
  7. Hocus Pocus 2
    Hocus Pocus 2 doesn’t hit the extremes that made the original a critical flop, but such an enduring rewatch. It’s less menacing. It lacks the exquisite cuteness exuded by a middle-grade Thora Birch. There are zero talking cats. But that’s unlikely to matter much to most audiences.
  8. DC League of Super-Pets
    While the calibre of star voices here is superb, it seems odd to centre the entire film around Johnson and Hart. So much of their chemistry in Jumanji or Central Intelligence was rooted in odd-couple physical comedy – a guy who’s always cracking jokes about his own short stature versus the closest we have to a living demi-god.
  9. Remarkably Bright Creatures
    While Marcellus, an ageing octopus feeling stifled in his imprisonment, is meant to act as a spiritual mirror to Tova, the film ultimately isn’t all that interested in the more delicate work of making peace with what can’t be brought back.
  10. Fast X
    No, there are no dinosaur cameos, but this 10th lap – now with added Brie Larson – is relentlessly fun.
  11. The Pale Blue Eye
    It’s a handsome adaptation, albeit with an unnecessary bit of literary celebrity dragged alongside it.
  12. The Running Man
    The eerie prescience of Stephen King’s dystopian source material – written in 1972 and set, of all years, in 2025 – has been wiped from this bland reboot, which also seems to know it’s miscast its leading man.
  13. Wuthering Heights
    Adaptation or not, it’s an astonishingly hollow work.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Magic Flute
    Most unwary cinema-goers who see The Magic Flute will vow never to cross the threshold of an opera house as long as they live.
  15. Ambulance
    Ambulance is a purely aesthetic beast, made for those who like their films to look like they’ve been edited by someone in the middle of a panic attack.
  16. The Boogeyman
    The Boogeyman is conventional horror, comfortably elevated – the same old monster in a shiny, new hat.
  17. Hot Milk
    This is slippery, subversive storytelling that’s very hard to get any firm grasp on – but that is one of its main pleasures.
  18. Megalopolis
    Ultimately, this isn’t the car crash it could have been. It is, though, deeply flawed and very eccentric.
  19. The Flash
    Blighted by development problems and a star whose downward spiral has been widely dissected by all, this superhero blockbuster emerges just as confused as predicted.
  20. Bingo Hell
    There’s enough warmth to Guerrero’s script, co-written with Shane McKenzie and Perry Blackshear, to paper over the odd rickety effect or wooden performance.
  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. The Adam Project
    The tone here aims for a vague combination of time-travelling romps like Back to the Future and Flight of the Navigator plus time-travelling weepies like Forever Young and The Lake House. It wears both those tones unconvincingly, like a serial killer in a skin suit.
  23. The Bride!
    There’s a playfulness there, and a real burst of imaginative thinking, but Gyllenhaal has regrettably pulled a Frankenstein herself. All those ideas, yet they haven’t quite stitched up together to make a beautiful corpse.
  24. Another Simple Favor
    Another Simple Favour has no aspirations beyond being a quick morsel. And a morsel it is.
  25. Beast
    Beast represents the apex of low-expectation cinema.
  26. 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.
  27. Strays
    The film has a tendency to circle around the same jokes like a dog chasing its own tail (the film reminds us that they like to do this, too).
  28. Firebrand
    Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s impassioned and atmospheric direction really takes hold.
  29. The Critic
    The Critic – adapted by Notes on a Scandal’s Patrick Marber from a novel by former Independent film critic Anthony Quinn – is, ultimately, a story about power. I wouldn’t expect relatability in this case, but I do expect substance. Here, it’s largely absent.
  30. The Boys in the Boat
    Clooney and his screenwriter, Mark L Smith, tell their story with rousing traditionalism, reinforced by Alexandre Desplat’s idealist score, but little more.
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