The Independent's Scores

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. Negative: 26 out of 590
590 movie reviews
  1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem blends a hyper-aware but affectionate love of the franchise’s past with the look and lingo of the present. It’s learnt all the right lessons from the current Spider-Verse craze.
  2. 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.
  3. Scrapper is a solar system of a film, with Campbell’s playful and defiant Georgie shining bright at its centre. You’ll not find many characters this year quite as likeable.
  4. Hsu and Cola balance the mania well against Park’s straight woman sincerity, but it’s Wu, a rising star on the standup scene, who serves as Joy Ride’s surprise MVP.
  5. The Duke reminds us once more, [Michell] knew how to get the very best out of his actors without forcing unnecessary dramatics.
  6. Not many friendships are tested because somebody decides to dress up as a literary detective in public. But it’s refreshing, in a way, that Will & Harper doesn’t try so hard to trumpet relatability. It doesn’t need to. Its heart remains true.
  7. If everything seems familiar from countless other crime dramas, at least the film is very slickly and creatively directed by Lee.
  8. Miranda’s film finds a graceful balance between fact and fiction, framing art as a heightened form of self obsession and the most magical and important thing in the world.
  9. 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.
  10. Bird is for every lost child who wishes someone would have stood up and defended them. It’s a fragile but beautiful vision, and marks the strongest blend yet of Andrea Arnold’s primary directives as a filmmaker.
  11. A moving, sentimental work that also chills to the bone, powered by the inevitability of tragedy when familial loyalty becomes tethered to self-destruction.
  12. Fair Play is not the erotic thriller Netflix’s algorithm so desperately wants it to be. There is sex, yes, and a psychological duel, but very little perverse desire. It’s ultimately a very ugly film. That’s not its failure, but its intention.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. Sure, there’s nothing in the film that matches the pure heartbreak of the first, when Riley’s imaginary friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind) disappears into nothingness. But Inside Out 2 proves that it’s ludicrous, at this point, to accuse the studio of having run out of ideas.
  16. If the film results in stunt performers gaining a little more respect from the public, that’s the ideal. If it merely reminds them how likeable Gosling is, that’s good, too.
  17. Man of the moment Jonathan Majors somehow manages to out-charisma both Michael B Jordan and Tessa Thompson here.
  18. 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.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A berserk, angry, funny and exhausting analysis of sado-masochistic power games masquerading as loving relationships.
  19. Air
    It’s hard to land on a reason for any of this to exist beyond a goosing up of Nike’s own image.
  20. It’d be uncharitable to call Hoppers derivative, when it’s otherwise odd and spiky enough to carve out its own niche.
  21. The Last Wish is visually gorgeous with an attention to detail you might not expect given it’s a sequel to a spin-off of a two-decade-old film.
  22. The filmmaker always shows the same painstaking attention to detail as his homicidal hero does to the logistics of murdering his adversaries. Fassbender is well cast and gives a typically committed performance – one leavened by moments of very deadpan humour. However. The Killer also often drifts into the realm of self-conscious pastiche.
  23. The film is always on the move, and yet somehow oppressively claustrophobic, as the tension gradually builds to the point of no return suggested by its title.
  24. There’s an argument to be made that Splitsville’s noncommittal on the subject of polyamory. I think that might, in fact, be the point: Covino and Marvin aren’t interested so much in whether polyamory is the solution to, or destruction of, a longterm relationship, but more the fact people’s stated beliefs and innate desires tend to be two entirely different and conflicted concepts.
  25. Ferrari drives determinedly in an uncertain direction.
  26. A thoughtful reframing of the Disney original’s metaphor for racism – with new character Gary De’Snake stealing the show.
  27. One of Them Days is funny as hell, but it also speaks to something sharply honest when Dreux sighs and mutters, “It shouldn’t have to be this hard.”
  28. Fire Island is a true, escapist romcom at a time when audiences are still undernourished when it comes to queer romances that don’t end in death and despair.
  29. Bros lumbers when it should glide, lectures when it should joke. Wherever you fall on the Kinsey scale, you’ll probably find it a miserable experience.

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