The Independent's Scores

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For 588 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: 287 out of 588
  2. Mixed: 275 out of 588
  3. Negative: 26 out of 588
588 movie reviews
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  1. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
    What keeps the film’s heart tender is the fact that, even if Linda’s been reduced to a husk, she’s still a mother who loves her daughter; who knows she’s in pain and can’t help her outbursts. She still sits at her daughter’s bedside and sings, gently, like a bird. She still wants to try, even when she fails. And that’s something to count on.
  2. Wuthering Heights
    Adaptation or not, it’s an astonishingly hollow work.
  3. Crime 101
    Crime 101 is sleek like a Michael Mann venture, but with a healthy dose of 2020s nihilism.
  4. 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.
  5. Melania
    The “film” is part propaganda, sure, and part sop to Big Tech companies who require constant regulatory approval for financial manoeuvrings. Even then, it is bad.
  6. Send Help
    It’s been told with enough wit and viscera to outpace many of its competitors.
  7. No Other Choice
    Park has a galvanising kind of curiosity behind the lens, pairing here with cinematographer Kim Woo Hyung. There’s always a new, unexpected angle to either watch Man Su or see his point of view.
  8. H Is for Hawk
    H Is for Hawk concerns itself less with the healing of wounds, but rather with the prying open of them. Can we look so deep into the pulp that the fear of it eventually washes away?
  9. Mercy
    Any effort to force us to identify with Chris comes to naught. Any promising idea leads to a dead end. It’s a maddening watch.
  10. 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.
  11. The Rip
    Affleck and Damon, at least, try to pump a little crotchety humanity into their characters. But any hope of suspense, any genuine mystery over who (if anyone) is on the path of betrayal, is swiftly dashed by how poorly defined these suspects are.
  12. I Swear
    I Swear is a crowdpleaser that doesn’t make a spectacle out of its subject, nor mines the darker chapters of their life for tearjerking sentimentality.
  13. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
    It’s rich thematic territory for the series, and slowly amps up the audience’s anticipation for the moment these two finally cross paths. When they do, it’s spectacular and audacious.
  14. Hamnet
    Buckley, already a frontrunner for the Academy Award for Best Actress, lives up to all the chatter and more. Like Mescal, she’s well-placed to express Agnes’s particular grief.
  15. Sentimental Value
    Sentimental Value doesn’t argue that art heals all wounds, but that it’s sometimes the only recourse for honest expression.
  16. Song Sung Blue
    The problem with this brand of Hollywood tale is that, by excessively romanticising their subjects, they diminish their humanity.
  17. The Housemaid
    Paul Feig nods to ‘Rebecca’ and ‘Vertigo’ in this pulpy adaptation of the Freida McFadden bestseller, which has a secret weapon in the form of a quite brilliant Amanda Seyfried.
  18. Avatar: Fire and Ash
    Fire and Ash, I’m sure, will find its place in the canon. But that doesn’t excuse its flaws.
  19. Pillion
    What Lighton has achieved here is incredibly delicate, intuitive work, which never compromises on the story’s explicit nature or in the specificities of its subculture.
  20. It Was Just an Accident
    It’s a film of overwhelmingly visceral emotion; impossible, then, to separate from what we imagine Panahi must feel himself. And yet, so often, we’ll see characters clamber over each other and wheel around their limbs like they’re in a Buster Keaton comedy.
  21. Marty Supreme
    It spins out like a fairytale penned by someone midway through a stimulant-induced panic attack.
  22. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
    Wake Up Dead Man extends its usual punchline denouement with a poignant examination of what it means to be truly righteous in an unrighteous world.
  23. Zootopia 2
    A thoughtful reframing of the Disney original’s metaphor for racism – with new character Gary De’Snake stealing the show.
  24. Wicked: For Good
    I guess we should at least be thankful we’ve been spared the monstrosity of a CGI-rendered Judy Garland as Dorothy (that said, there is some extremely disconcerting use of de-ageing tech elsewhere). But, as those witches might say, one good deed hardly changes things for the better.
  25. Anemone
    Day-Lewis, reliably, commands the whole piece, with that twinkle in his eye that spells either mischief or the inciting spark of an inferno.
  26. Nuremberg
    While it pleads for us to reckon with the ugliest of truths, it shuts the curtains before its own reckoning is done.
  27. 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.
  28. 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.
  29. Bugonia
    While it’s been argued that Lanthimos harbours active disdain for other people, Don reminds us that there’s a poignant streak of empathy to be found in even the most nihilistic of his stories. Hope, in Bugonia, is mostly lost. But not entirely.
  30. The Mastermind
    When the inevitable comes for our protagonist, The Mastermind delivers it as one of the smartest, wryest punchlines of the year.
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