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. Barbie
    While it’s impossible for any studio film to be truly subversive, this Mattel-approved comedy gets away with far more than you’d think was possible.
  2. 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.
  3. Wham!
    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.
  4. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
    You will leave Dead Reckoning the same way you always do: wondering how Cruise could possibly outdo himself in the next one – until inevitably, he does.
  5. Run Rabbit Run
    Run Rabbit Run is certainly fluent in the visual language of eerie, effective horror. Its metaphors, though, are all mumbled.
  6. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
    Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken fails to see its own potential – it’s never quite sharp enough to work as a parody, nor sincere enough to make its adolescent insecurities relatable.
  7. 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.
  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. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
    Ramos and Fishback are talented enough actors that they are able to perforate the chaos with some genuine emotion.
  10. The Boogeyman
    The Boogeyman is conventional horror, comfortably elevated – the same old monster in a shiny, new hat.
  11. 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.
  12. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
    This is, dare I say it, how fan service should be done. It’s far easier to overlook the usual nostalgic pandering when it’s taken a backseat to genuine creativity.
  13. Asteroid City
    In its own offbeat way, Asteroid City is an Anderson patchwork of Cold War paranoia and American family values in all their often hypocritical glory. It is every bit as arch as his best work, while still managing to tug hard on the heartstrings.
  14. The Little Mermaid
    Nice casting can’t cover up the ugly visuals and lack of creative risk.
  15. May December
    It’s a closely focused character study, galvanised by the tremendous performances from Portman and Moore, which delves into areas more conventional dramas don’t go near.
  16. Killers of the Flower Moon
    DiCaprio and De Niro are brilliant, but it is relative unknown Lily Gladstone who is truly extraordinary.
  17. 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.
  18. Beau Is Afraid
    Beau Is Afraid is an Oedipal farce hysterically outsized in its execution.
  19. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
    It’s a phenomenal performance from McAdams, subtle and gentle in its heartbreak.
  20. Jeanne du Barry
    Against the odds, Jeanne du Barry has turned out to be a subtle and well-crafted costume drama with plenty of satirical bite.
  21. Fast X
    No, there are no dinosaur cameos, but this 10th lap – now with added Brie Larson – is relentlessly fun.
  22. Book Club: The Next Chapter
    Their film is so stuffed with incident – all of it preposterous, and occasionally insulting to the intelligence of its central quartet – that it sours what could (and should) have been a joyful celebration of desire and indulgence at any age.
  23. Return to Seoul
    Go back to your roots, we’re always told, and you’ll find your heart’s true home. But in Davy Chou’s daring and mesmeric Return to Seoul, an adoptee’s search for her birth parents tears open wounds and unearths neither meaning nor resolution.
  24. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
    The Guardians films have always been about the fact that many of us are like putty – shaped not by where we’ve come from but where we are and could end up. Vol 3 should make audiences thrilled about what comes next for Gunn in his new position as co-head of DC Studios. As for Marvel – well, it’ll be their loss.
  25. Polite Society
    Manzoor’s film, with a roundhouse kick to the heart, both parodies the generational divide with its fantastical plot and finds sympathy for what makes parents domineering.
  26. Evil Dead Rise
    Evil Dead Rise provides blood by the bucketful without ever crossing the line into outright cruelty.
  27. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
    It’s not a manifesto, really, but a matter-of-fact portrayal of the palpable anger emanating from a betrayed generation.
  28. Ghosted
    There is no chemistry, sexual or otherwise.
  29. One Fine Morning
    The irony of being intimately connected while desperately lonely can be a hard one to digest. Yet director Mia Hansen-Løve prods at the concept with the same tenderness that she applies to all her films – each of them united by the pains and pleasures of interconnectivity.
  30. Renfield
    It’s only regrettable that the film itself didn’t heed one of cinema’s most important lessons – when you put Nicolas Cage in a movie, it’s guaranteed no one will care about anything other than Nicolas Cage.
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