The Independent's Scores

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For 595 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. Positive: 291 out of 595
  2. Mixed: 278 out of 595
  3. Negative: 26 out of 595
595 movie reviews
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  1. Bros
    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.
  2. Barbarian
    As a filmmaker, Cregger seems conscious of embracing and then twisting an audience’s expectations, leaning into certain tropes of the genre before forcefully pushing towards something far more realistic.
  3. Triangle of Sadness
    That one already notorious sequence aside, Triangle of Sadness feels a little like gnashing at air.
  4. My Policeman
    There are major moments of pain and betrayal that should feel like a punch but remain curiously ineffective. Sussex’s wonderful secret beaches and pockets of drizzly suburbia somehow seem strangely anonymous here. And Ron Nyswaner’s script is full of lines of clunking portent.
  5. The Banshees of Inisherin
    The Banshees of the Inisherin is really a beautiful work to behold.
  6. Black Adam
    Why is Dwayne Johnson delivering every line here in an exhausting monotone?
  7. She Said
    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.
  8. Emily
    Though it takes a liberal approach to biography, it’s so attuned to Emily’s creative spirit that it’s not implausible that this is how the author might have chosen to envision her own life if given the chance. Emily captures the soul of the artist, if not her reality.
  9. Amsterdam
    The thing is, there is a great film in here fighting to get out, but it’s drowned out by manic plotting, self-indulgence, and a thickly laid-on, twee message about love and art.
  10. The Woman King
    This is kinetic, muscular, easy-to-cheer filmmaking applied to a story ready-made for the silver screen.
  11. Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical
    This is the rare musical that actually allows its performances room to breathe. There’s an inherent theatricality in the staging and a complexity in the choreography.
  12. Blonde
    Blonde is not a bad film because it is degrading, exploitative and misogynist, even though it is all of those things. It’s bad because it’s boring, pleased with itself and doesn’t have a clue what it’s trying to say.
  13. 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.
  14. Smile
    Considering every horror film these days seems to be “about trauma”, Smile suffers from never evolving past the basics – that trauma begets trauma and, if left unchecked and unexamined, can consume a person’s life.
  15. My Best Friend's Exorcism
    It’s a devilishly smart and self-aware take on the current trend for Eighties horror homage, lovingly adapted from Grady Hendrix’s 2016 novel of the same name.
  16. After Yang
    As After Yang gently suggests, there’s no longer a way to conceive of ourselves that’s entirely detached from technology. Nerves and circuits, inevitably, all work towards the same goals.
  17. 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.
  18. Goodnight Mommy
    All in all, the film is exactly as you’d imagine a Hollywood remake to be. It’s too po-faced, too stripped of its meanness. And so drearily inevitable.
  19. Ticket to Paradise
    It’s a joy to watch Julia Roberts and George Clooney fall in love. It’s an even greater joy to watch them bicker.
  20. Bodies Bodies Bodies
    Bodies Bodies Bodies is damn funny, often deliriously so.
  21. See How They Run
    The film’s so plain in its ambitions – in its sense of giddy, well-intentioned fun – that it feels a little pointless to scorn its more superficial choices.
  22. Don't Worry Darling
    It is a messy, convoluted affair with some very contrived plotting.
  23. The Whale
    The pathos is laid on very thick. At times, you wonder why a filmmaker as sophisticated as Aronofsky is resorting to such manipulative tactics. Beneath all its blubber, though, this turns out to be a film with a very big heart.
  24. The Forgiven
    It’s obvious why this cast were attracted to The Forgiven – an actor’s most thrilling challenge is to find the brokenness hidden in between the cruellest of words. Fiennes and Chastain have always excelled in this area, as they do here. But the ugliness quickly wears thin.
  25. Three Thousand Years of Longing
    What’s surprising is that, though Miller’s imagination remains entirely untarnished, Three Thousand Years of Longing stands in defiance of all of Fury Road’s sagest lessons. The film sags where it should speed; it mumbles when it should pronounce; it narrows when it should expand.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Maisie
    First-time feature director Lee Cooper’s sweet, soulful documentary Maisie captures Raven in the run-up to his 85th birthday celebrations and provides a joyful insight into the trailblazing life of Britain’s oldest working drag performer.
  27. Nope
    Peele, really, is the magician disguised as a filmmaker. Nope is the sleight of hand so slick you’ll never question how the trick was pulled off.
  28. Beast
    Beast represents the apex of low-expectation cinema.
  29. Official Competition
    Official Competition may be yet another satire on filmmaking, but it’s the rare iteration that’s nuanced enough to understand that self-awareness does not equal absolution.
  30. I Came By
    The film’s distractingly scattered in its attempt to capture the full breadth and width of its social commentary. In fact, it’s so stuffed with tangentially related ideas that even its timeline feels confusing and difficult to follow, signalled only by the erratic changes in McKay’s hair colour.
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