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. 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. Queer
    It’s a feverish, agonised document of addiction and abortive passion, into which the director has weaved further elements of the author’s life.
  3. Kraven the Hunter
    Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, and Matt Holloway’s script is profoundly scattered, and there’s such a ruthless amount of re-recorded dialogue inserted that there’s little cohesion between or even within scenes.
  4. A Complete Unknown
    Despite the drip-fed reminders of contemporary history (the Cuban Missile Crisis! the Kennedy assassination! Weren’t the Sixties wild, man!), A Complete Unknown struggles to fully engage with Dylan’s relationship to that intersection between politics and music.
  5. Conclave
    Conclave turns ritual into the hysteria of a murder mystery, the tension of a political conspiracy, the pressurised force of a criminal heist.
  6. Moana 2
    Moana 2 would have made for a very nice television series – as it was originally meant to be. But as a reskinned theatrical sequel to one of Disney Animation’s biggest hits, it’s a little harder to justify.
  7. All We Imagine as Light
    It’s a film that feels like a long exhale, the moment of unburdening after a tight embrace. It’s beautiful.
  8. 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.
  9. Nosferatu
    Depp does magnificent work in embodying the sense of existing out of place, not only in the violent contortions and grimaces of supernatural possession, but in the way Ellen’s gaze seems to look out beyond her conversation partner and into some undefinable abyss.
  10. Emilia Pérez
    Audiard’s efforts don’t always pay off, and in Emilia Pérez they come across as impassioned but featherweight.
  11. Wicked
    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.
  12. Gladiator II
    Gladiator II, in short, shows us how to make cinema with a capital “C”.
  13. Bird
    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.
  14. Paddington In Peru
    Really, all you can do is take what joy you can from Paddington in Peru, because its pleasures are rarer but still sweet.
  15. Venom: The Last Dance
    It’s hard to say how these films will be remembered in the grand scheme of comic book history, but, with The Last Dance, we can at least be reminded that sometimes they actually managed to have fun with these things.
  16. Heretic
    While Beck and Woods flirt with convention in the film’s later stages, as it grows wilder and more gruesome, Heretic is a wordy horror that holds up surprisingly well under scrutiny.
  17. Anora
    Madison takes a character trained by life to always pounce – on an opportunity or a threat – and subtly, but consistently, reveals to us her softness and her soul.
  18. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
    Vengeance Most Fowl sees Aardman return to their tried-and-tested formula. Yet, it’s also the source of the studio’s continuing brilliance – somehow, the familiar always feels new, and the craftwork never tires.
  19. Woman of the Hour
    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.
  20. The Wild Robot
    It preserves DreamWorks’s broad, direct appeals to sentimentality while weaving in a little more of the thematic maturity and subtlety you might see over at Ghibli or Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon.
  21. The Apprentice
    The Apprentice’s most effective takedown of Donald Trump is how unremarkable it makes him seem. This may render Ali Abbasi’s portrait of the early days of the former president and current presidential candidate a little monotonous, but it makes its point succinctly.
  22. The Outrun
    The Outrun’s true tether, however, is Ronan, and here she works to all her greatest strengths. The film wraps entirely around her, yet she’s far too honest an actor to ever play up to the audience’s expectations of a woman in crisis.
  23. Timestalker
    Timestalker certainly puts on a show.
  24. A Different Man
    A Different Man layers idea onto idea, then inflates them to the point of satirical absurdity.
  25. Blitz
    It’s a war picture, in the more conventional mould, that feels new and revelatory purely because it’s being viewed through the eyes of its singular director – expressionist yet rarely sentimental, disquieting in its terrors yet tender in its hope, and profoundly interested in the ordinary lives of others.
  26. His Three Daughters
    Jacobs delicately toys with the boundaries between truth and artifice, between dishonesty and vulnerability. Our intimacy with these characters is earned by their own efforts to shed their steel-built defences. And it’s all the more rewarding for it.
  27. The Substance
    The Substance doesn’t quite gel as it should, but it’s potent.
  28. 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.
  29. Will & Harper
    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.
  30. Speak No Evil
    While this might be a flashy, American production (courtesy of Blumhouse, behind the Insidious movies and Get Out), it’s also the distinctly observational work of a British writer-director. And then there’s McAvoy, delivering one of the most impressively repugnant performances of the year.
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