The Telegraph's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 2,516 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 48% 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 Cantona
Lowest review score: 0 Cats
Score distribution:
2516 movie reviews
  1. While Toy Story 5 may fall short of essential, in an age in which children’s entertainment routinely panders to its audience, there is something quietly radical about a film that is willing to worry for them.
  2. With its ruminations on everything from responsible government to humanity’s innate religious drive, Disclosure Day is unquestionably a big swing. But with Spielberg, big swings should be a given, and this one only glancingly connects.
  3. Sweary, a bit lairy, occasionally teary, this isn’t the romcom of anyone’s dreams. But for a fun and frivolous evening on the sofa, Office Romance’s charms are undeniable.
  4. There are duels à la Thackeray. There are classical snippets borrowed from sundry Kubrick soundtracks for added pomp. But, unfortunately, there’s never a real reason to stay this grim film’s course.
  5. This reboot of the 1980s fantasy cartoon keeps telling us how absolutely right we are to not be enjoying it. Who am I to argue?
  6. The film lays out all these facts quite vividly, but the insights it’s peddling into art and beauty never get below the surface. It’s a deeper dimension – truth – that eludes it.
  7. Other Carney films have been funnier or sweeter; but this has a seen-it-all take on the music biz that’s refreshingly acerbic. It knows how fame and fairness are practically banned from sharing a bed.
  8. As bizarre as it is terrifying, Backrooms may not be a revolution in horror, but it’s a beyond-freaky remapping of the genre.
  9. Rarer still is comedy direction so inspired from someone making their feature debut. Alicia MacDonald is the real deal. There are dozens of characters here all nailing laughs by being 100 per cent themselves: that takes not only inspired casting and acting, but a person in charge who knows how to wring the juice out of every syllable.
  10. This might be familiar dramatic terrain, but it’s handled with blazing empathy by all involved.
  11. Deploying AI to resurrect John Lennon himself, even for a moment, is the one temptation he resists, thank God. But this cloying, nothing-to-see-here experiment is the next worst thing.
  12. The overall tone, though, is just abominable. It’s hard to believe the source novel, adapted personally by its author, Virginia Feito, could have been quite this abrasively pointless.
  13. It makes for easy-breezy viewing, the daft tone landing halfway between Buñuel and the Farrelly Brothers.
  14. It’s an achingly elegant piece of work which I’m already looking forward to revisiting.
  15. The performances across the board are keenly felt yet commendably unshowy: Branagh gets his character’s crumped forbearance spot on, while Abbass’s portrayal of Christian fortitude in the direst of circumstances becomes the wellspring of the film’s deep, multi-axial compassion.
  16. It is normal to be bored by dreadful films, or even annoyed by them. But I don’t believe I have ever felt as sorry for one as I do John Travolta’s directorial debut, the viewing of which is like watching a toddler walk into a lamp post.
  17. You want The Unknown to go on the attack, or go wild, rather than dwindle into anticlimax. None of it needs an explanation – but it could have done with a point.
  18. It’s all fun in the heat of the moment – or more often the chill of it – and the physically constructed city itself is a wonder. But we already know that Refn can do this stuff in his sleep. As the credits roll, you may be left wondering: what else?
  19. If you wanted to be mean about Pedro Almodóvar’s new film, you could call it complacent. On the other hand, if you wanted to be generous, you could call it a spry deconstruction of artistic complacency. In reality, it’s both.
  20. As always in Nemes’s films, the period detail is so enveloping it feels utterly natural. But his great gift as a director is his facility for portraying 20th-century European history as a great grinding machine, into the blood-stained cogs of which anyone might have found themselves dragged.
  21. Everything Disney needed to revive the franchise after its seven-year absence from cinemas is in here. The problem is there is only around 20 minutes of it, and much of the rest is hopeless.
  22. Writer-director Cristian Mungiu has made a slow-burn provocation that knows exactly which buttons it is pressing – yet which also grapples with the thorny issues it raises, from the limits and contradictions of multiculturalism to public sector careerism, with an unflinching moral seriousness.
  23. You could abandon Hope for an entire hour in the middle without missing much. There’s no denying the kicks we get either side, but there is a sharper, more satisfying 100-minute film fighting to get out here.
  24. Gray’s film is itself no paper tiger – yes, it’s a fondly conceived throwback, but its claws are real.
  25. It’s a necessarily tough watch, with an engrossing performance from Seydoux that makes Lucy’s every flicker of hope and stab of dread feel like your own.
  26. The film’s addictive needle-drops and sassy ensemble – including a sparingly used Cara Delevingne as Peter’s cutting business partner, and The Night Manager’s Diego Calva as an extremely obliging social worker – make it nothing if not easy to like.
  27. Watching that brilliance in action remains a thrill: you can see the angles and vectors align in his mind’s eye before every kick. Tryhorn and Nicholas have pulled off something similar here. Having got every calculation just right, their film soars.
  28. Its central love quadrangle, which straddles two separate time periods with ease, is breezily absorbing thanks to its participants’ plentiful chemistry, while the plot embraces and dodges clichés by turns with quickstepping finesse.
  29. Unfolds with little dramatic momentum and negligible intrigue.
  30. There’s enjoyment to be had watching McKellen, 86, gamely pecking away at the role, snacking on morsels in every scene. If only he’d been given a fuller feast.

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