The Telegraph's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
For 2,484 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 Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere
Lowest review score: 0 Cats
Score distribution:
2484 movie reviews
  1. Director Cave stages some nicely gripping scenes of suspense, toggling between camp and grit as nimbly as the swoony soundtrack, which occasionally cuts out for comic effect.
  2. [Burton] never thought acting was a manly profession, and seemed to be involved in a tug-of-war against himself, tangled up by his roots. To have half explored these themes, as Evans’ film does, means we’re left wanting more, but there’s a pleasing ache to the experience as a platonic love story.
  3. The headline draw remains the headline draw – and sometimes it’s enough for two lead actors to animate, complicate and enrich a project by lending it all the mysterious gravity you could ask for.
  4. Nothing about the plot or craft astounds, but the qualities above are all far rarer in studio movies these days than they should be, which makes The Amateur remarkable – in its own stonily workmanlike way.
  5. Drop is ludicrous. OK, so are all films in which a taunting psychopath calls the shots, but this one takes the biscuit because of the so-not-cutting-edge tech element.
  6. The result is in every sense a partial portrait, but doesn’t remotely suffer from being so – in fact, its exhortation to viewers to fill in the gaps where possible is one of its central pleasures.
  7. In lieu of monologues and soul-baring, Coogler crams the film with proper movie-star performances at every level: by turns glowingly charismatic, sparklingly funny and silkily seductive.
  8. The placid, open-ended charm of its video game source material is nowhere to be found in this grindingly generic brand extension.
  9. Part of the genius of Warfare’s ending is that it admits that war rarely – if ever – contains endings at all.
  10. There’s little here to keep us up at night – or from forgetting all about it by tomorrow.
  11. Think of it as a slightly self-nobbling version of Enchanted, the wondrous (and original) Disney blockbuster that both sent up and celebrated the Disney princess musical tradition in 2007.
  12. The Alto Knights certainly has the off-screen pedigree you’d hope for. Nicholas Pileggi (Goodfellas, Casino) wrote the script, named after an infamous Manhattan social club. But the circuitous shaping feels off, a problem Barry Levinson’s direction is too flaccid to fix.
  13. It wants to become a cat-and-mouse game between the leads, but the leaky script dampens any real hope of suspense.
  14. As filmmaking, it’s as mindless as Hollywood’s worst.
  15. It positions spycraft as a hybrid of occult ritual and parlour game – and perhaps also a grand-scale working-through of deep-seated national jitters. Happily, it’s also enormous fun with it, and has your mind whirring to keep up with David Koepp’s devious screenplay, which gives itself a head start and waits until the very end before willingly surrendering the lead.
  16. One swaggering brawl plays out to a certain synth version of Beethoven’s 9th, suggesting that Love’s fanboy devotion to A Clockwork Orange might override having fully understood it. But who knows?
  17. What fun it is to watch a film this expensive and not be able to quite work out where it’s going – or even if it might just stay put for a bit, and soak up the dustily poetic death-of-the-American century vibe.
  18. The long-term consequences are depressing, but also low on dramatic tension and life.
  19. It’s an absorbing but disappointingly tasteful watch.
  20. Some films based on dramatic true events offer us a snapshot of a life: I’m Still Here shows us a life of snapshots.
  21. To everyone’s complaints that Longlegs’ plot turned daft, I can only shrug: it was easily assured enough to sustain a deadly undertow, while dancing about with a diabolical sense of mischief. I also point them to The Monkey as Exhibit A for what misfiring daftness looks like.
  22. Mickey 17, about a hapless clone’s misadventures on a colonising mission, is a throwback to blockbusters as the late 20th century made ’em: a $100m boisterous sci-fi satire that neither belongs to a franchise nor cares to start one, but instead jams as many eggs as it can into one increasingly precarious basket.
  23. What The Gorge does supply is a novel science-fiction premise and some captivating bursts of suspense.
  24. A thrill-free thriller.
  25. It’s the comedy of British middle-class embarrassment, executed here as deftly as anything in peak Richard Curtis. Like me, you may be surprised by how much you’ve missed it.
  26. The premise sounds morbid but the execution couldn’t be sunnier: think Snoopy does RoboCop.
  27. With its single, ultimately blood-soaked day to cover, this wants to be a pressure-cooker thriller, but something’s a little off with the settings.
  28. So much of the film’s (notably slight) running time is squandered on filler – a subplot involving bickering henchmen consumes around a third of the film – that it’s never able to hit its grindhouse stride.
  29. It’s all lightly reminiscent of Bride Wars, the cat-fighty 2009 farce with Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson doing very unfeminist things to ringfence their perfect day. You’re Cordially Invited has a little more heart than that: it hits an average yet amiable stride.
  30. It’s a breezy watch with nothing insightful to impart about the group or their impact on society. But it is guided by the implicit understanding that any project about the Beatles will inevitably find an audience – and that is an itch it undeniably scratches.

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