The Times' Scores

For 277 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 58% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.1 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 63
Highest review score: 100 Pride & Prejudice
Lowest review score: 0 The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 23 out of 277
277 movie reviews
  1. Despite Alcock’s efforts, Supergirl fails to uplift the superhero genre.
  2. It's just Spielberg badly rehashed, poorly reheated, lukewarm and with extra treacle.
  3. The acting is feeble but for a solid turn from Idris Elba as the boozy bodyguard Duncan. The action is jeopardy-free and repetitive. And although the pitiful script, in vague development hell for more than two decades, seems determined to recast He-Man as a delicate, left-leaning protagonist, a finale involving gloriously captured face punches and broken jaws leaves us in no doubt that he remains a two-fisted Trumpian warrior and 1980s to the core.
  4. It's like watching fantastically dull scenarios from the 2007 first person video game Portal apparently a source of inspiration for Parsons. There are breaks for backstory — Clark had a volatile marriage; Mary's mother was sectioned — but these add little meaningful context or narrative grounding.
  5. [Claire's] social circle seems to consist entirely of vapid, annoying thirtysomethings swanning around doing nothing of any value. The problem is that the film, directed by the Spaniard Maria Martínez Bayona, feels equally aimless.
  6. Coward is sweetly played and elegantly mounted but there’s little here that really surprises.
  7. At heart, though, this is just a suspense movie with some decent twists and an excellent turn from Tawba El Gharchi as Ida, Thomas and Nora’s fiery young daughter.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Like most first-time directors, Van Dyk sometimes hits flat notes and tonal wobbles, overplaying the sentimentality in places. But he closes on lyrical flourish, at a quiet family gathering that speaks volumes about shared humanity and the kindness of strangers.
  8. The film is very much a paper tiger — what feels at first like a prestige production is ultimately toothless and unconvincing.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Parallel Tales (Histoires parallèles) begins as an ambitious, metatextual, multicharacter ensemble drama, with various key cast members playing dual roles. But it rambles on too long, losing much of its early charm and focus in a ponderous, undercooked second half.
  9. The film plays like a well-leafed anthology of Irish folklore, handsomely enough shot but lacking the unifying conceit that has driven, say, the great Australian horror movies of recent years: The Bababook, Talk to Me, Bring Her Back. Hangings, hauntings, howling winds? For McCarthy, it’s all just good craic.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Solid on research, weaker on analysis, this is an affectionate celebration that keeps the northern soul campfires burning nicely.
  10. Remarkably Bright Creatures milks My Octopus Teacher for Hallmark-card dollops of anthropomorphic sentiment, but fails to live up to the promise of its title, abundantly. Nice but dim is closer to the mark.
  11. Mazin’s script has some fun with whodunnit tropes — the late-arriving wild card, the police blaming a drifter, the clue lying in the victim — but the film’s flaw is fairly straightforward: the sheep don’t do enough detecting.
  12. This is a mildly distracting guilty pleasure romp that is undone by its own casting crisis.
  13. It looks great, and Cronin is a gifted stylist. But, as with his debut The Hole in the Ground, there’s too much slavish imitation and homage here. His greatest accomplishment is the downtime family scenes. They throb with easy realism. He should dump horror and do drama instead.
  14. The twists are many and some predictable, but the mood here is mostly, and unapologetically, guilty-pleasure hokum.
  15. The film, despite themes of empowerment, is really a strange cinematic palimpsest. Scratch the glossy feminist makeover to reveal underneath a still smirking, leering, chauvinistic pig.
  16. So why two stars? Because it’s inoffensive and criticising it feels like punching down. And because Martin Clunes, playing a grouchy landlord, is really quite good.
  17. It’s more funny peculiar than funny ha ha and, alas, doesn’t always work.
  18. There are some mildly diverting moments, and it’s pleasing to see Ed Harris emerge later on in a significant set piece. Like everything else in this ill-judged effort, his appearance is a wasted opportunity.
  19. The Colleen Hoover school of social realism is back — and this time it’s more idiotic than ever.
  20. There’s lots of fun here, some of the one-liners are exquisite and the helter-skelter finale is delightfully overstuffed. Frustratingly, it’s still second-grade Pixar.
  21. Worst of all, and quite baffling for a film that was directed and cowritten by the franchise creator, Kevin Williamson, this isn’t even about articulate teens deconstructing horror films any more. There are a handful of limp references to AI deepfakes but otherwise all the sharp culture awareness, and certainly all the irony, has been removed. It’s as if nobody realised that a Scream movie without the irony is just a bad horror movie. Roll on Scream 8?
  22. This is all good fun but at about the midway mark (see the chunky running time) it begins to lose its vitality, ceasing to be a new Heat and becoming more of a reheat.
  23. Yes, there is no person or inanimate object safe in a film where Fennell’s main directorial note to Elordi seems to have been, “Great, but can you also lick it?”
  24. Sadly, the mockumentary Zamiri’s film most resembles — at times, eerily so — is Spice World: The Movie. No, really. Same manic energy. Same faux crises. Same shouty one-note line delivery.
  25. With Bader and Blyth on quietly charismatic form throughout, [Haley's] made a film that is eminently slick, consistently palatable and instantly forgettable. The perfect Netflix product.
  26. Skarsgard and Reinsve are excellent as two damaged people who are only able to open up when they’re working, but you yearn for the film itself to open up. It’s an intriguing premise, stylishly executed but sometimes lacking a bit of heart.
  27. It’s difficult to convey just how little dramatic urgency there is in a film that’s effectively a computer-generated diorama, one that’s filled with fantastical flora and fauna and mystical beings who are all dressed up with nowhere to go.

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