The Times' Scores

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For 250 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 1.6 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. Positive: 120 out of 250
  2. Mixed: 110 out of 250
  3. Negative: 20 out of 250
250 movie reviews
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  1. On Swift Horses
    It’s not going to rock everyone’s world and neither is it a patch on Carol. But it’s competent, sometimes clever, film-making with ideas and lots of heart.
  2. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
    The film, written by Julian Fellowes on autopilot and directed by Simon Curtis (in a trance?), climaxes with a scene that is simultaneously grossly saccharine and deeply cynical.
  3. The Wizard of the Kremlin
    The film bounds ambitiously through fifteen years of the Baranov-Putin alliance.
  4. Father Mother Sister Brother
    It’s not quite vintage Jarmusch (for that see Night on Earth and Broken Flowers), but it is light and compassionate.
  5. Caught Stealing
    The plotting has an off-kilter swerve to it that catches you nicely off guard, and the images have the warmth of nostalgic recall
  6. Sorry, Baby
    Sorry, Baby is of a different order of achievement. Walking a tonal tightrope between comedy and tragedy with an exquisite balance that recalls Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain of last year, the film manages to address a difficult, dark subject with a blunt candour that is also slyly funny.
  7. Jay Kelly
    The film builds to a magnificently sad climax, with Clooney breaking the fourth wall and delivering probably his best screenwork ever.
  8. The Summer Book
    The earnestness slowly becomes suffocating, and Grandmother’s endless lessons grating. Yes, nature is the ultimate healer. And?
  9. After the Hunt
    Guadagnino is also on the form of his life, directing with assured style and structure, and offering a lovely closing device that asks us to relax, calm down and remember that it’s all just playtime.
  10. La Grazia
    La grazia is wonderful. It is slow initially and sometimes difficult but it gradually, seductively seeps into you and becomes near impossible to shake.
  11. The Thursday Murder Club
    Mirren, of course, smooths over most quibbles with a character who begins in pure camp and enjoys a cheeky nod to her off-screen ex-beau Liam Neeson in Taken, and then gradually evolves into a serious, stony-faced sleuth.
  12. The Map That Leads to You
    Hallstrom also works wonders with the principal cast, finding hidden depths in Cline and mostly neutralising Apa’s unnerving propensity for blinkless serial killer stares (it’s like he’s going for Blue Steel but just, well, misses).
  13. Night Always Comes
    The supporting character interactions can be creaky and stiff, as if the director Benjamin Caron was so convinced of Kirby’s prowess that he presumed she could carry the film, flaws and all. And she almost does. Almost.
  14. Weapons
    Where to start with this utterly gorgeous, commanding, terrifying and masterful suspense thriller? Firstly don’t believe the hype — it’s not a horror. It’s bigger than that. Not a slasher, a creeper, a spooker or a demented killer movie. It’s better than that.
  15. Freakier Friday
    There’s more of everything. More narrative convolutions, more subplots, more supporting characters, more one-liners, more slapstick, more musical interludes, and even more tear-jerking finales.
  16. The Naked Gun
    This film isn’t particularly new or original but it’s just like its predecessors, which is more than enough.
  17. Happy Gilmore 2
    Like the original movie, this isn’t super funny, unless burping, farting and people being hit in the groin with golf balls is your thing.
  18. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
    It’s when they return to Earth-828 that the film reverts to type: enervating action, platitudinous script, predictable ending.
  19. Four Letters of Love
    It doesn’t help that the director, Polly Steele (The Mountain Within Me), has seemingly chosen to fill the narrative longueurs with endless drone shots of the Irish countryside. Pretty, yes. But they can only offer so much damage limitation.
  20. Friendship
    All of this, to be clear, is hilarious. Emotionally desolate, but hilarious.
  21. Modi - Three Days on the Wing of Madness
    Every single scene here is about what the scene is about, creating the deepest vat of cinematic s**t imaginable. The screenplay is shamefully inept.
  22. Smurfs
    The two Spider-Verse movies proved that brash and branded Hollywood entertainment does not have to sacrifice novelty and innovation. Smurfs, on the other hand? Profoundly, oppressively empty. There’s no reason to see it.
  23. Apocalypse in the Tropics
    Ending with uncertainty, and a sense that Brazil is never too far away from another military dictatorship, this is sobering, essential viewing.
  24. Superman
    There are glimmers of intrigue, as well as quirks and curios.
  25. Chicken Town
    The entire film is like this. Random and unfocused. Bit of this. Bit of that. Lots of charm. See how you go. There are great lines hidden in the mulch, mostly delivered by Fellows.
  26. Words of War
    It works. Peake is that good. Isaacs is also that good. And the subject is compelling and timely.
  27. Jurassic World Rebirth
    In the end, though, the pairing of Edwards with Koepp is the complementary master stroke. They are camera and script in harmony, deftly entwined for a franchise that is finally, after thirty years, worthy of rebirth.
  28. M3GAN 2.0
    It’s bigger, brasher, more inventive, more “roboty”, certainly more entertaining, but missing just a sliver of the first instalment’s raw-bones charm.
  29. Wild Diamond
    The film hovers uneasily in a narrative grey zone, post-audition yet pre-show, and repeatedly castigates social media and reality TV for turning a generation of human beings into vacuous, camera-ready twits.
  30. 28 Years Later
    The sense of hallucinogenic sweatiness won’t be to everyone’s taste but [Garland] and Boyle should be applauded for taking such big swings and having the flair and confidence to pull them off. It’s an astonishing piece of work.
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