Time Out London's Scores

  • Movies
For 1,246 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 48% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 48% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.2 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 64
Highest review score: 100 Dark Days
Lowest review score: 20 The Secret Scripture
Score distribution:
1246 movie reviews
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Low on documentary conviction and political context, but an intriguing exercise in concealing the obvious.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Two hours long and anti-climactic, but Bond fans won't be disappointed.
  1. Scarecrow’ feels like an existential fairytale squarely rooted in the reality of America’s fraying backroads and small towns. It’s all a little rambling and anarchic, but later scenes in a jail have real bite. And when the sadness behind Lion’s smile is revealed, it’s also genuinely moving.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Seven sketches parodying a sex manual, in which Allen strung together "every funny idea I've ever had about sex, including several that led to my own divorce."
    • 52 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Photographed by the admirable Bruce Surtees, but a curiously strangled Western which can't make up its mind whether it wants to wring straight action out of the range war between poor Mexicans and a tycoon rancher (Duvall), or to explore the moral standing of the disreputable character (Eastwood) who takes law and order into his hands.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Dismally lurid stuff, ham-fistedly directed and low on credibility.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Apart from a clumsy climax, a wry and exhilarating bit of entertainment.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Eastwood's first film as director, and first exploratory probe for the flaws in his macho image as outlined in Siegel's The Beguiled. A highly enjoyable thriller made under the influence of Siegel (who contributes a memorable cameo as a bartender).
    • 69 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    It's a long way down from even the second in the series.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Allen's second feature, a tribute to the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup, is a wonderfully incoherent series of one-liners centered around a puny New York Jew's unwitting and unwilling involvement in a South American revolution.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    After a spendidly traditional opening sequence, the message about the dangers of scientific research begins to loom ponderously large, with banks of super-computers dedicated to science fact but the dialogue (Good God, it's growing!) still mired in fiction.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tale of the eagerly criminal career of Virgil Starkwell is as unpredictably structured as Annie Hall, if not yet anything like as sustained in tone and mood. But it has plenty of hilarious jokes and concepts, like the ventriloquists' dummies at prison visiting time, and the return home from a chain gang break with five shackled cons in tow.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This sequel to Planet of the Apes isn't bad, but degenerates the original conception into routine comic strip adventure.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Muddled campus revolt comedy, distinguished by Elliott Gould's marvellously grizzly performance as an ageing dropout who decides to drop back in again, and resolutely keeps his nose glued to his books in self-defence. Robert Kaufman's script casts a nicely caustic eye not only on the juvenility of the student demands, but also on the hopeless desiccation of academia.
  2. The Bond films were bad enough even with the partially ironic performances of Connery. Here, featuring the stunning nonentity Lazenby, there are no redeeming features.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The understated performances and reluctance to emphasise plot result in convincing characterisations, to such an extent that the often narcissistic Redford actually allows himself to come across as a dislikeably selfish, arrogant and icy man. And the location skiing sequences, revealing Ritchie's background and interest in documentary styles, are simply astounding, even for those with little interest in the sport.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Outrageously overrated... the film indulges in bland satire, fashionable flashiness, and a sodden sentimentality that never admits either to its homosexual elements or to the basic misogyny of its stance. Add to that a glamorisation of poverty and an ending that makes Love Story seem restrained, and you have a fairly characteristic example of Schlesinger's shallow talent.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The plot, concerning the battle of wits between an honest cop and an ambitious politician for possession of the key witness in a Mafia exposé, is serviceable but nothing special. But the action sequences are brilliant, done without trickery in real locations (including a great car chase which spawned a thousand imitations) to lend an extraordinary sense of immediacy to the shenanigans and gunfights.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Whenever it seems there might be a glimmer of hope, Romero cruelly reverses our expectations. The nihilistic ending, in particular, has to be seen to be believed. Chuckle, if you can, during the first few minutes; because after that laughter catches in the throat as the clammy hand of terror tightens its grip.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The film's central irony is not the usual one of public success at the expense of private pain, but the complex one of success at the expense of personal knowledge. Streisand never looks into the mirrors that Wyler surrounds her with. Well worth watching.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A supremely intelligent and convincing adaptation of Ira Levin's Satanist thriller.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A caustically witty look at the American South and its still-surviving chain gangs, with Newman in fine sardonic form as the boss-baiter who refuses to submit and becomes a hero to his fellow-prisoners. Underlying the hard-bitten surface is a slightly uncomfortable allegory which identifies Newman as a Christ figure. But this scarcely detracts from the brilliantly idiosyncratic script (by Donn Pearce from his own novel) or from Conrad Hall's glittering camerawork (which survives Rosenberg's penchant for the zoom lens and shots reflected in sun-glasses).
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    An effective shocker which has the blind Hepburn alone in the house when psychotic villain Arkin and his hoodlum pals (Crenna and Weston) arrive to retrieve a doll containing heroin which her husband (Zimbalist) unwittingly brought through customs for them. Though based on a stage play (by Frederick Knott), the skillful use of interiors for once transcends the visual limitations.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Roald Dahl's implausible script is padded out with the usual exotic locations, stunts, and trickery.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One of Ritt's best films, with fine performances all round, impressive Death Valley locations, and superlative camerawork from James Wong Howe.
  3. Based on Kurosawa's Yojimbo, it sets a fashion in surly, laconic, supercool heroes with Eastwood's amoral gunslinger, who plays off two gangs against one another in a deadly feud.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sweet revenge for anyone who has sat through a foreign film suffering from a torrent of bad dubbing. For his first auteur-credit (!), Woody Allen got hold of a 1964 Japanese exploitation thriller and exploited it for his own ends, dubbing it delightfully with gags and Hollywood clichés. Enough one-liners to leave you with happy memories. A jolly oddity.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sleek and quite fun all the same, with SPECTRE holding the world to ransom after stealing a couple of nuclear bombs, Bond almost getting his in the villain's shark-infested swimming pool, and a cleverly choreographed underwater battle to provide the icing on the mix.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Any kid growing up in the early ’60s will remember this one for several reasons: Birley Shassey’s screamer of a theme; Bond’s shocking use of a beautiful girl as a human shield; bullion-obsessed baddie Auric Goldfinger’s top hat-wielding henchman, Oddjob; Honor Blackman’s risquely monikered Pussy Galore; and, above all, Bond’s stupendous, gadget-infested silver Aston Martin DB5, the car that spurred a thousand Corgi purchases.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Despite being recognised as one of the better 007 films (and one laudably devoid of what would later become the formulaic Bond ending), number two in the series actually proves marginally less memorable than many of the others.

Top Trailers