Time Out's Scores

  • Movies
For 6,373 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 56% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.4 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 61
Highest review score: 100 Pain and Glory
Lowest review score: 0 Surf Nazis Must Die
Score distribution:
6373 movie reviews
  1. Him
    It doesn’t all work: the religious iconography is too obvious, and the more lurid horror elements – like the obsessive fans who literally haunt Cam during his training – can be so heavy-handed they’re more silly than scary. What never falters, though, is Tipping’s avid commitment to his concept.
  2. Despite an occasional burst of self-mocking glibness (mostly via Robbie, who skirts but never quite tilts into the manic-dream-pixie playground), this is a movie that isn’t afraid of sincerity, and it brings a bit of silver-lining energy to our overcast world.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The film’s primary feelings are anger and paranoia. As we watch this depiction of a life lived looking over your shoulder, we recognise these as the most commonly, deeply felt feelings of our age.
  3. Cheesier than a wheel of Stilton and about as edgy, Downton Abbey bows out with a cosy but loveable final instalment that will leave few dry eyes among long-time fans of Julian Fellowes’ British TV thoroughbred.
  4. Remake is emotionally shattering.
  5. Martel’s forensic doc shatters any sense that, for her fellow Argentinians, the colonial burden has been lifted. It’s an intimate pinhole camera capturing an IMAX-sized story.
  6. The performances are solid, with an excellent Jude Law all inscrutable psychopathy as a younger Vladimir Putin and Alicia Vikander the perfect embodiment of an amoral post-Soviet arrivista, and the chilly world-building works well enough, but there’s a missing ingredient – actual Russians.
  7. Beyond the regular crunch of fist on bone, The Smashing Machine is an unexpectedly gentle, soulful character study that has Johnson undercutting his crowd-pleasing ‘The Rock’ persona with vulnerability and boyish uncertainty.
  8. Those first 40-odd minutes are unbearably tense. Ferguson is a standout in a strong ensemble cast
  9. Not top tier Jarmusch, but still a funny, soulful anthology worth seeking out.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    With humour blacker than black bean noodles, the film is a masterful work of cinema which might well be Chan-wook’s masterpiece. And given this is the man who directed The Handmaiden that’s saying a lot.
  10. As with The Shape of Water, del Toro makes no secret of where his sympathy lies and who the real monsters are, but there are surprises here. Not least of which is how moved you might feel in the end.
  11. The usually distinctive filmmaker – Black Swan, The Wrestler, Mother! – is in unflashy form for this solid, starry but not very memorable thriller about one man’s very bad night.
  12. The Roses gets off to an enjoyable start, but like the marriage at its centre, the novelty wears off.
  13. Grab your nan, put the kettle on and enjoy some exceedingly fine thesps hamming it up royally.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Winner of the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes, Young Mothers brings nothing new to the Dardennes’ canon, but there’s comfort in the familiarity of their methodology. They’ve always had a knack for coaxing tremendous performances from even the youngest of actors, and the cast here is uniformly excellent.
  14. Sorry, Baby is a captivating comedy-drama that avoids the reductive binary of hero or villain. Instead, Victor articulates the flaws of humanity, of people, but also the hope we can find in each other and ourselves.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s a wonderfully rich gambit for talking about the push and pull of long-term commitment; of the fine line between complacency and wilful denial; and of the bonds of love that can remain intact regardless of your own toxicity. The
  15. Fans, of course, will fiercely argue that Buckley has so much more to offer. And in the strongest compliment to Berg’s affectionate portrait, she makes a similarly convincing case, with ample and tender grace.
  16. There’ll be moans from horrorheads that it’s not scary throughout, but in deepening his exploration of family life in the ‘burbs, Cregger sharpens his twisted scares to a dagger point. And the frights, when they come, really land.
  17. There are almost endless holes you could pick in its logic and storytelling, but it gives you few reasons to want to. This Friday’s freakier, but it’s kind of… funner too.
  18. In the thick of reboot culture, The Naked Gun is a prime example of filmmakers taking a nostalgic piece of cinema and making good on its legacy. It honours the humour above all, and you’d be hard-pushed to find a funnier film this year.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Bad Guys 2 gets a bit high on its own supply; there are moments of indulgence. But to a large extent that’s because Perifel and co know they’re onto a good thing.
  19. A groundbreaking view of the horror and pity of war, I can’t remember a cinematic experience quite like it. It’s devastating and extraordinary.
  20. For a movie that looks this sleek, there’s a lot of scrappiness around the fringes. Paul Walter Hauser is fun as subterranean mastermind Mole Man, but gets barely a toehold on the plot. Half of whatever Natasha Lyonne’s character, a teacher with a thing for The Thing, was due to be doing is surely on the cutting room floor. The Four’s droid helper H.E.R.B.I.E. doesn’t leave a massive impression.
  21. Like Talk To Her, it doesn’t completely satisfy when it comes time to resolve its intrigue. But, as with their debut, the Philippou brothers show a real skill for creating believable teen characters, Barratt and Wong create a tender, affecting chemistry that make the chills all the more affecting.
  22. For Gunn, who has injected superhero movies with a winningly irreverence since his R-rated indie Super, ridding the DCEU of its bombast and self-seriousness is a step in right direction. Whether, like his alien hero, he can arrest the march of time and reinvigorate this tired genre is another matter.
  23. Rebirth knows it needs to make its scaly stars frightening and surprising again and manages it in Spielbergian style.
  24. M3GAN 2.0 continues to offer up a goofy brand of cautionary tale, too: against AI, tech dependence, and Silicon Valley types who want to stick a chip in their brains. You can take that seriously as you want to, just don’t be surprised to find yourself watching it again on your cellphone one day.
  25. Mercifully, it lacks the pretentious moralising of his later work, and is far more professionally put together. But for all its relative dramatic coherence, it's still hard to see how it was ever taken as a masterpiece.
  26. There’s so much in Grenfell: Uncovered about the state of modern Britain that Sadiq does brilliantly not to get sidetracked.
  27. Splicing in montage footage of marching soldiers, shots from Lawrence Olivier’s Henry V, and even archers in action, and layering in discordant sound design, Boyle reinvents the zombie movie as a bloody pop-art installation.
  28. It’s hard to draw too much old-school romance from this world of sponsorship, celebrity and sports washing, but F1 manages it on the back of Pitt’s earthy charm. Watch it rev into the canon of great sports movies. Motion sickness tablets recommended.
  29. Song has, undeniably, done a beautiful job composing this visually absorbing film.
  30. Happily, it emerges at last with enough inventive action to stand alongside its murderous predecessors, and makes Ana de Armas into a likeable assassin hero – a phrase that makes more sense in her killer-filled world than our own.
  31. Unfolding at the American filmmaker’s measured tempo, it’s more droll than LOL-funny, though there are some big laughs along the way.
  32. It takes a steady hand to pull off a horror film as outlandish as Dangerous Animals – a movie, lest we forget, that is literally about dangerous animals – but Byrne has pulled off something slick and confident here. It’ll keep horror fans out of the water for years.
  33. In Saeed Roustayi’s Woman and Child, a carefully crafted and endlessly gripping drama that follows a Tehran family’s slow disintegration, it’s the supposedly joyous occasion of a marriage proposal that set the wheels of fate in motion.
  34. South African director Oliver Hermanus finds plenty of deep feeling and sincerity here but his beautiful-looking, measured period piece gets stifled by its own languors – especially in a first half that needs a slug or two of moonshine to inject some life into it.
  35. The director is clearly having a whale of a time taking the piss out of the corruption, cruelty and bribery rife in his country.
  36. The Secret Agent is vicious and vivid in its sense of place and danger. But it also has a streak of weirdness and offers a very human take on the political-crime thriller genre.
  37. In live-action mode, Lilo & Stitch has some of the charm of an ’80s Amblin movie, like E.T. or Gremlins.
  38. As a storyteller, writer-director Hafsia Herzi is not coy, but she’s careful, allowing intimacy to emerge with the same tentativeness as it does for Fatima.
  39. It’s as interesting for what it doesn’t show as for what it does.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Much like the case itself, a crime drama performed and crafted with this level of care and social resonance is well worth investigating.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Much will depend on how far you’re willing to go with the wild swings the film takes in its second half, but if you’re down for a trip, Sirat is The Wages of Fear meets The Vanishing on shrooms; startlingly original, jarringly hilarious and deeply disturbing.
  40. Harris Dickinson steps behind the camera for a bruising, brilliantly strange debut that channels veteran auteurs like Jonathan Glazer and Andrea Arnold, while carving out a distinctive voice all its own.
  41. Watching this Anderson extravaganza is like assembling a meticulously detailed puzzle: at times frustrating, but deeply rewarding when the full picture comes together.
  42. For devoted filmlovers, Nouvelle Vague is a must-see – a joyful homage to the art of cinema that’ll have you queuing at your local repertory cinema as soon as the credits roll.
  43. It’s a deeply raw and honest film. It’s bleak, but it also has a musical, black-comic, big-hearted spirit that pulls you through the despair.
  44. This good-natured hagiography isn’t anywhere near free of pomposity, but even Bono seems to know when it’s best just to keep quiet and move on.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s Poots who carries the story, giving heart and soul to a performance of a woman who cannot help but careen her way through life like a bull in a china shop.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hitchcock's sly blend of fantasy, game-playing and frightening lechery, and his continually inventive visuals, make for an intriguing exploration of '20s high-life.
  45. So, sure, the plot is overstuffed, the cross-cutting is frenzied, and Pegg’s goofy asides are the only light relief from the underlying somberness. If you’re looking for flaws, The Final Reckoning definitely has them. But with action sequences this adrenalised, no one is leaving short-changed.
  46. By keeping the camera in the vehicle, hauntingly lit with the blur of passing houses and the glow of the mobile phone, Hallow Road invites you to fill the scene at the other end of the line with a shadowy menace that the final stretch really delivers on.
  47. This movie does exactly what a horror reboot should, taking the best bits of the original and heading in a smart, inventive new direction. There’s minimal reliance on nostalgia. It’s daft as hell and a heck of a good time.
  48. Writer-actors Tim Key and Tom Basden’s three-hander, set on a remote British isle, have delivered a rare blend of unkempt charm, emotional precision and soulful folk music with this feature-length expansion of their own 2007 short, The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island.
  49. Yes, Friendship does feel in many ways like an expanded I Think You Should Leave sketch built on bizarro absurdism and a waterfall of exacerbating circumstances. To his credit, though, DeYoung – a TV director making his feature debut – does take advantage of the opportunity in some satisfying ways.
  50. It’s a lurid psychological horror that’ll thrill midnight movie crowds.
  51. As so often the case, this Marvel effort is best when its talented cast is flinging around snarky banter and self-aware asides.
  52. The Friend is a poignantly affecting watch that mostly earns its emotional payoff, delivering gentle laughs along the way.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Ziba’s relationship with her unwaveringly affectionate mother (Narges Rashidi) is genuinely touching, a rejection of the austere immigrant parent stereotype.
  53. You’ll get several movies for the price of a single ticket in Ryan Coogler’s (Creed) period drama-thriller-romance-musical Sinners. And while some of these disparate elements are more successful than others, the combination is audacious enough to leave you simultaneously awed and overwhelmed by his outsized ambitions.
  54. Malek’s twitchy brand of anti-charm makes him an unusual lead for a film like this, and his outsider energy works better as the tormented killer-to-be than the doting husband. Heller is not always easy to root for, which can make The Amateur a chilly experience.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    ‘Painful to watch’ isn’t often a term of praise, but this action-comedy about a man who loses the ability to feel physical discomfort channels its unusual, nerve-numbing premise into a fun and oddly romantic ride.
  55. A survival epic full of mysteries and magic, it’s an animated epic worthy of Ghibli.
  56. This is far from the disaster that was predicted. It’s cute and cheerful, but its efforts to make Snow White both respectful to the original and relevant to a new audience leave it stranded in some smudgy grey areas.
  57. If you take The Alto Knights on its own terms – as an eccentric but engaging curio – there’s still plenty of fun to be had.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A moving and humorous coming-of-age story which is told with brio, avoiding the usual divots of social realism misery.
  58. We want to be there with them in the fading light, and that’s the might of Sach’s quiet little ode to friendship.
  59. You can expect Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman-like banter from Robert Kaplow’s finely-tuned screenplay, an expert evocation of the ‘40s.
  60. Last Breath depicts a workplace where instead of fabricated conflict coming from villainous colleagues, a team of people are battling with their own souls while under extreme duress. Their conscientious solidarity forms an undercurrent that breathes oxygen into the heart of this moving thriller.
  61. With this quick-witted and sexually supercharged espionage caper, Steven Soderbergh and his screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park) have just remade Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the Industry generation.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s a document of a febrile time and a wake-up call for a fizzled revolution.
  62. Maybe art does demand something profound of us all, but here the big, interesting ideas have been chipped away in favour of subpar scares, leaving this film’s own cult appeal looking rather limited.
  63. Away has the mild rush of a coming-of-age dream, the sort that lodges in your memory as symbolic and significant as you pass from one stage of life to the next.
  64. Bronstein crafts a thriller of teeth-grinding magnificence centred on Byrne as the indefatigable figure at the centre of this whirlwind of unsolicited advice.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Mickey 17 may lack some of the political bite of his previous work – though there are Trumpian elements in Marshall – but it’s unquestionably tremendous fun: a big, strange spectacle that’s unlike most blockbuster cinema out there.
  65. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a movie that feels as though it was made by someone who just discovered the collected works of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie.
  66. ‘Please don’t be boring,’ Nelson’s villain beseeches Wilson in a clutch moment. Who wants to tell him?
  67. As ever, it’s Zellweger that provides the secret sauce.
  68. Memoir of a Snail is not just a stop-motion animation that feels handmade from top to bottom. It tells a deeply human story about a hard-won route to happiness – with all the pain and missteps that go with it.
  69. Emotionally charged, Last Breath offers a forensic study of cold professionalism in the face of unfolding disaster. It’s deepened, too, by a rich cast of supporting characters, including Lemons’s fiancée in Scotland, the surface crew who recall the fateful night and his teary-eyed dive leader and mentor.
  70. Mostly admirable for its ambition, which often feels nearly endless – as, alas, does the film itself.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What unfolds in Andrews’ screenplay, co-written with Jonathan Hourigan, has the grim inevitability of a Greek tragedy, no less violent than the feud at the centre of The Banshees of Inisherin, albeit without that film’s Irish black humour.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The film successfully leans into absurdity, offering a cathartic and darkly funny exploration of gender dynamics and control.
  71. This is very effective, experimental filmmaking – and at 85 minutes it never becomes indulgent – and the most exciting thing Soderbergh’s done in quite some time.
  72. As it is, it’s an atmospheric, sporadically disquieting depiction of fatherhood in freefall.
  73. The acting is a bubbling fondue of clashing styles.
  74. While billed as a psychological horror, it may be best approached as a dark drama or thriller, rather than a fully terrifying experience. But if you invest in its characters, it offers a thought-provoking insight into the depths of the human mind when faced with the laws of survival. It’s grim, but good.
  75. The Last Showgirl may begin – as its ever-romantic heroine exclaims – with a shiny celebration of ‘breasts and rhinestones and joy!’ But in Gia Coppola’s (Palo Alto) sensitive telling, the glitter swiftly disperses to reveal an elegiac meditation on memory and age, femininity and beauty.
  76. This Nosferatu is a worthy modern addition to a classic horror lineage. Get lost in its shadows.
  77. This is Ross’s first fiction feature and its power comes as no surprise to those familiar with his 2018 calling card of a documentary. Hale County, This Morning This Evening announced a gifted photographer driven by sensitivity to his subjects’ dignity. Accordingly, Nickel Boys miraculously goes against the grain of the story’s devastating trajectory by leading with the same loving eye.
  78. It feels real, and honest, in a way that too few romantic films manage.
  79. The film thrives on two performances: Barbaro is terrific as Baez, hypnotic on stage and fiercely charismatic off. And Chalamet inhabits Dylan without ever feeling like a Stars In Your Eyes contestant. From the voice to the charm to the earthiness to the self-centredness (‘You’re kind of an asshole, Bob,’ Baez tells him), Chalamet nails it all. It’s a shame Mangold’s safe flick doesn’t ask just that little bit more of him.
  80. It’s a film of deep empathy, but a tough one, too.
  81. More often than not, September 5 feels like a great 1970s thriller that could only have been made in the 21st century.
  82. By the final act, Sister Midnight breaks free from the shackles of submissive feminine stereotypes and raucously leans into a woman behaving very, very badly.
  83. A fun, bombastic, brilliant choreographed and totally enthralling film.
  84. The songwriting verve of Lin-Manuel Miranda is missed, too. Composers Barlow and Bear chip in with some catchy ditties, but there’s nothing to match How Far I’ll Go and You’re Welcome.

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