Steve Rose

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The Guardian
For 29 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 41% higher than the average critic
  • 0% same as the average critic
  • 59% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 4.7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Steve Rose's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 70
Highest review score: 100 Beetlejuice
Lowest review score: 40 Bohemian Rhapsody
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 29
  2. Mixed: 16 out of 29
  3. Negative: 0 out of 29
29 movie reviews
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    • 52 Metascore
    • 40 Steve Rose
    Eternals
    It’s not exactly boring – there’s always something new to behold – but nor it is particularly exciting, and it lacks the breezy wit of Marvel’s best movies. One of the strengths of the MCU to date is how it has taken time to define each character individually and lay out the grand narratives over successive movies, building a sense of momentum. Here, it’s all thrown at us at once.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan
    What really redeems the film are the brilliantly observed characters: these are archetypes of modern Britain that nobody really nailed before. Created by the principal actors themselves, they are generally portrayed with affection rather than condescension, and performed so convincingly that a newcomer might well believe they were real people.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Steve Rose
    Riders of Justice
    There are action thrills, to be sure, but they are folded into what becomes a sort of group therapy session on the psychology of grief, guilt, vengeance, chance and coincidence. Even more blessedly, it’s often hilarious.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Steve Rose
    Night of the Kings
    The freshness of the approach, combined with the substance of the stories, works the same strange magic on the viewer as on the inmates. It is easy to be swept along.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    We Intend to Cause Havoc
    There’s now a well-trodden route for such musical travelogues, laid down by the likes of Buena Vista Social Club and Searching for Sugar Man, and while this lacks the polish or drama of either of those, it’s an engaging and uplifting journey.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Steve Rose
    The God Committee
    The dialogue is earnestly on-the-nose, and there is little in the way of visual excitement in what’s essentially a static board meeting (the story was adapted from a stage play).
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    Kindred
    Lawrance does a convincing job nonetheless, portraying Charlotte as a reasonable woman in unreasonable circumstances – but it’s Shaw who steals the show, conveying her character as both a heartless monster and a woman haunted by her own past, with that kind of breathy, distracted haughtiness she does so well.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    White on White
    Director Théo Court does a fine job of capturing the barren beauty of this landscape and using it to suggest the broader moral vacuum.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    Spring Blossom
    Where some might praise an Eric Rohmer-style lightness of touch, others might see a certain slightness. And at barely 70 minutes, this is a fleeting affair in every sense. Perhaps that’s the point.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    Red Moon Tide
    The trance-like pacing and mystical meditation might frustrate viewers looking for an easy watch, but local film-maker Lois Patiño is clearly operating at the fine-art end of the cinema scale. He applies his distinctive mode to a story that’s both ravishing and unsettling.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Steve Rose
    Onward
    Beneath the bro-friendly, fantasy-art trappings, Onward finds a little bit of that old Pixar magic.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Steve Rose
    Sonic the Hedgehog
    Like its fast-moving, attention-deficient hero, this just feels like a rush job.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
    If you’re going to do a send-off this huge, there are a lot of goodbyes to say, and a lot of loose ends to tie up. The fact that The Rise of Skywalker manages most of them and within a vaguely coherent story is something of an achievement in itself.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    XY Chelsea
    This is very much a sympathetic fly-on-the-wall with Team Chelsea, but, considering the high drama of Manning’s life, the resultant film is muted and disjointed, and given to impressionistic images – such as landscapes out of car windows – when really the time could have been spent telling us more.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 80 Steve Rose
    Aladdin
    It is lively, colourful and genuinely funny, and doesn’t break what didn’t need fixing about the original.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    Pokémon Detective Pikachu
    Without Reynolds this would be pretty run-of-the-mill; with him it’s a perfectly acceptable family movie. Given the history, that’s a giant leap for Pokémon-kind.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 40 Steve Rose
    Bohemian Rhapsody
    Bohemian Rhapsody honours Mercury the showman but never really gets to Mercury the person.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    Deadpool 2
    The movie’s other major weakness is its continued foregrounding of the white guys at the expense of the consciously inclusive cast around them.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    Peter Rabbit
    This kids’ animation is altogether lively and funny with just enough soul, even if it comes at the expense of Potter’s sensitivity and delicacy.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 80 Steve Rose
    Tomorrowland
    Director Brad Bird deserves praise for packing such big ideas into such an accessible, rip-roaring, retro-futurist adventure.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Steve Rose
    A Tale of Two Cities
    Vintage screen Dickens with a cutting edge: the French terror is vividly, hauntingly realised, all chaos and guillotine ghouls. [16 Aug 2000, p.23]
    • The Guardian
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Steve Rose
    The Evil Dead
    You could say this is all good gory fun, and The Evil Dead remains a triumph of brains over budget. But in retrospect, you can’t help wondering if Raimi and co didn’t have some women issues to work through?
    • 70 Metascore
    • 100 Steve Rose
    Beetlejuice
    The story almost comes off the rails, but Beetlejuice’s charm lies more in the execution. The movie is crammed with visual invention and snappy comedy. The afterlife is richly imagined as a macabre bureaucracy. The living world is no less outlandish, especially with those eye-popping interiors and costumes.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Steve Rose
    Night of the Living Dead
    It remains a nightmare experience that’s not easily brushed off. And despite its ramshackle scrappiness in production terms, and some dated gender politics, the storytelling is first class, pitching us straight into the action, but only revealing its full hand gradually.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Steve Rose
    Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
    This animated Japanese masterpiece is a war story as wrenching as any live-action movie.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Steve Rose
    The Rules of the Game
    It is not a simple film to summarise or describe as a comedy, satire or drama. Renoir was too generous to deal with such absolutes, and that's one of the reasons the film endures: nobody is good or bad, they just make good or bad decisions – hence the title.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Steve Rose
    Kiki's Delivery Service
    This sunny 1989 fantasy by master animator Hayao Miyazaki broaches the issue of female sexuality more boldly than any Western children’s movie would dare.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Steve Rose
    My Neighbor Totoro
    Hayao Miyazaki's family fantasy is full of benign spirituality, prelapsarian innocence, but little icky sentiment.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Steve Rose
    Shadows
    It's a cool customer – the hip lingo and fast-talking characters all of a piece with its bebop score – but there's a scrupulous honesty to the story, too.
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