The Independent's Scores

For 252 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 47% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 2.3 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 67
Highest review score: 100 The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
Lowest review score: 20 Ghosted
Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 10 out of 252
252 movie reviews
  1. This is, dare I say it, how fan service should be done. It’s far easier to overlook the usual nostalgic pandering when it’s taken a backseat to genuine creativity.
  2. In its own offbeat way, Asteroid City is an Anderson patchwork of Cold War paranoia and American family values in all their often hypocritical glory. It is every bit as arch as his best work, while still managing to tug hard on the heartstrings.
  3. Nice casting can’t cover up the ugly visuals and lack of creative risk.
  4. It’s a closely focused character study, galvanised by the tremendous performances from Portman and Moore, which delves into areas more conventional dramas don’t go near.
  5. DiCaprio and De Niro are brilliant, but it is relative unknown Lily Gladstone who is truly extraordinary.
  6. The movie consists of a series of chases and fights linked by ever more improbable plot twists. The action is often very inventively staged. James Mangold, who has taken over directing duties from Steven Spielberg, sets a breakneck tempo.
  7. Beau Is Afraid is an Oedipal farce hysterically outsized in its execution.
  8. It’s a phenomenal performance from McAdams, subtle and gentle in its heartbreak.
  9. Against the odds, Jeanne du Barry has turned out to be a subtle and well-crafted costume drama with plenty of satirical bite.
  10. No, there are no dinosaur cameos, but this 10th lap – now with added Brie Larson – is relentlessly fun.
  11. Their film is so stuffed with incident – all of it preposterous, and occasionally insulting to the intelligence of its central quartet – that it sours what could (and should) have been a joyful celebration of desire and indulgence at any age.
  12. Go back to your roots, we’re always told, and you’ll find your heart’s true home. But in Davy Chou’s daring and mesmeric Return to Seoul, an adoptee’s search for her birth parents tears open wounds and unearths neither meaning nor resolution.
  13. The Guardians films have always been about the fact that many of us are like putty – shaped not by where we’ve come from but where we are and could end up. Vol 3 should make audiences thrilled about what comes next for Gunn in his new position as co-head of DC Studios. As for Marvel – well, it’ll be their loss.
  14. Manzoor’s film, with a roundhouse kick to the heart, both parodies the generational divide with its fantastical plot and finds sympathy for what makes parents domineering.
  15. Evil Dead Rise provides blood by the bucketful without ever crossing the line into outright cruelty.
  16. It’s not a manifesto, really, but a matter-of-fact portrayal of the palpable anger emanating from a betrayed generation.
  17. There is no chemistry, sexual or otherwise.
  18. The irony of being intimately connected while desperately lonely can be a hard one to digest. Yet director Mia Hansen-Løve prods at the concept with the same tenderness that she applies to all her films – each of them united by the pains and pleasures of interconnectivity.
  19. It’s only regrettable that the film itself didn’t heed one of cinema’s most important lessons – when you put Nicolas Cage in a movie, it’s guaranteed no one will care about anything other than Nicolas Cage.
  20. Air
    It’s hard to land on a reason for any of this to exist beyond a goosing up of Nike’s own image.
  21. It’s hard to demand all that much from a Mario Bros film when its source material has been historically devoid of plot, but shouldn’t we be allowed to demand a little more than mere competency?
  22. In a blockbuster landscape that’s become depressingly monotonous, it’s a blast of fresh air straight from a spellcaster’s staff.
  23. No one involved in Murder Mystery 2 seems to have worked with any real sense of direction, since the film is more than happy to let Sandler and Aniston take the steering wheel. There’s an easy chemistry to the pair.
  24. A Good Person has a tendency to approach moral complexity as a checklist.
  25. Even at its nearly three-hour runtime, John Wick: Chapter 4 commits so nobly to its self-seriousness that it almost borders into camp. And yet, the franchise possesses both the self-confidence and the ingenuity to earn its boldness.
  26. We’re constantly reminded that there are hundreds more stories weaving in and out of these streets, existing beyond Yas and Dom’s. This romance is special. But it also sort of isn’t. It’s exactly the kind of hope the most lovelorn in Rye Lane’s audience might be looking for.
  27. Pearl’s torment – empathetic, frightening, and ludicrous all at the same time – is believable largely because Goth single-handedly wills it to be.
  28. Fury of the Gods lands in the frustrating middle: a film that isn’t without promise, but feels far too messy and corporatised to have any real affection for.
  29. When it comes to “The Friends”, there’s some great comic timing – Iannucci, Tevlin, and Metcalfe are particular stand-outs – but it’s hard to shake how frequently these jokes are written at their expense.
  30. It’s both wholly satisfying and ridiculously fun.

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