Observer's Scores

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For 1,801 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 49% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 50% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 4.8 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Denial
Lowest review score: 0 From Paris with Love
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,004 out of 1801
  2. Mixed: 382 out of 1801
  3. Negative: 415 out of 1801
1801 movie reviews
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  1. Bill & Ted Face the Music
    They came in fleeting glances, befuddled smiles and odd-timed pauses that the iconic pair share with each other before the movie shuffles them from one frenzied and inconsequential story beat to the next. In such stolen moments, you sense the depth of a friendship so profoundly felt and so deeply comforting that you think to yourself, I would follow these guys anywhere.
  2. American Made
    Hack director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) is lucky to engage Cruise’s box-office appeal for a tale that otherwise would never have seen the light of day.
  3. Last Flag Flying
    The best thing about Last Flag Flying is that Ethan Hawke is not in it. Otherwise, it’s business as usual, and the business is excruciating to get through.
  4. I See You
    Helen Hunt is a good actress with an Oscar on her mantle and practically no ability to choose a decent movie script based on quality or entertainment value. She’s been absent from the screen far too long, so it’s a pleasure to welcome her back, but not in a labored, amateurish charade as bad as I See You.
  5. Vengeance
    While Vengeance doesn’t always rise to the level of its ambitions, it is admirable to see Novak spit acid towards the privilege systems that make careers like his possible...But by repeating the same reductive and representational mistakes of the media it so pointedly criticizes, Novak’s film unwittingly becomes yet another part of the problem.
  6. Unexpected
    A sweet, honest, well-acted and carefully constructed little film that truly lives up to its title.
  7. Operation Mincemeat
    It’s a true story so strange it makes you wonder what other untold chapters of World War remain.
  8. The Runaways
    It's when the music stops that we run into problems. For starters, there are so many questions left unanswered.
  9. My Week with Marilyn
    What an extraordinary thrill to leave a movie exhilarated instead of drained, sated instead of empty, rejuvenated instead of depressed. It's a magical experience.
  10. Kill Your Darlings
    Something is missing here, like a clear perspective.
  11. Salt
    Salt is about as believable as a secret training program for military pilots consisting entirely of kangaroos in flight helmets. But it must be said that the star carries her load admirably.
  12. I Love You Phillip Morris
    This is an oddball tale that is well worth telling, but Mr. Carrey simply cannot resist turning it into a Three Stooges routine in drag.
  13. Everything Must Go
    Everything Must Go is the one for the Gipper-the movie in which he steps out of character for his own sake and works hard to lose Will Ferrell. The results are mixed, but I admire the guy for making an effort.
  14. Saving Mr. Banks
    The screenplay, by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, seamlessly captures two different eras with overlapping story lines that never intrude or confuse.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Made in Dagenham
    Made in Dagenham is a retro romp with heart, smarts, soul and wit that will restore your faith in the power of the picket line.
  16. The Confirmation
    In this case two mesmerizing performances by Clive Owen and his astounding co-star, a remarkably adroit child actor named Jaeden Lieberher, who is going places fast.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 63 Critic Score
    Alien: Covenant
    Peel away the big budget genre film’s veneer of Western Civ citations—embodied by references to artist and inventor Michelangelo, composer Richard Wagner and the romantic poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, among others—and what you have is rather conventional Lego blocks of sci-fi horror.
  18. Men
    Anchored by a haunting lead performance by Jessie Buckley, Men is an unsettling drama about the cultural pathology that holds women responsible for the actions of men, focused not so much on how it feels but on what it does. It’s quiet but visually verbose, mixing obvious and obscure metaphors in a way that would get tiresome if not for its modest 100 minute runtime.
  19. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    It’s not just emotion and creative innovation that feels MIA in this installment. The film acts as though it’s edgy, but lacks real bite.
  20. The Disappearance of Alice Creed
    A grim, toxic, psychological British thriller, brimming with surprises, that always manages to be quite a bit more than it appears on the surface.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Maudie
    A gorgeous color palette and a tactile sensitivity to the emotions and intelligence of rural people help to create an organic work that integrates brilliant casting, yummy production and costume design, and fine cinematography.
  22. Never Grow Old
    It’s too monstrous and mean-spirited to please everyone unconditionally, but I found it challenging and honest — and hair-raising enough to work as a modern morality tale in cowboy boots.
  23. High-Rise
    A trash wallow in sex, nudity, violence, cruelty to animals and the skewering of contemporary society, it will predictably appeal to kids and art house patrons who crave the cinematic roller coaster rides of outrage and chaos that lead to downright anarchy. Saner, more rational minds are advised to look elsewhere.
  24. Twisters
    The love affair part of the film is so wholesomely family-oriented that it’s about as sexy as an algebra book. There isn’t even one single kiss. Fortunately, the action sequences are nothing bland or dull, adding up to a whale of entertainment.
  25. The Art of Self-Defense
    The sum of the parts in martial arts on view here do not add up to a fascinating, consistently intelligent whole. You can write the plot on the head of an ice pick.
  26. The Good Nurse
    This film is a prime example of how thrilling it can be when two extraordinarily gifted artists pool their resources to turn a routine thriller into a memorable work of art.
  27. We Are Still Here
    Of course, you can’t really make a movie that combines elements of the metaphysical, zombie and haunted-house genres without a few splatter-movie clichés, but Mr. Geoghegan makes them creepier and more unpredictable than I thought possible.
  28. Hostiles
    Fortunately, this is a filmmaker as talented as he is brave and stubborn. Hostiles breathes fresh oxygen into a genre as old as a Confederate cough.
  29. Sharper
    One of the classiest intellectual thrillers in ages.
  30. The Phantom of the Open
    Who doesn’t want to be lauded for being absolutely rubbish at something we love? The Phantom of the Open is a good reminder that you don’t have to be the best to achieve your dreams.
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