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 4.9 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. The Tree of Life
    Content to make movies for himself (Malick) that nobody else wants to see as long as he can find someone to foot the bill, he's also an iconoclast searching for significance. So am I, but not 138 minutes worth. Anyone seeking symmetry in this cinematic taffy pull risks emerging from it with a pretzel for a brain.
  2. Battleship
    Battleship is dopey, preposterous and unintentionally hilarious in all the wrong places, but as directed by Peter Berg, it is also energetic, fast-moving and bracing.
  3. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
    Landing in multiplexes more than a year late after some business reshuffling and rewrites (not a good idea for your bad guys to be Ukrainian gangsters at this moment in history), Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a slick and empty-headed spy thriller that is almost instantly forgettable.
  4. The Postcard Killings
    A lurid, tasteless crime procedural about a plague of serial slaughters by a pair of particularly demented maniacs roaming across Europe torturing and mutilating young newlyweds and leaving their victims nude and positioned to resemble famous works of art. It’s more gruesome than I dare to describe.
  5. Nocturnal Animals
    The juxtaposition of tone, theme and content in the narratives fails beyond the basic ideas. This leaves the capable Gyllenhaal to do little more than scream and rant hysterically.
  6. Strays
    The movie, which hovers between ridiculous crass comedy and oddly touching moments of sweetness, is completely inane. But that silliness may also be what makes it somewhat endearing and, certainly, entertaining.
  7. Tolkien
    You watch along as it unravels with the tempo of a funeral dirge, and before you check your watch, you realize you’re already bored to death.
  8. Trespass Against Us
    Plotless and illogical.
  9. Out of the Furnace
    More bitter, bleak lives of American mill workers without a compass and no place to go if they had one are showcased in the pessimistic drama Out of the Furnace. It’s getting to be a dismal film director’s obsession bordering on cliché.
  10. The Iron Lady
    Let it be said that Ms. Streep is galvanizing, even as the film slogs through too much information and not nearly enough illumination.
  11. Kraven the Hunter
    Despite a lot of silliness, primarily thanks to Nivola’s absurdist performance as the Rhino, Kraven the Hunter is entertaining—far more so than expected based on Morbius and Madame Web. If only it wasn’t so convoluted or dragged down by extraneous characters. If only the CGI was better.
  12. Escobar: Paradise Lost
    In a footnote to history that is still too close for comfort, he’s the real meaning of paradise lost.
  13. Gun Hill Road
    Gun Hill Road is worth seeing for the acting. The great character actress Miriam Colon makes a brief but memorable appearance as the strong matriarch of the household, and Ms. Santana, a true transgendered teen who has never acted before, is especially wrenching.
  14. Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
    By my rough calculation, the real Jack Ryan should be approximately 103. Preposterous but moderately engaging, Jack Ryan has outlived his welcome, and there’s no end in sight.
  15. TÁR
    From his debut feature in 2001, the brilliant and sobering domestic drama In the Bedroom, with Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson, his work has been sporadic but his films have been astonishing, heartbreaking and unforgettable. Not this one.
  16. To Rome with Love
    To Rome with Love has moments of isolated charm, but it's only moderately entertaining, it isn't very funny, and it's entirely too long.
  17. The Pretty One
    The good twin/bad twin conceit in 2014 doesn’t have a shred of the original surprise, and Zoe Kazan doesn’t have the chops to carry it off anyway.
  18. Leaves of Grass
    Don’t be misled by the title Leaves of Grass. Do not expect literacy, either. This stoner comedy has nothing whatsoever to do with Walt Whitman or poetry of any kind.
  19. The Mauritanian
    Another of those fact-based semi-documentary style films about the need for government transparency that is responsible, sobering, worthwhile and, in my opinion, as boring as the recent halftime show in the 2021 Super Bowl.
  20. The Absence of Eden
    The scant narrative and unwritten characters result in a lack of empathy that doesn’t serve the thematic ideas.
  21. Phantom
    To be honest, I can rarely recall any film, on any subject, that made less sense.
  22. Gauguin: Voyage to Tahiti
    The film has beautiful cinematography and occasional peaks of high drama, but lacks the kind of significant tempo necessary to sustain enough interest for nearly two hours to keep a viewer focused.
  23. Maybe I Do
    Talky, labored and lost in mediocrity, Maybe I Do is another sad example of what happens to seasoned pros when they hang around long enough to end up in material that is regrettably beneath them.
  24. The Art of Racing in the Rain
    If he weren’t voiced by a mellow and serene Kevin Costner, Enzo would sound like Martin Short’s old Ed Grimley character, only with Formula One replacing Pat Sajak and Wheel of Fortune as his object of obsession.
  25. The End of Love
    There are some lovely and moving things here, but over the long haul it’s more like watching an hour and a half of someone’s weekend trip to Knott’s Berry Farm.
  26. Dark Was the Night
    A creepy descent into madness called Dark Was the Night is better than most.
  27. The Goldfinch
    The Goldfinch arrives as one of the year’s deadliest disappointments.
  28. Happy Christmas
    The results are variable, exasperating, challenging, often both disappointing and exhilarating. These elements surface throughout Happy Christmas, often simultaneously. Mr. Swanberg is not a total amateur, but he is called “a doodler” for obvious reasons, all of them on red alert here.
  29. Mama
    Trading in her red locks for kohl-lined eyes like a raccoon and the vampire look of Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, [Chastain] is the spookiest thing in Mama. Everything else is cable television.
  30. The Commuter
    The whole thing has a certain “been there already” deja vu that dilutes the movie’s intended wow factor. Everything else in The Commuter is a yawn.
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