Observer's Scores

  • Movies
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:
1801 movie reviews
  1. Old
    Old is asinine.
  2. The fight choreography is often impressive. But the script is pockmarked with cliches, tropes and never-ending predictability.
  3. It’s still worth seeing, mainly for the depth and feeling Mark Wahlberg exhibits in the title role, but fails to expand a viewer’s vision and understanding of an otherwise hot-button topic beyond a superficial surface.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    A sonic-boom look at a seismic band, The Velvet Underground dissects one of the most influential 1960s musical acts with dizzying visual flair and a structural academic rigor refracted through a showman’s prism.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The Danish director of Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Starship Troopers has never been one for subtlety, but this queer thriller and anti-Catholic screed sets a new high in lowbrow revelry. It’s smart smut, a witty, louche provocation that never takes itself too seriously.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    Val
    Val doesn’t tell the whole story, but it does give a fascinating glimpse into a very human trajectory through the gauntlet of fame and fortune. It’s a legacy totem for a deeply spiritual soul.
  4. Whether you are already familiar with both or you just got to know about Sparks thanks to Edgar Wright’s The Sparks Brothers documentary, Annette is everything you’d imagine from a collaboration between Sparks and Carax, for better and worse. This is a film that is as overindulgent as it is earnest, but flaws and all, it is worth the wait.
  5. Even the film’s copious weaknesses are a reason to smile, taking us back to both the series’ B-movie roots and to less fraught periods in our lives.
  6. A film that feels immersed in fog, and one that reserves even sunlight for vital moments, Holler is a gorgeously-textured exploration of the way ruthless corporatism trickles down through each layer of a country, and a system, until it falls on the shoulders of a young girl and obscures her future.
  7. By the time Wright’s somewhat exhaustive film concluded, every moment of it propelled by a high-octane geeky affection that felt like a newly discovered alternative fuel, I was in the strange duo’s thrall.
  8. By shining the light on Stone, Agrelo’s movie rightfully makes a national hero out of a historical footnote.
  9. For a movie that pulses with joyful expressiveness and brims with possibility, there is a tragic undertone to Ailey.
  10. The Mark Wahlberg–starrer reveals just how stuck Hollywood sci-fi is in 1999, when The Matrix cemented ideas of digital consciousness in the Western mainstream (with a bent of pan-Asian spirituality).
  11. The movie is messy yet scrumptious, unwieldy yet vibrant. Its plot is all over the place but the sum of its excellently executed parts amounts to a whole that feels like a turning point for Disney.
  12. Make no mistake, this is a musical turned into a blockbuster, as Chu treats the wide shots of the dozens of background dancers with the same eye you could see Christopher Nolan apply to Tenet, or the Russo brothers apply to Endgame.
  13. With no solution to the horrors it introduces, it’s a screamfest that seems rather pointless, too, but somewhat redeemed by a few genuine thrills, an imaginative use of makeup and camerawork, and a great supporting performance by the gifted young Millicent Simmonds, who returns as Regan.
  14. The acting is first-rate from start to finish, but it is really Mr. Waltz who keeps the action flowing. Both demon and clown, he’s horrifying, appealing and immensely mesmerizing in a film about the pitfalls that await anyone who falls for charm while ignoring the evils that can sometimes hide behind the facade of disingenuous priorities.
  15. There’s little weight, not much style and even less sense to the psychological terror The Woman in the Window attempts to inflict.
  16. Without the grounding of richly drawn characters and burdened by ideas that reflect Pentagon policy papers of the late 1980s rather than our current world, Without Remorse has the feeling of product rather than cinema — just another polished, consumer-facing, slightly stale gizmo scooting down the virtual Amazon assembly line.
  17. It will more than likely meet fans’ expectations for what they want in a Mortal Kombat movie but will fall short of exceeding them.
  18. Rare are the moments where the frame features no human-made structures or clearings, but the animals are presented so wondrously and tenderly that anything remotely human begins to feel unnatural.
  19. Empathy and compassion aren’t vulnerabilities in this narrative. They’re resources, with which you can defy the cold cosmos — though not without cost.
  20. Mulligan’s raw portrayal of a woman trapped by invisible walls is certainly powerful — she keeps the film afloat even when it falters — and the way Fennell gives human form to those walls imbues the film with a simmering rage. However, these handful of strengths are hardly enough to render its other failings moot.
  21. Mugen Train may be light in character development, but what little we get is effective enough to make the tears flow like waterfalls by the end of the film.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 75 Critic Score
    The plot is built to deliver on the promise of the title, which it does with aplomb.
  22. The filmmakers’ attempts to play around with the concept of the unlikely action hero are only moderately successful.
  23. Zack Snyder’s Justice League may feature altered scenes from its chopped-up counterpart, but it’s unlikely to play any differently to general audiences — apart from feeling like more of a slog. Its mere existence guarantees that someone, somewhere will be satisfied, but the film’s improvements are hardly enough to fix what was, now quite apparently, a flawed endeavor from the start.
  24. Yes, it’s a bit helter-skelter, but it is also an adequately enjoyable and untaxing way to kill off a couple of hours.
  25. The film is nothing short of a joyous experience that champions a hopeful optimism in humanity’s ability to trust one another despite ample evidence to the contrary.
  26. You feel the late genius through the way Day carries her body, so lissome yet creaking with the weight of both her talent and addiction. The Rise Up singer not only matches our imagination’s version of Holiday, but somehow beats it: she seems so present yet ethereally sozzled in a manner that suggests she may be operating on another plane.

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