The Observer (UK)'s Scores

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For 1,641 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 46% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 51% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 3.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Movie review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Enys Men
Lowest review score: 20 Book Club: The Next Chapter
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 894 out of 1641
  2. Mixed: 714 out of 1641
  3. Negative: 33 out of 1641
1641 movie reviews
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  1. Paddington In Peru
    While it’s an enjoyable family romp that should charm younger audiences, the action onslaught can’t conceal that this sequel lacks the inventive agility, wit, comic timing and, most crucially, the magic of its predecessors.
  2. The End We Start From
    I can think of few other films that get into the skin of new motherhood, with its formless terrors and fierce, furious primal love, as inventively and effectively as this one.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Destination Tokyo
    Best-known for his westerns, screenwriter Daves made a considerable impression with this patriotic World War II movie about the hazardous mission by a submarine to gather information inside Tokyo Bay to prepare the way for the first US air-raid on Japan. Cary Grant gives an authoritative performance as the cool commander. [05 Mar 2000, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Land of the Pharaohs
    Uneven, oddly distinguished attempt to examine the pyramid-building obsession of the Pharaoh (Jack Hawkins) and how it was affected by his second wife (Joan Collins) and his architect (James Robertson Justice). Some excellent sets by the great Alexander Trauner, much turgid dialogue and a score by Dimitri Tiomkin. [11 Jun 2006, p.18]
    • The Observer (UK)
  5. Mr. Malcolm's List
    It’s pleasant, frothy, unapologetically by-numbers stuff.
  6. Polina
    Though the film suggests a hardiness borne of her working-class background and mobster father, Polina remains fairly opaque. At least the contemporary dance sequences are beautifully mounted; French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj has a co-director credit on the film.
  7. Pinocchio
    The source material is a neat fit for the Italian film-maker, who traversed similarly episodic fairytale terrain with 2015’s Tale of Tales. It’s also a critique of society that feels timeless or, rather, timely – and not just for Garrone.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Hot Rock
    Wittily adapted by William Goldman from a Donald E. Westlake novel, it's the best film Yates made between Bullitt and Breaking Away. [08 Aug 1999, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  9. Bill & Ted Face the Music
    This slapdash movie, with its big-hearted, puppyish positivity, might not save the world but it will surely lift the spirits.
  10. Hearts Beat Loud
    The music they create together is emblematic of the central problem. It’s sterile, manufactured and utterly fake production-line pop masquerading as some kind of indie rock spotify sensation.
  11. Vengeance
    It’s mildly amusing stuff that delivers no surprises, but may muster a few laughs.
  12. Swan Song
    Todd Stephens’s film is an amiable little story, and Kier is clearly enjoying himself immensely, but this is as wafting and insubstantial as Patrick’s chiffon scarf.
  13. Even Mice Belong in Heaven
    The story is a little flat, but the gorgeous, hand-crafted puppets and sets give the film dimension.
  14. Operation Mincemeat
    A quality cast tackle the script’s various twists and turns with aplomb. But the tale itself feels cumbersome and over-furnished, listing under the weight of its bolt-on subplots and endless reams of dialogue.
  15. Ron's Gone Wrong
    The debut feature from animation studio Locksmith is cute but familiar.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Firecreek
    Superior social western in which a torpid backwater community and its irresolute part-time sheriff (James Stewart) are redeemed and revivified through a menacing visit by ageing outlaw Henry Fonda's gang. Weathered oldtimers Dean Jagger, Ed Begley, Jack Elam and Jay C Flippen provide authenticity. Excellent photography by William Clothier. [15 May 2005, p.91]
    • The Observer (UK)
  17. Sunset
    The film’s formal qualities obscure Nemes’s intentions instead of illuminating them. It’s all too vague to function effectively as either a commentary on the build-up to the Great War or as the story of a woman looking to find her place in a city predicated on rigid, gender-determined hierarchies.
  18. The Courier
    With slack pacing and insufficient focus, the film lacks the crackle of tension and propulsive efficiency of something like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
  19. Men
    It’s a playfully twisted affair – not quite as profound as it seems to think, perhaps, but boasting enough squishy metaphorical slime to ensure that its musings upon textbook male characteristics are rarely dull, and sometimes deliciously disgusting.
  20. The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
    The final set piece is a little protracted, but the jokes are mostly sharp and enjoyably self-referential and the songs still catchy (one track is titled Catchy Song).
  21. The Good Boss
    An impressively slick and slimy performance from Javier Bardem is the standout selling point for this serviceable if (perhaps appropriately?) workaday satire on corporate corruption and alienated capitalism.
  22. Alice, Darling
    What’s impressive about this psychological thriller, the debut feature film from director Mary Nighy, is how tuned in it is to the dynamics of female friendship.
  23. Drop
    It’s enjoyable stuff: a taut and crisply edited balance between humour and horror.
  24. The Good Nurse
    The film’s elegant framing and unobtrusive directorial choices give space for Chastain and Redmayne to fully inhabit their characters in a picture that combines compassion and empathy with a sickening swell of almost unbearable tension.
  25. Transformers One
    One of the aspects that makes this an unexpectedly satisfying piece of storytelling (aside from the obvious improvements in the joke quality) is the way that the film digs into the structure of Autobot society.
  26. The Black Phone
    A solid, spooky period chiller.
  27. The Audition
    The slow creep of the camera mirrors the incremental build in pressure; this is the kind of tension that feels like a tightening chokehold on the audience.
  28. Raging Grace
    Peel back the cliches and there’s something interesting here: a gnawing sense of injustice and biting social commentary.
  29. Sharper
    The performances, so thickly layered with charm and artifice that it’s hard to know what and who is real and what isn’t, are first-rate. It’s a pacy and enjoyable movie.
  30. The First Omen
    It’s a decent attempt from director Arkasha Stevenson to tap into the look and the spirit of the original film. And while it doesn’t match The Omen for scares, it does deliver some skin-crawlingly creepy moments.
  31. The Phantom of the Open
    Despite the inherent silliness, the actors play it straight. There’s an earnestness to Rylance’s performance, which encourages us to find inspiration in the underdog.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    On Moonlight Bay
    Delightful period musical set in a small town on the eve of America's entry into World War Two. [09 Apr 2006, p.14]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
    Harris has a good ear for teenage dialogue. But her heroine, who addresses us directly through the camera, is a pain in the neck. She is to assertiveness-training what Schwarzenegger is to body-building. [01 Aug 1993, p.48]
    • The Observer (UK)
  34. Black '47
    It’s unfortunate that caricatured villains lessen the impact of the film’s upward punch.
  35. Plus One
    Erskine, with her earthy chuckle and precision-tooled comic timing, is the real discovery here. She’s a smutty, sniggering joy in the role and I can’t wait to see what she does next.
  36. Photograph
    This bland, sombre love story from the director of The Lunchbox (2013) lacks that film’s flavour.
  37. True Mothers
    Kawase’s frequent use of handheld camera gives parts of the film a quasi-documentary feel, but it’s the lyrical touches . . . that hit the hardest.
  38. George Michael Freedom Uncut
    Michael talks about himself with candour, and the archive footage is extensive. But the choice of interviewees, including a tittering Ricky Gervais honking out off-key witticisms, James Corden and Liam Gallagher, seems a bit random.
  39. Alien: Romulus
    While Alien: Romulus leans into the grislier elements of its horror heritage – at the expense of much in the way of deeper story development – it fails to assert itself as a particularly distinctive addition to the series, formally, tonally or thematically.
  40. Enforcement
    While Shorta is certainly a propulsive piece of action cinema, which makes effective use of its acid yellow, cement grey and burnt umber palette and warren-of-concrete location, there’s a crudely schematic quality to the writing.
  41. Frozen II
    The more times I listen to Frozen II’s rousing anthem Into the Unknown, the more I’m convinced of its earworm quality. It’s as good (and maybe better) than the indelible Let It Go.
  42. MaXXXine
    Gore addicts will be sated – the prosthetics and makeup are robustly grisly – but the story feels rather too glib and predictable to be fully satisfying.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Road to Bali
    Bob Hope and Bing Crosby milk a familiar formula for all its worth in their penultimate 'Road' movie (the only one in colour) which takes them on a wise-cracking journey to the South Seas where Dorothy Lamour is inevitably on hand as an Indonesian princess to be rescued and fought over. [13 Oct 2002, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
  44. Captain Marvel
    It’s just a pity that the movie that introduces her is so unremarkable.
  45. Layla
    Layla is less about making peace with the past than it is about staying true to the present.
  46. The New Boy
    The latest film from Warwick Thornton (Samson and Delilah) is strikingly beautiful, its widescreen vistas rendered in a scorched palette of dust and ochres. But the pacing is languid to a fault and it all gets rather bogged down in allegory.
  47. The Queen of My Dreams
    Flashbacks to Mariam’s technicolour youth in 1969 Karachi are gorgeously realised, and the design department (in particular wardrobe) gets to revel in an eye-popping kaleidoscope of primary hues.
  48. Bombshell
    The film can’t square the fact that its protagonists are the victims of sexism and yet perpetuate it by sheer virtue of working for a rightwing news channel.
  49. Suspiria
    Watching this sporadically sparkling yet weirdly saggy “cover version” of Argento’s biggest international hit, I couldn’t help wishing that someone had been there with the scissors to trim the film of its indulgences – not the violence, but the verbosity.
  50. Baby Done
    Tinder-dry delivery bolsters the film’s gentle humour, and while the momentum sags a little in the second half, the natural chemistry between Matafeo and Lewis keeps the audience invested and the story relatable.
  51. Ready or Not
    There is an elegance to the premise – an otherwise straightforward cat-and-mouse chase around a gothic mansion – and a satisfying clip to the rewardingly gory action.
  52. Elvis
    It’s a riotously audacious work.
  53. Pick of the Litter
    In a tussle between the appeal of the subject and the plodding banality of the approach, the pups are ultimately the losers.
  54. Napoleon
    A man, even a man as combative as Napoleon, amounts to more than the battles he has fought. And it is in this respect that the film is less successful.
  55. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
    The sci-fi stuff is tedious, but Wiig and Mumolo are bawdy and brilliant as ever, their effortless chemistry bolstered by years of collaboration.
  56. The Lost King
    Whatever its inconsistencies, The Lost King is an underdog story that proves a perfect vehicle for Hawkins’s reliably winning screen presence.
  57. Notre-Dame on Fire
    What the film does best is capture the daunting rage of the fire: Annaud combines muscular action sequences with actual footage of the event to eyebrow-scorching effect.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Cross of Iron
    James Mason as the commanding officer and David Warner as his adjutant are both first rate, as are Coburn and Schell. This was Peckinpah's last important work and his only war movie.
  59. Vivarium
    There’s enough visual and thematic invention to keep viewers gripped and unsettled, particularly in these unprecedented, isolated times.
  60. Give Me Pity!
    Kramer’s vision is distinctive: playful and jarringly lurid. Give Me Pity! is a one-off – and that’s probably a good thing.
  61. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
    Classic rock needle drops and showy, snaking, single-shot action sequences – both GOTG trademarks – abound in a picture that balances a slightly overstuffed storyline with mischief, humour and the biggest of hearts.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    I'll See You in My Dreams
    Engaging, occasionally downbeat monochrome biopic of pop-composer Gus Kahn (Danny Thomas) and his devoted wife (Doris Day) who stood beside him through his affairs, the Wall Street Crash and his subsequent breakdown. [15 Dec 2002, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
  63. Elizabeth: A Portrait in Part(s)
    Although it may not bring revelations, there’s an informality and intimacy to this portrait that is unexpectedly pleasing.
  64. Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg
    Catching Fire is more concerned with the mercurial essence of its subject than it is with the nuts and bolts of her life. We learn little, for example, about her family background.
  65. The Man Who Sold His Skin
    Provocative and challenging, if not the most subtle piece of political commentary, the film certainly cements Kaouther Ben Hania as a name to watch in Arab cinema.
  66. Downton Abbey
    It’s lighthearted stuff and mostly benign too, save its unashamedly effusive stance on the monarchy.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Train Robbers
    Enjoyable traditional western. [26 Apr 2009, p.18]
    • The Observer (UK)
  68. Gladiator II
    This sequel is so derivative of its predecessor, it’s practically a remake.
  69. Nobody
    It’s a blast.
  70. Greenland
    A first-rate B-picture, and a timely reminder of the delights of well-crafted popcorn thrills.
  71. Kinds of Kindness
    It’s impossible to endure all this – the film is sporadically funny but it’s also emotionally arid, mannered, and overlong – without making a link between the power plays on screen and Lanthimos’s approach as a film-maker.
  72. Sebastian
    It’s tender, thoughtful film-making from Finnish director Mikko Mäkelä, exploring the bond between two men separated by generations but joined by literature and love.
  73. The Apprentice
    Most intriguing is Strong’s slippery portrayal of Cohn – a man full of sharp edges and wide, swinging contradictions.
  74. Maya and the Wave
    Leaning heavily on a wealth of breathtaking slow-motion surf footage, Stephanie Johnes’s crowd-pleasing documentary tracks Gabeira’s triumph over industry sexism and a catastrophic wipeout that nearly cost her career and her life. Stirring stuff.
  75. The Bad Guys
    It’s sharp, silly and frequently very funny.
  76. Dora and the Lost City of Gold
    The result is goofily charming and a rare, age-appropriate children’s film in which the adults are silly and the kids, especially the girls, are smart.
  77. Gwen
    As a genre exercise, the film starts promisingly enough, contrasting claustrophobic, dimly lit interiors with atmospheric wides of the landscape composed like moody paintings. Worthington-Cox is compelling, by turns twitchy, tentative, stoic and bold. Still, something isn’t clicking.
  78. The Creator
    Minor quibbles aside, this is a remarkable achievement, and a persuasive argument in favour of carte blanche creative freedom for Edwards in whatever he chooses to do next.
  79. Misha and the Wolves
    A puzzle box of a structure reveals fresh angles to the story with each new contributor, but the woman at its core – the discredited author Misha Defonseca – remains silent and unaccountable, to the film’s detriment.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A Bridge Too Far
    First-rate blockbuster preaching an anti-war message but laying on grand battle sequences as it recreates, coherently and convincingly, Operation Market Garden, the Allied Forces' airborne assault on Arnhem in 1944 that was intended to end the Second World War by Christmas. [19 Nov 2006, p.2]
    • The Observer (UK)
  81. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    Disappointingly but perhaps not surprisingly, this sequel fails to match the original on any level whatsoever. It’s not bad exactly, although there’s a synthetic look to the colour palette that feels very try-hard and gaudy next to the lovely, atmospheric earth tones of the first film.
  82. The Feast
    The Feast requires a degree of commitment; it avoids jump scares in favour of a long, slow build of tension – so slow that at times the characters appear to be in the grip of a kind of paralysis – that pays off with an explosively grisly final act.
  83. Piece By Piece
    It’s a fun watch, and the technique allows film-maker Morgan Neville to visually represent Williams’s form of synaesthesia, which turns music into colours, and to explore his musical process in a suitably playful and creative manner.
  84. Nyad
    It’s this – the wry humour provided by the long-suffering Bonnie; the lovely lived-in quality of the friendship – rather than the lengthy swimming sequences and a few slightly unwieldy flashbacks that gives the film its crowd-pleasing appeal.
  85. Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets
    The live performances are electrifying, all jagged elbows and brilliant pop tunes, with the band suitably assisted not by drugs and booze, but by a neatly organised display of treatments for colds, incontinence and light grazes. On the subject of fame, Cocker asserts boldly that "it didn't agree with me – like a nut allergy". Hardcore indeed.
  86. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
    Like Wain’s art, the film is superficially twee – characters are referred to as “nosy poseys” at one point – but under the kitsch is something more rewarding: an affecting portrait of a creative but troubled man.
  87. I'm Your Woman
    Reorienting a typically white male genre around themes of feminist awakening and racial tension is an intriguing proposition, so it’s frustrating that Brosnahan remains blank and the film’s pace plodding.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Holiday Affair
    A sweet-natured romantic movie. [15 Dec 2002, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
  89. Your Monster
    Caroline Lindy’s feature debut is a droll, if uneven blend of comedy, romance, fantasy and horror that relies heavily on the off-the-charts chemistry between Barrera and Dewey, who manages to convince as a charismatic romantic lead, despite looking like a rejected prosthetics test for the 80s TV series Manimal.
  90. Knock at the Cabin
    As the film’s bleak momentum builds, so does a tsunami swell of existential dread. It’s Shyamalan’s most contained and efficient picture in a while.
  91. Falling
    The directorial debut of Viggo Mortensen, which he also wrote and stars in, is an empathetic but gruelling account of a father-son relationship.
  92. Fingernails
    Buckley, as always, is terrific, bringing the picture more emotional potency than it perhaps warrants.
  93. Triangle of Sadness
    There’s the flabby third act in which Östlund slightly fumbles the hand-tooled Louis Vuitton ball.
  94. Bring Them Down
    Bring Them Down is an impressive first feature from Christopher Andrews.
  95. Alpha
    This Albert Hughes-directed adventure is visually stunning.
  96. Scoop
    The picture is also perceptive on the dynamics of a newsroom under duress, with Billie Piper terrific as Sam McAlister, the straight-talking producer who managed to land the interview to end all royal interviews.
  97. In the Earth
    Suffice to say that, as with all of Wheatley’s best works, In the Earth combines humour and horror in terrifically bamboozling fashion, not least during a gruellingly extended amputation sequence that will have you squirming, laughing and wincing all at once.
  98. Beau Is Afraid
    I think Beau Is Afraid is best described as an amusingly patience-testing shaggy dog story that asks: “What if your mother could hear all those unspeakable things you tell your therapist?” Parts of it are hilarious. Other sections sag. Some will find it insufferable.
  99. A Haunting in Venice
    It’s enjoyable, if familiar.
  100. The Matrix Resurrections
    The film is a utopian riff on the apocalyptic source material, a Technicolor reimagining flooded with light and optimism.
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