The Observer (UK)'s Scores

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For 1,640 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 3.3 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: 893 out of 1640
  2. Mixed: 714 out of 1640
  3. Negative: 33 out of 1640
1640 movie reviews
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  1. Expend4bles
    Watching the cast of Expend4bles, the latest instalment of the thunderously dumb veteran mercenary franchise, sweating and straining their way through the “casual banter” section of the screenplay is like watching contestants on The World’s Strongest Man attempting to climb a ladder while carrying a tractor tyre. It’s painful.
  2. Fisherman's Friends: One and All
    It all feels rather cursory, subplots as glue to tack together the Cornish tourist board-approved shots of cornflower-blue waters and cloudless skies.
  3. Assassin Club
    By the end, his getaway car is almost as riddled with holes as the plot itself.
  4. Borderlands
    The effects are so shoddy, you wonder if the entire post-production budget was blown on fine-tuning Cate Blanchett’s cheekbones. It’s so incoherent, you half expect to see the notorious director Uwe Boll’s name on the credits.
  5. Blithe Spirit
    The impish Leslie Mann is well cast as his dead wife, Elvira, who provides a jolt of creative inspiration. Judi Dench’s screechy caricature of psychic Madame Arcati is less winning.
  6. Rambo: Last Blood
    It’s cheap and lazy stuff.
  7. Playmobil: The Movie
    While The Lego Movie is all about creativity and invention, Playmobil shamelessly steals ideas.
  8. Playing with Fire
    This is beyond inept.
  9. Off the Rails
    Bickering middle-aged women obsessing over travel arrangements is not entertainment, it’s a living hell.
  10. Holmes & Watson
    Puerile, imbecilic and imbued with the kind of casual 1970s sitcom homophobia that reads all male friendships as somehow suspect, this slack-jawed grossout comedy represents the nadir of Conan Doyle adaptations.
  11. Music
    These self-consciously upbeat moments clash horribly with the wider redemption narrative.
  12. Life Itself
    This stupid person’s idea of a clever movie is keen that we get the point, right down to providing an overbearing, hand-holding voiceover, which guides us through its multiple levels of plot contrivance as if the audience is a not particularly bright toddler.
    • 21 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Choirboys
    Aldrich is at his most crudely anarchic and macho celebrating the saintly community service and childish off-duty antics of Los Angeles's hard-nosed uniformed cops, starring Charles Durning, Perry King et al. [25 Feb 2007, p.6]
    • The Observer (UK)
  14. Apostasy
    Frequently, the film is enraging. Not because it shows the way in which dogma has the power to rewire the moral instincts of its devotees, but for the sombreness with which it acknowledges that the devotees allow this to happen.
  15. Article 15
    Ayushmann Khurrana, playing the good cop who can’t bring himself to look away to preserve “society’s balance”, combines soulful Bollywood heartthrob charisma with an arrestingly intense performance.
  16. Perfect 10
    The film’s main asset is impressive newcomer Box: veering between bratty backchat and bruised reticence, she’s tossed on unpredictable tides of teenage emotions.
  17. Parallel
    Montages, seesawing Dutch tilts and profligate overuse of lighting gels fail to conceal the fact that the film’s writing doesn’t match the lure of the central idea.
  18. Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie's Dead Aunt)
    As Ellie and Abbie respectively, Sophie Hawkshaw and Zoe Terakes make light work of a somewhat heavy-handed screenplay.
  19. Here We Are
    Beautifully observed and saturated with warmth, this tender family drama gradually reveals the fact that it is Aharon, as much as Uri, who depends on their relationship.
  20. Bye Bye Morons
    It’s amiable enough, but this broad French comedy is not distinctive enough for the arthouse crowd, and too Gallic for the mainstream.
  21. Lola
    Mya Bollaers is a magnetic presence in this Belgian-French film that approaches the story of an adolescent trans girl and her estranged father with good intentions but a thuddingly unsubtle directorial approach.
  22. Save the Cinema
    Save the Cinema is the kind of plucky underdog feelgood slop that the British film industry churns out on a regular basis, largely to the indifference of audiences.
  23. Rebel Dread
    Letts gives thoughtful context to the way he was able to straddle the racially delineated worlds of dub reggae and punk rock, drawing parallels between the merging of subcultures in 1970s London, and the intersection of hip-hop and rock’n’roll in 1980s New York.
  24. Leave No Traces
    With the help of a couple of outstanding performances from Ziętek and Agnieszka Grochowska, as Jurek’s mother, and its obsessive attention to period detail, the film finally unravels the serpentine coils of corruption.
  25. Her Way
    [An] impressive drama.
  26. It Snows in Benidorm
    The always impressive Spall elevates this low-key mood piece a little, but even his skill as an actor can’t save the stultifying pacing.
  27. Lancaster
    Part oral history, part archive, this is a thoroughly researched account of the role of the Lancaster bomber in the second world war. It’s solid, no frills film-making, but that’s entirely appropriate given the sobering stories recounted by surviving members of Bomber Command, now in their 90s.
  28. Hide and Seek
    Using a combination of verité and poetic reconstructions, Fiore paints a sobering portrait of a bright, personable kid whose destiny is preordained.
  29. Epic Tails
    The decent quality of the animation of this English-language French production is rather let down by some shockingly poor voice performances and a couple of ear-bleeding musical numbers.
  30. Maigret
    It’s dour, certainly, but the sense of bone-tired exhaustion and crushed hope that linger like pipe smoke works rather effectively for this particular case.
  31. Man on the Run
    This documentary shares Scorsese’s theme of obscene greed, while Kuala Lumpur’s neon nightscape gives the feel of a Batman villain’s origin story. The Penguin, probably.
  32. The Nettle Dress
    Allan Brown, a textile artist, speaks eloquently of the rich symbolism of taking something that is a source of pain, stripping it of its sting and, over the years, gradually reshaping and repurposing it into a thing of beauty.
  33. Getting It Back: The Story of Cymande
    Tim Mackenzie-Smith’s slightly breathless and overstretched documentary aims for a Buena Vista Social Club-style story of late-life rediscovery but gets a little bogged down in a few too many hagiographic quotes from high-profile fans. Still, the music is sublime.
  34. Baltimore
    The picture also doubles as a fascinating psychological study of fanaticism, with Poots’s expressive performance unpeeling the layers beneath Dugdale’s fervent belief in her cause.
  35. The Mountain Within Me
    This is a film that is precision-engineered to hit the commercial sweet spot between extreme-sports mountain-climbing adventure docs such as Free Solo, The Alpinist and Touching the Void and feelgood tales of overcoming adversity. And as such, it works.
  36. Night Courier
    Seedily handsome cinematography captures a city full of secrets and simmering violence.
  37. Apollo 13: Survival
    Familiarity doesn’t lessen the impact of this excellent documentary by Peter Middleton, directing solo here, having previously collaborated with James Spinney on the acclaimed Notes on Blindness.
  38. Reawakening
    It’s affecting enough, with both Harris and Stevenson capturing the wrenching, protracted grief of not knowing, but I found myself wishing that the film had maintained a sense of mystery rather than dumping a chunk of inelegant exposition at the end.
  39. Sunray: Fallen Soldier
    The combat sequences and SUV shootouts are grimly efficient, but the picture is baggily paced.
  40. Cottontail
    A delicate gem of a film, with a powerhouse turn from Franky.
  41. The Hermit of Treig
    This lovely, compassionate documentary, which recently won the audience award at the Glasgow film festival, is more than a character study. It’s a portrait of a friendship between Smith and film-maker Lizzie MacKenzie.
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