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. The Surfer
    Crisply scripted by Thomas Martin and directed by Finnegan with a pleasing, no-frills intensity, The Surfer feels resolutely old-school. It’s a low-budget, hard-hitting comic bruiser of a picture: a midlife-crisis movie dressed up as a 1970s exploitation flick.
  2. Hoard
    Carmoon’s depiction of trauma, grief and mental health in crisis as a kind of putrid, repellent stench that clings to the skin, stings the eyeballs and turns the stomach makes for a queasily insalubrious viewing experience. Hoard is a film I admire, but struggle to like.
  3. La Chimera
    There’s something about the folkloric quality of Rohrwacher’s films, their embrace of a kind of earth magic, that prompts people to describe them as fairytales. But this is perhaps misleading. La Chimera is no twinkly escapist fantasy, it’s a film full of grit, thorns and greed.
  4. Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger
    While the film lacks the bravura flourishes that characterised Powell and Pressburger at their peak, it’s an engrossing celebration of two of British cinema’s most distinctive voices, and their creative harmony.
  5. The Almond and the Seahorse
    A film so grating that you long for the sweet release of amnesia.
  6. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    This is a top-quality summer blockbuster, bringing fresh blood and new ideas into the series while staying recognisably within the worlds so meticulously created in the previous three movies.
  7. Challengers
    The sex is like tennis: fierce, combative bouts in which there will always be a winner and a loser. And the tennis, ultimately, is like sex: an ecstatic consummation between two perfectly matched people at their glistening physical peak.
  8. Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara
    With stately restraint, Bellocchio manages to put the audience in an ever-tightening chokehold of tension and outrage.
  9. The American Society of Magical Negroes
    Kobi Libii’s film is far too diffident and polite in its approach to leave much of a mark in the conversation about race and representation in US culture.
  10. I.S.S.
    While DeBose is impressive, the contrived plot of Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s movie hinges, somewhat preposterously, on rational, highly trained scientific minds devolving overnight into paranoid, murderous maniacs.
  11. Seize Them!
    The small-screen tone of the picture makes it feel like a duff episode of Horrible Histories, albeit with considerably more swearing.
  12. Sometimes I Think About Dying
    It plays out at the tipping point at which living with loneliness starts to feel easier than tackling the daunting prospect of conversation with a stranger.
  13. Jeanne du Barry
    It’s a curiously inert affair: constrained, corseted, passionless and saddled with a lumpen, Depp-shaped deadweight where there should be a pulse-racing core of power and desire.
  14. Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver
    While Sofia Boutella, playing outlaw warrior Kora, brings a balletic elegance to her fight sequences, ultimately this is disappointingly generic stuff.
  15. Abigail
    Stevens is one of several reasons to watch this extravagantly gory botched kidnap horror.
  16. Bleeding Love
    Decent performances from both McGregors can’t breathe much spirit (alcoholic or otherwise) into the film’s listless and generic screenplay.
  17. The Teachers' Lounge
    It’s a masterclass in using a stripped-back, minimal approach to gripping effect, evident throughout Ilker Çatak’s terrific, taut, Oscar-nominated drama.
  18. Back to Black
    There are moments when Abela disappears and Winehouse bursts on to the screen, like a magic eye picture blinked fleetingly into focus. But the film is wildly uneven and prone to catastrophic misjudgments – in that at least it’s true to Winehouse’s spirit.
  19. Civil War
    It does, though, capture chillingly the terrible, self-perpetuating momentum of war. A war that, in this case, has reached the point at which people no longer know what they are fighting for, only that they are fighting.
  20. Close Your Eyes
    It’s a beguiling drama that contrasts the mirage-like quality of hopes against the more tangible solidity of regrets. But while there’s a melancholy magic to it all, the spell is stretched rather thinly over the long running time.
  21. A Forgotten Man
    A handsome period piece, shot in striking black and white, A Forgotten Man tackles an intriguing theme, but it’s a little too airless and inert in approach to bring this murky corner of European history to life.
  22. Monkey Man
    It’s a visceral, breathless rampage, and while it’s a little rough around the edges at times, the picture’s brawling energy makes it an exhilarating ride.
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
  25. Evil Does Not Exist
    While not as satisfying as the director’s two previous films – a jarring ending knocks the picture off balance – this uneasy eco-parable is still very much worth your time.
  26. Io Capitano
    Central to the spirit of the film is Seydou, a gangly string bean with a smile that warms the screen; a teenager who is still enough of a child to believe that manhood means never being afraid. It’s a gorgeous, sensitive performance from Sarr.
  27. The Sweet East
    For all its to-the-moment social commentary, the film has roots in the anarchistic, surrealist 60s: Lillian could be a direct descendant of minxy troublemakers Marie I and Marie II from Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, reimagined for the TikTok generation.
  28. The Origin of Evil
    With the exception of Stéphane, who becomes more intriguing and less likable with each secret unpeeled, the main characters are a little schematic and two-dimensional. It’s fortunate, then, that the always impressive Calamy is on top form.
  29. Disco Boy
    While the plot itself is a little nebulous, the atmosphere that Abbruzzese creates, through a hypnotic, pulsing electronic score and Rogowski’s febrile presence, is unnerving and intense.
  30. Drift
    This portrait of lost souls connecting is unassuming, but quietly powerful.
  31. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
    Dumbed-down and stripped of the symbolic subtext of the earlier movies, the picture is not without seat-shuddering thrills, but it’s like a tag-team wrestling bout for monsters rather than a picture with meaning and even a modicum of thought.
  32. Mothers' Instinct
    A film about two immaculately groomed women gaslighting and goading each other to the point of madness should be a lot more fun than this.
  33. Late Night with the Devil
    Smart, cynical and at times devilishly funny, the film delivers a crackle of disruptive static to the demonic possession genre.
  34. Robot Dreams
    There’s such tenderness to the storytelling, such empathy and emotional depth, that it broadens the film’s potential audience from kids, who will respond to the cute characters and gentle wit, to adolescents and adults, who will recognise the angst and awkwardness of trying to function alone once again.
  35. The Persian Version
    If the final act overdoes it a little with the wackily-ever-after feelgood vibes, Mohammadi’s flippantly acidic to-camera commentary emphasises the sharp edges within the family embrace.
  36. The Delinquents
    It’s a teasing exploration of the cost of freedom and of the dualities of life.
  37. 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.
  38. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
    It’s not unenjoyable, just deeply unoriginal.
  39. Irish Wish
    There are no leprechauns in this abysmal romantic comedy. Otherwise, though, pretty much no theme-park Ireland cliche is left unturned.
  40. Monster
    Ultimately, the question of what actually happened is just another red herring. The real point of the film is its heartfelt, if slightly trite, message: that it’s the wider world that needs to adapt and accept the differences of children like Minato and Yori, rather than the other way around.
  41. 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.
  42. Drive-Away Dolls
    The film has a boisterous energy, but it’s puerile, phoney and frequently rather cringe.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Lovely Rita (2001)
    It's performed by a non-professional cast, who all seem a little tense, and the rebellious Rita is an unsympathetic, inadequately characterised figure, though not unconvincing. [30 Dec 2001, p.12]
    • The Observer (UK)
      • Posted Mar 15, 2024
  44. Origin
    The compelling Ellis-Taylor goes some way towards tying together the disparate elements. She is a magnetic, dignified presence, persuasive in both the more melodramatic elements of the story and in the academic journey.
  45. Frida
    While the film doesn’t attempt to explore every aspect and every romantic connection, it does delve satisfyingly deeply into her interior life, explored through her artistic output.
  46. Ricky Stanicky
    Despite the best efforts of a game John Cena in the title role, the laughs are a little thin on the ground.
  47. The Inventor
    Charming and informative as it is, the film may struggle to engage younger audiences accustomed to more overt comedy in their animated movies and less grave-robbing.
  48. High & Low: John Galliano
    Given the vested interest that the business has in the industry and its highly lucrative maverick son, it’s surprising and refreshing that High & Low is as nuanced and thought-provoking as it is.
  49. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World
    This picture is more or less equal parts an indulgent, endurance-testing slog and a brilliantly audacious, fiercely political poke in the eye to conventional cinema. I loved every enraging minute of it.
  50. Dune: Part Two
    There are moments when Dune: Part Two feels uncomfortably timely.
  51. Perfect Days
    Perhaps, in its polite and unassuming way, the film advocates not just a new way of looking, but also a new way of living.
  52. Memory
    Gradually and delicately, Sylvia and Saul’s tessellating traumas are revealed by a beautifully balanced pair of lead performances.
  53. Out of Darkness
    Proof that even the most basic cinematic tools can be used to make fire.
  54. 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.
  55. The Taste of Things
    The Taste of Things defies expectations. There is something refreshingly unconventional about its depiction of the tender, well-worn love between Eugénie and Dodin.
  56. Eureka
    Unfortunately, for all its daring, Eureka is often stultifyingly slow.
  57. The Promised Land
    This very enjoyable Nordic western from Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair), based on a true story, is at first driven by grit and macho hubris. But thanks to the women in his life . . . the captain belatedly comes to realise that there is more to life than potatoes and royal-sanctioned prestige.
  58. Bob Marley: One Love
    What becomes painfully clear is the fact that Bob Marley deserves a better biopic. Still, Lynch’s magnetic presence, and a heartstopping rendition of Redemption Song, almost justify the price of admission.
  59. Occupied City
    Feels closer in approach to his early gallery installation work than it does to his narrative film-making.
  60. The Iron Claw
    Even if The Iron Claw doesn’t quite match the bracing originality of the other two films, it still cements Durkin’s status as one of the most consistently impressive American directors of his generation.
  61. Your Fat Friend
    It helps that Gordon is a dream of a subject: funny, frank and eminently likable, she challenges preconceptions and prejudices about fatness with wit and grace.
  62. The Settlers
    Not everything in this Leone-inspired Latino western hits its target, but the picture has a venomous bite, and a smart, slippery final scene that turns the lens back on to the act of film-making, questioning cinema’s role in (mis)shaping the way we view history.
  63. American Fiction
    The story works on two levels, first as a prickly critique of the pressures facing Black creatives. But equally satisfying is its depiction of the abrasive, complicated dynamics in a high-achieving family.
  64. Migration
    A screenplay by White Lotus creator Mike White elevates proceedings with an enjoyably sardonic bite.
  65. Argylle
    The special effects seem shoddy and unfinished and the screenplay struggles to keep up with its own twists and turns.
  66. The Zone of Interest
    The impact all but knocks the breath from your body.
  67. All of Us Strangers
    It’s a remarkable achievement – a raw and potent piece of storytelling that grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go.
  68. The Holdovers
    There’s a bracingly astringent bleakness under its surface layer of melancholy humour; a biting, sharp edge that counters the occasional lurch towards sentimentality.
  69. Werner Herzog - Radical Dreamer
    Interviewees tie themselves in knots of gushing superlatives, but the real insights come from the man himself.
  70. The Kitchen
    Robinson and Bannerman are excellent, warily stepping around each other’s expectations and weighing up the cost of allowing themselves to care.
  71. Mean Girls
    The scene-stealing standout is Avantika, playing sweet-natured Plastic dimwit Karen. Her comic timing is impeccable; her musical number, a boisterous Halloween party romp titled Sexy, is worth the price of admission alone.
  72. 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.
  73. The Boys in the Boat
    It’s not bad exactly, but like many film-makers, Clooney is at his most interesting when he’s not afraid to make enemies.
  74. Poor Things
    It’s an alchemic combination, this continuing collaboration between Lanthimos and Stone . . . together they unleash in each other an extra level of uninhibited artistic daring that, one suspects, must be rooted in an uncommon degree of mutual trust.
  75. The Disappearance of Shere Hite
    It’s a fascinating and enraging film and a timely reminder of the courage of members of the feminist vanguard.
  76. Lift
    Perhaps aware of the limitations of the screenplay, director F Gary Gray deploys an irritating arsenal of flashy camera moves and sleight-of-hand edits, but these only serve to emphasise the emptiness of the spectacle.
  77. The Beekeeper
    It’s Statham’s movie – a brisk, slick, ultra-violent action onslaught that yet again demonstrates his ability to redeem just about any old tosh.
  78. Raging Grace
    Peel back the cliches and there’s something interesting here: a gnawing sense of injustice and biting social commentary.
  79. Next Goal Wins
    Even when he’s not mugging on screen, Waititi’s personality is evident in every frame, which suggests that he is rather overestimating the level of audience goodwill towards him, which has been depleted by the divisive Jojo Rabbit and the mediocre Thor: Love and Thunder.
  80. Jules
    It’s a gently inoffensive little comedy from Marc Turtletaub (producer of Little Miss Sunshine and director of Puzzle), with an amiably jovial score. But the picture is elevated by its handling of melancholy themes of ageing and loneliness, and a superb gruff-yet-vulnerable performance from Kingsley.
  81. Society of the Snow
    While there are moments in which the film’s generous running time starts to take its toll, Bayona’s smart decision to make this a tale of both the survivors and victims brings a nervy uncertainty to the story, even if we all know broadly how it ends.
  82. One Life
    While Winton’s achievements and his dedication were remarkable, the film-making here is less so. There’s little to set One Life apart from the very crowded field of films exploring equally laudable tales of second world war heroism.
  83. Good Grief
    Levy, who also wrote the screenplay and stars in the picture, has made a satisfyingly adult, bittersweet drama which argues that even a seemingly gilded life can be painfully messy.
  84. Scala!!!
    Borrowing a punky, handmade aesthetic from the famous monthly programme posters, the film collates wildly entertaining interviews with former staff and punters.
  85. The Goldfinger
    This has the brash swagger of The Wolf of Wall Street, but the labyrinthine intricacies of the case may present something of a challenge to anyone not well versed in stock market manipulation.
  86. Priscilla
    Coppola evokes the aching loneliness and isolation experienced by women who simultaneously have everything and nothing.
  87. Ferrari
    A terrific Penélope Cruz makes up for the lack of colour with her enjoyably strident turn as Ferrari’s permanently furious wife, Laura.
  88. Rebel Moon Part 1: A Child of Fire
    Sofia Boutella shows action-star potential as Kora, a mysterious outsider who has found peace living with the farming commune, but she deserves a better vehicle than this chop-shopped jalopy.
  89. The Boy and the Heron
    The lush orchestral score, by regular Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi, is shimmering and exultant. All the elements are in place. So it seems almost churlish to note that this is middling Miyazaki at best.
  90. Silent Night
    It’s an interesting exercise – a show-don’t-tell action extravaganza. But Woo resorts to such clumsy storytelling devices . . . that the film is scuppered by its own gimmick.
  91. Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom
    The lazily generic plot devices (yet again, an ancient evil artefact offers unlimited powers to its holder); performances so thuddingly clunky that much of the dialogue sinks like a boulder in the sea; the lack of any humour whatsoever: these are all minor irritations compared with the picture’s glib trivialisation of the climate crisis.
  92. The Three Musketeers - Part 2: Milady
    If anything, this follow-up is even more enjoyable, its appeal boosted by Milady slinking on to centre stage, her weaponised sexuality backed up by her private collection of daggers and swords.
  93. Godzilla Minus One
    It’s a testament to the quality of writing, and to the action direction, that this never feels as corny or as crass as you might expect.
  94. Monica
    The result is a film of quiet but considerable power.
  95. Every Body
    Heartbreaking as this story is, the picture’s peppy energy results in a film that is celebratory and defiantly upbeat.
  96. What Happens Later
    It’s a tonal mess, a film that aims to be an adorably quirky romcom but plays out as such a surreally purgatorial ordeal.
  97. Earth Mama
    It’s bleak at times, but there is a defiantly celebratory aspect to the film, which finds hope in the solidarity of Black women and dignity in Gia’s quiet stoicism.
  98. Wonka
    Wonka is an effervescent pleasure – an endlessly, intricately charming treasure trove of a movie. And overall, Timothée Chalamet’s fresh-faced take on the central character – bringing a puckish innocence and spry, light-footed energy to one of the most famously jaded misanthropes in children’s literature – works rather well.
  99. Anselm
    The meditative experience is heightened by Wenders’s innovative use of sound: indistinct whispers flutter like bats through the cavernous spaces.
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