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. Unhinged
    This zippy car chase thriller shares some DNA with Joel Schumacher’s 1993 black comedy Falling Down . . . . Both are darkly funny studies and send-ups of emasculated men, with Crowe’s character claiming to have been “dismissed as the unworthiest fuck to ever walk the planet”.
  2. 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.
  3. Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project
    Stokes is a fascinating, elusive protagonist – she was a recluse who enjoyed daily martinis and felt a kinship with Steve Jobs. Yet Wolf treats her archive with reverence, rather than writing her off as an eccentric.
  4. The 8th
    There are charismatic figures fronting the movement, but the real power comes from each of the many shared, sad stories from women whose lives were affected by the law.
  5. 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.
  6. Being a Human Person
    This terrific, unexpectedly moving documentary portrait captures the man at work.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Long Riders
    Politically, the film reflects post-Vietnam, post-countercultural blues.
  8. A Bunch of Amateurs
    As this terrific and very moving documentary shows, the society, fuelled by bickering, biscuits and cinephilia, is a lifeline for its members, who weather bereavements, loneliness and fiercely argued creative differences within its peeling walls. Lovely stuff.
  9. Scala!!!
    Borrowing a punky, handmade aesthetic from the famous monthly programme posters, the film collates wildly entertaining interviews with former staff and punters.
  10. While We Watched
    This is tense, essential film-making that argues for the importance of serious, balanced journalism in today’s world of factional infotainment, while also showing the cost to those who stand against the tide.
  11. 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.
  12. Never Look Away
    While the direction may be deceptively unfussy, Deschanel does brilliant work bringing Kurt’s worldview to life, enabling us to understand his progress towards an artistic breakthrough, represented here by paintings conjured by (among others) Richter’s former assistant Andreas Schön.
  13. 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.
  14. Joyland
    Richly detailed and superbly acted across the board, the film cast a scathing eye over the rigid social constraints that ensnare anyone who fails to conform.
  15. 3 Faces
    And Shahrzad, a huge star from the 1960s and 70s who was banished after the revolution, is present as a voice rather than a face in the film, but is no less significant for the fact that she is not seen by the camera.
  16. Knife + Heart
    Variously gorgeous, ethereal, artful and tacky, both Anne’s film and Gonzalez’s are sustained by a throbbing sexual energy, aided by French electronic act M83’s twinkling, club‑inspired score.
  17. Only the Animals
    This is film-making that really tests the elasticity of its story strands, but it largely manages to keep the audience from teetering into disbelief. For the most part, that’s thanks to persuasively solid characters and casting.
  18. Under The Wire
    It gives heart-in-the-mouth insights into the realities of war reporting, and is a testament to the value – and the price – of great journalism.
  19. Some Kind of Heaven
    It’d be easy to mistake the director’s deadpan observation for mocking, but the space he holds for the darker aspects of his characters’ individual stories helps to puncture any cultivated cutesyness.
  20. Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story
    [An] affectionate, frequently amusing documentary portrait.
  21. 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.
  22. Living
    This deceptively gentle 50s-set film addresses weighty matters of life and death with a winning simplicity that is hard to resist.
  23. The Wedding Guest
    Patel excels as a smouldering, enigmatic antihero who gradually begins to drop his defences; Apte might be even better as the duplicitous femme fatale.
  24. Mogul Mowgli
    This is abrasive, confrontational film-making, with a machine-gun assault of ideas and influences.
  25. Causeway
    Lawrence is phenomenal, giving the kind of wary, reined-in performance that made such a compelling impression in her breakthrough film, Winter’s Bone. And the always excellent Henry gradually strips back a character who at first seems wholly at ease with life to reveal layers of suppressed guilt and pain.
  26. Apollo 11
    A celebration of human endeavour, and of a rare moment of global unity.
  27. Support the Girls
    Under the party whoops and confetti cannons there’s a deceptively complex and layered portrait of female solidarity in the face of ingrained sexism, racism and general male shittiness.
  28. American Animals
    A heart-pounding heist movie and a bantering conversation between real life and fiction, the debut drama by documentary director Bart Layton (The Imposter) is a great deal sharper – and more slickly executed – than the lunkheaded criminal debacle on which it is based.
  29. Sylvie's Love
    Like Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk and Todd Haynes’s Carol, Ashe takes the form of the 50s melodrama and recentres it on characters the genre has tended to ignore. This isn’t as politically restless as those films – it’s less interested in subverting the “woman’s picture” than establishing itself as one.
  30. Girls Will Be Girls
    This impressive first feature from Indian director Shuchi Talati burrows into the skin of its high-achieving, ambitious central character.
  31. The Apprentice
    Most intriguing is Strong’s slippery portrayal of Cohn – a man full of sharp edges and wide, swinging contradictions.
  32. Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle
    Along the way, the director, Arthur Harari, takes the exhausted true tale of the lone Japanese soldier and sculpts it into a captivating tragicomedy, a sharp-eyed study of zealotry and self-delusion, ridiculous and heartbreaking in about equal measure.
  33. In Fabric
    Strickland’s work seems to exist in that strange space between the social-realist tragicomedy of Mike Leigh and the exotic kaleidoscopic imaginings of Nicolas Roeg or Ken Russell. It’s a mesmerising place to be, at once familiar yet otherworldly. Try it on for size.
  34. Fire of Love
    The film’s approach skirts around the actual science of the Kraffts’ work, but it does explore the psychology of a shared passion, of a couple who melted their boots together on smoking lava flows and danced by the craters in a confetti of volcanic bombs.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Breathless
    It baffled popular audiences outside Europe, but its insouciant style, amoral attitudes and cultural sophistication made it an influential milestone of post-war cinema. [28 Apr 1996, p.14]
    • The Observer (UK)
  36. Thirteen Lives
    Despite the fact that we all know the outcome, and that it’s the third film in as many years to tell the story, Ron Howard’s account of the drama is compulsively watchable and breathlessly tense.
  37. Good Posture
    Wells’s bracingly spiky writing vividly draws both the characters and the connections between them.
  38. Servants
    Ostrochovský’s camera emphasises the constricting architecture of both church and state, with its black and white morality and a claustrophobic central courtyard, frequently portrayed via stiff, judgmental God’s-eye shots.
  39. Dahomey
    It’s a wisp of a thing, clocking in at barely over an hour. But the agile poetry and formal playfulness of Mati Diop’s exquisite hybrid documentary belies the weight and wealth of ideas within.
  40. Asia
    This impressive Israeli feature debut from Ruthy Pribar stars a mesmerising Shira Haas.
  41. Diego Maradona
    I found myself gripped by a universally accessible tale of a divided soul – a figure whose dual personas are embodied in the two names of the film’s title; Diego and Maradona.
  42. The Brink
    It’s unsavoury viewing – flies on the wall are rarely attracted by the sweet smell of roses after all – but it’s queasily fascinating nonetheless.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All That Heaven Allows
    A sharply observed indictment of 1950s country club conformity. [07 Jul 2013, p.45]
    • The Observer (UK)
  44. The Wild Robot
    It’s sentimental stuff, certainly, but the picture’s unexpectedly dark humour outweighs any maudlin tendencies.
  45. Werner Herzog - Radical Dreamer
    Interviewees tie themselves in knots of gushing superlatives, but the real insights come from the man himself.
  46. The Hummingbird Project
    Part thriller, part family drama, part satirical commentary on the way that the pursuit of wealth is a cultural cancer that taints everything it touches, The Hummingbird Project is no less compelling for its odd mishmash of components.
  47. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
    Földes’s matter-of-fact approach to storytelling balances the tendency towards quirkiness in the material. Dream logic coexists with the crushingly mundane, in a picture that also showcases the director’s musical talents with an intricate and involving score.
  48. Smile 2
    The special effects are bracingly revolting, the malevolent smiles as creepy as ever. And the film has the added bonus of some killer choreography, in every sense of the word.
  49. Emergency
    Carey Williams’s smart satire of the daily realities of racial profiling is a switchback ride that lurches between comedy and nerve-shredding tension, but loses focus in an extraneous coda.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Hold Back the Dawn
    Smoothly orchestrated entertainment. [30 Apr 2000, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  51. Time
    In Time it’s an almost superhuman sense of togetherness that rings through, a refusal to bow down, to be broken or defeated.
  52. La Mif
    Mini-chapters focus on characters in turn, each offering a new perspective on the unfolding drama; choral and chamber music is an unexpected but effective punctuation in the storytelling, but most powerful is sound design that understands the gravity of moments of weighted silence.
  53. Benediction
    Behind it all is an endlessly saddening search for that transformative sacrament evoked by the film’s title – alluring yet elusive.
  54. 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.
  55. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
    While subjects as dark as separation and death may be faced head-on (a reading from Philip Larkin’s The Trees had me in tears), there’s a comedic quality that reminded me of Aardman’s sublime Creature Comforts animations – a joyous juxtaposition of quotidian, vérité-style dialogue and fancifully inventive visuals that hits a tragicomic sweet spot.
  56. Sugarcane
    The sickening facts of the case are presented with a respectful restraint but it’s impossible to watch this and not feel a cold, hard rage on behalf of the victims.
  57. Woman of the Hour
    Kendrick’s knack for capturing period detail goes beyond the psychedelic synthetics and kipper ties. She taps into the treacherous sexism that was hardwired into the entertainment industry and wider culture of the time, both of which are shown to be minefields of fragile male egos and potential violence.
  58. We the Animals
    One of the discoveries of the year so far.
  59. The Inspection
    This well-acted outsider’s-eye view of the inner workings of the US armed forces is fiercely candid, in its condemnation of the brutality that is enmeshed in the training programme, and in its celebration of the bonds and brotherhood that grow between fellow cadets.
  60. The Forty-Year-Old Version
    [A] warm, funny and enjoyably rude debut.
  61. The Count of Monte Cristo
    It’s directed with verve and acted with gusto.
  62. His Three Daughters
    This is subtle, unshowy film-making that is entirely in the service of the screenplay and the performances – and what performances.
  63. Architecton
    Architecton is a gorgeously photographed poetic reverie on the subject of stone and concrete, permanence and profligate waste.
  64. Kajillionaire
    On relationships, July remains as perceptive as ever.
  65. The Adam Project
    The high-concept plot is held together more by force of will (and some decent special effects) than by logic, but the core of this engaging, kid-friendly Netflix production is a big-hearted tale of broken families made good.
  66. Mystify: Michael Hutchence
    The result is enlightening and affecting, providing a missing piece in the puzzle of a life prematurely ended.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Man Who Knew Too Much
    The classic thriller in which Hitchcock truly discovered his metier as the 'master of suspense' and never looked back. [08 Aug 1999, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  68. Sing Sing
    It’s powerful and profoundly moving stuff.
  69. Turning Red
    Turning Red is a fizzing, squealing adolescent explosion of a movie that nails a fundamental truth about growing up.
  70. Azor
    As far as the plot is concerned, almost nothing happens, and yet Andreas Fontana’s sinewy debut teems with unseen threat. He crafts an atmosphere of grubbiness despite all the polished surfaces.
  71. King Richard
    It’s a very watchable picture, but one that, like the plan that Williams famously wrote for his daughters, feels at times like a checklist of challenges overcome and decisions vindicated.
  72. Doctor Sleep
    The new material is fresher and considerably more fun.
  73. Night Courier
    Seedily handsome cinematography captures a city full of secrets and simmering violence.
  74. Small Body
    With its colour palette of mossy greens, terracotta and earth tones, and its matter-of-fact approach to themes of folklore and mysticism, this gorgeous first feature from Italian director Laura Samani is as enchanting as it is unusual.
  75. Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
    This crystalline tale of memory, love and brain surgery from writer-director Lili Horvát (who made 2015’s The Wednesday Child) is a treat – sinewy, seductive and beautifully strange.
  76. Sinners
    If you pick apart the story threads, Sinners is a little messy, but Coogler’s assurance and vision holds everything together.
  77. Maestro
    With its nonlinear structure, Maestro feels a little like a scrapbook of life moments – glittering career achievements; crackling explosions of domestic tension – and Cooper keeps up a zesty, kinetic energy throughout.
  78. The Devil All the Time
    However dark the narrative may seem, there’s a strong streak of black humour that accompanies the horror, often facilitated by a pointedly chosen tune.
  79. Queendom
    Ultimately, as Agniia Galdanova’s remarkable observational documentary shows, Gena is her own extraordinary creation.
  80. Ford v Ferrari
    Slick, thrilling and saturated with vivid hues and 60s can-do optimism, Le Mans ’66, James Mangold’s follow-up to Logan, is a precision-tooled machine of a movie.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Theater of Blood
    Arguably Price's finest single performance, certainly the one that called on all his varied talents as a comedian, aesthete, mellifluous speaker of verse, old-fashioned barnstormer and exponent of horror, is Douglas Hickox's classic black comedy Theatre of Blood, best of a string of horror pictures he made in Britain.
  82. The Power of the Dog
    The weathered earth tones of Campion’s subdued colour scheme conceal a vivid and full-blooded emotional palette.
  83. Return to Dust
    It’s a gorgeous, quietly affecting film that finds an unassuming beauty in this simple life in rural China, but which doesn’t shy away from the extreme hardships faced by the very poorest.
  84. Her Way
    [An] impressive drama.
  85. Leave the World Behind
    A provocative, superbly acted action drama that combines big-hitting ambition and spectacle with just enough humour to temper the whole end-of-civilisation meltdown scenario.
  86. Last Night in Soho
    For all its scattershot reference points, however, Last Night in Soho still emerges as Wright’s most personal film – you can feel how much he loves the material. Frankly, I felt the same way.
  87. The Eternal Daughter
    For all its decorous restraint, this is emotionally potent storytelling.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One of Our Aircraft Is Missing
    One of the best World War Two morale-boosting adventure movies. [07 Feb 1999, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Music Man
    Robert Preston unforgettably reprises his greatest stage role in this old-fashioned musical that challenged West Side Story on Broadway and proved quite as popular. [13 Nov 2005, p.87]
    • The Observer (UK)
  90. Zappa
    Key to the success of the film is the editing, a pinballing assault of free association, claymation and gleeful profanity, which goes some way towards recreating what it must have been like to spend time inside Zappa’s head.
  91. Hatching
    Bergholm gives us precision-tooled jump scares and creeping, clammy atmospherics; a malevolent mother and an insurrectionist child.
  92. 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.
  93. Missing Link
    The film feels more like an elbow in the ribs than a slap on the wrist, revelling in the miscommunications between Susan the Sasquatch’s literal-minded monkey brain.
  94. Funny Pages
    Funny Pages spins a hilarious tale from the fringes of the underground comics scene, powered by a wonderfully sour performance by Daniel Zolghadri as Robert, a teenage cartoonist who strikes out on his own.
  95. She Dies Tomorrow
    Alternately hilarious and spine-tingling, it recalls David Lynch’s Twin Peaks in its serious, penetrating sense of doom.
  96. Happy as Lazzaro
    Inviolata is Italian for “unspoiled”, and the word could apply to its people as much as their straw-gold land.
  97. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
    There’s a new maturity both in the character and in the storytelling that makes this final film in the trilogy take wing.
  98. Bad Tales
    Parental indifference is not attuned to the looming tragedy in this horribly compelling fable.
  99. Drive My Car
    With its eddying, fluid score and judicious use of silence, its satisfying layers of storytelling, this is a supremely confident piece of film-making from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, albeit one that, at three hours long and with a rather Chekhov-heavy second half, will certainly require the right mindset.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Wuthering Heights
    This classic adaptation of Emily Bronte's novel is actually only the first half of the book and the Goldwyn Studio's notion of 19th-century Yorkshire is distinctly odd. But it's an intense, atmospheric work, and the performances are first rate. [11 Aug 2013]
    • The Observer (UK)
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