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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per page
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Wedding Banquet
    Independently produced on a small budget and directed by the New York-based Taiwanese moviemaker Ang Lee, The Wedding Banquet has the spontaneity, unpredictability and human warmth that are lacking in Sleepless In Seattle and The Fugitive. [26 Sep 1993, p.4]
    • The Observer (UK)
  2. Fire Will Come
    Laxe has a masterly command of rhythm and pacing. The action feels unhurried, despite the film’s tight running time, and there is a spaciousness to the world-building; attentive sound design and 16mm photography capture Galicia’s damp, green allure.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Magnificent Obsession
    Less magnificent than the Ambersons or the Seven perhaps, but a minor classic nonetheless. [26 Mar 2006, p.14]
    • The Observer (UK)
  4. Soul
    It’s a visually sumptuous riot of ideas, pitched somewhere between a playful musical, a divine comedy and a metaphysical drama.
  5. Present.Perfect.
    [A] fascinating, troubling but overlong documentary.
  6. Frozen
    Blessed with not one but two resourceful heroines, and painted with a glittering digital palette which conjures a spectacular backdrop for the romping action (Arendelle and its environs are part Norway, part Narnia), this is terrifically enjoyable – romantic, subversive, engaging and enthralling.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Inside Out 2
    Is Inside Out 2 as memorable as the original? To borrow a word popular with Ennui, “Non!” Is it a must-see? Oui oui.
  8. Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV
    This very enjoyable film explores his extensive body of work, much of it daringly ahead of its time; it was Paik who, long before the concept of the internet had taken root, first broached the idea of an electronic superhighway.
  9. Bacurau
    Sci-fi wipe transitions, 70s-style CinemaScope photography, a drone shaped like a UFO, and a cameo from German actor Udo Kier are clever genre flourishes that playfully deliver the film’s anticolonial politics.
  10. Sasquatch Sunset
    What the film shares with the Zellners’ previous pictures is a deft handling of tonal shifts, particularly the delicate tipping point at which flippant absurdity gives way to the darker minor key of melancholy.
  11. Memory Box
    Hadjithomas and Joreige thoughtfully explore trauma while remaining joyful, animating Maia’s photos, which fizz, crackle and dance to life on screen.
  12. Till
    An awards-worthy performance from Danielle Deadwyler (who stole the show in 2021’s The Harder They Fall) lends a passionate heart to this solidly engrossing and still contemporary historical drama set in 1955 and dedicated “to the life and legacy of Mamie Till-Mobley”.
  13. David Byrne’s American Utopia
    There aren’t any isolated moments as cinematic as Byrne’s tender lamp dance in Jonathan Demme’s 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense, but the director’s playfulness is felt.
  14. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
    With a smile that frays a little around the edges, and a peppy enthusiasm that can’t quite hide the doubts, McAdams wrings every last drop of pathos from her scenes, almost upstaging her screen daughter in the process.
  15. Mr. Jones
    A subplot about George Orwell is perhaps surplus to requirements, but otherwise the film is a striking, efficient political thriller.
  16. Nomadland
    There’s a hardscrabble sense of ordinary ageing folk making the best of a bad deal in often desolate and unforgiving circumstances. Yet whatever hardships they face, it’s the air of community and self-determination that rings throughout Zhao’s empathic film.
  17. And Then We Danced
    Gelbakhiani is commanding in his first acting role, metabolising heartbreak and moving with an irrepressible prowling sensuality.
  18. Under the Fig Trees
    It’s not the kind of film that nails the audience to its seats; rather, it’s a quiet, observational piece of storytelling that pieces together the budding relationships between the labourers.
  19. The Guardians
    There are two special moments in the film.
  20. Slalom
    Favier is smart on the mechanics of abuse, and the sobering inevitability of her heroine’s downhill skid.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. The Festival
    It delivers its “lessons” with a light touch, allowing Nick a couple of moments of genuine, relatable pathos... but encouraging the audience to take his self-loathing with a pinch of salt.
  24. Trolls World Tour
    The only bum note is the music itself, despite the presence of prestige pop stars including Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson and Mary J Blige.
  25. The Rider
    Though it’s filmed like a romance, the moment feels captured, not staged.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    On Dangerous Ground
    A noir classic by the distinguished team of producer John Houseman and director Nicholas Ray. [06 Jan 2013, p.43]
    • The Observer (UK)
  27. I Am Not a Witch
    This daringly satirical parable of magic and misogyny, superstition and social strictures confirms [Nyoni's] promise as a film-maker of fiercely independent vision, with a bright future ahead.
  28. 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.
  29. Martin Eden
    If writing is a democratic art and social leveller, Marcello indicts the celebrity author as a sellout, steamrolling their way to success.
  30. Every Body
    Heartbreaking as this story is, the picture’s peppy energy results in a film that is celebratory and defiantly upbeat.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Road to Rio
    In the fifth and funniest of the Road movies, Hope and Crosby play third-rate vaudevillians rescuing heiress Dorothy Lamour from her wicked aunt (the incomparable Gale Sondergaard) in Latin America. [09 Apr 2000, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  32. Monica
    The result is a film of quiet but considerable power.
  33. Lucky
    The film is a goldmine of small but perfectly formed parts.
  34. 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.
  35. Stan & Ollie
    Throughout, there’s an intriguing interplay between the performers’ real and fictional personae that lends emotional weight to the “stuff and nonsense” of their act.
  36. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
    This is an archetypal Anderson film: mannered, fussy, obsessively designed – normally irksome traits, but in this alchemic instance it’s an utterly delightful combination.
  37. The Surrogate
    Writer-director Jeremy Hersh tackles the intersection of race, sexuality, class and disability with rare nuance in this wry indie drama, which observes sharply the trappings of millennial entitlement and liberal hypocrisy.
  38. 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.
  39. Columbus
    The message that brutalism is not only beautiful but therapeutic will probably have its detractors, but for those who, like me, love both pensive arthouse cinema and cantilevered concrete structures, it’s a rare treat.
  40. The Truffle Hunters
    Every bit as immersive as Victor Kossakovsky’s recent documentary Gunda, about a sow and her piglets, The Truffle Hunters serves as a timely reminder that the world does not turn to the industrialised rhythms of mankind alone, and that we lose track of its natural heartbeat at our peril.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Patton
    Made at the height of the Vietnam war, this remarkable film presents the second world war on an epic scale while painting a warts-and-all portrait of the military genius General George Patton (George C Scott), part mystic, part mad martinet. [28 Sep 2014, p.47]
    • The Observer (UK)
  42. 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.
  43. 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.
  44. XY Chelsea
    Hawkins seems beguiled by Manning’s natural charisma, and more interested in the highs and lows of her personal reckoning. These are fascinating in their own right, yet more context might have made this feel like more of a definitive portrait.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    True Grit
    Veteran Hathaway skilfully balances humour and action in a classic western handsomely photographed by Lucien Ballard, one of the great cinematographers, who came to this task immediately after The Wild Bunch. [14 Nov 1999, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  46. The Front Runner
    There’s a thrilling charge to the film-making. Jostling, overlapping dialogue feels lived rather than written.
  47. May December
    The performances, from Moore and in particular Portman, are sublime: both bracingly unsympathetic and wildly enjoyable.
  48. Crazy Rich Asians
    To evaluate it solely on the basis of representation is to do it a disservice and to further narrow the parameters of how we’re allowed to talk about movies that feature “diverse” actors.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sunrise
    Murnau's first Hollywood film and one of the last great silent movies.
  50. Identifying Features
    Valadez’s expressionist images give texture to the abstract emotions of rage and pain.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Good Morning
    Full of humanity, humour and moments of pathos. [08 Jul 2012, p.45]
    • The Observer (UK)
  52. Midnight Traveler
    [A] remarkable documentary.
  53. The Brutalist
    The screenplay dwells obsessively on certain aspects and rushes blithely past others. The craft of the film-making, though, is exemplary.
  54. Cradle of Champions
    What makes it so compelling to watch is the choice of characters and the examination of what, beyond sporting glory, they are actually fighting for.
  55. Assassination Nation
    This is pure genre exploitation – a gleefully gory revenge flick that leaves its small-town streets awash with blood. It may also be one of the smartest, most perceptive commentaries on a contemporary society distorted and magnified by online hysteria that you are likely to wince your way through.
  56. Just Mercy
    As for Foxx and Jordan, their dialled-down discipline pays dividends, lending greater weight to those few moments (a courtroom showdown, a jailhouse breakdown) when Cretton briefly turns up the dramatic heat, with rousing results.
  57. A Hidden Life
    Malick links the lonely labour of working the land with the thanklessness of sainthood, asking questions about devotion, tradition and individual acts of resistance. Mileage (and the film is three hours) will likely depend on your tolerance for the director’s signature poetic style.
  58. Small Things Like These
    Small Things Like These casts a powerful spell.
  59. Booksmart
    Wilde expertly modulates the giddy highs and bittersweet lows of being a teenager, as demonstrated in the way the film’s house party climax crests and then crashes.
  60. Calm with Horses (The Shadow of Violence)
    Buoyed by Joe Murtagh’s screenplay, which keeps the warring elements of the narrative elegantly balanced throughout, the excellent ensemble cast create a complex emotional ecosystem through which our troubled antihero stumbles in search of his identity.
  61. Pirates
    It’s a bouncy, grin-inducing romp through Caribbean takeaways, designer boutiques stacked with Moschino streetwear and one ill-advised trip south of the river.
  62. Shoplifters
    It’s an eerily moving piece, masterfully blurring the divide between the unforgivable and understandable, finding tenderness in the bleakest and most traumatic of circumstances.
  63. Heretic
    It’s a tense, tight fairground ride of a film.
  64. Sisters with Transistors
    What a joy is a documentary that neither talks down to its audience nor diminishes its subject.
  65. Us
    Hats off, too, to choreographer and movement consultant Madeline Hollander for bringing a shiversome physicality to the shadow roles that recalls the creepiest moments from Hideo Nakata’s Ringu.
  66. Nobody
    It’s a blast.
  67. Happening
    Happening is a visceral, confronting experience.
  68. 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.
  69. The Vast of Night
    That a film with such an apparently familiar narrative can keep us this intrigued is a credit to the film-makers – particularly Patterson, from whom we should expect to hear much more in the future.
  70. Freaks
    Today, Browning’s sympathies are clear; if there are “freaks” on display here, they are not the versatile performers to whom the title seems to allude.
  71. 1917
    For all the steel-trap visceral efficiency, it’s the more low-key moments that really pack a punch – those moments when we’re confronted with the simple human cost of war.
  72. R.M.N.
    The space that Mungiu leaves, both physically, with his immaculately composed wide shots, and temporally, in the unhurried plotting, allows for a satisfying complexity, and an eventual swerve into dreamlike symbolism.
  73. Annette
    By comparison with 1999’s Pola X and 2012’s Holy Motors, Annette (which Carax tenderly dedicates to his daughter Nastya) is surprisingly accessible fare: adventurous, anarchic and unexpectedly heartfelt.
  74. Moana 2
    The main selling point remains Moana herself: the sparkiest and most intrepid Disney heroine of them all.
  75. Parallel Mothers
    It’s Cruz who sets the tone, with a performance that radiates warmth and is refreshingly forgiving of her character’s flaws. She has never been better.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Performance
    It's an exhilarating commentary on Swinging London in its dying days and the worlds of popular music and crime, with the disturbing paintings of Francis Bacon and the fascinating fictions of Jorge Luis Borges as influences. [11 Mar 2007, p.14]
    • The Observer (UK)
  77. The Suicide Squad
    The Suicide Squad has found its place in the superhero pantheon: the gutter, and proud.
  78. Nothing Compares
    It’s small wonder that she effectively torpedoed the stardom she never much wanted anyway.
  79. Abigail
    Stevens is one of several reasons to watch this extravagantly gory botched kidnap horror.
  80. The Broken Hearts Gallery
    The premise of writer Natalie Krinsky’s directorial debut sounds cheesy, and it is, but watching the brooding Nick softening to putty in our goofball heroine’s presence while she remains sparkily oblivious is an earnest pleasure.
  81. The Three Musketeers - Part I: D'Artagnan
    The picture’s seductive power lies elsewhere, with a glorious, typically extravagant performance from Eva Green as the treacherous Milady. She’s great fun in a role that might have been tailor-made for her skill set: Milady is vampy, venomous and dripping with goth jewellery.
  82. The Nest
    Law manages to be both utterly authentic and glossily untrustworthy.
  83. Close
    Astonishingly natural and engaging performances from young newcomers Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele lend heartfelt authenticity to a film that builds upon the promise of 2018’s Girl, confirming Dhont as a deft and empathetic chronicler of the tumultuous anguish and ecstasy of adolescence.
  84. Tuesday
    There’s a real elegance and economy to Pusić’s direction, in the first half at least. She has a knack for packing layers of story into seemingly insignificant details.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Winchester '73
    Dan Duryea (manic outlaw) and Shelley Winters (pioneer wife) are excellent, as is the photography by William Daniels. [22 Jul 2012, p.43]
    • The Observer (UK)
  86. Brian and Charles
    The result has homemade charm to spare, proving delightfully ridiculous but also poignant.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Day the Earth Stood Still
    Wise achieved fame and riches with West Side Story and The Sound of Music, but he's most highly regarded for his splendid genre movies like this sci-fi classic, one of his numerous minor masterpieces.
    • The Observer (UK)
  88. The Irishman
    For all its flash-back/flash-forward tricksiness, The Irishman rarely seems disjointed or thematically fractured. It conjures a kaleidoscopic illusion of depth that only starts to shatter as the pace flags in the final act.
  89. Fighting with My Family
    It’s a delicate balancing act that Merchant handles with aplomb.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Young and Innocent
    Lightweight and immensely enjoyable Hitchcock thriller. [22 Oct 2000, p.11]
    • The Observer (UK)
  91. The Nightingale
    It’s a punishing watch; a harrowing film which boots home its message by gouging at the vulnerable soft spots of the audience. Like the world she depicts, Kent’s storytelling shows no mercy.
  92. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
    This Shrek spin-off is a breezily entertaining DreamWorks animation that harnesses the familiar appeal of the self-aggrandising feline (Antonio Banderas), while also adopting a distinctive and original graphic visual style.
  93. Babes
    It’s caustically funny, albeit wincingly uncomfortable at times. Where the film really excels is not so much in the snappy, trash-talking vag banter, but in the perceptive depiction of the gear changes in a female friendship as the besties start to realise that their paths might be diverging.
  94. Capernaum
    Rafeea, a non-professional actor and Syrian refugee, is the film’s secret weapon. At times, the tragedy unfolding on screen feels borderline unwatchable, but his strange, fascinating, eerily adult face offers a litany of minute expressions. There is a wisdom, a soulfulness, and an icy, angry candour that feels lived rather than performed.
  95. Wildfire
    Savagely powerful, directed with an unshowy but acute eye (the use of the colour red is a simple but searingly effective device), this is a terrific feature debut from the writer and director Cathy Brady.
  96. His House
    Genuine jump scares are bolstered by the film’s spooky sound design, as well as terrific performances from Dirisu and Mosaku, whose terror is palpable.
  97. Radical
    Derbez is very likable, if a little too prone to moments of moist-eyed pathos, but the young actors are phenomenal – in particular Jennifer Trejo as Paloma, the litter-picker with a genius IQ, and Danilo Guardiola as Nico, the class clown in the clutches of the cartel.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ride the High Country
    The leads' subtle, honest performances bring pathos and poignancy to what is probably Peckinpah's most well realised film. [04 Jul 2010, p.52]
    • The Observer (UK)
  99. John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
    The latest instalment of John Wick makes an art of pain in a way that is curiously life-affirming.
  100. 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.
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