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. 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.
  2. Make Up
    Eerie images of a bloodied fingernail and long grass lit by amber floodlights signal Oakley’s sly sense of humour and eye for visual poetry.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Duel
    A haunting study of middle-class paranoia scripted by seasoned horror author Richard Matheson, it established Spielberg in Europe as a name to be reckoned with before he'd been heard of in the States. [03 Oct 2004, p.83]
    • The Observer (UK)
  4. 13th
    The words are so piercing and acute that we hardly need the stirring score that swirls in the background.
  5. This Much I Know to Be True
    The atmosphere is stripped down and austere, allowing the songs to speak for themselves as they transport us from this world to the next.
  6. Everything Everywhere All at Once
    The result may be a tad overlong and convolutedly overstuffed, but it made me laugh, cry and think – which is more than can be said for many a Marvel flick.
  7. After Love
    After Love constantly foregrounds duality, narratively and stylistically.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. Godland
    There’s a strong element of myth and magic at work here too, most notably in the recitation of an eerie dream about mating eels and mass infidelity, and in the sight of the body of a horse rotting over a period of years and returning to the earth. It all adds to the film’s haunting appeal.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Klute
    Jane Fonda gives what remains the best performance of her career as a confident, self-aware call girl in a riveting thriller by a master of paranoid conspiracy cinema that explores feminism and the darker side of inner-city life. [10 Jun 2012, p.48]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 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.
  13. MLK/FBI
    Pollard’s decision to eschew traditional talking heads in favour of voiceover interviews allows the archive to take centre stage.
  14. Beginning
    Sukhitashvili’s subtle performance brings interiority to a character who might otherwise be defined entirely by her suffering.
  15. 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.
  16. Midnight Family
    Captured by a camera that frequently rattles against the sides of the hurtling ambulance, the Ochoas’ night-time escapades are electrifying and urgent, doused in strobing emergency lights and powered by adrenaline.
  17. 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.
  18. Riders of Justice
    We laugh, partly, from relief at escaping the unimaginable.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ama Gloria
    One of the year’s most hypnotic performances nestles inside this seemingly modest French-language coming-of-age drama.
  20. 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.
  21. 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.
    • 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)
  23. Memoir of a Snail
    It’s bleak, certainly. But what makes this a distinctively Elliot film is not the relentless misfortune but the flashes of mordant humour to be found alongside Grace’s hoarded knick-knacks, and the care with which the director handles his damaged, cherished social outcasts.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Scent of Green Papaya
    The boldness of this remarkable feature film debut resides in its reticence, and we experience the world through a special sensibility. [03 Apr 1994, p.5]
    • The Observer (UK)
  25. The Hate U Give
    Though it leans on the genre beats of melodrama to occasionally clunky effect in order to mine the audience’s tears, it’s impressive how it metabolises these moments of charged emotion in order to make its wider points.
  26. I Lost My Body
    The primary tone is gentle and melancholic – an almost existential evocation of memory, and the longing to be made whole.
  27. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
    The real star? Johnson’s crisply mischievous screenplay, which crams in so many laughs you almost don’t notice the occasional plot holes.
  28. A White, White Day
    The momentum really builds in the third act, but the film’s quieter moments of contemplation are its most striking.
  29. The Guardians
    There are two special moments in the film.
  30. Benediction
    Behind it all is an endlessly saddening search for that transformative sacrament evoked by the film’s title – alluring yet elusive.
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