The Observer (UK)'s Scores

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For 1,641 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 3.1 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: 894 out of 1641
  2. Mixed: 714 out of 1641
  3. Negative: 33 out of 1641
1641 movie reviews
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  1. Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
    The narration, by LaKeith Stanfield, speaks on behalf of the photographer, who died in 1990. It’s through his remarkable pictures of South Africa and Black America, however, that we really hear his voice.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Limelight
    It's a verbose, technically creaky work, both sentimental and self-indulgent, and never very funny except for a brilliant scene with Chaplin and Buster Keaton as a disaster-prone musical duo. However, there are sublime, deeply affecting moments and for those who think Chaplin one of the key figures of 20th-century popular culture, it is a crucial movie.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Days and Nights in the Forest
    It brings to mind Chekhov, Jean Renoir and Love's Labour's Lost and is quite exquisite. [28 Jul 2002, p.9]
    • The Observer (UK)
  4. Nothing Lasts Forever
    The interview subjects are fascinating throughout, but jewellery designer and author Aja Raden is a particular gift: funny, insightful, dripping with sarcasm and oversized earrings.
  5. Sometimes Always Never
    The precision in the shot composition is mirrored in the storytelling – there’s an unassuming elegance that balances the eccentricity of a film that makes something as mundane as Scrabble into a taut dramatic device.
  6. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
    Like Wain’s art, the film is superficially twee – characters are referred to as “nosy poseys” at one point – but under the kitsch is something more rewarding: an affecting portrait of a creative but troubled man.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Magician
    It's amusing and weirdly convincing.
  8. Licorice Pizza
    Like all the best evocations of times past, Licorice Pizza has no answers – only an enraptured sense of awe that makes Anderson’s joyous film feel like a very personal memory.
  9. Bugonia
    Even by the standards of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, Bugonia is an unhinged and savage piece of storytelling.
  10. First Man
    While Gosling plays everything close to his chest, it’s Foy who invites us into the unfolding drama with her wonderfully empathetic performance.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Firecreek
    Superior social western in which a torpid backwater community and its irresolute part-time sheriff (James Stewart) are redeemed and revivified through a menacing visit by ageing outlaw Henry Fonda's gang. Weathered oldtimers Dean Jagger, Ed Begley, Jack Elam and Jay C Flippen provide authenticity. Excellent photography by William Clothier. [15 May 2005, p.91]
    • The Observer (UK)
  12. People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan
    Rarely does a half-hour TV show successfully stretch itself into a 90-minute film. It’s a nice surprise, then, that the popular BBC mockumentary works as a feature.
  13. DJ Ahmet
    It’s a rich depiction of a traditional Yörük community – Turkic tribal people – that feels authentically lived in rather than an ethnographic curio, as well as a fresh coming-of-age film.
  14. Notturno
    Rosi’s broader critique of violence is implied through footage of a play performed by patients in a psychiatric hospital, and of a children’s art therapy class. He is more interested in the reverberations of conflict than the source, focusing on those who have suffered its effects directly.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cat People
    This chilling, weirdly plausible tale centres on a New York dress designer (French star Simone Simon) obsessed with the notion that she's living under an ancient Serbian curse. It achieves its effects obliquely. [11 Dec 2005, p.123]
    • The Observer (UK)
  16. Sabaya
    [A] sensitive, frequently harrowing observational documentary.
  17. Rosie
    Greene is terrific – her Rosie is a force of nature. When she cracks, briefly, under the strain, her voice is a raw blade cutting through the bubble of safety she has created but no longer believes in.
  18. Beirut
    This is an enjoyably pacey spy picture, unfolding against the backdrop of a country that has imploded. It’s a film in which smiles are masks and conversations are loaded with double meanings.
  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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Wrong Man
    Henry Fonda brings an overwhelming sadness to his role as a New York nightclub musician who's almost ruined, and his wife (Vera Miles) driven insane, as the result of his wrongful arrest for armed robbery. An intriguing case of life imitating Hitchcock's art. [02 Nov 1997, p.9]
    • The Observer (UK)
  21. Judy
    Zellweger and Garland coexist symbiotically on the screen, in a kind of magic-eye illusion of a performance that flips back and forwards between the two. Zellweger is phenomenally good nonetheless.
  22. The Night House
    The fuzzy plotting is balanced by Hall’s brilliantly controlled performance as the caustic, sceptical Beth, whose grief has pushed her to the knife edge of sanity.
  23. Red Island
    It captures beautifully and atmospherically a sense of mounting tension as the military men grapple with their impotency in a newly independent country.
  24. The Last Showgirl
    Anderson, whose character is left questioning not just what the future holds, but also the costly choices that shaped her past, is excellent, delivering a performance that has single-handedly rewritten the way she is viewed as an actor.
  25. The World to Come
    This is a singularly subdued kind of storytelling. Passions run deep, but there’s a reticence in the film-making that makes them feel like a whispered secret in a church pew rather than a grand, soul-baring declaration.
  26. The Heiresses
    A superb first feature from Marcelo Martinessi, this entirely female-driven story is full of gentle wit and playful observations on the crumbling upper echelons of Paraguayan society – there are parallels with early Lucrecia Martel, and with Sebastián Lelio’s exploration of older female sexuality, Gloria.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    3 Godfathers
    This underrated picture opens with a superbly staged bank robbery, is strikingly shot in Death Valley, and is dedicated to the great Harry Carey, who starred in Ford's 1919 version of this story and died in 1947 after appearing in Red River. [22 Aug 2004, p.63]
    • The Observer (UK)
  28. Mary and The Witch's Flower
    It may lack the originality of the best Miyazaki films, but with its heart-swelling score and exquisitely realised worlds, this is a must for Ghibli fans.
  29. The Alpinist
    A portrait of a man who, as one of his contemporaries remarked, feels almost too comfortable on the side of a mountain.
  30. Mr. Bachmann and His Class
    It’s an investment in time, certainly, but this profound and hopeful picture justifies every second of its three hours and 38 minute running time.
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