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. Juliet, Naked
    Byrne and Hawke, both easygoing, naturalistic performers at their best when they barely seem to be acting, have an utterly persuasive connection.
  2. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
    Set in the murkily atmospheric underworld of 1980s Hong Kong, wildly entertaining, eye-poppingly violent triad martial arts flick is an old-school throwback to the action cinema heyday of the territory.
  3. Peterloo
    Leigh’s egalitarian insistence on voices for all means that there are a few too many of them in play. Still, there is a fascinating wealth of detail, both in the vividly recreated period backdrop and, more remarkably, given the sheer volume of people on screen, in the characters, however fleetingly they appear.
  4. A Love Song
    There’s a sparseness and stillness to Max Walker-Silverman’s storytelling that is filled by Dickey’s terrific, lived-in performance and the brief spark of connection between two lonely people.
  5. Alien: Romulus
    While Alien: Romulus leans into the grislier elements of its horror heritage – at the expense of much in the way of deeper story development – it fails to assert itself as a particularly distinctive addition to the series, formally, tonally or thematically.
  6. The Eight Mountains
    Sweeping and novelistic in scope, the film, adapted from an Italian bestseller by Paolo Cognetti, combines the earthy, rooted grit of Jack London with the vivid emotional landscapes of Elena Ferrante.
  7. Prey
    It’s a prequel to the Predator series that stays true to the essence of the original – stylishly violent, stickily graphic, impossibly tense – while also working satisfyingly as a self-contained entity.
  8. Night of the Kings
    This portrayal of imprisonment may be authentically down to earth (Blackbeard’s rival Lass wants inmates to be managed “more rationally”, not as enslaved people but “customers”), but Night of the Kings proves most captivating in evoking the transformative power of the imagination.
  9. The Velvet Underground
    A more conventional director might have chosen to focus on their most famous member, Reed, but Haynes smartly structures the film as a group show, giving space to the women in the ensemble.
  10. The Colors Within
    With its wide-eyed lack of cynicism and the crystalline delicacy of the animation, this is a heart-swellingly lovely work.
  11. Amazing Grace
    When a parishioner leaps to her feet, her spirit clearly moved, you’ll want to do the same. Wholy Holy indeed.
  12. Rojo
    The film does not serve up its ideas in easily digestible bites. The audience needs to work with a dislocated string of scenes that sometimes highlight absurdity, sometimes violence and frequently say very little at all.
  13. Blindspotting
    What could have been laboured and polemical is deftly handled, defused with comedy and powered by a pulsating score. Dialogue that slides into rap at key moments adds a heartfelt sense of honesty. This is the real deal.
  14. 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.
  15. Murina
    The atmosphere, of sun and celebration, rings as hollow as the Europop that Ante blasts to drown out arguments; sonar-stabs of cello on the score sound a warning
  16. Subject
    It’s thought-provoking stuff, which also explores our own role, as audience members, in the voracious demand for other people’s stories.
  17. Madeline's Madeline
    The dilemma she presents is ethical: is it fair to ask someone to traumatise (or retraumatise) themselves for the sake of art? Rather boldly, it seems as though Decker is also asking the question of herself.
  18. Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom
    Lunana’s appeal is hard to miss: though rather naive in its messaging and unashamedly sentimental, the film is so pure of spirit and so open-hearted, you want to breathe it in, to fill your lungs with it.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Cranes Are Flying
    Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes Are Flying has superb lyrical photography and a heartbreaking performance by Tatyana Samojlova as a hospital worker who makes a bad marriage after hearing that her fiance has been killed in action. [28 Jan 2007, p.20]
    • The Observer (UK)
  20. Memory
    Gradually and delicately, Sylvia and Saul’s tessellating traumas are revealed by a beautifully balanced pair of lead performances.
  21. Assassins
    Perhaps wisely, Ryan White’s slick documentary chooses not to mine the bizarre scene for comic potential. Instead, he spins the arrest of Siti Aisyah and Doan Thi Huong – economic migrants from Indonesia and Vietnam respectively – into a parable about political corruption.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Spellbound
    Trail-blazing tale of murder at an American mental hospital that helped make the sympathetic Freudian shrink a Hollywood standby. [24 Aug 2011, p.56]
    • The Observer (UK)
  23. 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.
  24. 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.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Saint Jack
    Bogdanovich's best film since his fall from grace in the mid-Seventies, and produced by Roger Corman who gave him his first jobs on low-budget drive-in movies. [18 Aug 2002, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
  26. Greenland
    A first-rate B-picture, and a timely reminder of the delights of well-crafted popcorn thrills.
  27. Passages
    Most modern American film-makers rarely get the chance to conjure frank sex scenes that serve an explicit narrative purpose, so it’s significant that Sachs has cited the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Belgian film-maker Chantal Akerman (along with fellow Europeans Maurice Pialat and Luchino Visconti) as inspirations for this French-German co-production.
  28. The Assistant
    It’s a credit to Garner that, as a character who effectively has no voice, she manages to say so much about Jane’s predicament through posture, pose and gesture.
  29. Pokémon Detective Pikachu
    The CGI critters are seamlessly integrated with the 35mm cinematography, the film stock’s grain smoothing the visual tackiness.
  30. 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.
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