The Observer (UK)'s Scores

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:
1641 movie reviews
  1. It is very much the MIA story told from the MIA viewpoint. Normally, this might be an issue, but, as the film points out, so many people have rushed to undermine and discredit her, it’s perhaps only fair that in this case she gets to tell her side, without spin or sly references to truffle fries.
  2. It’s a fascinating and enraging film and a timely reminder of the courage of members of the feminist vanguard.
  3. It’s a visceral, breathless rampage, and while it’s a little rough around the edges at times, the picture’s brawling energy makes it an exhilarating ride.
  4. Immersive, disorienting, frightening: this experimental documentary takes its form from the landscape it explores.
  5. This spry little French-language picture, which delights in subverting our expectations and leaves us with teasing questions about culpability and a crime, shows the director at his most understated, the better to foreground the excellent, intriguingly layered performance from Hélène Vincent.
  6. We laugh, partly, from relief at escaping the unimaginable.
  7. While the fantastical elements provide a distance for the audience from the bleak core of the story, they also heighten the sense of enveloping melancholy of this aching tale of thwarted first love.
  8. The momentum really builds in the third act, but the film’s quieter moments of contemplation are its most striking.
  9. It’s a masterclass in using a stripped-back, minimal approach to gripping effect, evident throughout Ilker Çatak’s terrific, taut, Oscar-nominated drama.
  10. The result is the kind of stinging emotional candour that makes you wince.
  11. Fonte, who deservedly won the best actor prize at Cannes this year, is remarkable.
  12. It’s a gripping piece of film-making: a propulsive, kinetic account of a grassroots campaign captured at what would seem to be considerable personal risk to both the subject and directors. And as a snapshot of a curdled, corrupted political system, it is eye-opening and at times genuinely terrifying.
  13. It won’t be for everyone, certainly, but if social distancing has you not just climbing the walls but contemplating punching a hole in them, this might just be the perfect cathartic lockdown movie.
  14. Rarely does a music documentary so vividly evoke both the artistic approach and the tricky personality of its subject.
  15. Fascinatingly, in this world there are only fascists, making the film’s looming riot police feel like a real and relevant threat.
  16. It’s not subtle – at one point he grafts Trump’s voice on to footage of Hitler addressing a Nazi rally. But subtle was never in Moore’s cinematic vocabulary.
  17. Of the two main characters, Clara provides the tonal touchstone for the film. Like her, the picture spins off into moments of unpredictable fantasy – musical numbers inspired by television variety shows. Music – peppy Italian pop, schmaltzy ballads – is inventively employed throughout, but the use of colour and costume is particularly evocative.
  18. Mostly Regan’s unfiltered approach brings a fizzing unpredictability and vitality to this abrasively empathic exploration of a father-daughter bond.
  19. It’s still a small, silly movie and there’s nothing particularly novel or even of the moment about its technosceptic stance on machines, but as a genre exercise, it’s a fun ride.
  20. The atmosphere is stripped down and austere, allowing the songs to speak for themselves as they transport us from this world to the next.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It's an accomplished, affecting, relentless work.
  21. This is a film that examines both the past and the present day; that plots a path on the common ground between them.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Decades on, I found its loopy humour and skew-whiff child’s-eye observations reassuringly in place.
  22. This Kelly is motivated by an oedipal complex and wears dresses to distract his opponents; The Babadook’s Essie Davis is equal parts fearsome and magnetic as his enterprising sex worker mother. More enjoyable still are the film’s corrupt policemen; the louche, stockinged, pipe-smoking Constable Fitzpatrick (Nicholas Hoult) and virile cartoon villain Sergeant O’Neil (Charlie Hunnam).
  23. It might be staged, but it has a scrappy, fly-on-the-wall feel.
  24. What’s interesting and unexpected is the film’s subtle acknowledgement of culturally specific generational trauma and displacement.
  25. The more times I listen to Frozen II’s rousing anthem Into the Unknown, the more I’m convinced of its earworm quality. It’s as good (and maybe better) than the indelible Let It Go.
  26. Ruffalo optioned the rights to Nathaniel Rich’s original article and has an executive producer credit on the film; clearly, he has a stake in the material. The actor is excellent as reluctant hero Bilott, muting his natural charisma to create a character who is both taciturn and generous, determined but socially ill at ease.
  27. Both are terrific, but Binoche is the standout.
  28. 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.

Top Trailers