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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    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Suspicion
    Hitchcock's fourth Hollywood movie is a subtle thriller set in a very Hollywoodian England populated by leading members of the Tinseltown cricket club. [19 Jan 2003, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
  2. Hollywoodgate
    [A] fascinating, chilling film.
  3. Scrapper
    Mostly Regan’s unfiltered approach brings a fizzing unpredictability and vitality to this abrasively empathic exploration of a father-daughter bond.
  4. Subject
    It’s thought-provoking stuff, which also explores our own role, as audience members, in the voracious demand for other people’s stories.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    One of Our Aircraft Is Missing
    One of the best World War Two morale-boosting adventure movies. [07 Feb 1999, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  6. 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.
  7. The Duke
    While The Duke is never quite as surprising as the case that inspired it, it nonetheless retains a much-needed astringent streak.
  8. When Fall Is Coming
    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.
  9. Calamity Jane
    Boisterous fun, with Day’s performance – as the song goes – as busy as a fizzy sarsaparilla.
  10. Dream Scenario
    It’s a savagely funny showcase for Cage at his very best. But the picture sours somewhat in a third act that departs from crisp character study to target cancel culture, losing some of its biting humour in the process.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Them!
    It moves fast and is superbly silly. [01 Aug 1954, p.6]
    • The Observer (UK)
  12. Will & Harper
    The cushioning effect of Ferrell’s celebrity and, judging by the closing credit list, an extensive and well-funded production team, mean that while this is a likable-enough film, it is an insulated and artificial construction.
  13. Sweat
    Von Horn understands the gap between Sylwia’s authenticity online – mediated through the safety of a screen – and the intimacy her followers feel entitled to in real life.
  14. tick, tick...Boom!
    Alexandra Shipp is a grounding presence as Larson’s girlfriend, Susan, while Garfield fizzes with energy and outsize emotion. He’s a fabulous crier and pitch-perfect as a shrill, preening narcissist who manages, against the odds, to remain resolutely likable.
  15. She Said
    Schrader’s sensitive, unshowy approach to the directing choices is a smart decision; this is a film that is respectful of and in service to the stories of the women.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oklahoma!
    It's a skillful blending of the folksy and the sophisticated, shot almost entirely on location. With evergreen songs, delightful choreography by Agnes De Mille, and charming performances from Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae as the romantic leads, Charlotte Greenwood, and Gloria Grahame as the girl who can't say no. [22 Dec 2013, p.40]
    • The Observer (UK)
  17. Tehran Taboo
    The characters and plotting tend to be a little schematic, but just because the trajectories of the women’s narratives are predictable, it doesn’t follow that the story lacks power. On the contrary – this is fearless, potent storytelling.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Naked City
    Both a landmark and some sort of masterpiece.
  19. Bird
    Bird finds beauty and wonder in every frame (one that Arnold has slyly shaped to evoke the format and curved corners of a smartphone screen, echoing the way Bailey captures private moments of visual poetry). The film celebrates rather than judges its erratic and occasionally challenging characters It’s the closest Andrea Arnold has come to a feelgood flick.
  20. Beats
    It’s a terrific little film that combines the earthy humour and honesty of a Shane Meadows movie with an unexpected expressionistic section – flooded with colour – that channels the boys’ joyful dancefloor abandon.
  21. Queen & Slim
    It’s a terrifically tactile film, full of the kind of deliciously observed detail that lingers in the mind long after the movie has finished.
  22. Some Kind of Heaven
    It’d be easy to mistake the director’s deadpan observation for mocking, but the space he holds for the darker aspects of his characters’ individual stories helps to puncture any cultivated cutesyness.
  23. 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.
  24. On the Rocks
    A film that knowingly lifts riffs from screwball capers and melancholy romcoms alike, writing love letters to the city of New York as it swirls from one upmarket fairytale locale to the next.
  25. Miss Juneteenth
    Miss Juneteenth is a beautifully observed and quietly powerful drama that applies its coming-of-age tropes to children, parents and politics alike.
  26. The Iron Claw
    Even if The Iron Claw doesn’t quite match the bracing originality of the other two films, it still cements Durkin’s status as one of the most consistently impressive American directors of his generation.
  27. Robin's Wish
    It’s certainly informative and affecting, but the limited use of early archive footage and the emphasis on Williams’s decline and suffering make for bleak viewing.
  28. Mystify: Michael Hutchence
    The result is enlightening and affecting, providing a missing piece in the puzzle of a life prematurely ended.
  29. Fair Play
    It’s maliciously effective, up to a point: an enjoyably lurid piece of classy-trashy psychological warfare. Unfortunately, both the plot and the performances boil over in the third act, and the film loses much of its icily calculated cool.
  30. She Will
    A thrillingly intense central performance by Alice Krige (who earned her genre spurs in the underrated 1981 screen adaptation of Peter Straub’s Ghost Story) is the lightning rod at the core of the film, grounding its hallucinogenic visuals in the terra firma of past tragedies and modern traumas, provoking “dark thoughts; really dark thoughts”.
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