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. Babes
    It’s caustically funny, albeit wincingly uncomfortable at times. Where the film really excels is not so much in the snappy, trash-talking vag banter, but in the perceptive depiction of the gear changes in a female friendship as the besties start to realise that their paths might be diverging.
  2. Queer
    The yagé trip sequence is overlong, baggy and indulgent. The characters lose all sense of their bodies; the film simply loses its point.
  3. Bugonia
    Even by the standards of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, Bugonia is an unhinged and savage piece of storytelling.
  4. Possessor Uncut
    Scenes of faces melting and bodies merging have a satisfyingly tactile feel, harking back to the experimental cinematic trickery of Georges Méliès, albeit with added 21st-century oomph. There’s a real physical depth to Possessor that helps keep the story grounded even during its most outlandish flights of fantasy.
  5. Alice
    High-class sex work is presented as a financial quick fix and a route to female empowerment, but the film’s sex-positive politics gloss over any of the job’s potential pitfalls.
  6. My Rembrandt
    My Rembrandt is at its most interesting when struggling to reconcile the slow, careful work of art restoration with the crass, instant gratification on acquiring such rarefied objects.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Guns of Navarone
    The action sequences are splendid, it's magnificently staged and photographed, but there's too much pretentious moralising talk. [12 Dec 2010, p.51]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 72 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Flying Down to Rio
    Marvellous musical and a movie landmark, with the first joint appearance of Fred Astaire and Gingers Rogers as members of a band touring Latin America. [28 Sep 2003, p.9]
    • The Observer (UK)
  9. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
    Like a big old glass of pub wine, it might not be particularly complex or sophisticated but, my goodness, it hits the spot.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Killers
    The movie defines the violent, complex persona that would make Marvin a star, and he's cast alongside the irresistibly alluring Angie Dickinson.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Down and Out in Beverly Hills
    Amusing and well acted. [16 May 2010, p.50]
    • The Observer (UK)
  12. Candyman
    The overall tone is one of wry knowingness, which is DaCosta’s achilles heel.
  13. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
    When the film is this much fun, who cares if Grant recycles some of the greatest hits from his gag repertoire?
  14. El Conde
    Larraín’s film demonstrates a palate for mordant humour as refined as the count’s taste for blood.
  15. Let It Be
    At the very least it’s a fascinating historical document. However, the fly on the wall songbook approach is draggy and repetitive – this remains a flawed and slightly frustrating music documentary. [2024 Restored Version]
  16. Midsommar
    The film works better as a comedy than a horror, skewering its ignorant US tourists, and better still as a spiteful relationship drama.
  17. Society of the Snow
    While there are moments in which the film’s generous running time starts to take its toll, Bayona’s smart decision to make this a tale of both the survivors and victims brings a nervy uncertainty to the story, even if we all know broadly how it ends.
  18. Bull
    Writer-director Paul Andrew Williams is a furiously visceral force behind the camera. His knuckleduster direction goes beyond mere muscularity and takes on the daunting persuasive power of a mob enforcer; his storytelling is both thrilling and utterly terrifying.
  19. Watcher
    There are few genuine surprises, perhaps, but there are distinctive elements here which set the film apart, not least the way lack of fluency in a language (Julia’s Romanian is sparse to non-existent) creates a sense of siege.
  20. The Suicide Squad
    The Suicide Squad has found its place in the superhero pantheon: the gutter, and proud.
  21. Present.Perfect.
    [A] fascinating, troubling but overlong documentary.
  22. Late Night with the Devil
    Smart, cynical and at times devilishly funny, the film delivers a crackle of disruptive static to the demonic possession genre.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mogambo
    Clark Gable, 21 years older, repeats his role as an expatriate adventurer; Ava Gardner's brunette temptress looks great but is an inadequate replacement for Jean Harlow's wisecracking blonde broad; Grace Kelly is the frigid upper-class visitor (a role originally played by Mary Astor). John Lee Mahin wrote both but did a better job first time around. [26 May 2010, p.51]
    • The Observer (UK)
  24. Bobi Wine: The People's President
    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.
  25. The Invisible Man
    Subverting the original text’s point of view allows Whannell to privilege his female protagonist while continuing to explore the novel’s theme of untrammelled power.
  26. The Batman
    Zoë Kravitz is a highlight as cocktail waitress turned cat burglar Selina Kyle.
  27. Superboys of Malegaon
    Reema Kagti’s fiction feature gets a little bogged down in the tension between the friends, resulting in a marked dip in energy in the second hour. But the (literally) uplifting final act raises the roof and, through rudimentary green-screen technology, some of the cast.
  28. Mogul Mowgli
    This is abrasive, confrontational film-making, with a machine-gun assault of ideas and influences.
  29. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
    Cretton negotiates potential cliches such as flashback sequences and that hoariest of old chestnuts, the training montage, with a gravity-defying lightness of touch.
  30. Luca
    While Luca might lack some of the dizzying inventiveness that marks out top-tier Pixar, it’s packed to the gills with charm.
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