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. Martin Margiela: In His Own Words
    The use of the notoriously media-shy Margiela’s warm, serious spoken voice helps to create intimacy, even though we never see his face.
  2. Benjamin
    The jokes are brutal and very funny, with Benjamin the butt of most of them.
  3. MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A.
    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.
  4. In Camera
    It’s a heightened caricature, certainly, but there are uncomfortable truths underpinning the surreal excesses.
  5. Late Night
    The lack of diversity in entertainment is an open goal, long overdue for a skewering. But rather than kicking over the traces of the patriarchal establishment, the film ends up just giving it a playful tickle.
  6. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
    It’s mildly amusing, and Evan Rachel Wood is great fun as an evil Madonna. But one joke – even a joke as bizarre as this – is not enough to sustain a whole movie.
  7. Knife + Heart
    Variously gorgeous, ethereal, artful and tacky, both Anne’s film and Gonzalez’s are sustained by a throbbing sexual energy, aided by French electronic act M83’s twinkling, club‑inspired score.
  8. The Old Guard
    There’s plenty to enjoy, not least Layne’s terrific turn as the newbie with a fresh take on forever.
  9. Only the River Flows
    Offbeat flashes of humour punctuate this stylishly enigmatic, Jean-Pierre Melville-inspired crime picture, but the momentum flags a little in a convoluted final act.
  10. Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time
    It’s this aspect – the real warmth, the way the camera becomes almost incidental in the encounters between documentarian and subject – which gives this film its satisfying emotional depth.
  11. Radical
    Derbez is very likable, if a little too prone to moments of moist-eyed pathos, but the young actors are phenomenal – in particular Jennifer Trejo as Paloma, the litter-picker with a genius IQ, and Danilo Guardiola as Nico, the class clown in the clutches of the cartel.
  12. Cocote
    Dominican Republic film-maker Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias’s gorgeous, restlessly creative hybrid fiction combines ethnographic documentary with improvised drama to explore a clash of two religious identities.
  13. Sicilian Ghost Story
    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.
  14. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
    Földes’s matter-of-fact approach to storytelling balances the tendency towards quirkiness in the material. Dream logic coexists with the crushingly mundane, in a picture that also showcases the director’s musical talents with an intricate and involving score.
  15. Why Don't You Just Die!
    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.
  16. The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future
    Blending science fiction and magical realism, environmental catastrophe and family secrets, Francisca Alegría’s heady mystery is an ambitious and murkily atmospheric debut.
  17. God's Creatures
    This solid but familiar drama is acted with conviction; Watson and Mescal are equally compelling. But there’s only so much a quality performance can do – and the film leans heavily on shots of Watson’s troubled face – when the material is a well-meaning but dourly rote exploration of cycles of violence.
  18. Only the Animals
    This is film-making that really tests the elasticity of its story strands, but it largely manages to keep the audience from teetering into disbelief. For the most part, that’s thanks to persuasively solid characters and casting.
  19. Censor
    This thrilling, dizzying debut from Welsh writer-director Prano Bailey-Bond is a nostalgic treat for anyone old enough to remember the infamous “video nasties” scare of the early 80s. Yet beneath the retro surface lies a more universal tale about the power of horror to confront our deepest fears – a timeless celebration of the liberating nature of the dark side.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Here Comes Mr. Jordan
    It is a delightful film, both comic and touching, with a wonderfully camp performance from Edward Everett Horton as one of God's bureaucrats. [06 Sep 2009, p.30]
    • The Observer (UK)
  21. The Miseducation of Cameron Post
    It’s one of the lovely ironies of Akhavan’s bittersweet film that Cameron finds true friendship in a place dedicated to stamping it out, and there’s laugh-out-loud joy to be found in the acid-tongued interaction between these soulmates.
  22. Rocketman
    Fletcher is the real star of this show, a director whose enthusiasm for musical storytelling shines through every frame, hitting all the emotional high notes.
  23. Wildhood
    It’s striking, certainly, but teasingly elusive when it comes to story resolution.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The One That Got Away
    It all takes place before America's entry into the Second World War, and the three bids for freedom (the last from a prison train in Canada) are well handled. In his first English-speaking movie Kruger is impressive, though somewhat enigmatic. [26 Feb 2006, p.22]
    • The Observer (UK)
  25. How to Build a Girl
    It’s a credit to Feldstein that the wobbliness of her Wolverhampton accent never comes between us and her character. Instead, we simply get on board with her adventures, accepting her for what she is – however odd that may sometimes sound.
  26. Tuesday
    There’s a real elegance and economy to Pusić’s direction, in the first half at least. She has a knack for packing layers of story into seemingly insignificant details.
  27. Dragonfly
    This lean, intimate drama is a Paul Andrew Williams film, and anyone who saw his brutal revenge picture, Bull, will have an inkling of how dark his movies can get. Even so, the blunt force of Dragonfly’s tonal swerve is enough to knock the air out of you.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Pawnbroker
    The movie is brilliantly photographed in black and white by Boris Kaufman (who lit On the Waterfront and 12 Angry Men ), but this ambitious work strains for effect in trying to make Steiger's character the focus for half the problems of the twentieth century. [9 July 2000]
    • The Observer (UK)
  29. Green Book
    Ali beautifully captures the complexity of the man who juggles whiskey-soured, morning-after regret with a stubborn pride in his true self.
  30. The Competition
    Simon’s fly-on-the-wall mode is a distancing tool, but shouldn’t be confused with ambivalence. Exposing the mechanics of decision-making is an implicit reproof of increasing conservatism, both of La Fémis itself and the film-makers they are producing.
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