The Observer (UK)'s Scores

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For 1,640 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 3.3 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: 893 out of 1640
  2. Mixed: 714 out of 1640
  3. Negative: 33 out of 1640
1640 movie reviews
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  1. Vermiglio
    From the intimate restraint of the early scenes, Delpero’s direction becomes more fractured and abrasive. It’s a remarkable work.
  2. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
    The sense of the watering hole as a haven for lost souls – not to mention the threat of gentrification to civic space – couldn’t be more vérité.
  3. Eno
    What is particularly striking, however, uniting most critics so far, is how elegantly the film flows; there is a curious, intuitive logic weaving together these randomly chosen scenes and clips. It’s an outstanding achievement.
  4. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
    Portrait of a Lady on Fire (the French title uses the less Jamesian “jeune fille”) seamlessly intertwines themes of love and politics, representation and reality. At times it plays like a breathless romance, trembling with passionate anticipation. Elsewhere, it seems closer to a sociopolitical treatise, what Sciamma has called “a manifesto about the female gaze”.
  5. Prayers for the Stolen
    It captures the wary, precarious nature of a community that relies financially on the same forces – the rampaging drug cartels – that also terrorise it. Huezo taps into the intense vibration between young female friends who treasure each other above all else.
  6. Hale County This Morning, This Evening
    The film works as a collage of everyday moments that dovetail seamlessly between the sublime and the banal. Indeed in its most mesmerising scenes, the alchemy of duration and focus elevates these moments to something more profound.
  7. Warfare
    The overriding impression, once the adrenaline has drained away, is of futility, waste and pointless destruction.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Lady Vanishes
    It's the greatest-ever comedy-thriller, the greatest film set on a train, a faultlessly cast mirror held up to the nation in the year of Munich.
  9. Barry Lyndon
    One of the most beautiful of all Stanley Kubrick’s films, originally released in 1975, this slyly savage tale of social climbing in the 18th century is also arguably his funniest.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    McCabe & Mrs. Miller
    A truly great western.
  11. The Monkey
    Such intricate genre mechanisms are fundamental to The Monkey’s construction, but the film also has a heart that beats with authentic human emotion.
  12. La La Land
    Like the musical itself, the film has timeless charm and a brave sense of adventure. Bravo!
  13. System Crasher
    Most essential is the central performance: Zengel’s oscillating wild joys and storming furies are painful to watch. A moment when she howls for her mother (always tantalisingly out of reach) brought me to tears.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    From Here to Eternity
    [An] expertly wrought movie.
  15. Robot Dreams
    There’s such tenderness to the storytelling, such empathy and emotional depth, that it broadens the film’s potential audience from kids, who will respond to the cute characters and gentle wit, to adolescents and adults, who will recognise the angst and awkwardness of trying to function alone once again.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Meet Me in St. Louis
    It's a film whose four parts cover the seasons from summer to spring but is truly a film for all seasons and all time.
  17. Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
    Director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s feature debut intertwines music and politics in one of the best concert movies of all time.
  18. Monos
    Tonally, the film is mercurial, capturing the multiple realities of its young subjects who are both children and soldiers – the distressing, disorienting dichotomy at the centre of its eerie spell. With skill and sensitivity, Landes manages to capture both sides of their fractured world, evoking empathy without resort to pity.
  19. Parasite
    Thrillingly played by a flawless ensemble cast who hit every note and harmonic resonance of Bong and co-writer Han Jin-won’s multitonal script, it’s a tragicomic masterclass that will get under your skin and eat away at your cinematic soul.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Foreign Correspondent
    Hitchcock's second Hollywood movie is a hugely enjoyable espionage thriller. [05 Jan 1997, p.12]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Klute
    Jane Fonda gives what remains the best performance of her career as a confident, self-aware call girl in a riveting thriller by a master of paranoid conspiracy cinema that explores feminism and the darker side of inner-city life. [10 Jun 2012, p.48]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Deer Hunter
    The Deer Hunter is a rich and powerful picture that without a trace of patronisation or the slightest touch of cultural superiority, speaks eloquently for the inarticulate.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Sanjuro
    A minor masterpiece. [05 Nov 1995, p.11]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Bad News Bears
    Matthau is at his curmudgeonly best and Ritchie (at the time considered one of Hollywood's best directors) brings his usual sharp eye for middle-Americana to bear on a script by Bill Lancaster, son of Burt. [24 Oct 2010, p.46]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 74 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Naked City
    Both a landmark and some sort of masterpiece.
    • 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)
    • 60 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Gone to Earth
    Carefully restored Powell and Pressburger minor masterpiece in glowing Technicolor, doing more than justice to Mary Webb's melodramatic sub-Hardy novel of late Victorian Shropshire. [05 Aug 2001, p.9]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Big Sleep
    Bogart and Bacall's exchanges are wittily playful, and the only femme fatale is a minor though crucial figure who destroys that perennial noir fall-guy, Elisha Cook Jr. But it's unmissable, irresistible.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Jules and Jim
    The film introduced a crucial theme that was to run right through Truffaut's work: how we cope with death and how we preserve our memories of those who have died. I don't think Jeanne Moreau gave a better performance than as Catherine.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Imitation of Life
    Marketed as a glossy weepie but in fact an outstanding piece of social criticism that goes to the root of postwar American life. [26 Sep 2010, p.56]
    • The Observer (UK)
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