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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    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Rain People
    A journey by car that becomes a journey into the inner self, Wild Strawberries played a crucial role in creating what is now thought of as an American genre, the Road Movie. [11 Jun 1995, p.12]
    • The Observer (UK)
  2. The Last Showgirl
    Anderson, whose character is left questioning not just what the future holds, but also the costly choices that shaped her past, is excellent, delivering a performance that has single-handedly rewritten the way she is viewed as an actor.
  3. Sasquatch Sunset
    What the film shares with the Zellners’ previous pictures is a deft handling of tonal shifts, particularly the delicate tipping point at which flippant absurdity gives way to the darker minor key of melancholy.
  4. Bumblebee
    Though the references are familiar, it’s a fresh direction for the macho franchise.
  5. Holy Spider
    It’s a tense, atmospheric piece of film-making but it made me profoundly uncomfortable – and not, I should add, in a good way. There’s a prurience in how the murders are filmed – the camera hungrily scouring the distorted faces of dying women – that borders on dehumanising.
  6. Cowboys
    Comic actors Steve Zahn and Jillian Bell are uncharacteristically earnest in this achingly well-intentioned but thuddingly heavy-handed family drama.
  7. Causeway
    Lawrence is phenomenal, giving the kind of wary, reined-in performance that made such a compelling impression in her breakthrough film, Winter’s Bone. And the always excellent Henry gradually strips back a character who at first seems wholly at ease with life to reveal layers of suppressed guilt and pain.
  8. Cyrano
    It’s as though an essential part of the character’s appeal is missing; the knock-on effect is that the film’s glorious scenery and Sicilian backdrop end up doing rather a lot of heavy lifting.
  9. The Kid Who Would Be King
    I’m a huge fan of Cornish’s 2011 debut Attack the Block, but this film isn’t nearly as energetic or enjoyably wacky as its predecessor. In fairness, it’s pitched at a considerably younger audience, but at two hours it drags; less patient children may struggle.
  10. Judy
    Zellweger and Garland coexist symbiotically on the screen, in a kind of magic-eye illusion of a performance that flips back and forwards between the two. Zellweger is phenomenally good nonetheless.
  11. Wonka
    Wonka is an effervescent pleasure – an endlessly, intricately charming treasure trove of a movie. And overall, Timothée Chalamet’s fresh-faced take on the central character – bringing a puckish innocence and spry, light-footed energy to one of the most famously jaded misanthropes in children’s literature – works rather well.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Red Dust
    No amount of resourceful set dressing can convince us that this poky MGM backlot is a perspiring slab of French Indochina in monsoon season. [03 Aug 2014, p.6]
    • The Observer (UK)
  13. Last Swim
    Sunny, soulful, if a little montage-heavy at times, this is a more conventional film. Hekmat’s magnetic star quality, though, is unmistakable: she’s a free and fascinating presence.
  14. Pieces of a Woman
    The film is acutely perceptive on the effect of a bereavement on other people.
  15. Swan Song
    Ali is tremendous in a dual role that takes in everything from a beguiling meet-cute with his future wife (Naomie Harris) to a third act consumed by grief and doubt about whether he did the best thing for his family after all.
  16. VS.
    For all the impressive qualities of the picture, it does feel as though there is a rigid upper-age limit for its audience.
  17. Dumb Money
    Ultimately, Dumb Money may not be as revealing about the financial markets as it is about the rallying power of the internet.
  18. Master
    Diallo utilises the visual language of horror – red lighting, empty shower stalls, a gnarled hand that emerges from under the bed – to express the terror of racism and the rot of its legacy.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Road to Rio
    In the fifth and funniest of the Road movies, Hope and Crosby play third-rate vaudevillians rescuing heiress Dorothy Lamour from her wicked aunt (the incomparable Gale Sondergaard) in Latin America. [09 Apr 2000, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  20. Mid90s
    The attempts at authentic stoner dialogue soon become tedious, with too little plot or character development grounding the inanity (Hill’s self-written script also features an eyebrow-raising overuse of the N-word).
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Lion Is in the Streets
    An effective, superficial film, much inferior to All the Kings Men, which was also based on Louisianas governor Huey Long. [30 Jan 2000]
    • The Observer (UK)
  22. Bad Reputation
    This unwillingness to divulge anything truly intimate, combined with the film’s jumbled chronology, gives the whole thing a thin, Wikipedia-ish feel. Jett says she wants to offer her fans “a primal release”. A pity, then, that this film about her is so repressed.
  23. Thirteen Lives
    Despite the fact that we all know the outcome, and that it’s the third film in as many years to tell the story, Ron Howard’s account of the drama is compulsively watchable and breathlessly tense.
  24. Mothering Sunday
    It’s the more deceptively restrained and poetic elements that strike home.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Husbands
    Highly uneven, painfully drawn-out, deeply sincere, wildly misogynistic and at times agonisingly tedious. It is also intermittently brilliant, with moments of piercing honesty. There is, however, not a single memorable line of dialogue or anything that might pass for wit.
  26. Harriet
    So often, historical films are stale and mired in misery, but Harriet has a rare buoyancy.
  27. The Return
    Both are terrific, but Binoche is the standout.
  28. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
    This is a top-quality summer blockbuster, bringing fresh blood and new ideas into the series while staying recognisably within the worlds so meticulously created in the previous three movies.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Reivers
    Pleasing, affectionate adaptation of William Faulkner's last novel. [01 Aug 1999, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  30. Puzzle
    The lovely, subtle work from Macdonald, as her character blossoms and her horizons broaden, gives the film a warmth and magnetism.
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