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. The Good Boss
    An impressively slick and slimy performance from Javier Bardem is the standout selling point for this serviceable if (perhaps appropriately?) workaday satire on corporate corruption and alienated capitalism.
  2. Alice, Darling
    What’s impressive about this psychological thriller, the debut feature film from director Mary Nighy, is how tuned in it is to the dynamics of female friendship.
  3. Drop
    It’s enjoyable stuff: a taut and crisply edited balance between humour and horror.
  4. The Good Nurse
    The film’s elegant framing and unobtrusive directorial choices give space for Chastain and Redmayne to fully inhabit their characters in a picture that combines compassion and empathy with a sickening swell of almost unbearable tension.
  5. Transformers One
    One of the aspects that makes this an unexpectedly satisfying piece of storytelling (aside from the obvious improvements in the joke quality) is the way that the film digs into the structure of Autobot society.
  6. The Black Phone
    A solid, spooky period chiller.
  7. The Audition
    The slow creep of the camera mirrors the incremental build in pressure; this is the kind of tension that feels like a tightening chokehold on the audience.
  8. Raging Grace
    Peel back the cliches and there’s something interesting here: a gnawing sense of injustice and biting social commentary.
  9. Sharper
    The performances, so thickly layered with charm and artifice that it’s hard to know what and who is real and what isn’t, are first-rate. It’s a pacy and enjoyable movie.
  10. The First Omen
    It’s a decent attempt from director Arkasha Stevenson to tap into the look and the spirit of the original film. And while it doesn’t match The Omen for scares, it does deliver some skin-crawlingly creepy moments.
  11. The Phantom of the Open
    Despite the inherent silliness, the actors play it straight. There’s an earnestness to Rylance’s performance, which encourages us to find inspiration in the underdog.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    On Moonlight Bay
    Delightful period musical set in a small town on the eve of America's entry into World War Two. [09 Apr 2006, p.14]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Just Another Girl on the I.R.T.
    Harris has a good ear for teenage dialogue. But her heroine, who addresses us directly through the camera, is a pain in the neck. She is to assertiveness-training what Schwarzenegger is to body-building. [01 Aug 1993, p.48]
    • The Observer (UK)
  14. Black '47
    It’s unfortunate that caricatured villains lessen the impact of the film’s upward punch.
  15. Plus One
    Erskine, with her earthy chuckle and precision-tooled comic timing, is the real discovery here. She’s a smutty, sniggering joy in the role and I can’t wait to see what she does next.
  16. Photograph
    This bland, sombre love story from the director of The Lunchbox (2013) lacks that film’s flavour.
  17. True Mothers
    Kawase’s frequent use of handheld camera gives parts of the film a quasi-documentary feel, but it’s the lyrical touches . . . that hit the hardest.
  18. George Michael Freedom Uncut
    Michael talks about himself with candour, and the archive footage is extensive. But the choice of interviewees, including a tittering Ricky Gervais honking out off-key witticisms, James Corden and Liam Gallagher, seems a bit random.
  19. Alien: Romulus
    While Alien: Romulus leans into the grislier elements of its horror heritage – at the expense of much in the way of deeper story development – it fails to assert itself as a particularly distinctive addition to the series, formally, tonally or thematically.
  20. Enforcement
    While Shorta is certainly a propulsive piece of action cinema, which makes effective use of its acid yellow, cement grey and burnt umber palette and warren-of-concrete location, there’s a crudely schematic quality to the writing.
  21. Frozen II
    The more times I listen to Frozen II’s rousing anthem Into the Unknown, the more I’m convinced of its earworm quality. It’s as good (and maybe better) than the indelible Let It Go.
  22. MaXXXine
    Gore addicts will be sated – the prosthetics and makeup are robustly grisly – but the story feels rather too glib and predictable to be fully satisfying.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Road to Bali
    Bob Hope and Bing Crosby milk a familiar formula for all its worth in their penultimate 'Road' movie (the only one in colour) which takes them on a wise-cracking journey to the South Seas where Dorothy Lamour is inevitably on hand as an Indonesian princess to be rescued and fought over. [13 Oct 2002, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
  24. Captain Marvel
    It’s just a pity that the movie that introduces her is so unremarkable.
  25. Layla
    Layla is less about making peace with the past than it is about staying true to the present.
  26. The New Boy
    The latest film from Warwick Thornton (Samson and Delilah) is strikingly beautiful, its widescreen vistas rendered in a scorched palette of dust and ochres. But the pacing is languid to a fault and it all gets rather bogged down in allegory.
  27. The Queen of My Dreams
    Flashbacks to Mariam’s technicolour youth in 1969 Karachi are gorgeously realised, and the design department (in particular wardrobe) gets to revel in an eye-popping kaleidoscope of primary hues.
  28. Bombshell
    The film can’t square the fact that its protagonists are the victims of sexism and yet perpetuate it by sheer virtue of working for a rightwing news channel.
  29. Suspiria
    Watching this sporadically sparkling yet weirdly saggy “cover version” of Argento’s biggest international hit, I couldn’t help wishing that someone had been there with the scissors to trim the film of its indulgences – not the violence, but the verbosity.
  30. Baby Done
    Tinder-dry delivery bolsters the film’s gentle humour, and while the momentum sags a little in the second half, the natural chemistry between Matafeo and Lewis keeps the audience invested and the story relatable.
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