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 3.2 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. Anonymous Club
    While the film is not particularly groundbreaking in its approach to the music documentary, it’s unusually candid and open in what it reveals about the cost of the creative process.
  2. Hoard
    Carmoon’s depiction of trauma, grief and mental health in crisis as a kind of putrid, repellent stench that clings to the skin, stings the eyeballs and turns the stomach makes for a queasily insalubrious viewing experience. Hoard is a film I admire, but struggle to like.
  3. Smallfoot
    The songs are a bum note, but the film does raise thoughtful questions about dogma, fake news and the identity crises that might occur once a community’s core beliefs are challenged.
  4. 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.
  5. The Dig
    In a film defined by understatement, it’s the little details that matter.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Moby Dick
    Gregory Peck's dignified Ahab is, like his leg, somewhat wooden, but the cast is splendid (not least Orson Welles's guest spot as Father Mapple), and Oswald Morris's experimental colour photography (based on old whaling prints) is commendable. [29 May 2005, p.79]
    • The Observer (UK)
  7. Bruised
    It’s not badly made, necessarily, just entirely unsurprising. The saving grace is British theatre actor Sheila Atim, arresting and intriguing in a key supporting role.
  8. The First Slam Dunk
    While it leans a little heavily on baffling basketball strategy and court-based machinations, it’s a dynamic and unexpectedly affecting animation.
  9. The Roads Not Taken
    The Roads Not Taken is frequently moving, and a fascinating creative idea, but without sufficient information about Leo’s character to anchor the narrative, it feels too abstract.
  10. Palmer
    The showy singer turned actor struggles to modulate his natural charisma, a flirtatious, extroverted energy repeatedly leaking out where it should be muffled.
  11. Luck
    While Pixar movies tell their stories visually, Luck finds itself wielding densely detailed exposition about the process of deploying luck to the human world. Still, there’s much to enjoy.
  12. Out of Darkness
    Proof that even the most basic cinematic tools can be used to make fire.
  13. Earwig
    Earwig, the director’s first English-language film, lacks the macabre logic of Evolution, or the precision of Innocence; the audience is left fumbling for meaning in the gloom.
  14. By the Stream
    By the Stream is a wry comedy of manners that muses, in its unassuming way, on the creative act.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Train Robbers
    Enjoyable traditional western. [26 Apr 2009, p.18]
    • The Observer (UK)
  16. A Glitch in the Matrix
    It’s a messy, mind-blowing collision of philosophy, technology, religion and fruit-loop paranoia which, while it doesn’t exactly make a watertight case, does provide a fascinating, and in one case deeply disturbing, insight into the thought processes of those who believe it.
  17. Companion
    It isn’t breaking new ground, but the feature debut from TV director Drew Hancock is pulpy, bloody fun.
  18. Destination Wedding
    Writer-director Victor Levin’s caustic take on the romcom works better as a treatise on the genre than as an example of it. The staging of the individual scenes feels like an afterthought, with the stars and script doing all the heavy lifting. Still, the scaffolding is there.
    • 39 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    To the Devil a Daughter
    Far from the Rosemary's Baby it wished to be, but nonetheless unsettling at least up to the point that we see the devil's glove-puppet itself. [27 Jun 1999, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  20. Hard Truths
    Great turns don’t always amount to a great picture, and the unfortunate consequence of this no-frills directing approach is that the film-making can feel rather flat and functional – a display cabinet for the acting rather than a vital piece of storytelling.
  21. 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.
  22. The Batman
    Zoë Kravitz is a highlight as cocktail waitress turned cat burglar Selina Kyle.
  23. Rams
    It works on the assumption that a story about grumpy old gits united against a common foe has a universal appeal. True, to an extent, but what the makers of this film fail to realise is that it was the specificity of the Icelandic original that made it such a glumly hilarious delight.
  24. Red White & Royal Blue
    Fortunately, the twin charisma assault of the two leads adds considerably to the film’s appeal. It turns out that watching two impossibly beautiful boys making cow eyes at each other might be just the escapist pulp we need right now.
  25. Maigret
    It’s dour, certainly, but the sense of bone-tired exhaustion and crushed hope that linger like pipe smoke works rather effectively for this particular case.
  26. J.T. Leroy
    Dern brings a hungry, manic energy to Albert, a sad and troubled woman who used LeRoy as a vehicle to process her own childhood trauma, while Stewart’s performance is typically interiorised and exacting.
  27. Saturday Night
    For all the talk of gamechanging comedy genius, Saturday Night ultimately plays it rather safe: it’s closer to a Noises Off-style romp transposed to a TV studio than the blast off of a cultural revolution.
  28. House of Gucci
    For better or worse, House of Gucci is a little too well behaved to become a cult classic. But Gaga deserves a gong for steering a steely path through the madness – for richer, not poorer; in kitschness and in wealth.
  29. Science Fair
    A crowd-pleasing, if slightly formulaic, documentary in the vein of Spellbound.
  30. Heart of Stone
    The screenplay is a rudimentary thing – scaffolding to support the set pieces – that starts to creak whenever it attempts any depth of character. But the action is terrific, with a screaming, tyre-shredding extended car chase around Lisbon’s tight, cobbled alleys a breathless and exhilarating highlight.
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