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. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    Disappointingly but perhaps not surprisingly, this sequel fails to match the original on any level whatsoever. It’s not bad exactly, although there’s a synthetic look to the colour palette that feels very try-hard and gaudy next to the lovely, atmospheric earth tones of the first film.
  2. The Feast
    The Feast requires a degree of commitment; it avoids jump scares in favour of a long, slow build of tension – so slow that at times the characters appear to be in the grip of a kind of paralysis – that pays off with an explosively grisly final act.
  3. Piece By Piece
    It’s a fun watch, and the technique allows film-maker Morgan Neville to visually represent Williams’s form of synaesthesia, which turns music into colours, and to explore his musical process in a suitably playful and creative manner.
  4. Nyad
    It’s this – the wry humour provided by the long-suffering Bonnie; the lovely lived-in quality of the friendship – rather than the lengthy swimming sequences and a few slightly unwieldy flashbacks that gives the film its crowd-pleasing appeal.
  5. Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets
    The live performances are electrifying, all jagged elbows and brilliant pop tunes, with the band suitably assisted not by drugs and booze, but by a neatly organised display of treatments for colds, incontinence and light grazes. On the subject of fame, Cocker asserts boldly that "it didn't agree with me – like a nut allergy". Hardcore indeed.
  6. The Electrical Life of Louis Wain
    Like Wain’s art, the film is superficially twee – characters are referred to as “nosy poseys” at one point – but under the kitsch is something more rewarding: an affecting portrait of a creative but troubled man.
  7. I'm Your Woman
    Reorienting a typically white male genre around themes of feminist awakening and racial tension is an intriguing proposition, so it’s frustrating that Brosnahan remains blank and the film’s pace plodding.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Holiday Affair
    A sweet-natured romantic movie. [15 Dec 2002, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
  9. Your Monster
    Caroline Lindy’s feature debut is a droll, if uneven blend of comedy, romance, fantasy and horror that relies heavily on the off-the-charts chemistry between Barrera and Dewey, who manages to convince as a charismatic romantic lead, despite looking like a rejected prosthetics test for the 80s TV series Manimal.
  10. Knock at the Cabin
    As the film’s bleak momentum builds, so does a tsunami swell of existential dread. It’s Shyamalan’s most contained and efficient picture in a while.
  11. Falling
    The directorial debut of Viggo Mortensen, which he also wrote and stars in, is an empathetic but gruelling account of a father-son relationship.
  12. Fingernails
    Buckley, as always, is terrific, bringing the picture more emotional potency than it perhaps warrants.
  13. Triangle of Sadness
    There’s the flabby third act in which Östlund slightly fumbles the hand-tooled Louis Vuitton ball.
  14. Bring Them Down
    Bring Them Down is an impressive first feature from Christopher Andrews.
  15. Alpha
    This Albert Hughes-directed adventure is visually stunning.
  16. Scoop
    The picture is also perceptive on the dynamics of a newsroom under duress, with Billie Piper terrific as Sam McAlister, the straight-talking producer who managed to land the interview to end all royal interviews.
  17. In the Earth
    Suffice to say that, as with all of Wheatley’s best works, In the Earth combines humour and horror in terrifically bamboozling fashion, not least during a gruellingly extended amputation sequence that will have you squirming, laughing and wincing all at once.
  18. Beau Is Afraid
    I think Beau Is Afraid is best described as an amusingly patience-testing shaggy dog story that asks: “What if your mother could hear all those unspeakable things you tell your therapist?” Parts of it are hilarious. Other sections sag. Some will find it insufferable.
  19. A Haunting in Venice
    It’s enjoyable, if familiar.
  20. The Matrix Resurrections
    The film is a utopian riff on the apocalyptic source material, a Technicolor reimagining flooded with light and optimism.
  21. Peter von Kant
    It’s enjoyable enough, but Peter von Kant is a curiously insubstantial adjunct that trades some of the swirling, savage currents of melodrama of the original – which placed a female fashion designer rather than a male film-maker at the centre of the intrigue – for a frothy, flippant archness.
  22. Amanda
    The film shies away from any kind of political commentary, and as a result feels oddly sapped of fire or urgency.
  23. Tove
    Alma Pöysti is luminous as Jansson, bringing to life her playful, pleasure-seeking artist’s spirit.
  24. People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan
    Rarely does a half-hour TV show successfully stretch itself into a 90-minute film. It’s a nice surprise, then, that the popular BBC mockumentary works as a feature.
  25. Hotel Mumbai
    There is something queasy about mining such fresh real-life trauma for popcorn entertainment.
  26. Misbehaviour
    The film is called Misbehaviour, but a timid script belies mischief of any sort.
  27. Lee
    Not surprisingly given Kuras’s background as a cinematographer, Lee is largely visually driven.
  28. The Sweet East
    For all its to-the-moment social commentary, the film has roots in the anarchistic, surrealist 60s: Lillian could be a direct descendant of minxy troublemakers Marie I and Marie II from Věra Chytilová’s Daisies, reimagined for the TikTok generation.
  29. Call Jane
    The very watchable combination of Elizabeth Banks, as a suburban Chicago housewife turned illegal abortion technician, and Sigourney Weaver, as the founder of Call Jane, brings a force of charisma that overrides the picture’s occasional frothiness.
  30. Joy
    Given the emotive subject matter, the film chooses to keep the potential mothers at arm’s length as characters, losing tear-jerking opportunities as a consequence.
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