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. All My Friends Hate Me
    Andrew Gaynord’s debut feature doesn’t quite hold together, but the atmosphere of twitchy paranoia is horribly effective.
  2. The Amateur
    James Hawes, who directed the entire first season of Slow Horses, clearly knows his way around the spy genre. Which is why this disjointed thriller about a brilliant CIA code cracker turned elite operative (Rami Malek) delivers at least some pacy thrills and globe-hopping intrigue, despite numerous issues with the screenplay, structure and casting.
  3. Eternal Beauty
    Roberts relies heavily on imagery suggesting a confused reality ( characters are constantly fractured into multiple reflections) but the use of colour is an effective shorthand that clues us into Jane’s state of mind.
  4. Cocaine Bear
    Sporadically goofy fun, a scrappy carnival of ripped limbs, severed heads and spilled intestines, all softened by an only partly parodic family-centred Spielbergian sensibility.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Alfie
    Good in parts, mainly due to the excellence of Vivien Merchant, Jane Asher, Julia Foster, Shirley Anne Field and Shelley Winters as his various conquests and, in a brief but memorable role, Denholm Elliott as a sad abortionist. [28 Mar 2010, p.57]
    • The Observer (UK)
  6. Will & Harper
    The cushioning effect of Ferrell’s celebrity and, judging by the closing credit list, an extensive and well-funded production team, mean that while this is a likable-enough film, it is an insulated and artificial construction.
  7. Paris, 13th District
    This is a playfully sensuous affair that wonders what happens to slow-burn intimacy when mediated by the urgency of the online world.
  8. Jurassic World Dominion
    It doesn’t help that Dominion spends a good deal of time trying to figure out what story to tell and which genre (or country) to tell it in.
  9. The Great Escaper
    There’s a real emotional heft to the storytelling and Caine, at 90, is a knockout.
  10. 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.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    An American in Paris
    The Gershwin songs are magnificent, and the climactic ballet a tour de force that won the great Hungarian-born cameraman John Alton an Oscar.
  12. Monster
    Ultimately, the question of what actually happened is just another red herring. The real point of the film is its heartfelt, if slightly trite, message: that it’s the wider world that needs to adapt and accept the differences of children like Minato and Yori, rather than the other way around.
  13. Da 5 Bloods
    While the changing moods of BlacKkKlansman seemed bold and audacious, the warring elements of Da 5 Bloods appear bolted together rather than alchemically mixed.
  14. What's Love Got to Do with It?
    The sparky chemistry between James and Latif leaves few surprises in how it all pans out, but it’s an unexpectedly, disarmingly sweet film.
  15. Downton Abbey
    It’s lighthearted stuff and mostly benign too, save its unashamedly effusive stance on the monarchy.
  16. Dalíland
    The great missed opportunity of this film, with its glossy, handsome design and cinematography, and its genteel orchestral score, is how polite and unadventurous it is – something that could never be said of Dalí himself.
  17. Everybody's Talking About Jamie
    Much of the film’s appeal comes from its star, newcomer Max Harwood, who, despite a chiffon-wisp of a singing voice claims every frame with his knife-sharp cheekbones and charisma to match.
  18. Ron's Gone Wrong
    The debut feature from animation studio Locksmith is cute but familiar.
  19. The Independent
    Some of the picture’s taut focus and pacing are lost to an unnecessary cancer subplot involving Eli’s family; like the journalists it follows, the film works best when it is tenaciously single-minded.
  20. The Courier
    With slack pacing and insufficient focus, the film lacks the crackle of tension and propulsive efficiency of something like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Guns of Navarone
    The action sequences are splendid, it's magnificently staged and photographed, but there's too much pretentious moralising talk. [12 Dec 2010, p.51]
    • The Observer (UK)
  22. The Last Duel
    Despite a spirited performance from Comer and an impressive roster of supporting turns (including a scene-stealing Harriet Walter as Jean’s withering mother, Nicole), The Last Duel has a tendency to mirror its central battle’s attempts to address complex issues with the blunt tool of rabble-rousing spectacle.
  23. Man on the Run
    This documentary shares Scorsese’s theme of obscene greed, while Kuala Lumpur’s neon nightscape gives the feel of a Batman villain’s origin story. The Penguin, probably.
  24. Jumanji: The Next Level
    Jumanji: The Next Level keeps things upbeat and lively, thanks in no small part to the introduction of two counterintuitively revivifying characters – curmudgeonly old codgers whose gripes and aches provide a jolly counterpoint to the teen angst that fired Kasdan’s previous instalment.
  25. The Black Phone
    A solid, spooky period chiller.
  26. Citizen K
    Gibney struggles to psychologically penetrate his cold antihero.
  27. A Quiet Place Part II
    To suggest Krasinski is only interested in surface thrills feels at odds with the seriousness of his craft. Judicious pacing, clever cross-cutting and visceral sound design build tension, but there’s an absence of soul, and no satisfying sense of what the monsters might be a metaphor for.
  28. Little
    Directed by Tina Gordon Chism, co-writer of What Men Want, the film is cute enough, even if key ideas aren’t especially novel: it’s lonely at the top; we need to connect with our inner child; everyone is insecure as a teenager.
  29. Firebrand
    Law is phenomenal – a petulant, powerful and vengeful man who has the court balanced on the knife-edge of his mercurial favour. Vikander is magnetic as Katherine, but, as with the depiction of Josephine (played by Vanessa Kirby) in Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, the screenplay creates a strong woman of today rather than a credible figure from history.
  30. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
    But while the period details are slavishly recreated, there’s an absence when it comes to character details for the two women, particularly Bundy’s wife, Carole Ann Boone (Scodelario).
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