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. 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.
  2. Heart Eyes
    It’s all fairly predictable. Anyone who has seen more than a couple of serial killer movies will have no problem assembling a list of possible masked murderers. But Josh Ruben’s film goes above and beyond when it comes to squelchy, visceral gore.
  3. Babylon
    For all its nudge-wink movie-history nods and self-conscious carnivals of bodily fluids and glamorous excess, Babylon is exhaustingly unexciting fare – hysterical rather than historical, derivative rather than inventive.
  4. Drift
    This portrait of lost souls connecting is unassuming, but quietly powerful.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
    It's a bicentennial companion piece to Nashville, with a fabulous cast that includes Burt Lancaster (superb as dime novelist Ned Buntline), Harvey Keitel and Joel Grey. [22 Jun 1997, p.11]
    • The Observer (UK)
  6. A Life on the Farm
    Harding’s film proves movingly open-minded on the subject of the strange things isolation can do, but as a neighbour he might have been nosier. English reserve seems to have prevented further prying into the circumstances that created this English eccentric.
  7. The Peasants
    The film is a match for Lars von Trier’s Dogville in its grimly relentless approach to misogyny and sexual violence. A disconcertingly beautiful picture about the ugliness of humanity.
  8. John and the Hole
    While the result may not be quite as deep as the cavern at the centre of the story, it has an enticing sliver of ice at its heart.
  9. The White Crow
    Equally impressive is the quality of the dance on screen.
  10. Vice
    It’s an ambitious piece of writing, certainly, springy with ideas and information. But whereas the screenplay for The Big Short, which McKay co-wrote with Charles Randolph, deftly negotiated the dense, often very dry material, here there is a slightly frantic top note to McKay’s trademark wryly satirical tone.
  11. Respect
    Despite top-notch period production design and a couple of convincing studio workout sequences (I was reminded of the brilliant Love & Mercy as Aretha tells her bassist to ditch Alabama for Harlem), the drama rarely has the fiery spark its subject demands.
  12. Onward
    The emotional impact is true and clean. The fractious bond between the brothers and their aching anger at the loss of a parent are evoked with exquisite sorrow and clarity.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Under Capricorn
    A critical and box-office disaster that the Master himself dismissed. It is in fact a fascinating film, and was revered in France by Truffaut and others as Les amants du capricorne. [02 Apr 2006, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  14. The Front Runner
    There’s a thrilling charge to the film-making. Jostling, overlapping dialogue feels lived rather than written.
  15. Blue Beetle
    Blue Beetle may be frontloaded with visual fireworks that neatly meld the practical and the virtual, but it is the likable interplay between its down-to-earth characters that gives the film oomph, making it more than just a Shazam-style romp.
  16. The Persian Version
    If the final act overdoes it a little with the wackily-ever-after feelgood vibes, Mohammadi’s flippantly acidic to-camera commentary emphasises the sharp edges within the family embrace.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Tetris
    Ultimately, if the film is entertaining – and it is, sporadically at least – it’s as much to do with the reliably engaging Taron Egerton in the central role of embattled businessman Henk Rogers, as it is with the wiretaps, honey traps and sneering Soviet security forces.
  18. Scream VI
    The only notable development is just how rapidly a satirical skewering of genre formulas can become thuddingly formulaic.
  19. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
    The film’s teen protagonists, meanwhile, are chaste children’s book heroes, but the horror, based on illustrator Stephen Gammell’s drawings, has a gruesome quality that feels too full-on for youngsters.
  20. Saltburn
    There is little satisfaction to be found in the picture’s messily uninhibited climax.
  21. Mr. Burton
    It’s a pity, then, that this sluggishly paced film, which leans heavily on a fussy, twinkling piano score, is so meandering and listless.
  22. Hilma
    This handsome biopic by Lasse Hallström, with his daughter Tora Hallström in the role of the younger Hilma, attempts to redress the balance.
  23. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
    It’s the movie equivalent of a fairground ride with all the bolts loosened and the safety booklet blazed long ago when someone ran out of Rizlas.
  24. The Legend of Molly Johnson
    The film tackles issues of race, sexual violence and the low-level simmering cruelty that is a fact of life for those hardy individuals who make a life in the bush in the late 19th century.
  25. 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.
  26. Dragged Across Concrete
    Unfortunately, kind of a drag.
  27. The Lost City
    The respective charms of Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum receive a rigorous workout during the course of this caffeinated, overeager adventure romp – to the point where significant signs of wear and tear begin to appear.
  28. That Christmas
    There’s a little too much crammed into this overstuffed stocking of a movie, but the gorgeous, lovingly detailed animation style – it’s the second feature from British studio Locksmith Animation (Ron’s Gone Wrong) – and the zippy action sequences should prove a winning combination for family audiences.
  29. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
    Unlike movies such as Black Panther and Shang-Chi, which functioned as self-contained entities, this film requires an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel minutiae and world-class cross-referencing skills to fully work. And who, outside the diehard fanbase, has the bandwidth for that level of commitment?
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Great Waldo Pepper
    This colourful fable, scripted by William Goldman (who wrote Butch Cassidy and All the President's Men ) deserved far better than the critical drubbing and public rejection that greeted it. [20 Jul 2008, p.18]
    • The Observer (UK)
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