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. Rebel Ridge
    The film runs out of momentum, finding itself ensnared in a needlessly complicated web of intrigue and administrative shenanigans.
  2. The United States vs. Billie Holiday
    This is Day’s show all the way, and her performance remains the film’s strongest suit.
  3. The Etruscan Smile
    Indeed, I’d have happily watched Cox flirt with Rosanna Arquette’s museum curator for 90 minutes; her game attempts to parrot his Gaelic and a tentative kiss while gardening, knee-deep in soil, are strangely charming.
  4. The Many Saints of Newark
    It’s undeniably entertaining stuff, but this choppy collage-style portrait of the formative figures in the life of the young Tony Soprano (Michael Gandolfini) is better suited to the needs of existing fans rather than those of Sopranos neophytes.
  5. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
    The sci-fi stuff is tedious, but Wiig and Mumolo are bawdy and brilliant as ever, their effortless chemistry bolstered by years of collaboration.
  6. Vox Lux
    The film is at its most successful in the first half, which shows the genesis of a pop phenomenon...But once Portman takes over the role, as a jaded, jangled pop veteran, the picture becomes less persuasive.
  7. Federer: Twelve Final Days
    Like its subject, the film is not particularly revolutionary or groundbreaking in its approach. But again, like its subject, it is a work of unmistakable quality and class.
  8. Starve Acre
    Some pleasingly icky special effects add to the general sense of mouldering menace. Where the picture stumbles, however, is in its almost total lack of effective scares.
  9. The Inventor
    Charming and informative as it is, the film may struggle to engage younger audiences accustomed to more overt comedy in their animated movies and less grave-robbing.
  10. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
    Realistically, it was never going to match the instant cult appeal of the original, but it has a lot of fun trying.
  11. Chevalier
    Perhaps that is this frothy film’s strength: cherrypicking multiplex-friendly elements from a complex and still largely unknown life in a manner that leaves the audience wanting to know much more.
  12. Ithaka
    Shipton is a fascinating character – abrupt, ill at ease with the voracious press attention, but also possessed of a sharp, unusual intelligence that tends to veer off at jarring tangents.
  13. Fast X
    Disbelief is not so much suspended as detonated.
  14. Piggy
    There’s an atmospheric, unsavoury oiliness to the cinematography and an uncomfortable tussle of sympathies – director Carlota Pereda shows real promise as a genre film-maker.
  15. Origin
    The compelling Ellis-Taylor goes some way towards tying together the disparate elements. She is a magnetic, dignified presence, persuasive in both the more melodramatic elements of the story and in the academic journey.
  16. The Seagull
    The result is entertaining enough, particularly when Annette Bening whirls through a scene.
  17. A Man Called Otto
    A Man Called Otto taps into a seemingly unquenchable audience appetite for stories of cantankerous grumps redeemed by the healing embrace of community.
  18. White Men Can't Jump
    It’s slick, unchallenging and perfectly enjoyable, but it’s hard to see the point of a remake of Ron Shelton’s 1992 mismatched buddy movie about a pair of basketball hustlers who reluctantly team up.
  19. The Grudge
    The cluttered parallel story structure – the fates of several different individuals over a period of two years are woven together – results in a series of mini-scares rather than a gradual build to a big one. And since we already know the fate of most of them, all the diseased yellow lighting and oppressive sound design in the world can’t engineer much tension.
  20. Last Swim
    Sunny, soulful, if a little montage-heavy at times, this is a more conventional film. Hekmat’s magnetic star quality, though, is unmistakable: she’s a free and fascinating presence.
  21. Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road
    When Fine encourages him to elaborate, Wilson isn’t especially articulate, but his emotional responses to the individual songs are often lucid and revealing.
  22. It Must Be Heaven
    Wry rather than uproarious, it’s a little uneven at times. But Suleiman is a master of slow-burning, cumulative humour; this is the kind of comedy that creeps up on you.
  23. 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.
  24. The Equalizer 2
    A climactic fight that takes place in the eye of a hurricane is appropriately silly but lacks a sense of fun.
  25. The Secret Life of Pets 2
    [A] charming sequel.
  26. May December
    May December also comes coloured by the lurid downlight of tabloid culture. It could be a pastiche of a psychological thriller, or a playfully misdirected daytime afternoon soap.
  27. Fair Play
    It’s maliciously effective, up to a point: an enjoyably lurid piece of classy-trashy psychological warfare. Unfortunately, both the plot and the performances boil over in the third act, and the film loses much of its icily calculated cool.
  28. Tove
    Alma Pöysti is luminous as Jansson, bringing to life her playful, pleasure-seeking artist’s spirit.
  29. Flight Risk
    Very silly, but pulpy fun.
  30. Presence
    The element that makes this intriguing – the ghost POV shooting technique – is also a problem, undermining the suspense and distancing the audience from the vulnerable girl whose fate is in the balance.
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