The Observer (UK)'s Scores

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For 1,640 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 3.3 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: 893 out of 1640
  2. Mixed: 714 out of 1640
  3. Negative: 33 out of 1640
1640 movie reviews
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    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
    This, you feel, is really a story with roots in the nation, not just a fiction snatched out of the busy air. [16 Apr 1950, p.6]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Yojimbo
    Toshiro Mifune is electrifying as an unemployed samurai exploiting two embattled factions in an early nineteenth-century Japanese country town. [05 Nov 2000, p.11]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Pat and Mike
    This undervalued comic masterpiece, scripted by the husband-and-wife team of Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, would be a fine film even if it didn't try to be funny, which it so successfully does. [06 May 2007, p.64]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 71 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    REC
    Guaranteed to scare the pantalones off you.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Top Hat
    In one of the best-looking, wittiest, most melodious and stylishly romantic musicals ever made, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance and feud from London to a dazzling art deco Venice. [09 Oct 2011, p.51]
    • The Observer (UK)
  6. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
    DaCosta’s film is a macabre morality tale about the best and worst of human nature. It is utterly brutal, and one of the most compelling so far.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Front Page
    This first film version, a milestone work in every sense, helped, through its fast, wise-cracking dialogue and rapid editing, to change the sight and sound of the new talkies. Adolph Menjou as the suave, double-crossing editor Walter Burns and Pat O'Brien as his star reporter head a great cast. [17 Dec 2006, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 90 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    High and Low
    As well as being a skilfully developed thriller and a study in moral dilemma, High and Low is a precise and devastating anatomy of postwar Japanese society. [31 Jan 1999, p.11]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Black Narcissus
    Kathleen Byron is unforgettable as a sister who goes dangerously off the rails. A beautifully designed movie with Oscar-winning colour photography by Jack Cardiff. [27 Apr 2014, p.48]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Shop Around the Corner
    It's funny, touching and beautifully paced with numerous examples of the celebrated "Lubitsch touch".
    • 85 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Stalker
    Visually unforgettable and possibly Tarkovsky's finest work.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Treasure Island
    Attractively staged, it is one of numerous versions of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure and is most notable for an unforgettable, over-the-top performance by Robert Newton as an eye-rolling Long John Silver. [7 May 2006, p.2]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Written on the Wind
    Polished melodrama of considerable psychological and social subtlety. [03 Feb 2013, p.43]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 92 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Wizard of Oz
    Somehow, for all the dollar-book Freud brought to bear on it, the picture comes up fresh, innocent and enchanting whenever you see it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Roaring Twenties
    The movie has an epic sweep that anticipated and influenced the best gangster movies of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola of which it is fully the equal. [18 Aug 2010]
    • The Observer (UK)
  16. The Price of Everything
    While Kahn offers no overt criticism, it’s hard not to question the sustainability of an art market that has evolved into a kind of prestige car park for vast quantities of money.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Swing Time
    Marvellous Astaire-Rogers musical with the usual high-gloss production. [06 Jan 2013, p.38]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 65 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Informer
    Expressionist masterpiece. [11 Nov 2007, p.20]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Farewell My Concubine
    Farewell My Concubine is an exquisite film, subtle, well acted, deeply moving. It confirms Chen Kaige's position as a major figure on the world scene and Gu Changwei as one of the today's finest cinematographers. [09 Jan 1994]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Mildred Pierce
    A great actress at her sado-masochistic best in a noir melodrama worthy of her talents. [28 Mar 2001, p.9]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Children of Paradise (1945)
    The movie's final parting sequence, where Arletty rides away in a coach and Barrault is inexorably swept in the opposite direction by a swirling crowd, is among the peaks of romantic cinema.
    • 92 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Cool Hand Luke
    Brilliant study of hero-worship and bloody-minded individualism centering on doomed outsider Paul Newman, jailed on a minor charge, bullied by guards, and winning the respect of fellow convicts on a southern chain gang. Superb cast, unforgettable moments. [29 Nov 2009, p.29]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Wise Blood
    Stunning adaptation of Catholic author Flannery O'Connor's novel about religious obsession in America's Bible belt. Brad Dourif is outstanding as an agnostic GI returning to the deep south after the second world war and becoming involved with competing evangelists Harry Dean Stanton and Ned Beatty. [26 Sep 2010, p.59]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hondo
    An excellent 1954 John Wayne Western, in which he plays a cavalry scout with Indian sympathies fighting Apaches in New Mexico.
    • The Observer (UK)
  25. More Than Ever
    This French and English-language drama is a film about taking ownership over the end of life; about dying personally and, if necessary, selfishly.
  26. 7 Prisoners
    The rather on-the-nose storytelling grows increasingly complex and interesting the further that the protagonist ventures into morally ambiguous territory.
  27. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
    This female-led triptych of stories, with its deft, empathetic camerawork and intimate, intricately crafted character sketches, is a minor masterpiece in its own right.
  28. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
    Talbot’s film is not perfect. A scene set to Joni Mitchell’s Blue makes its point awkwardly, and the narrative, like its characters, is prone to meandering. Yet as a film about place and personal mythology, it’s hugely moving.
  29. In Camera
    It’s a heightened caricature, certainly, but there are uncomfortable truths underpinning the surreal excesses.
  30. Toy Story 4
    Woody and Buzz et al are still wonderful creations, and time spent in their company is rarely wasted. But riffs about new owner Bonnie starting kindergarten and once-favoured toys getting left in the cupboard smack of old ground being retrodden.
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