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. Saw X
    Grisliness occurs, accompanied by a score that sounds like knives being sharpened on violins. It’s thoroughly unpleasant, but that’s rather the point.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mogambo
    Clark Gable, 21 years older, repeats his role as an expatriate adventurer; Ava Gardner's brunette temptress looks great but is an inadequate replacement for Jean Harlow's wisecracking blonde broad; Grace Kelly is the frigid upper-class visitor (a role originally played by Mary Astor). John Lee Mahin wrote both but did a better job first time around. [26 May 2010, p.51]
    • The Observer (UK)
  3. Tehran Taboo
    The characters and plotting tend to be a little schematic, but just because the trajectories of the women’s narratives are predictable, it doesn’t follow that the story lacks power. On the contrary – this is fearless, potent storytelling.
  4. The Old Oak
    The final message of hope is resolutely upbeat and desperately needed.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Run Silent Run Deep
    A highly competent, conventional Second World War movie. [07 May 2006, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  6. Amaurosis
    The film lurches into conventional horror-thriller territory as it progresses, though there are interesting moments.
  7. Tiger Stripes
    The message is not always clear, but it’s an entertaining ride.
  8. Flora and Son
    The volcanically sweary dialogue doesn’t quite disguise the naivety of the feelgood trajectory, and the ending feels clunky, but this is a boisterous and disorderly charmer of a picture nonetheless.
  9. The Lesson
    Unfortunately, it all rather stumbles with an overwrought final act that disintegrates under scrutiny and hinges on a key character’s unlikely ability to remember, verbatim, every word he has ever read.
  10. The High Note
    While The High Note doesn’t serve up any real surprises, it’s a pleasant diversion, a sunny, slick production that delivers an upbeat refrain of dreams realised and talent appreciated.
  11. The White Crow
    Equally impressive is the quality of the dance on screen.
  12. IF
    F is an engaging kid-pleaser that celebrates the power of imagination and suggests that the key to overcoming the tough times might have been lurking in our minds all along.
  13. Black Bear
    Levine’s playful deconstruction of tortured genius is a witty and provocative send-up of tyrannical directors, diva-ish actors and over-invested voyeurs alike.
  14. Makala
    This immersive, slow-burning documentary about a Congolese charcoal maker finds poetry in the punishing, monotonous graft of one man’s trade.
  15. The Kingmaker
    More than 70 civil and criminal charges have been lodged against the family. Marcos flaunted her wealth while her country’s living standards plummeted, and Greenfield’s portrait is damning.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Slam
    It's flat, unrevealing, but powerfully sincere. [11 Apr 1999, p.6]
    • The Observer (UK)
  17. Sunset
    The film’s formal qualities obscure Nemes’s intentions instead of illuminating them. It’s all too vague to function effectively as either a commentary on the build-up to the Great War or as the story of a woman looking to find her place in a city predicated on rigid, gender-determined hierarchies.
  18. Tenet
    Nolan’s desire to stimulate both the blood and the brain feels earnest. What’s frustrating is that he doesn’t trust his audience to follow along.
  19. Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg
    Catching Fire is more concerned with the mercurial essence of its subject than it is with the nuts and bolts of her life. We learn little, for example, about her family background.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Kung Fu Panda 2
    The central notion of discovering one's unique personal identity ("the only thing that matters is what you choose to be now") takes us back to an earlier China and it's free of jokey references to other movies.
  21. Juror #2
    Time is of the essence; Eastwood’s 94 years old. He’s not prepared to be cross-examined or sidetracked by pesky minor details.
  22. 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.
  23. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
    On screen, the man play-acted the qualities of courage and resilience. Off it, he came to embody them too.
  24. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
    The screenplay is so meta that at times it is practically consuming itself, an ouroboros of in-jokes. But there’s an affable appeal to the picture that disarms the more self-satisfied tendencies of the writing, and which stems from the chemistry between Cage and Pascal. Come for the industry satire, stay for the endearingly goofy buddy movie.
  25. Dumb Money
    Ultimately, Dumb Money may not be as revealing about the financial markets as it is about the rallying power of the internet.
  26. Seberg
    This portrait of a woman pushed to breaking point coheres around a fine, friable performance from Kristen Stewart.
  27. 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.
  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. Blitz
    What the film-maker has built for us here is the cinematic equivalent of an Anderson shelter: basic, sturdy and unfussy. It’s there if we need it and have nowhere else to go.
  30. Creed III
    Jordan is doing double duty here, directing as well as starring in this solidly by-numbers chapter in the ongoing Creed saga. He does a workmanlike job – the fight sequences are thrillingly visceral, but his weakness for cheesy montages and the film’s formulaic screenplay ensure that the picture was never going to take the franchise anywhere new.
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