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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    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Down and Out in Beverly Hills
    Amusing and well acted. [16 May 2010, p.50]
    • The Observer (UK)
  2. The Cordillera of Dreams
    It’s a highly personal documentary: in addition to focusing on the mountains, Guzmán revisits his childhood home, now derelict, and explores his own archive footage of the 1973 coup d’état that prompted his relocation to France.
  3. Candyman
    The overall tone is one of wry knowingness, which is DaCosta’s achilles heel.
  4. The Lost King
    Whatever its inconsistencies, The Lost King is an underdog story that proves a perfect vehicle for Hawkins’s reliably winning screen presence.
  5. Worth
    Though this stolid drama, based on a true case, begins as a procedural, about systems, processes and deadlines, it is most absorbing when it zeroes in on one man’s moral arc.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Hounds
    All creatures great and small are fighting for their lives in this blasted landscape and, though the tension often flags, the actors, many of them non-professional, give consistently good face, especially Masstouri, who resembles a leathery, bushy-haired John Garfield.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Too Many Crooks
    Half-witted British comedy about a dim-witted gang's attempt at a big kidnapping. But it's worth seeing for a gifted cast, headed by Terry- Thomas (the victim's rich, shifty husband), that includes George Cole, Sid James, Bernard Bresslaw and John Le Mesurier. [25 Aug 2002, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Plaza Suite
    Three thin but amusing one-act comedies spun around guests at Manhattan's Plaza Hotel, adapted with minimum concessions to the cinema by Neil Simon from his own play which ran for three years on Broadway. [20 Nov 2005, p.115]
    • The Observer (UK)
  9. Spirit Untamed
    Handsome animation adds to the appeal of this sequel to the 2002 animation Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, but this is family entertainment that’s quite niche in its appeal – pony-mad kids will love it, but it may test the patience of parents.
  10. Vengeance
    It’s mildly amusing stuff that delivers no surprises, but may muster a few laughs.
  11. It Ends with Us
    For a film that dips its Manolo-clad toe into the murky waters of domestic abuse, it’s unexpectedly aspirational, almost frothy in tone. But perhaps that’s the point the film is labouring: spousal violence in a relationship is rarely broadcast to the wider world.
  12. The Good Liar
    Flashes of violence are effectively jarring when juxtaposed with the chintzy cosiness of much of the film. Less successful are two thudding, lead-weight flashbacks, which disgorge chunks of exposition and quash some of the fun in McKellen and Mirren’s deft double act.
  13. Where Is Anne Frank
    This handsome but uneven animation weaves together excerpts from the diary with the quest of Kitty – the imaginary friend to whom Anne addressed much of it – to locate the young writer in present-day Amsterdam.
  14. Jungle Cruise
    Director Jaume Collet-Serra creates a romp of a picture booby-trapped with adventure movie tropes (arcane curses, snakes, evil Germans) which, while they might seem familiar to Indiana Jones fans, still combine to make for a decent family flick.
  15. Eiffel
    Eiffel is not unentertaining – it would pass the time pleasantly enough on a long-haul flight. Together, Duris and Mackey have a corset-twanging chemistry. But the foregrounding of a fictional romance over a feat of engineering does feel like a missed opportunity.
  16. The Angry Birds Movie 2
    Cameos from Awkwafina, Nicki Minaj and Pete Davidson, and a subplot involving a trio of adorable hatchlings, are amusing diversions, but Jones’s dynamic voice work is the highlight.
  17. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
    While it takes a few dramatic liberties and could have benefited from a tighter edit, there’s a swell of goodwill as the story progresses that is hard to resist.
  18. 69: The Saga of Danny Hernandez
    Was the persona 6ix9ine an act or a kind of addiction? Was he a professional troll – the Katie Hopkins of hardcore hip-hop – or a genius marketeer? This intriguing documentary fails to fully answer these questions, but it does shine a light on a particularly uneasy aspect of internet celebrity.
  19. Thunder Road
    What we have instead is a succession of variously successful vignettes, only some of which hit that sweet spot between horror and humour, as we watch Arnaud’s life collapse around him.
  20. The Old Guard
    There’s plenty to enjoy, not least Layne’s terrific turn as the newbie with a fresh take on forever.
  21. Enforcement
    While Shorta is certainly a propulsive piece of action cinema, which makes effective use of its acid yellow, cement grey and burnt umber palette and warren-of-concrete location, there’s a crudely schematic quality to the writing.
  22. Eternals
    For all the effort that has gone into ensuring representation in the casting, the storytelling, with its forced flashbacks and synthetic sentiment, lets the whole thing down.
  23. The Father
    For all its apparent structural complexities, The Father is not quite as mysterious as its creators would have us believe.
  24. Suspiria
    Watching this sporadically sparkling yet weirdly saggy “cover version” of Argento’s biggest international hit, I couldn’t help wishing that someone had been there with the scissors to trim the film of its indulgences – not the violence, but the verbosity.
  25. Misha and the Wolves
    A puzzle box of a structure reveals fresh angles to the story with each new contributor, but the woman at its core – the discredited author Misha Defonseca – remains silent and unaccountable, to the film’s detriment.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Boston Strangler
    This semi-documentary account of the terror in the Boston of the early Sixties sparked off by the serial killer Albert de Salvo has a creditable central per-formance from Tony Curtis and an admirable suppor-ting one by Henry Fonda as the chief investigator for the state attorney general. [12 Aug 2007, p.14]
    • The Observer (UK)
  27. Ma
    Those who enjoy Blumhouse productions for their unabashed silliness will be pleased to discover a sticky slice of schlock, with both household appliances and prosthetic genitals given their genre moments.
  28. Bros
    Eichner is on fine form with the scabrous spikiness of the first half of the picture, but neither he nor the film itself seems fully comfortable with the final descent into sentimentality.
  29. Drift
    This portrait of lost souls connecting is unassuming, but quietly powerful.
  30. Night School
    The film is a vehicle for Haddish, whose timing and delivery make the jokes jump off the page.
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