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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    • 58 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Blob
    Clever, tongue-in-cheek and far more fun than the hi-tech remake. [05 Jan 2003, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 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.
  3. Jojo Rabbit
    I suspect the strangely good-natured feel of the film will win the hearts of many viewers, but my own head remained too muddled by its uneven and oddly indecisive approach to embrace whatever quirky virtues it may possess.
  4. The Deer King
    The clear lines of the elegant 2D animation are not matched by the mythic muddle of the storytelling, an exposition-heavy slog of warring factions, convoluted webs of enchantment and a deadly, wolf-borne pandemic for good measure.
  5. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
    It’d be easy to map Gilliam on to Grisoni, a film-maker dogged by his artistic misfires and the mess left in their wake. Really, though, he’s Quixote, stuck in a noble past and wilfully disconnected from a present that jostles uncomfortably close.
  6. Cry Macho
    There’s something touching about seeing the 91-year-old Eastwood in such a reflective mood.
  7. Skin
    The film works hard to complicate the character of Widner, but flattens the pernicious culture that formed him.
  8. 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.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Geronimo: An American Legend
    Walter Hill is the living director closest to the great film-makers of Hollywood's Golden Age such as Raoul Walsh, John Ford and Howard Hawks, and Geronimo is his finest movie to date. Certainly it is his most humane. [16 Oct 1994, p.9]
    • The Observer (UK)
  10. Jumanji: The Next Level
    Jumanji: The Next Level keeps things upbeat and lively, thanks in no small part to the introduction of two counterintuitively revivifying characters – curmudgeonly old codgers whose gripes and aches provide a jolly counterpoint to the teen angst that fired Kasdan’s previous instalment.
  11. Moana 2
    The main selling point remains Moana herself: the sparkiest and most intrepid Disney heroine of them all.
  12. Mean Girls
    The scene-stealing standout is Avantika, playing sweet-natured Plastic dimwit Karen. Her comic timing is impeccable; her musical number, a boisterous Halloween party romp titled Sexy, is worth the price of admission alone.
  13. The Equalizer 3
    While there are no surprises here, there are visceral kicks to be found in the businesslike efficiency of McCall’s retribution, and the devilish glint in Washington’s eye as he delivers it.
  14. Memories of My Father
    Memories of My Father is a touch overlong and soapy and awkwardly structured. But it’s still an engrossingly watchable drama.
  15. The Hummingbird Project
    Part thriller, part family drama, part satirical commentary on the way that the pursuit of wealth is a cultural cancer that taints everything it touches, The Hummingbird Project is no less compelling for its odd mishmash of components.
  16. The Seagull
    The result is entertaining enough, particularly when Annette Bening whirls through a scene.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Let's Scare Jessica to Death
    Regular horror ingredients are all mixed up into something truly terrifying. [17 Dec 2006, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
  18. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
    He may be 80, but Ford carries the weight of the film, which, for all its gargantuan expense, feels a bit like those throwaway serials that first inspired Lucas – fun while it lasts, but wholly forgettable on exit.
  19. Wicked: For Good
    While Wicked: For Good repeats much of the same formula as the first picture, there is a crucial ingredient missing: humour. Without it, the spark is extinguished; the astringency that cut through the sentimentality of the first picture is gone.
  20. Pet Sematary
    The result may not be groundbreaking or, indeed, particularly scary. But it treats King’s story with reverent affection and, unlike the cover version of the Ramones title song that plays over the end credits, it won’t leave you nostalgically longing for the original.
  21. Last Letter from Your Lover
    Indecision and miscommunication, it turns out, are timeless. Sexiness less so, with Jones and Rizwan not quite able to summon the smouldering chemistry of Woodley and Turner.
  22. The Wedding Guest
    Patel excels as a smouldering, enigmatic antihero who gradually begins to drop his defences; Apte might be even better as the duplicitous femme fatale.
  23. Antlers
    It’s satisfyingly gross – there’s plenty of black bile, crunching bones and half-chewed bodies. Russell, best known for her radiant portrayal of a domestic abuse survivor in Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress, is clever casting too.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Last Tycoon
    A generally lacklustre affair. [03 Mar 2013, p.44]
    • The Observer (UK)
  25. Chemical Hearts
    Heavy-handed symbolism aside, this is a decent little drama which digs into the bewildering limbo state between childhood and the adult world – a time in which everything hurts, heads are full of hormones and time stretches out interminably.
  26. The Broken Hearts Gallery
    The premise of writer Natalie Krinsky’s directorial debut sounds cheesy, and it is, but watching the brooding Nick softening to putty in our goofball heroine’s presence while she remains sparkily oblivious is an earnest pleasure.
  27. Instant Family
    The tone is weird, seesawing between broad comedy (Tig Notaro and Octavia Spencer as hardened adoption agency workers) and manipulative melodrama (I hate to admit it, but a standoff between Pete, Ellie and Lizzy moved me to tears).
  28. Thor: Love and Thunder
    For the most part, however, this romp, which pits Thor against Christian Bale’s cadaverous God-slayer, is superficial stuff – a film that brings a greeting-card triteness to its themes of love and sacrifice; that harvests internet memes (screaming goats) in the service of easy laughs.
  29. The Festival
    It delivers its “lessons” with a light touch, allowing Nick a couple of moments of genuine, relatable pathos... but encouraging the audience to take his self-loathing with a pinch of salt.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Saint Jack
    Bogdanovich's best film since his fall from grace in the mid-Seventies, and produced by Roger Corman who gave him his first jobs on low-budget drive-in movies. [18 Aug 2002, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
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