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 3.2 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. Song Sung Blue
    While the film is largely content to tread a safe path, it does at least feel full-hearted in its appreciation of the way music can connect lost souls and enrich lives.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Land of the Pharaohs
    Uneven, oddly distinguished attempt to examine the pyramid-building obsession of the Pharaoh (Jack Hawkins) and how it was affected by his second wife (Joan Collins) and his architect (James Robertson Justice). Some excellent sets by the great Alexander Trauner, much turgid dialogue and a score by Dimitri Tiomkin. [11 Jun 2006, p.18]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cyclo
    That Ho Chi Minh City is as rotten as the old Saigon, only more cynical and decrepit, is no great revelation, and we learn little of how ordinary people live or how society is organised in Vietnam today. [24 Mar 1996, p.12]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 56 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rabid
    Early, low-budget Cronenberg horror flick, emetic in intention and effect. [08 Oct 2000, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Mirror Crack'd
    Third and least good of the quartet of period Agatha Christie movies produced by John Brabourne and Richard Goodwin. [04 Feb 2007, p.2]
    • The Observer (UK)
  6. Marry Me
    [A] silly, shallow romcom, which is as thin and predictable as Kat’s tinny pop songs.
  7. Stockholm
    There’s comedy in its depiction of the Swedish prime minister as a caricature of even-temperedness, but from its gaudy 70s costuming to its goofy, wobbling tone, everything about this film feels uncomfortably broad.
  8. Holy Spider
    It’s a tense, atmospheric piece of film-making but it made me profoundly uncomfortable – and not, I should add, in a good way. There’s a prurience in how the murders are filmed – the camera hungrily scouring the distorted faces of dying women – that borders on dehumanising.
  9. Brightburn
    In its attempts to provide an antidote to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s catalogue of liberal fantasies, the film swings too far in the other direction.
  10. You People
    The first third of the picture is promising, if frequently excruciating. But the points are painfully laboured and the jokes run out of steam.
  11. Stage Mother
    The feelgood tone feels a little flaccid.
  12. Ambulance
    At the core of the film, partially concealed by Bay’s posturing and swagger, is a bracing, slickly executed B-movie.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    The Black Scorpion
    Essentially this is a rip-off of the 1954 nuclear angst horror flick Them!, about mutant insects produced by bomb tests in New Mexico. Richard Denning and Mara Corday star, somewhat dimly. [21 Mar 1999, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  14. Harold and the Purple Crayon
    Since Levi is the single-use plastic of screen performers – flat, shiny, desperately unfashionable – it’s left to Jemaine Clement to provide the story’s charismatic core as Gary, the villainous failed fantasy novelist with a thing for Mel’s mum.
  15. Captain America: Brave New World
    It’s a humourless drag of a picture, overreliant on clunky exposition and naive geopolitical posturing. Plus it’s ugly, with a greasy murkiness that looks as though the lens was smeared with lard.
  16. Profile
    The ratcheting tension is sadly punctured by unintentionally hilarious scenes of ambitious “research” by journalist Amy (Valene Kane), mostly involving frantic Googling and YouTube tutorials on “how to look younger”.
  17. Sonic the Hedgehog
    Marsden is charming enough, summoning surprising chemistry with Schwartz, and so it’s not total torture spending an hour and a half with the pair. Yet for better or worse, it doesn’t linger.
  18. Swimming with Men
    Based on the true story of a group of Swedish men who competed in the synchronised swimming world championship, Swimming With Men is reminiscent of The Full Monty, its feelgood climax landing with a welcome, if gentle, splash.
  19. The Boss Baby: Family Business
    The pro-family, anti-tech messaging is designed to play to the parents, but while not entirely unwatchable, the film’s demented levels of energy will recommend it to younger audiences and may trigger stress headaches in anyone over 12.
  20. Dear Evan Hansen
    It’s the cinema equivalent of rubbing cut onions in the eyes of the audience: film-making that is cynically and artificially engineered to make the audience weep.
  21. The Critic
    Despite reported reshoots and a fresh edit after the film’s coolly received premiere last year, its sour spirit and a cluttered, clumsy third act remain a problem.
  22. Against the Ice
    There is about as much jeopardy as you’d expect from an action thriller about an obscure land dispute; a tense encounter with an angry polar bear and a phantom hot air balloon are highlights during the endless plodding across the frozen wilderness.
  23. Sonic the Hedgehog 3
    While I had more time than many of my fellow critics for the two previous movie spin-offs from the Sega video game series, it turns out that you can, in fact, have too much of a good thing.
  24. Mr. Burton
    It’s a pity, then, that this sluggishly paced film, which leans heavily on a fussy, twinkling piano score, is so meandering and listless.
  25. Mother's Pride
    This is an underdog tale straining so hard to be endearing that it’s more likely to pull a muscle than tug a heartstring.
  26. Greatest Days
    It’s a film that obediently hits the predictable story beats, is regularly punctuated by peppy, disposable musical numbers, but shows no inclination to be much more than a nostalgic marketing vehicle for a collection of anodyne pop songs.
  27. Christmas Eve in Miller's Point
    The prosaic anti-escapism of this sprawling American indie thoroughly subverts the expectations of the festive family movie.
  28. The Marvels
    Of the cast, it’s only Iman Vellani, as Marvel fangirl turned superhero Kamala Khan, who seems genuinely excited to be in the film.
  29. Songwriter
    While we learn little of interest about Sheeran himself, the film is arguably a thoroughgoing demystification of the industrial process behind the modern pop song.
  30. The Beanie Bubble
    It is blithely unquestioning of what the frenzy over glorified Hacky Sacks actually tells us about society.
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