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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  1. Lee
    Not surprisingly given Kuras’s background as a cinematographer, Lee is largely visually driven.
  2. Free Chol Soo Lee
    [An] impressive and wrenchingly sad documentary.
  3. My Favourite Cake
    Perhaps more radical than the censor-bating, though, is the fact that My Favourite Cake trains its lens on lonely, ordinary older people – a demographic all too frequently invisible to film-makers the world over. A rare delight.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Summer of '42
    A self-consciously nostalgic piece, with Oscar-winning music, immaculate detail, and made while soldiers were dying in Vietnam. [05 Aug 2007, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
  5. Sebastian
    It’s tender, thoughtful film-making from Finnish director Mikko Mäkelä, exploring the bond between two men separated by generations but joined by literature and love.
  6. My Old School
    It’s a fascinating story that starts as an affable, strange-but-true tall tale but ends in a decidedly minor key.
  7. Aniara
    A haunting allegorical tale, Aniara warns of humanity hurtling in the wrong direction and realising too late that there is no turning back.
  8. Blue Is the Warmest Color
    Certainly the performances by Léa Seydoux (already an important screen presence) and newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulos are extraordinary. Their portrayal of a blossoming, fragmenting relationship is shot through with genuine grace and conviction even when the film itself descends into indulgence.
  9. Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)
    Control director Anton Corbijn’s first documentary, Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis), is a fascinating and suitably maverick snapshot of a richly creative moment in music history, told through a couple of disreputable hippies who designed some of the most iconic album covers of all time.
  10. Black Dog
    Peng’s performance is physically rather than verbally expressive – he has barely more lines of dialogue than the dog – but Lang’s arc of redemption is explored with heart and humour.
  11. The Bibi Files
    Essential viewing.
  12. Sequin in a Blue Room
    This feature debut from the Sydney-based writer and director Samuel Van Grinsven may tackle familiar material – gay coming-of-age stories are hardly uncommon – but it does so with a lustre and style that marks Van Grinsven out as a name to watch. Perhaps even more notable is Leach, a silky, feline presence who owns every moment that he’s on screen.
  13. Anaïs in Love
    Demoustier so supercharges her performance with charisma, she almost seems to sparkle.
  14. Birds of Passage
    It’s powerfully affecting fare; elegiac, evocative and profoundly cinematic.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nightmare Alley
    Tyrone Power is outstanding in the most demanding role of his career as a con man who emerges from the fairground world to exploit the credulous rich as a mind-reader and descends to depths he's never dreamed of as a pre-avian flu carnival 'geek', biting off the heads of live chickens in exchange for alcohol. [04 Dec 2005, p.14]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Alice in the Cities
    Yella Rottlander is unforgettable as Alice. [06 Jan 2008, p.16]
    • The Observer (UK)
  17. Cairo Conspiracy
    Tarik Saleh’s political saga turns progressively knottier and more claustrophobic, almost to a fault. But it’s also horribly tense, richly textured and showcases a terrific supporting performance from Fares as the tale’s shadowy Thomas Cromwell figure.
  18. Il Mio Corpo
    This intimate observational documentary explores poverty in Sicily from two different vantage points, drawing poetic connections between lives that don’t appear to touch.
  19. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
    There’s a languid kind of magic to Koberidze’s approach, which, with its enchanting score, digressive montages and sparse dialogue, has roots in silent cinema but also feels refreshingly and genuinely original.
  20. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
    When the film is this much fun, who cares if Grant recycles some of the greatest hits from his gag repertoire?
  21. Medusa
    For all its multitudinous reference points, this remains very much Da Silveira’s movie – as distinct and pointed as Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night or Julia Ducournau’s Raw­ – a genre film with something to say, and a unique voice with which to say it.
  22. Mickey 17
    While Mickey 17 isn’t in the same elevated league as Parasite, it’s a lot of fun.
  23. Gloria Bell
    Moore’s subtle, empathetic work elevates what could be dismissed as a small-scale, even banal story.
  24. Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical
    This is immensely enjoyable stuff.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Duel
    A haunting study of middle-class paranoia scripted by seasoned horror author Richard Matheson, it established Spielberg in Europe as a name to be reckoned with before he'd been heard of in the States. [03 Oct 2004, p.83]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Nil by Mouth
    Everything about Nil By Mouth rings true. [12 Oct 1997, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  27. Sharper
    The performances, so thickly layered with charm and artifice that it’s hard to know what and who is real and what isn’t, are first-rate. It’s a pacy and enjoyable movie.
  28. Little Women
    By encouraging a merry chaos of overlapping personalities and performances – restructuring the timeline into a multilayered playground where the child and adult stories interact – and subtly foregrounding existing themes of female fulfilment and the economics of creativity, Gerwig creates something that is true to its roots and bracingly current.
  29. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
    Nyoni’s Zambia-set film, using the Bemba language and English, deftly juggles humour with pathos, domestic drama with surreal fantasy flourishes. It’s dizzyingly creative and rather special.
  30. A Quiet Place: Day One
    This is a stylish and satisfying prequel that elegantly integrates Sam’s poet’s sensibility into the storytelling.
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