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. On the Record
    The film’s empathetic approach allows Dixon to explore her decision, peeling back the layers of complexity that racism brings to the burden of sexual abuse. A must watch.
  2. In the Heights
    Perhaps a more potent political statement is the way that Christopher Scott’s choreography claims and owns every square inch of the block. Reclaim the streets (with fabulous shoes and glorious Latin dance routines)!
  3. Fire of Love
    The film’s approach skirts around the actual science of the Kraffts’ work, but it does explore the psychology of a shared passion, of a couple who melted their boots together on smoking lava flows and danced by the craters in a confetti of volcanic bombs.
  4. The Vast of Night
    That a film with such an apparently familiar narrative can keep us this intrigued is a credit to the film-makers – particularly Patterson, from whom we should expect to hear much more in the future.
  5. Widows
    Widows is a sinewy treat that seamlessly intertwines close-up character studies, big-picture politics and audaciously reimagined heist-movie riffs.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Bad News Bears
    Matthau is at his curmudgeonly best and Ritchie (at the time considered one of Hollywood's best directors) brings his usual sharp eye for middle-Americana to bear on a script by Bill Lancaster, son of Burt. [24 Oct 2010, p.46]
    • The Observer (UK)
  7. First Man
    While Gosling plays everything close to his chest, it’s Foy who invites us into the unfolding drama with her wonderfully empathetic performance.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
    Strongly scripted and deliciously acted, full of riveting confrontations as the emotionally intense events unfold. Though a feline Elizabeth Taylor overplays her role, Paul Newman is excellent as her brooding husband, but it's Burl Ives as dying patriarch 'Big Daddy' who's the ultimate revelation. [13 Aug 2006, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  9. The Disappearance of Shere Hite
    It’s a fascinating and enraging film and a timely reminder of the courage of members of the feminist vanguard.
  10. The Blue Caftan
    It’s a gentle piece of Arabic-language storytelling, one that softly, slowly enfolds the audience rather than propels them on a journey.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Wrong Man
    Henry Fonda brings an overwhelming sadness to his role as a New York nightclub musician who's almost ruined, and his wife (Vera Miles) driven insane, as the result of his wrongful arrest for armed robbery. An intriguing case of life imitating Hitchcock's art. [02 Nov 1997, p.9]
    • The Observer (UK)
  12. His Three Daughters
    This is subtle, unshowy film-making that is entirely in the service of the screenplay and the performances – and what performances.
  13. Under the Shadow
    With this terrific feature debut, Anvari lifts the veil on his heroines’ hidden lives and leaves us all dreaming with our eyes wide open.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    An American in Paris
    The Gershwin songs are magnificent, and the climactic ballet a tour de force that won the great Hungarian-born cameraman John Alton an Oscar.
  15. The Ground Beneath My Feet
    This oppressive, atmospheric Austrian drama takes the kind of alpha female high achiever familiar from Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann, but undermines her with splinters of Hitchcockian paranoia.
  16. Balloon
    The latest film from the acclaimed writer-director Pema Tseden casts a typically wry eye over the collision between modernity and tradition in 1980s Tibet.
  17. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
    The sense of the watering hole as a haven for lost souls – not to mention the threat of gentrification to civic space – couldn’t be more vérité.
  18. Soul
    It’s a visually sumptuous riot of ideas, pitched somewhere between a playful musical, a divine comedy and a metaphysical drama.
  19. Sing Sing
    It’s powerful and profoundly moving stuff.
  20. Turning Red
    Turning Red is a fizzing, squealing adolescent explosion of a movie that nails a fundamental truth about growing up.
  21. The Guilty
    The film’s narrow visual focus – much of the drama plays out in the face of police officer Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren) – accentuates the crackling cleverness of a screenplay that allows us to unravel a mystery in real time.
  22. Prayers for the Stolen
    It captures the wary, precarious nature of a community that relies financially on the same forces – the rampaging drug cartels – that also terrorise it. Huezo taps into the intense vibration between young female friends who treasure each other above all else.
  23. The Territory
    A must watch.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Young Frankenstein
    Mel Brooks's send-up of 1930s horror movies is a mixed, always amiable affair, beautifully shot in monochrome with loving attention to detail. [12 Nov 2000, p.11]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 83 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    National Velvet
    A children's classic and among the best family movies of all time. [19 Feb 2006, p.2]
    • The Observer (UK)
  26. The Lighthouse
    Frat boy humour is dressed up in an expensive, arthouse jacket.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    True Grit
    Veteran Hathaway skilfully balances humour and action in a classic western handsomely photographed by Lucien Ballard, one of the great cinematographers, who came to this task immediately after The Wild Bunch. [14 Nov 1999, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
  28. Rose Plays Julie
    There’s a strong element of Greek tragedy underpinning Rose Plays Julie.
  29. Saint Frances
    Saint Frances expands the representation of women’s lives on screen in a way that is so casual you hardly notice it’s happening.
  30. Mandy
    There are many things to enjoy here, not least the force of Cage’s performance as incensed lumberjack Red (and, it must be said, his scream).
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