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. The Sheep Detectives
    While it is not quite in the same league as any of the films that clearly influenced it, The Sheep Detectives is an appealingly offbeat children’s film, showcasing Balda’s knack for visual humour while also sheep-dipping into unexpectedly weighty themes.
  2. DJ Ahmet
    It’s a rich depiction of a traditional Yörük community – Turkic tribal people – that feels authentically lived in rather than an ethnographic curio, as well as a fresh coming-of-age film.
  3. 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.
  4. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
    DaCosta’s film is a macabre morality tale about the best and worst of human nature. It is utterly brutal, and one of the most compelling so far.
  5. 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.
  6. Bugonia
    Even by the standards of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, Bugonia is an unhinged and savage piece of storytelling.
  7. 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.
  8. Dragonfly
    This lean, intimate drama is a Paul Andrew Williams film, and anyone who saw his brutal revenge picture, Bull, will have an inkling of how dark his movies can get. Even so, the blunt force of Dragonfly’s tonal swerve is enough to knock the air out of you.
  9. Architecton
    Architecton is a gorgeously photographed poetic reverie on the subject of stone and concrete, permanence and profligate waste.
    • 90 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Gold Rush (1925)
    This technically simple, endlessly inventive film balanced laughter and pathos; its cabin fever sequence is unsurpassed. [28 Feb 2010, p.24]
    • The Observer (UK)
      • Posted Jun 25, 2025
  11. Freaky Tales
    With its VHS bargain-bin aesthetic, this is scuzzily enjoyable stuff.
  12. The Penguin Lessons
    Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty) directs, just about striking a balance between the fluffy sentimentality of the story and its hard-edged political backdrop.
  13. Warfare
    The overriding impression, once the adrenaline has drained away, is of futility, waste and pointless destruction.
  14. Sinners
    If you pick apart the story threads, Sinners is a little messy, but Coogler’s assurance and vision holds everything together.
  15. Last Swim
    Sunny, soulful, if a little montage-heavy at times, this is a more conventional film. Hekmat’s magnetic star quality, though, is unmistakable: she’s a free and fascinating presence.
  16. One to One: John & Yoko
    Ultimately, One to One might not reveal a huge amount that’s new about Lennon, but it makes him feel bracingly alive in a way few other documentaries have managed.
  17. The Amateur
    James Hawes, who directed the entire first season of Slow Horses, clearly knows his way around the spy genre. Which is why this disjointed thriller about a brilliant CIA code cracker turned elite operative (Rami Malek) delivers at least some pacy thrills and globe-hopping intrigue, despite numerous issues with the screenplay, structure and casting.
  18. G20
    As anyone who saw The Woman King will know, Davis has a formidable screen presence and serious action chops; for all its silliness, there’s plenty of fun to be had watching her slaughter the bad guys amid a diplomatic hail of bullets and canapés.
  19. Drop
    It’s enjoyable stuff: a taut and crisply edited balance between humour and horror.
  20. The Return
    Both are terrific, but Binoche is the standout.
  21. 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.
  22. 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.
  23. Death of a Unicorn
    Rather than a slick, high-concept fantasy action picture in the vein of Everything Everywhere All at Once, here is a B-movie throwback with its roots in the pulpy creature features of the 1950s. Viewed from this perspective, the shonky special effects are just part of the fun.
  24. A Minecraft Movie
    Perhaps there’s an alternative out there, a sharper, smarter, funnier version of a Minecraft movie. One with actual jokes. Or, God forbid, there may even be a worse iteration, although that’s hard to imagine.
  25. The Hermit of Treig
    This lovely, compassionate documentary, which recently won the audience award at the Glasgow film festival, is more than a character study. It’s a portrait of a friendship between Smith and film-maker Lizzie MacKenzie.
  26. When Fall Is Coming
    This spry little French-language picture, which delights in subverting our expectations and leaves us with teasing questions about culpability and a crime, shows the director at his most understated, the better to foreground the excellent, intriguingly layered performance from Hélène Vincent.
  27. Marching Powder
    If you’re a paunchy, middle-aged geezer with a wholesale cocaine habit, an aversion to “woke”, and hobbies that include beer and punching people, well, have I got a movie for you!
  28. The Last Showgirl
    Anderson, whose character is left questioning not just what the future holds, but also the costly choices that shaped her past, is excellent, delivering a performance that has single-handedly rewritten the way she is viewed as an actor.
  29. Superboys of Malegaon
    Reema Kagti’s fiction feature gets a little bogged down in the tension between the friends, resulting in a marked dip in energy in the second hour. But the (literally) uplifting final act raises the roof and, through rudimentary green-screen technology, some of the cast.
  30. Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
    The narration, by LaKeith Stanfield, speaks on behalf of the photographer, who died in 1990. It’s through his remarkable pictures of South Africa and Black America, however, that we really hear his voice.
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