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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    • 100 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Tokyo Story
    This 1953 classic is one of the cinema's most profound and moving studies of married love, ageing and the relations between parents and children. It is flawless and rewards numerous viewings.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Lady Vanishes
    It's the greatest-ever comedy-thriller, the greatest film set on a train, a faultlessly cast mirror held up to the nation in the year of Munich.
    • 98 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Passion of Joan of Arc
    This was Falconetti’s only major film, and over a period of a year under Dreyer’s direction (a combination of cruelty and patience) her extraordinarily expressive face made for one of the greatest, most harrowing screen performances.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Jules and Jim
    The film introduced a crucial theme that was to run right through Truffaut's work: how we cope with death and how we preserve our memories of those who have died. I don't think Jeanne Moreau gave a better performance than as Catherine.
  5. The Night of the Hunter
    Unforgettably haunting images (a car submerged in a watery grave; a spider's web view of the children fleeing in a riverboat to the strains of Pretty Fly; a silhouetted angel of death) make this a perennially unsettling masterpiece from which modern chillers could learn much.
  6. Quo Vadis, Aida?
    Like the unblinking closeup that concludes the deeply moving (and ultimately redemptive?) epilogue to Quo Vadis, Aida?, Žbanić’s powerful and personal film keeps its eyes wide open.
  7. Parasite
    Thrillingly played by a flawless ensemble cast who hit every note and harmonic resonance of Bong and co-writer Han Jin-won’s multitonal script, it’s a tragicomic masterclass that will get under your skin and eat away at your cinematic soul.
    • 97 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Battleship Potemkin
    Potemkin is a vital viewing experience that transcends its landmark/milestone status. Its virtuoso technique remains dazzling and is at the service of a revolutionary fervour we can still experience.
  9. Man with a Movie Camera
    This is an exuberant manifesto that celebrates the infinite possibilities of what cinema can be.
  10. Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
    Director Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s feature debut intertwines music and politics in one of the best concert movies of all time.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    The Shop Around the Corner
    It's funny, touching and beautifully paced with numerous examples of the celebrated "Lubitsch touch".
    • 96 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Breathless
    It baffled popular audiences outside Europe, but its insouciant style, amoral attitudes and cultural sophistication made it an influential milestone of post-war cinema. [28 Apr 1996, p.14]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 96 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Red River
    It's a landmark film that brought a new psychological complexity to the genre and gave John Wayne the first truly challenging role of his career.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sansho the Bailiff
    It is a heartbreaking story, tragic, unsentimental, but suffused with a belief in the ability of decency and dignity to survive under the most terrible circumstances. [02 Dec 2007, p.18]
    • The Observer (UK)
      • Posted Jan 11, 2022
    • 96 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Children of Paradise (1945)
    The movie's final parting sequence, where Arletty rides away in a coach and Barrault is inexorably swept in the opposite direction by a swirling crowd, is among the peaks of romantic cinema.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    The Bride of Frankenstein
    Whale's greatest work and the best ever gothic horror movie. [10 Oct 2010, p.46]
    • The Observer (UK)
  17. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
    Portrait of a Lady on Fire (the French title uses the less Jamesian “jeune fille”) seamlessly intertwines themes of love and politics, representation and reality. At times it plays like a breathless romance, trembling with passionate anticipation. Elsewhere, it seems closer to a sociopolitical treatise, what Sciamma has called “a manifesto about the female gaze”.
  18. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World
    This picture is more or less equal parts an indulgent, endurance-testing slog and a brilliantly audacious, fiercely political poke in the eye to conventional cinema. I loved every enraging minute of it.
  19. Aftersun
    A brilliantly assured and stylistically adventurous work, this beautifully understated yet emotionally riveting coming-of-age drama picks apart themes of love and loss in a manner so dextrous as to seem almost accidental. Don’t be fooled; Wells knows exactly what she’s doing, and her storytelling is as precise as it is piercing.
  20. Rocks
    What a wonderful, heart-breaking, life-affirming gem of a movie this is.
  21. Collective
    At a time when the press is routinely denigrated, an account of investigative journalism as a force for good makes for inspiring viewing.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sunrise
    Murnau's first Hollywood film and one of the last great silent movies.
  23. Amazing Grace
    When a parishioner leaps to her feet, her spirit clearly moved, you’ll want to do the same. Wholy Holy indeed.
  24. The Irishman
    For all its flash-back/flash-forward tricksiness, The Irishman rarely seems disjointed or thematically fractured. It conjures a kaleidoscopic illusion of depth that only starts to shatter as the pace flags in the final act.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
    It's an accomplished, affecting, relentless work.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Meet Me in St. Louis
    It's a film whose four parts cover the seasons from summer to spring but is truly a film for all seasons and all time.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Sunset Boulevard
    Still the best, most penetrating picture about Hollywood, its surface charm, its underlying cruelty, its lack of interest in its own history, its ruthless disregard for failure. The casting is perfect. [16 Mar 2003, p.7]
    • The Observer (UK)
  28. Past Lives
    There’s something quite breathtaking about the deceptive ease with which Song’s first cinematic foray juggles the metaphysical and the matter-of-fact, conjuring a world in which every decision has transformative power, and concepts of love and friendship are at once mysteriously malleable yet oddly inevitable.
    • 94 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Chimes at Midnight
    Overall this elegiac, monochrome movie, shot in the snow and mud in wintry landscapes, is a rich masterpiece. [28 Jun 2015]
    • The Observer (UK)
  30. Call Me by Your Name
    Chalamet, with his restless, impatient physicality and a face as sensual and sculpted as a fallen angel from a Caravaggio painting, is quite simply astonishing.
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