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. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
    Disappointingly but perhaps not surprisingly, this sequel fails to match the original on any level whatsoever. It’s not bad exactly, although there’s a synthetic look to the colour palette that feels very try-hard and gaudy next to the lovely, atmospheric earth tones of the first film.
  2. The Peasants
    The film is a match for Lars von Trier’s Dogville in its grimly relentless approach to misogyny and sexual violence. A disconcertingly beautiful picture about the ugliness of humanity.
  3. The Three Musketeers - Part I: D'Artagnan
    The picture’s seductive power lies elsewhere, with a glorious, typically extravagant performance from Eva Green as the treacherous Milady. She’s great fun in a role that might have been tailor-made for her skill set: Milady is vampy, venomous and dripping with goth jewellery.
  4. The Eternal Daughter
    For all its decorous restraint, this is emotionally potent storytelling.
  5. Leave the World Behind
    A provocative, superbly acted action drama that combines big-hitting ambition and spectacle with just enough humour to temper the whole end-of-civilisation meltdown scenario.
  6. Another Body
    The film focuses on Taylor’s quest to uncover the perpetrator and learn their motives. And while finally she has a good idea of the former, the answer to the latter remains elusive.
  7. Maestro
    With its nonlinear structure, Maestro feels a little like a scrapbook of life moments – glittering career achievements; crackling explosions of domestic tension – and Cooper keeps up a zesty, kinetic energy throughout.
  8. Wish
    Mostly, the soundtrack is an unhummable mess of warbled exposition.
  9. Napoleon
    A man, even a man as combative as Napoleon, amounts to more than the battles he has fought. And it is in this respect that the film is less successful.
  10. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
    Davis’s deranged games designer Dr Volumnia Gaul and Jason Schwartzman’s showboating compere Lucky Flickerman justify the price of admission.
  11. Saltburn
    There is little satisfaction to be found in the picture’s messily uninhibited climax.
  12. Rustin
    This is more of a dutiful plod through the facts than the kind of film that makes history come alive.
  13. May December
    May December also comes coloured by the lurid downlight of tabloid culture. It could be a pastiche of a psychological thriller, or a playfully misdirected daytime afternoon soap.
  14. The Great Escaper
    There’s a real emotional heft to the storytelling and Caine, at 90, is a knockout.
  15. Dream Scenario
    It’s a savagely funny showcase for Cage at his very best. But the picture sours somewhat in a third act that departs from crisp character study to target cancel culture, losing some of its biting humour in the process.
  16. Anatomy of a Fall
    Ultimately, one of the key pleasures of the picture is its uncertainty – the niggling doubts that remain, and the sense that a crucial piece of the puzzle is tantalisingly out of reach.
  17. The Eternal Memory
    The Eternal Memory is a restrained, respectful piece of film-making that takes its lead from its two subjects. It’s wrenchingly sad, but also a testament to the love that endures, even as Augusto increasingly struggles to recognise his wife.
  18. 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.
  19. Give Me Pity!
    Kramer’s vision is distinctive: playful and jarringly lurid. Give Me Pity! is a one-off – and that’s probably a good thing.
  20. The Royal Hotel
    A psychological thriller, it’s all the more tense for Green’s smart understatement of the genre elements.
  21. How to Have Sex
    Here’s a cause for celebration for fans of British cinema: a feature debut that launches not one but two of the most promising talents to arrive in movie theatres for a long while.
  22. Fingernails
    Buckley, as always, is terrific, bringing the picture more emotional potency than it perhaps warrants.
  23. Bottoms
    Even if the scattershot plotting doesn’t quite hold together, there’s a wayward energy to the picture and a barbed sense of mischief.
  24. On the Adamant
    The film’s observational approach means that little context is provided for the techniques used here, or for the lives and circumstances of the daily visitors. But the warm, non-judgmental embrace of Philibert’s approach is profoundly affecting.
  25. In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50
    Rarely does a music documentary so vividly evoke both the artistic approach and the tricky personality of its subject.
  26. Subject
    It’s thought-provoking stuff, which also explores our own role, as audience members, in the voracious demand for other people’s stories.
  27. Foe
    Mescal and Ronan are captivating: her watchful, raw-nerved longing; his stinging sense of betrayal. It almost eases us past an overwrought final twist. Almost, but not quite.
  28. Nyad
    It’s this – the wry humour provided by the long-suffering Bonnie; the lovely lived-in quality of the friendship – rather than the lengthy swimming sequences and a few slightly unwieldy flashbacks that gives the film its crowd-pleasing appeal.
  29. Trolls Band Together
    It’s a peppy sugar rush that should please younger audiences, but the appeal of the series is wearing pretty thin.
  30. Pain Hustlers
    It’s predictable but glossily watchable. The main redeeming feature is the crackling charisma of Emily Blunt, in the central role of a down-on-her-luck single mum turned pharma marketing genius.
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