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. Man on the Run
    This documentary shares Scorsese’s theme of obscene greed, while Kuala Lumpur’s neon nightscape gives the feel of a Batman villain’s origin story. The Penguin, probably.
  2. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
    Another sloppy helping of migrant family cliches, served up with the same loving forcefulness as grandma’s moussaka
  3. Bobi Wine: The People's President
    It’s a gripping piece of film-making: a propulsive, kinetic account of a grassroots campaign captured at what would seem to be considerable personal risk to both the subject and directors. And as a snapshot of a curdled, corrupted political system, it is eye-opening and at times genuinely terrifying.
  4. The Equalizer 3
    While there are no surprises here, there are visceral kicks to be found in the businesslike efficiency of McCall’s retribution, and the devilish glint in Washington’s eye as he delivers it.
  5. Sound of Freedom
    The picture, by Mexican director Alejandro Monteverde, is an earnest and well-intentioned attempt to engage with a very real and harrowing issue. It’s also a thunderously crass and manipulative movie that is hampered by erratic pacing, pantomime bad guys and an overfondness for shots of Caviezel weeping God-fearing, manly tears.
  6. Maigret
    It’s dour, certainly, but the sense of bone-tired exhaustion and crushed hope that linger like pipe smoke works rather effectively for this particular case.
  7. Passages
    Most modern American film-makers rarely get the chance to conjure frank sex scenes that serve an explicit narrative purpose, so it’s significant that Sachs has cited the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Belgian film-maker Chantal Akerman (along with fellow Europeans Maurice Pialat and Luchino Visconti) as inspirations for this French-German co-production.
  8. The First Slam Dunk
    While it leans a little heavily on baffling basketball strategy and court-based machinations, it’s a dynamic and unexpectedly affecting animation.
  9. Scrapper
    Mostly Regan’s unfiltered approach brings a fizzing unpredictability and vitality to this abrasively empathic exploration of a father-daughter bond.
  10. Strays
    Strays is a film that leans heavily on gross-out gags and a pre-adolescent fascination with pee and poop.
  11. Blue Beetle
    Blue Beetle may be frontloaded with visual fireworks that neatly meld the practical and the virtual, but it is the likable interplay between its down-to-earth characters that gives the film oomph, making it more than just a Shazam-style romp.
  12. L'Immensità
    Of the two main characters, Clara provides the tonal touchstone for the film. Like her, the picture spins off into moments of unpredictable fantasy – musical numbers inspired by television variety shows. Music – peppy Italian pop, schmaltzy ballads – is inventively employed throughout, but the use of colour and costume is particularly evocative.
  13. Gran Turismo
    Amid the screenplay platitudes (“The crash is not going to define who you are; how you respond to it will”) and shameless advertising riffs (unabashed spiels about PlayStation democratising motor sports), there’s an intriguing story of alien worlds colliding that somehow seems tailor-made for Blomkamp’s preoccupations.
  14. Heart of Stone
    The screenplay is a rudimentary thing – scaffolding to support the set pieces – that starts to creak whenever it attempts any depth of character. But the action is terrific, with a screaming, tyre-shredding extended car chase around Lisbon’s tight, cobbled alleys a breathless and exhilarating highlight.
  15. Haunted Mansion
    This is a grimly efficient IP cash-in that defuses any potential scares with a hot-pink colour palette and a bunch of oddly specific and distracting product placements.
  16. Red White & Royal Blue
    Fortunately, the twin charisma assault of the two leads adds considerably to the film’s appeal. It turns out that watching two impossibly beautiful boys making cow eyes at each other might be just the escapist pulp we need right now.
  17. LOLA
    Shot on film, using vintage equipment, the picture has a scrappy, tactile quality, its ghostly black-and-white images scratched and scorched. Meanwhile, Neil Hannon’s smartly used score envisages a chilling authoritarian future for pop music.
  18. The Beanie Bubble
    It is blithely unquestioning of what the frenzy over glorified Hacky Sacks actually tells us about society.
  19. Talk to Me
    For all the genre nods, this remains very much its own movie – a film that isn’t afraid to talk to its core audience, even while giving them the heebie-jeebies.
  20. Medusa Deluxe
    Mainly, though, the problem lies with a screenplay that fails to create suspense, or even to persuade us to care who killed a brilliant but unpopular hair stylist. Still, credit to the hair and costume design team for a collection of extravagantly silly creations.
  21. Pretty Red Dress
    Pretty Red Dress is both playful and defiant, swept along on a tide of toe-tapping tunes that tug at the heartstrings, yet unafraid to face up to complex personal issues while still maintaining its solidly mainstream appeal.
  22. Greatest Days
    It’s a film that obediently hits the predictable story beats, is regularly punctuated by peppy, disposable musical numbers, but shows no inclination to be much more than a nostalgic marketing vehicle for a collection of anodyne pop songs.
  23. Barbie
    It’s a riotously entertaining candy-coloured feminist fable that manages simultaneously to celebrate, satirise and deconstruct its happy-plastic subject. Audiences will be delighted. Mattel should be ecstatic.
  24. Oppenheimer
    For the most part, the film is a towering achievement. Not surprisingly, given Nolan’s preference for shooting on Imax 70mm film, the picture has a depth of detail you could drown in.
  25. Return to Dust
    It’s a gorgeous, quietly affecting film that finds an unassuming beauty in this simple life in rural China, but which doesn’t shy away from the extreme hardships faced by the very poorest.
  26. While We Watched
    This is tense, essential film-making that argues for the importance of serious, balanced journalism in today’s world of factional infotainment, while also showing the cost to those who stand against the tide.
  27. 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.
  28. Bird Box Barcelona
    With Bird Box: Barcelona, as with any film of this outlandish ilk, suspension of disbelief and an appreciation of propulsively destructive action sequences is key. Just don’t expect too many fresh ideas.
  29. 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.
  30. Wham!
    The beauty of Wham!, a key part of the appeal of the band, came from the perception that they were a self-contained unit, a guaranteed good time seemingly impervious to negativity. And for a while, that was true.
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