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 Independent
    Some of the picture’s taut focus and pacing are lost to an unnecessary cancer subplot involving Eli’s family; like the journalists it follows, the film works best when it is tenaciously single-minded.
  2. What's Love Got to Do with It?
    The sparky chemistry between James and Latif leaves few surprises in how it all pans out, but it’s an unexpectedly, disarmingly sweet film.
  3. Cocaine Bear
    Sporadically goofy fun, a scrappy carnival of ripped limbs, severed heads and spilled intestines, all softened by an only partly parodic family-centred Spielbergian sensibility.
  4. Joyland
    Richly detailed and superbly acted across the board, the film cast a scathing eye over the rigid social constraints that ensnare anyone who fails to conform.
  5. The Son
    Zeller explores how sadness repels; how people involuntarily recoil from depression, perpetuating the isolation of the sufferer.
  6. Nostalgia
    Meandering but richly detailed drama.
  7. The Inspection
    This well-acted outsider’s-eye view of the inner workings of the US armed forces is fiercely candid, in its condemnation of the brutality that is enmeshed in the training programme, and in its celebration of the bonds and brotherhood that grow between fellow cadets.
  8. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
    While subjects as dark as separation and death may be faced head-on (a reading from Philip Larkin’s The Trees had me in tears), there’s a comedic quality that reminded me of Aardman’s sublime Creature Comforts animations – a joyous juxtaposition of quotidian, vérité-style dialogue and fancifully inventive visuals that hits a tragicomic sweet spot.
  9. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
    The film’s main asset is Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror: his performance, with its velvet-soft line deliveries and unfathomable, boundless rage, is the magnetic core of this incoherent effects-dump of a movie.
  10. Sharper
    The performances, so thickly layered with charm and artifice that it’s hard to know what and who is real and what isn’t, are first-rate. It’s a pacy and enjoyable movie.
  11. Saint Omer
    Inspired by Diop’s own experience of attending the trial of a woman accused of murdering her baby, it’s a meditative exploration of a complicated connection between the woman in the dock and the one who bears witness.
  12. EO
    Yet there are also moments of heart-stopping tenderness and beauty.
  13. The Whale
    The film sets out to repulse us, and it frequently succeeds. It would be easy, and tempting, to dismiss it out of hand. But that would be to disregard its redeeming strength – the authentically knotty characters and the performances that inhabit them.
  14. Knock at the Cabin
    As the film’s bleak momentum builds, so does a tsunami swell of existential dread. It’s Shyamalan’s most contained and efficient picture in a while.
  15. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
    This Shrek spin-off is a breezily entertaining DreamWorks animation that harnesses the familiar appeal of the self-aggrandising feline (Antonio Banderas), while also adopting a distinctive and original graphic visual style.
  16. Epic Tails
    The decent quality of the animation of this English-language French production is rather let down by some shockingly poor voice performances and a couple of ear-bleeding musical numbers.
  17. Women Talking
    An atmosphere of empathy, reason and wit pervades Polley’s film, underwritten by an emancipatory urgency (“that day we learned to vote”) that drives the narrative even in its darkest moments.
  18. Blue Jean
    A supremely accomplished debut feature from writer-director Georgia Oakley, Blue Jean captures a specific moment in British history with almost uncanny accuracy.
  19. Somebody I Used to Know
    It’s a wasted opportunity. Brie is clearly a gifted comic actress who deserves better material than this.
  20. Nothing Lasts Forever
    The interview subjects are fascinating throughout, but jewellery designer and author Aja Raden is a particular gift: funny, insightful, dripping with sarcasm and oversized earrings.
  21. Magic Mike's Last Dance
    It’s a diverting enough way to pass a couple of hours, I suppose, although you’ll need a high tolerance for montage sequences and for the alarmingly priapic personal-space-invading exertions of Mike and his boys.
  22. The Amazing Maurice
    This perky computer-animated adventure leans a little heavily on its meta self-aware storytelling devices (expect numerous fourth-wall-smashing to camera asides), but it’s a fun, if slightly macabre option for family audiences.
  23. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
    What becomes clear from the film, which vividly details the cultural backdrop as well as Goldin’s work, is that fear has never been part of Goldin’s vocabulary, either creatively or personally.
  24. The Fabelmans
    If you’re looking for a film that explains where the Spielbergian tropes you know and love came from, then The Fabelmans is for you.
  25. Plane
    It may be big, brawling and somewhat inelegant in approach, but this Gerard Butler vehicle is an aviation fuel-powered good time.
  26. You People
    The first third of the picture is promising, if frequently excruciating. But the points are painfully laboured and the jokes run out of steam.
  27. Hide and Seek
    Using a combination of verité and poetic reconstructions, Fiore paints a sobering portrait of a bright, personable kid whose destiny is preordained.
  28. Babylon
    For all its nudge-wink movie-history nods and self-conscious carnivals of bodily fluids and glamorous excess, Babylon is exhaustingly unexciting fare – hysterical rather than historical, derivative rather than inventive.
  29. Bank of Dave
    Rory Kinnear gives a robustly likable performance as Dave, somewhat redeeming this unashamedly formulaic crowd-pleaser.
  30. Alice, Darling
    What’s impressive about this psychological thriller, the debut feature film from director Mary Nighy, is how tuned in it is to the dynamics of female friendship.
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