The Observer (UK)'s Scores

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:
1640 movie reviews
  1. From the intimate restraint of the early scenes, Delpero’s direction becomes more fractured and abrasive. It’s a remarkable work.
  2. The famous apple incident is a taut centrepiece for Nick Hamm’s picture, and the action sequences are propulsive. The casting, however, is questionable.
  3. It’s a tricky balance, and one that the film doesn’t always quite pull off, between sounding a warning and screaming with existential terror; between galvanising the audience into action and plunging them into despair.
  4. A masterpiece.
  5. We Live in Time is let down by the jarring product placement (take a bow, Weetabix and Jaffa Cakes) and by the aggressively anodyne score, which sounds like the kind of reassuring, hand-holding mulch that might be played in a dentist’s waiting room.
  6. While I had more time than many of my fellow critics for the two previous movie spin-offs from the Sega video game series, it turns out that you can, in fact, have too much of a good thing.
  7. It’s a droll, perceptive and shamelessly sentimental look at generational tensions.
  8. As for Law – sporting a bristling moustache and some girth that evoke the weariness that Husk must fight in himself – he gives a sometimes warm, sometimes commandingly irascible performance that shows this actor moving confidently into middle-career authority. He and Hoult’s icy-eyed adversary combine to somewhat mythical resonance; a wrestle-with-the-demon duo that actually fits the political context to pointed effect.
  9. There’s something about the macabre sensuality and mossy, crepuscular gloom of this retelling of the vampire legend that leaves a mark on the audience. It’s not so much a viewing experience as a kind of haunting.
  10. Better Man is a notable step up for Gracey. The synthetic, rather soulless panache of The Greatest Showman demonstrated his skills as a slick visual stylist, but here he directs from the heart, tapping into the rawness and vulnerability beneath the CGI monkey suit.
  11. Unfortunately, Perry drenches the tale with his trademark syrupy ineptitude, creating a gloopy, turgid plodder.
  12. The latest feature from the Bristol-based animation studio is an absolute delight.
  13. The yagé trip sequence is overlong, baggy and indulgent. The characters lose all sense of their bodies; the film simply loses its point.
  14. Nightbitch would have worked better if it had been pushed further in either direction – as an intimate interrogation, or as a full-bore bestial freakout. This uneasy middle ground feels like a missed opportunity.
  15. This slow-burning drama, which won one of the top prizes at Sundance earlier this year, elegantly balances a spark of hope against a slowly rising tide of dread.
  16. Nyoni’s Zambia-set film, using the Bemba language and English, deftly juggles humour with pathos, domestic drama with surreal fantasy flourishes. It’s dizzyingly creative and rather special.
  17. An impenetrable plot doesn’t entirely hold together, but the film is worth a look for fans of wigged-out sci-fi, gorgeous framing and lush, orchestral, Bernard Herrmann-inspired soundtracks.
  18. Essential viewing.
  19. There’s a little too much crammed into this overstuffed stocking of a movie, but the gorgeous, lovingly detailed animation style – it’s the second feature from British studio Locksmith Animation (Ron’s Gone Wrong) – and the zippy action sequences should prove a winning combination for family audiences.
  20. The main selling point remains Moana herself: the sparkiest and most intrepid Disney heroine of them all.
  21. It’s a marvel of a movie, with something of the humanist poetry of Satyajit Ray or Edward Yang. And it’s all the more remarkable given that this is Kapadia’s first fiction feature (her 2021 debut film, the documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, also picked up a prize in Cannes). What a talent.
  22. The fierce intelligence of Fiennes’s work is magnified by Berger’s elegant direction.
  23. Caroline Lindy’s feature debut is a droll, if uneven blend of comedy, romance, fantasy and horror that relies heavily on the off-the-charts chemistry between Barrera and Dewey, who manages to convince as a charismatic romantic lead, despite looking like a rejected prosthetics test for the 80s TV series Manimal.
  24. With its all too timely themes of bullying, corrupt leaders and the demonisation of difference, this is a movie that promises a froth of pink and green escapism but delivers considerably more in the way of depth and darkness.
  25. Powerful and enraging.
  26. Layla is less about making peace with the past than it is about staying true to the present.
  27. Joy
    Given the emotive subject matter, the film chooses to keep the potential mothers at arm’s length as characters, losing tear-jerking opportunities as a consequence.
  28. This sequel is so derivative of its predecessor, it’s practically a remake.
  29. Informative, exhaustively researched, but never dry or didactic, this is a phenomenal achievement by Grimonprez, who holds his own country to account for its shameful role in this sorry tale.
  30. The prosaic anti-escapism of this sprawling American indie thoroughly subverts the expectations of the festive family movie.

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