The Observer (UK)'s Scores

Select another publication »
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
view
per page
  1. Luzzu
    The magnetic Scicluna is a Maltese fisherman in real life, and part of a cast predominantly made up of non-professional actors. His performance is impressively complex.
  2. Elizabeth: A Portrait in Part(s)
    Although it may not bring revelations, there’s an informality and intimacy to this portrait that is unexpectedly pleasing.
  3. The Bob's Burgers Movie
    Fans will eat it up (with relish and fries); older kids will adore the oddball humour. And even cinemagoers who have never seen an episode of the TV series (me, for example) are likely to find much to amuse them, provided they have a tolerance for extreme silliness.
  4. Top Gun: Maverick
    Top Gun: Maverick offers exactly the kind of air-punching spectacle that reminds people why a trip to the cinema beats staying at home and watching Netflix.
  5. a-ha: the Movie
    Fans will no doubt find the film fascinating, if a little dispiriting: it may be like eavesdropping on your parents, only to discover that they’re on the brink of divorce.
  6. Benediction
    Behind it all is an endlessly saddening search for that transformative sacrament evoked by the film’s title – alluring yet elusive.
  7. Emergency
    Carey Williams’s smart satire of the daily realities of racial profiling is a switchback ride that lurches between comedy and nerve-shredding tension, but loses focus in an extraneous coda.
  8. The Innocents
    The child’s perspective on the story means that the film is unquestioning when it comes to the sources of the psychic powers, neatly sidestepping the need for exposition. In a child’s mind, magic is real, black magic painfully so.
  9. Cordelia
    Tension is frequently punctured by clunky dialogue.
  10. Vortex
    There’s a despairing inevitability to the film’s incremental pacing – we feel every aching minute of the nearly two-and-a-half-hour running time. It’s not exactly fun, but it’s a relentlessly powerful piece of film-making.
  11. The Legend of Molly Johnson
    The film tackles issues of race, sexual violence and the low-level simmering cruelty that is a fact of life for those hardy individuals who make a life in the bush in the late 19th century.
  12. Father Stu
    Playing out to the histrionic squalling of a country-infused score, this is film-making that aims to smite its audience into submission.
  13. Everything Everywhere All at Once
    The result may be a tad overlong and convolutedly overstuffed, but it made me laugh, cry and think – which is more than can be said for many a Marvel flick.
  14. This Much I Know to Be True
    The atmosphere is stripped down and austere, allowing the songs to speak for themselves as they transport us from this world to the next.
  15. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
    Unlike movies such as Black Panther and Shang-Chi, which functioned as self-contained entities, this film requires an encyclopedic knowledge of Marvel minutiae and world-class cross-referencing skills to fully work. And who, outside the diehard fanbase, has the bandwidth for that level of commitment?
  16. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
    The screenplay is so meta that at times it is practically consuming itself, an ouroboros of in-jokes. But there’s an affable appeal to the picture that disarms the more self-satisfied tendencies of the writing, and which stems from the chemistry between Cage and Pascal. Come for the industry satire, stay for the endearingly goofy buddy movie.
  17. Happening
    Happening is a visceral, confronting experience.
  18. Playground
    It is piercingly insightful without ever labouring the point.
  19. Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle
    Along the way, the director, Arthur Harari, takes the exhausted true tale of the lone Japanese soldier and sculpts it into a captivating tragicomedy, a sharp-eyed study of zealotry and self-delusion, ridiculous and heartbreaking in about equal measure.
  20. Operation Mincemeat
    A quality cast tackle the script’s various twists and turns with aplomb. But the tale itself feels cumbersome and over-furnished, listing under the weight of its bolt-on subplots and endless reams of dialogue.
  21. The Lost City
    The respective charms of Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum receive a rigorous workout during the course of this caffeinated, overeager adventure romp – to the point where significant signs of wear and tear begin to appear.
  22. The Northman
    While the Norns-of-fate narrative may contrive several reversals of fortune and sympathy, there’s little of the genuinely uncanny weirdness that made Eggers’s first two features such a treat. What madness lies herein is not of the north-northwest variety but more in keeping with the bonkers blockbuster spectacle of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah.
  23. Prayers for the Stolen
    It captures the wary, precarious nature of a community that relies financially on the same forces – the rampaging drug cartels – that also terrorise it. Huezo taps into the intense vibration between young female friends who treasure each other above all else.
  24. Compartment No. 6
    Beautifully believable performances from Haarla and Borisov add emotional weight, rivalling the nuanced naturalistic charm of Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy.
  25. Navalny
    It’s a genuinely exciting piece of storytelling, a propulsive real-life quest for truth driven by ingenious tech-geeks and the disarming force of Navalny’s personality.
  26. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
    In this third outing, there’s a crucial crackle of chemistry between Mikkelsen and Jude Law’s younger Dumbledore.
  27. Murina
    The atmosphere, of sun and celebration, rings as hollow as the Europop that Ante blasts to drown out arguments; sonar-stabs of cello on the score sound a warning
  28. Small Body
    With its colour palette of mossy greens, terracotta and earth tones, and its matter-of-fact approach to themes of folklore and mysticism, this gorgeous first feature from Italian director Laura Samani is as enchanting as it is unusual.
  29. Against the Ice
    There is about as much jeopardy as you’d expect from an action thriller about an obscure land dispute; a tense encounter with an angry polar bear and a phantom hot air balloon are highlights during the endless plodding across the frozen wilderness.
  30. Rebel Dread
    Letts gives thoughtful context to the way he was able to straddle the racially delineated worlds of dub reggae and punk rock, drawing parallels between the merging of subcultures in 1970s London, and the intersection of hip-hop and rock’n’roll in 1980s New York.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »