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. Ali & Ava
    Ali & Ava is a vibrant work that uses the transcendent power of song to turn a streetwise tale into a diegetic musical, with genuinely surprising results.
  2. Lucy and Desi
    Poehler, herself a gifted comedian, doesn’t include her own voice in the film, though we still get a sense of her feminist perspective.
  3. Escape from Mogadishu
    The picture, a big-budget spectacle guided by the sure hand of action director Seung-wan Ryu (Crying Fist), is at its most effective when the hurtling camera is strafed by bullets. It’s less successful when the headlong pace falters to allow the screenplay to hammer home its message of collaboration and tolerance.
  4. The Worst Person in the World
    Blending melancholy wistfulness with unruly energy and piercing humour, it’s a down-to-earth tale of love and death, boosted by a brilliantly believable central performance and elevated by fantastical moments of hallucinogenic horror and ecstatic joy.
  5. Ambulance
    At the core of the film, partially concealed by Bay’s posturing and swagger, is a bracing, slickly executed B-movie.
  6. The Audition
    The slow creep of the camera mirrors the incremental build in pressure; this is the kind of tension that feels like a tightening chokehold on the audience.
  7. The Novice
    It’s not surprising to learn that its writer and director, Lauren Hadaway, who based this film on her own experiences on a college rowing team, has a background in sound editing.
  8. True Things
    With great physical poise and precision, Wilson (who optioned and developed the source book) engages the audience on a visceral level, her deceptively low-key performance taking us deep inside her character’s dreams, desires and insecurities.
  9. The Bad Guys
    It’s sharp, silly and frequently very funny.
  10. Morbius
    [An] incoherent, vampire-themed Marvel offcut.
  11. Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood
    Unfortunately, it becomes clear that the film is all backdrop, a boomer nostalgia trip with little in the way of actual story.
  12. Sing 2
    While there are no surprises whatsoever here, the perky charm remains.
  13. Hive
    Basholli understands that healing is possible, even if closure isn’t.
  14. Paris, 13th District
    This is a playfully sensuous affair that wonders what happens to slow-burn intimacy when mediated by the urgency of the online world.
  15. The Phantom of the Open
    Despite the inherent silliness, the actors play it straight. There’s an earnestness to Rylance’s performance, which encourages us to find inspiration in the underdog.
  16. Master
    Diallo utilises the visual language of horror – red lighting, empty shower stalls, a gnarled hand that emerges from under the bed – to express the terror of racism and the rot of its legacy.
  17. X
    The latest film from horror director Ti West (The House of the Devil), about a porn movie shoot gone wrong, is ripe with playful winks and nudges.
  18. Red Rocket
    As for Baker and regular co-writer Chris Bergoch, they refrain from judging their characters, observing the world from Mikey’s maniacally self-serving point of view even as comedy turns to queasiness and worse.
  19. Turning Red
    Turning Red is a fizzing, squealing adolescent explosion of a movie that nails a fundamental truth about growing up.
  20. The Adam Project
    The high-concept plot is held together more by force of will (and some decent special effects) than by logic, but the core of this engaging, kid-friendly Netflix production is a big-hearted tale of broken families made good.
  21. Great Freedom
    The power of Sebastian Meise’s subdued prison drama comes not from big, brash moments but from subtle details. Sound design that hints at the aching emptiness outside the frame and beyond the walls.
  22. The Batman
    Zoë Kravitz is a highlight as cocktail waitress turned cat burglar Selina Kyle.
  23. The Duke
    While The Duke is never quite as surprising as the case that inspired it, it nonetheless retains a much-needed astringent streak.
  24. Studio 666
    The running time is an issue – a punchy seven-inch single approach would have been preferable, rather than this jam session of a screenplay, which doesn’t know how to end. But the tonal blend of goofy and gory is oddly endearing.
  25. La Mif
    Mini-chapters focus on characters in turn, each offering a new perspective on the unfolding drama; choral and chamber music is an unexpected but effective punctuation in the storytelling, but most powerful is sound design that understands the gravity of moments of weighted silence.
  26. Cyrano
    It’s as though an essential part of the character’s appeal is missing; the knock-on effect is that the film’s glorious scenery and Sicilian backdrop end up doing rather a lot of heavy lifting.
  27. Servants
    Ostrochovský’s camera emphasises the constricting architecture of both church and state, with its black and white morality and a claustrophobic central courtyard, frequently portrayed via stiff, judgmental God’s-eye shots.
  28. Flee
    This is a triumph-of-the-human-spirit story as dramatic as the most finely wrought melodrama, with flashes of vintage newsreels reminding us that it is all “real”.
  29. Petrov's Flu
    It’s possibly the most Russian thing ever created, and it’s most certainly not a soothing viewing experience. But there’s something grimly fascinating about it nonetheless.
  30. Marry Me
    [A] silly, shallow romcom, which is as thin and predictable as Kat’s tinny pop songs.
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