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 Piano Lesson
    It’s a handsome production, and an impressive debut from first-time director Malcolm Washington, Denzel’s son. But like the previous two pictures, it’s stagey and mannered – a film that never quite sheds its theatrical roots.
  2. Piece By Piece
    It’s a fun watch, and the technique allows film-maker Morgan Neville to visually represent Williams’s form of synaesthesia, which turns music into colours, and to explore his musical process in a suitably playful and creative manner.
  3. Red One
    A charmless, CGI-heavy spectacle, Red One falls into an ill-considered audience no man’s land: it’s too intense for little kids (we get to visit Krampus in what appears to be a yuletide S&M dungeon) and too bland to attract teens and genre fans.
  4. Bird
    Bird finds beauty and wonder in every frame (one that Arnold has slyly shaped to evoke the format and curved corners of a smartphone screen, echoing the way Bailey captures private moments of visual poetry). The film celebrates rather than judges its erratic and occasionally challenging characters It’s the closest Andrea Arnold has come to a feelgood flick.
  5. No Other Land
    The friendship that grows between the two is a splinter of hope in an otherwise increasingly bleak situation.
  6. Paddington In Peru
    While it’s an enjoyable family romp that should charm younger audiences, the action onslaught can’t conceal that this sequel lacks the inventive agility, wit, comic timing and, most crucially, the magic of its predecessors.
  7. Blitz
    What the film-maker has built for us here is the cinematic equivalent of an Anderson shelter: basic, sturdy and unfussy. It’s there if we need it and have nowhere else to go.
  8. Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
    On screen, the man play-acted the qualities of courage and resilience. Off it, he came to embody them too.
  9. Juror #2
    Time is of the essence; Eastwood’s 94 years old. He’s not prepared to be cross-examined or sidetracked by pesky minor details.
  10. Heretic
    It’s a tense, tight fairground ride of a film.
  11. Small Things Like These
    Small Things Like These casts a powerful spell.
  12. Anora
    Anora deepens and darkens with each twist and turn and provides a violent corrective to so many Hollywood fairytales.
  13. Dahomey
    It’s a wisp of a thing, clocking in at barely over an hour. But the agile poetry and formal playfulness of Mati Diop’s exquisite hybrid documentary belies the weight and wealth of ideas within.
  14. The Room Next Door
    See The Room Next Door for its stunning mid-century architecture, chic interior design, and for Swinton’s enviable euthanasia wardrobe. But don’t expect to feel much of anything, unless you have an unhealthy passion for colour-blocked chunky knitwear.
  15. Emilia Pérez
    The film’s messaging on female empowerment and living authentically might border on the trite. The means of delivering that message, however, does at least feel genuinely fresh and new.
  16. Black Box Diaries
    It’s a tough watch – at the start, she suggests that we “close our eyes and take a deep breath if we need to” – but a brave and important one.
  17. Venom: The Last Dance
    Hardy is a highlight, playing Eddie as a man who has had more than enough of the party that’s raging in his head, but Kelly Marcel’s film is a sloppy, incoherent let-down.
  18. Matt and Mara
    Radwanski uses restless, handheld cameras and improvisation to capture micro-moments in which not a lot happens but the implications are huge.
  19. Woman of the Hour
    Kendrick’s knack for capturing period detail goes beyond the psychedelic synthetics and kipper ties. She taps into the treacherous sexism that was hardwired into the entertainment industry and wider culture of the time, both of which are shown to be minefields of fragile male egos and potential violence.
  20. Smile 2
    The special effects are bracingly revolting, the malevolent smiles as creepy as ever. And the film has the added bonus of some killer choreography, in every sense of the word.
  21. The Wild Robot
    It’s sentimental stuff, certainly, but the picture’s unexpectedly dark humour outweighs any maudlin tendencies.
  22. The Apprentice
    Most intriguing is Strong’s slippery portrayal of Cohn – a man full of sharp edges and wide, swinging contradictions.
  23. Timestalker
    It’s a fun premise, but Lowe’s follow-up to her deliciously nasty 2016 debut, Prevenge, is disappointingly underpowered and slapdash.
  24. His Three Daughters
    This is subtle, unshowy film-making that is entirely in the service of the screenplay and the performances – and what performances.
  25. Sugarcane
    The sickening facts of the case are presented with a respectful restraint but it’s impossible to watch this and not feel a cold, hard rage on behalf of the victims.
  26. The Goldman Case
    As an account of a notable moment in French legal history, it’s undeniably compelling stuff.
  27. Strange Darling
    The teasing, tricky structure adds intrigue to a fairly rudimentary horror premise and the cinematography – actor Giovanni Ribisi steps behind the camera as the DOP – is suitably strident, with reds and yellows screaming from the screen.
  28. Girls Will Be Girls
    This impressive first feature from Indian director Shuchi Talati burrows into the skin of its high-achieving, ambitious central character.
  29. Salem's Lot
    The vampire genre is, like its toothy protagonists, notoriously difficult to kill outright, but this flat and uninspired film could be a nail in its coffin.
  30. Transformers One
    One of the aspects that makes this an unexpectedly satisfying piece of storytelling (aside from the obvious improvements in the joke quality) is the way that the film digs into the structure of Autobot society.
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