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. Honest Thief
    With Neeson well within the confines of his comfort zone, tailed by corrupt cops and diving out of hotel windows, the film should be better. Yet it drags.
  2. SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock
    Rock’s wildest years – both the man and the music – swirl together into a psychedelic maelstrom of pills, pictures and brilliantly creative swearing.
  3. Time
    In Time it’s an almost superhuman sense of togetherness that rings through, a refusal to bow down, to be broken or defeated.
  4. Rebecca
    Personally, I would have preferred a little more Wheatley edge, a little less Country Living.
  5. White Riot
    Rubika Shah’s smart, spirited feature debut is a whistle-stop tour of a DIY uprising.
  6. Under the Shadow
    With this terrific feature debut, Anvari lifts the veil on his heroines’ hidden lives and leaves us all dreaming with our eyes wide open.
  7. Kajillionaire
    On relationships, July remains as perceptive as ever.
  8. The Forty-Year-Old Version
    [A] warm, funny and enjoyably rude debut.
  9. Saint Maud
    Charting a razor-sharp course between the borders of horror, satire, psychodrama and lonely character study (Taxi Driver has been cited as an influence), Saint Maud is a taut, sinewy treat, blessed with an impressively fluid visual sensibility and boosted by two quite brilliant central performances.
  10. On the Rocks
    A film that knowingly lifts riffs from screwball capers and melancholy romcoms alike, writing love letters to the city of New York as it swirls from one upmarket fairytale locale to the next.
  11. Eternal Beauty
    Roberts relies heavily on imagery suggesting a confused reality ( characters are constantly fractured into multiple reflections) but the use of colour is an effective shorthand that clues us into Jane’s state of mind.
  12. The Trial of the Chicago 7
    This is a film that examines both the past and the present day; that plots a path on the common ground between them.
  13. Rocks
    What a wonderful, heart-breaking, life-affirming gem of a movie this is.
  14. Miss Juneteenth
    Miss Juneteenth is a beautifully observed and quietly powerful drama that applies its coming-of-age tropes to children, parents and politics alike.
  15. Capital in the Twenty-First Century
    Documentaries should be more than a vehicle for information. Here, the message is hard to argue with, but the medium – an excess of music video-style cutting, contemporary pop culture montages and literal music cues – does the material no favours.
  16. Misbehaviour
    The film is called Misbehaviour, but a timid script belies mischief of any sort.
  17. Bill & Ted Face the Music
    This slapdash movie, with its big-hearted, puppyish positivity, might not save the world but it will surely lift the spirits.
  18. The Roads Not Taken
    The Roads Not Taken is frequently moving, and a fascinating creative idea, but without sufficient information about Leo’s character to anchor the narrative, it feels too abstract.
  19. The Devil All the Time
    However dark the narrative may seem, there’s a strong streak of black humour that accompanies the horror, often facilitated by a pointedly chosen tune.
  20. The Broken Hearts Gallery
    The premise of writer Natalie Krinsky’s directorial debut sounds cheesy, and it is, but watching the brooding Nick softening to putty in our goofball heroine’s presence while she remains sparkily oblivious is an earnest pleasure.
  21. Matthias & Maxime
    Ultimately, the revelation here is not so much Dolan’s more contemplative approach to film-making, but the subtlety and sensitivity of his performance.
  22. She Dies Tomorrow
    Alternately hilarious and spine-tingling, it recalls David Lynch’s Twin Peaks in its serious, penetrating sense of doom.
  23. Get Duked!
    Hyperactive editing, the jittery rap score and an obligatory acid trip scene grate, but Doff’s social commentary is sharp.
  24. Les Misérables
    It’s that sense of beauty – of the possibility of redemption – that prevents Les Misérables from being crushed by the grim weight of the world it depicts. It’s a world in which Ly grew up, and his love of these neighbourhoods, in all their hardscrabble glory, is tangible.
  25. i'm thinking of ending things
    This is not cinema that leaves you feeling good about things. Nor does it tread a familiar path. But I’m Thinking of Ending Things is one of the most daringly unexpected films of the year, a sinewy, unsettling psychological horror, saturated with a squirming dream logic that tips over into the domain of nightmares.
  26. Mulan
    It’s a film that cries out to be seen in the cinema. Disney’s decision to bypass a theatrical release in favour of streaming does a disservice to both the film and its audience.
  27. Chemical Hearts
    Heavy-handed symbolism aside, this is a decent little drama which digs into the bewildering limbo state between childhood and the adult world – a time in which everything hurts, heads are full of hormones and time stretches out interminably.
  28. Tenet
    Nolan’s desire to stimulate both the blood and the brain feels earnest. What’s frustrating is that he doesn’t trust his audience to follow along.
  29. Pinocchio
    The source material is a neat fit for the Italian film-maker, who traversed similarly episodic fairytale terrain with 2015’s Tale of Tales. It’s also a critique of society that feels timeless or, rather, timely – and not just for Garrone.
  30. Babyteeth
    There’s a fearlessness to Murphy’s film-making, a slightly wayward, maverick spirit. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
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