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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    • 86 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Written on the Wind
    Polished melodrama of considerable psychological and social subtlety. [03 Feb 2013, p.43]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Moby Dick
    Gregory Peck's dignified Ahab is, like his leg, somewhat wooden, but the cast is splendid (not least Orson Welles's guest spot as Father Mapple), and Oswald Morris's experimental colour photography (based on old whaling prints) is commendable. [29 May 2005, p.79]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Harder They Fall
    Inspired by the suspect career of a prewar Italian boxer, it's rather good, but inferior to the novel by Budd Schulberg, the expert on the fight game and Oscar-winner for On the Waterfront. [04 Jan 2009, p.06]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Forbidden Planet
    A minor classic. [02 Apr 2000, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 92 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Ikiru
    The narrative is carefully paced, the central performance magnificent, the final effect overwhelming in a manner that recalls the great Russian writers Kurosawa admired.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    All That Heaven Allows
    A sharply observed indictment of 1950s country club conformity. [07 Jul 2013, p.45]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oklahoma!
    It's a skillful blending of the folksy and the sophisticated, shot almost entirely on location. With evergreen songs, delightful choreography by Agnes De Mille, and charming performances from Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae as the romantic leads, Charlotte Greenwood, and Gloria Grahame as the girl who can't say no. [22 Dec 2013, p.40]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    To Catch a Thief
    An engaging comedy thriller, one of the Master's rare straightforward whodunnits, producing real cinematic chemistry between Grace Kelly (her third and last Hitchcock film) and Cary Grant (his third and penultimate Hitchcock picture). [19 Oct 2014, p.48]
    • The Observer (UK)
  9. The Night of the Hunter
    Unforgettably haunting images (a car submerged in a watery grave; a spider's web view of the children fleeing in a riverboat to the strains of Pretty Fly; a silhouetted angel of death) make this a perennially unsettling masterpiece from which modern chillers could learn much.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Land of the Pharaohs
    Uneven, oddly distinguished attempt to examine the pyramid-building obsession of the Pharaoh (Jack Hawkins) and how it was affected by his second wife (Joan Collins) and his architect (James Robertson Justice). Some excellent sets by the great Alexander Trauner, much turgid dialogue and a score by Dimitri Tiomkin. [11 Jun 2006, p.18]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    White Christmas
    It's creaky sentimental stuff, redolent of the Eisenhower era, but the songs are (mostly) excellent, and Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney are delightful. [14 Dec 2008, p.17]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The Barefoot Contessa
    Pretentious, highly entertaining melodrama about the international movie business, giving Ava Gardner an iconic role as a wayward actress who takes a dangerous step too far when she marries an impotent Italian aristocrat (Rossano Brazzi). [01 Oct 2006, p.14]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Magnificent Obsession
    Less magnificent than the Ambersons or the Seven perhaps, but a minor classic nonetheless. [26 Mar 2006, p.14]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Them!
    It moves fast and is superbly silly. [01 Aug 1954, p.6]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    The Wild One
    A well-acted, soft-centred example of pre-rock rebelliousness with one of Brando's finest performances, it features the celebrated exchange between local lawman's daughter Mary Murphy and Brando: "What are you rebelling against?" - "What have you got?" [31 Aug 2014, p.48]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Hondo
    An excellent 1954 John Wayne Western, in which he plays a cavalry scout with Indian sympathies fighting Apaches in New Mexico.
    • The Observer (UK)
  17. Calamity Jane
    Boisterous fun, with Day’s performance – as the song goes – as busy as a fizzy sarsaparilla.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Mogambo
    Clark Gable, 21 years older, repeats his role as an expatriate adventurer; Ava Gardner's brunette temptress looks great but is an inadequate replacement for Jean Harlow's wisecracking blonde broad; Grace Kelly is the frigid upper-class visitor (a role originally played by Mary Astor). John Lee Mahin wrote both but did a better job first time around. [26 May 2010, p.51]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    A Lion Is in the Streets
    An effective, superficial film, much inferior to All the Kings Men, which was also based on Louisianas governor Huey Long. [30 Jan 2000]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    From Here to Eternity
    [An] expertly wrought movie.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It Came from Outer Space
    An exciting, frightening movie, and a landmark of the genre, it stands up surprisingly well. [16 Jul 2006, p.20]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Shane
    Shane is a beautiful, deceptively simple movie that takes on different meanings for each generation. [08 Oct 2000, p.10]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ivanhoe
    Best of a series of lavishly mounted MGM historical yarns made in England in the early 1950s with American stars and British supporting casts. [03 Jun 2012, p.46]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Niagara
    This gripping thriller, an early film noir in colour, features the Niagara Falls thundering grandly in the background and Marilyn Monroe wiggling sexily in the foreground as a treacherous wife whose scheme to murder her middle-aged husband (Joseph Cotten) goes fatally wrong. [27 Sep 2009, p.29]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Bad and the Beautiful
    An immaculately cast and acted film that paints a warts-and-all portrait of Hollywood at its zenith. [22 Apr 2012, p.24]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Road to Bali
    Bob Hope and Bing Crosby milk a familiar formula for all its worth in their penultimate 'Road' movie (the only one in colour) which takes them on a wise-cracking journey to the South Seas where Dorothy Lamour is inevitably on hand as an Indonesian princess to be rescued and fought over. [13 Oct 2002, p.8]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Limelight
    It's a verbose, technically creaky work, both sentimental and self-indulgent, and never very funny except for a brilliant scene with Chaplin and Buster Keaton as a disaster-prone musical duo. However, there are sublime, deeply affecting moments and for those who think Chaplin one of the key figures of 20th-century popular culture, it is a crucial movie.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Quiet Man
    A triumph of true sentiment over lurking sentimentality starring John Wayne as an Irish-American boxer returning to Ireland in search of peace and a wife (Maureen O'Hara) and finding himself in the middle of a brawling, drinking, singing, timeless Oirish Neverland. [03 Oct 2010, p.47]
    • The Observer (UK)
    • 79 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Pat and Mike
    This undervalued comic masterpiece, scripted by the husband-and-wife team of Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, would be a fine film even if it didn't try to be funny, which it so successfully does. [06 May 2007, p.64]
    • The Observer (UK)
  30. The Tales of Hoffmann
    This sublimely orchestrated marvel takes fantasy film-making to a new level, looking back to the dramatic choreography of silent cinema and forward to the colourful ecstasies of Ken Russell.
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