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Observer (UK)

Tomatometer-approved publication.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
State of Statelessness (2024) Barbara Ellen The final story, about a son’s discovery of a family secret in Dharamshala following the death of his father, is the most intriguing and accomplished.
Posted Jan 27, 2026  Edit critic review
Mercy (2026) Wendy Ide It’s pulpy, propulsive fun, but it reads alarmingly like a feature-length advertisement for mass surveillance.
Posted Jan 26, 2026  Edit critic review
Saipan (2025) Wendy Ide A droll and gently entertaining blend of sports movie and soap opera.
Posted Jan 26, 2026  Edit critic review
The History of Sound (2025) Wendy Ide This is a handsome and impeccably tasteful work from South African director Oliver Hermanus... But it is subdued almost to the point of coyness, a story of passion undone by its polite execution.
Posted Jan 26, 2026  Edit critic review
Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart (2026) Barbara Ellen This is a robust documentary... The miracle is not only that Elizabeth managed to survive her ordeal, but that she went on to become an impressive spokesperson for survivors of sexual violence.
Posted Jan 26, 2026  Edit critic review
North (1994) Philip French North the boy has everything and faces no real threat, while North the movie is a parasitic ragbag of movie references.
Posted Jan 23, 2026  Edit critic review
Misery (1990) Philip French At once wonderfully original and aware of its ancestry, this astonishing film is a taut, darkly comic thriller.
Posted Jan 22, 2026  Edit critic review
The American President (1995) Philip French This is a romantic fairy-tale intended to amuse, inspire and get Clinton re-elected, not to raise questions, and as such it's a smooth entertainment.
Posted Jan 22, 2026  Edit critic review
Bulk (2025) Wendy Ide I can’t say that it all makes a great deal of sense, but the film’s playfulness and teasing meta humour is appealing.
Posted Jan 20, 2026  Edit critic review
The Rip (2026) Wendy Ide Despite, or perhaps because of all the jostling egos, shouting and shooting, this is a baggy mess of a picture that fails to muster much in the way of suspense, or even to persuade us that we should care one way or another.
Posted Jan 20, 2026  Edit critic review
Rental Family (2025) Wendy Ide Although Fraser plays the character with an almost childlike naivety, there’s something rather off-putting about this big wet sponge of a man who believes all too readily in the roles he is assigned to play.
Posted Jan 20, 2026  Edit critic review
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) Wendy Ide DaCosta’s film is a macabre morality tale about the best and worst of human nature. It is utterly brutal, and one of the most compelling so far.
Posted Jan 17, 2026  Edit critic review
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) C.A. Lejeune The exhibition of scientific gadgets will delight the inquiring mind, and the account of planetary intentions proves highly reassuring.
Posted Jan 16, 2026  Edit critic review
Stand by Me (1986) Philip French Stand By Me is an economical, gentle, truthful tale.
Posted Jan 14, 2026  Edit critic review
Gaslight (1944) C.A. Lejeune It is a fierce, Victorian period piece; deliberately played for horror and handsome in a rich and stuffy way.
Posted Jan 13, 2026  Edit critic review
Becoming Victoria Wood (2026) Wendy Ide It was an untimely loss that still stings. This unshowy but affectionate documentary salutes her singular talent and charts her journey.
Posted Jan 12, 2026  Edit critic review
Giant (2025) Wendy Ide For a film about a fighter who was famous for his footwork, this is disappointingly plodding stuff.
Posted Jan 12, 2026  Edit critic review
Hamnet (2025) Wendy Ide The film’s potency is derived as much from the physicality of the performances -- Mescal’s restless, questing agitation, Buckley’s open book of a face -- as it is from the dialogue.
Posted Jan 09, 2026  Edit critic review
Beaver Valley (1950) C.A. Lejeune Beaver Valley is a little beauty... It is drawn direct from life, but composed directly for the cinema. The skill and innocence that once went into the presentation of cartoon animals have been applied, but with a new vigor, but without the new vulgarity.
Posted Jan 08, 2026  Edit critic review
Alice in Wonderland (1951) C.A. Lejeune Alice in Wonderland is a far less stimulating achievement, except in the sense that it may drive lovers of Lewis Carroll to frenzy, but let it be said at once that there are some delightful things in it.
Posted Jan 08, 2026  Edit critic review
A Few Good Men (1992) Philip French Certainly it poses some important questions. But because the authors are so intent on creating an exciting melodrama that appeals alike to hawks and doves, the issues are fudged and no one really gets his way in court.
Posted Jan 08, 2026  Edit critic review
The Sure Thing (1985) Philip French A dissappointing campus comedy.
Posted Jan 08, 2026  Edit critic review
*batteries not Included (1987) Philip French I found the film highly resistible.
Posted Jan 07, 2026  Edit critic review
Empire of the Sun (1987) Philip French Even though you might be impressed by the portentous mood, you'll wonder how a film that comes to look like a sanitised fusion of The Go-Between and Tenko can have been derived from a novel that has been favorably compared to A High Wind in Jamaica.
Posted Jan 07, 2026  Edit critic review
The Princess Bride (1987) Philip French A captivating, wonderfully witty swashbuckling fairy-tale.
Posted Jan 07, 2026  Edit critic review
Song Sung Blue (2025) Wendy Ide It’s almost too obvious to draw a parallel between the directorial approach and the pleasantly forgettable, unapologetically corny music at its rhinestone-encrusted heart, but this is the very definition of middle-of-the-road film-making.
Posted Jan 06, 2026  Edit critic review
Re-Animator (1985) Philip French Neither really funny nor truly frightening, it is too self-consciously bent on acquiring instant cult status.
Posted Jan 05, 2026  Edit critic review
Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) C.A. Lejeune It isn't a very good picture.
Posted Dec 31, 2025  Edit critic review
The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants (2025) Wendy Ide The animation style might have evolved since the first cinematic outing for the rectangular undersea goofball in 2004, but the fourth film adventure for SpongeBob and his best friend, Patrick the starfish, is reassuringly familiar in other ways.
Posted Dec 22, 2025  Edit critic review
The Housemaid (2025) Wendy Ide Sweeney and Seyfried attack their respective roles with gusto, but the plotting is too disingenuous and contrived to deliver much in the way of satisfying thrills.
Posted Dec 22, 2025  Edit critic review
The Six Billion Dollar Man (2025) Wendy Ide It’s not the definitive account of the Assange story -- that would require an interview with the man himself, something conspicuously absent here -- but it’s probably the closest we have to date.
Posted Dec 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) Wendy Ide Fire and Ash might be technically accomplished, but the story isn’t strong enough to support the weight of the spectacle. Even worse is the synthetic hyper-clarity of the visuals: dazzling yet emotionally dead.
Posted Dec 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Sentimental Value (2025) Wendy Ide Skarsgård is magnificent as the charismatic, unreliable Gustav, but the film’s secret weapon is Elle Fanning’s hapless US starlet.
Posted Dec 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Marty Supreme (2025) Wendy Ide Marty Supreme is a thrilling visual onslaught, a rattling cacophony of ideas and images so intense that for two and a half hours you barely have time to catch your breath. It’s utterly exhausting and I loved every jangling second.
Posted Dec 22, 2025  Edit critic review
At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1991) Philip French The week's only movie with a moderately compelling narrative, serious subject matter and interesting characters.
Posted Dec 19, 2025  Edit critic review
Final Analysis (1992) Philip French This is sub-Vertigo stuff, sacrificing everything to serpentine plot twists and the tone is relentlessly misogynous.
Posted Dec 19, 2025  Edit critic review
Salmonberries (1991) Philip French A characteristic Adlonian mixture of the artful and the artless.
Posted Dec 19, 2025  Edit critic review
The Doctor (1991) Philip French There is a deal of designer blood in The Doctor, and much heartache. But little pain, dirty or financial anxiety.
Posted Dec 19, 2025  Edit critic review
Hook (1991) Philip French Adolescents will find it patronising. Grown-ups will be bored, embarrassed and, if British, annoyed to find their childhood dreams so thoroughly colonised by Hollywood.
Posted Dec 19, 2025  Edit critic review
Preparation for the Next Life (2025) Wendy Ide The feature film debut from documentary-maker Bing Liu (best known for the Oscar-nominated Minding the Gap), this is an intimate, superbly acted account of lives on the margins.
Posted Dec 15, 2025  Edit critic review
Ella McCay (2025) Wendy Ide Dated in tone and positively antediluvian in its attitudes towards women in power, this is a clunky waste of Emma Mackey in the title role and of Jack Lowden as her crowbarred-in plot device of a husband.
Posted Dec 15, 2025  Edit critic review
Goodbye June (2025) Wendy Ide This is a precision-engineered tear-jerker, but the inevitable moist eyes feel cynically manipulated rather than earned in good faith -- as if Winslet has blasted the audience with the emotional equivalent of pepper spray..
Posted Dec 15, 2025  Edit critic review
Eleanor the Great (2025) Wendy Ide “Great” would be overstating it: let’s call it Eleanor the Adequate. The directorial debut from Scarlett Johansson is hamstrung by timidity, lack of vision and a crippling need to be liked. It’s a wasted opportunity.
Posted Dec 15, 2025  Edit critic review
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) Tom Milne The delight of Assault on Precinct 13 is not just the amazing skill of director John Carpenter, but the fact that he is way ahead of the audience all the time.
Posted Dec 14, 2025  Edit critic review
True Lies (1994) Philip French It is murky misogynistic stuff that gets its laughs from the strong persecuting the weak, and involves the degradation and humiliation of an innocent woman and a sad, inadequate man.
Posted Dec 10, 2025  Edit critic review
The Abyss (1989) Sean French Harris and Mastrantonio are pungently compelling.
Posted Dec 09, 2025  Edit critic review
The Abyss (1989) Philip French The cast is fine, the set-pieces grand, the special effects outstanding. But after a couple of hours underwater the movie gets the bends.
Posted Dec 09, 2025  Edit critic review
Folktales (2025) Wendy Ide Strikingly photographed and rooted in the earthy rhythms and traditions of the land, this is restorative comfort cinema. that has a kinship with pictures such as The Truffle Hunters and Honeyland. A film to renew the soul.
Posted Dec 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Cover-Up (2025) Wendy Ide A compelling and inspiring portrait of a one-off.
Posted Dec 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Prime Minister (2025) Wendy Ide This could hardly be described as an impartial work. But, like the subject herself, it does strive to be scrupulously honest.
Posted Dec 08, 2025  Edit critic review
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