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New Statesman

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
No Other Choice (2025) David Sexton [No Other Choice] is made with all of Park's manic energy and visual invention, but its moral impact is blunted by its turn towards satire and even slapstick.
Posted Jan 21, 2026  Edit critic review
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) William Whitebait Robert Wise handsomely directs, and Michael Rennie handsomely, and quite remotely, embodies Katoo.
Posted Jan 15, 2026  Edit critic review
Hamnet (2025) David Sexton It’s a major production, backed by Steven Spielberg, that will not disappoint fans of the book or anyone who likes a really good sob.
Posted Jan 09, 2026  Edit critic review
Sentimental Value (2025) David Sexton The subjects it really addresses -- love and loss, understanding and forgiveness across generations -- could not be more universal. You need only see a few minutes to think: so that’s how you do it.
Posted Dec 12, 2025  Edit critic review
It Was Just an Accident (2025) David Sexton It Was Just an Accident is terrific, nothing less than cinema as national conscience.
Posted Dec 03, 2025  Edit critic review
Pillion (2025) David Sexton That is beautifully achieved in this accomplished debut -- pretty much the film Fifty Shades failed to be.
Posted Dec 02, 2025  Edit critic review
Sisu: Road to Revenge (2025) David Sexton Compared to the first film, the scenarios here are a bit inflated and over-mechanised, and there are some rather dubious plot holes. But if it’s a violent cartoon you fancy, as we all do from time to time, you won’t be disappointed.
Posted Nov 19, 2025  Edit critic review
Predators (2025) Megan Nolan A revelatory and brilliant film.
Posted Nov 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Die My Love (2025) David Sexton Jennifer Lawrence, who made the film while four months pregnant with her second child, is tremendous here. She is totally committed, her extraordinary face often seen not just in extreme close-up but right into the iris of the eye.
Posted Nov 07, 2025  Edit critic review
Bugonia (2025) David Sexton The real pleasure of Bugonia is seeing Stone and Plemons work together. They are a match for each other in ferocity and commitment, truly seeming almost a mini-repertory company now
Posted Oct 29, 2025  Edit critic review
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) David Sexton Though Springsteen spirals into breakdown, there’s little sense of jeopardy: viewers will be well aware of his later success.
Posted Oct 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Re-Animator (1985) John Coleman Charles Addam's Fester would be the ideal audience for Re-Animator, a sick, gore-spewing, surgical romp.
Posted Oct 16, 2025  Edit critic review
After the Hunt (2025) David Sexton This enormously talky film, painfully over-scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, is never involving, nothing of what happens emerging persuasively from the characters we see, despite the quality of the acting, direction, design and editing.
Posted Oct 16, 2025  Edit critic review
Born Yesterday (1950) William Whitebait This is bright and not too slight movie-making, well acted, smoothly directed (by George|Cukor), and not compromising itself too outrageously.
Posted Oct 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Good Boy (2025) David Sexton It’s a remarkably effective trick, offering both a novel take on the loyal dog yarn and new angle on a familiar horror movie scenario.
Posted Oct 09, 2025  Edit critic review
Tron (1982) John Coleman Some of the effects are worth a fanfare and there is even a cracker-barrel bit of moralising... But the fun is at kiddy-level.
Posted Oct 06, 2025  Edit critic review
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE (2025) David Sexton Obscuring that reality by not naming them outright makes this countdown movie, gripping though it is, more of a genre exercise. The result is more of a standard Netflix product -- and less pertinent -- than it might have been.
Posted Oct 01, 2025  Edit critic review
One Battle After Another (2025) David Sexton A film serious about racial politics... There’s almost none of this primal subject in Pynchon’s novel, yet it’s Anderson’s main theme. He’s a director whose films always come at you from a different angle. Don’t miss this one.
Posted Sep 24, 2025  Edit critic review
Steve (2025) David Sexton Steve is a film that would not work at all with a lesser actor than Cillian Murphy at its centre. He grips your attention and demands empathy.
Posted Sep 19, 2025  Edit critic review
KPop Demon Hunters (2025) Sam Jennings The most disturbing element of Demon Hunters is the subtle message that keeps poking through its bright, frenetic surface: that there’s nothing wrong, or even essentially exploitative, about contemporary fame.
Posted Sep 15, 2025  Edit critic review
Glenrothan (2025) Esther Zuckerman There’s a clunkiness that pervades the entire enterprise. The dialogue is particularly wooden and the actors struggle through mixed metaphors.
Posted Sep 12, 2025  Edit critic review
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (2025) David Sexton There’s no replacing Maggie Smith, but Simon Russell Beale is hilarious as Hector Moreland, a whiskery grump.
Posted Sep 12, 2025  Edit critic review
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025) David Sexton Proust had a go at describing a reunion like this – a party where people seemed to have got on a bit -- but he didn’t give it half as much welly as Spinal Tap. It’s a triumph. You can just tell these guys go way back.
Posted Sep 12, 2025  Edit critic review
On Swift Horses (2024) David Sexton Promising. That promise is not fulfilled. Although On Swift Horses is about a seditious subject – queer love in a repressive society -- it is peculiarly earnest and programmatic.
Posted Sep 03, 2025  Edit critic review
The Roses (2025) David Sexton So the causes of war have been updated, from basic inequality of roles to the stresses created by both striving for career fulfilment. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t work on any level. The English/American gambit is completely off-target.
Posted Aug 29, 2025  Edit critic review
Eddington (2025) Caitlín Doherty Eddington is the most pronounced and developed iteration of phone-led narrative in Aster’s work to date: the pings of notifications working as sonic jump scares.
Posted Aug 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Materialists (2025) Pippa Bailey Ultimately, the question Materialists poses is far more interesting than its schmaltzy answer: love wins, however illogical or impractical... Still, it is a visual feast: a beautiful picture about beautiful people. There are worse things for a film to be.
Posted Aug 07, 2025  Edit critic review
2000 Meters to Andriivka (2025) David Sexton We see what they see, or at least what they are in the middle of, in an unprecedented way. It’s the most immersive filming possible.
Posted Aug 01, 2025  Edit critic review
Babe (1995) Jonathan Romney ...Babe is one of the three films in history that you can call charming and mean it as a compliment. It looks extraordinary, photographed with extravagant style by Andrew Lesnie; it does technical things that you can hardly imagine being achievable...
Posted Jul 30, 2025  Edit critic review
The Naked Gun (2025) Leaf Arbuthnot t’s a very, very funny film; so cheerful and light on its feet that it all but erases the outside world for 85 sparkling minutes, replacing it with a better one.
Posted Jul 30, 2025  Edit critic review
The Bad Guys 2 (2025) David Sexton Being that difficult second crime caper, The Bad Guys 2 lacks the great charm of being able to reveal its characters for the first time... No matter. In a summer of dodgy sequels, it’s good to see the Bad Guys, being good and bad.
Posted Jul 25, 2025  Edit critic review
Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994) Jonathan Romney Naked Gun 33 1/3 is not wildly funny, but like a dose of the salts, it does what it's supposed to.
Posted Jul 17, 2025  Edit critic review
Superman (2025) David Sexton This Superman is updated, it’s brightly coloured, it’s top-level CGI, but it’s still puerile. Manufacturing fun on this scale is hard work, even on a budget of $225m.
Posted Jul 16, 2025  Edit critic review
Barry Lyndon (1975) David Sexton Barry Lyndon is a film altogether about time, one of the good reasons for experiencing the full 185 minutes continuously, in a cinema. It’s much more rewarding to see on a big screen.
Posted Jul 09, 2025  Edit critic review
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) Leaf Arbuthnot This is a disposable film that makes you feel stupider and sadder the longer it goes on; not the worst film ever made, but one of the more demoralising ones.
Posted Jul 03, 2025  Edit critic review
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) Jonathan Coe The real genetic monstrosity here is not the velociraptor or the pterodactyl, but the mutation of what was once intended as an art-form into a mere machine for quickening the pulse.
Posted Jun 30, 2025  Edit critic review
28 Years Later (2025) David Sexton Garland and Boyle have produced an exclusively British horror film, a hokey play on how readily we revert to isolation.
Posted Jun 26, 2025  Edit critic review
Superman II (1980) John Coleman ...[Superman II] held me a shade less than the first, maybe because the special effects -said to be 'improved'- were deja vus, maybe because the trio of baddies imprisoned in a square mirror in space in the ur-movie are really heavy...
Posted Jun 25, 2025  Edit critic review
Return to Oz (1985) John Coleman Return to Oz keeps one eye pretty faithfully on reproducing the background and adventures of L. Frank Baum's Kansas-raised girleen while swivelling the other to incorporate some extremely special, often splendid effects.
Posted Jun 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Tornado (2025) Leaf Arbuthnot The film looks and sounds like a better film than it is... Moments of beauty aren’t enough to make a film worth seeing, and there is something lacking here. Characters speak ponderously and act incomprehensibly.
Posted Jun 18, 2025  Edit critic review
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (2024) David Sexton Jane Austen Wrecked My Life tries to revive the genre but ends up proving it passé.
Posted Jun 11, 2025  Edit critic review
Ballerina (2025) Leaf Arbuthnot Happily, Ballerina is superb -- a tight two hours of deeply stressful action, with a bodycount that must be in the triple digits before the first half hour is up.
Posted Jun 09, 2025  Edit critic review
Dangerous Animals (2025) David Sexton Jai Courtney is superb as a kind of satanic version of Steve Irwin, jocular, sententious and insane.
Posted Jun 04, 2025  Edit critic review
Mountainhead (2025) Rachel Cooke The dialogue is sharper than a premium Japanese knife, and often very funny.
Posted Jun 02, 2025  Edit critic review
The Phoenician Scheme (2025) David Sexton The Phoenician Scheme, let’s say straight away, is a treat. Unlike its predecessors, it has a story to tell, rather than being an anthology of incidents.
Posted May 22, 2025  Edit critic review
The Wedding Banquet (2025) Simran Hans Mostly, the film is lighthearted and fun, which is why it wobbles a little when trying to find its balance. Ahn treats the theme of a chosen family with earnest, weary seriousness, but the grounded dramatic performances can jar with the zippier jokes.
Posted May 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) David Sexton So Tom Cruise has produced yet another thumping vehicle for himself, our great action hero, the would-be saviour of marquee cinema and the world. Yet he remains peculiarly unrelatable.
Posted May 15, 2025  Edit critic review
Riefenstahl (2024) David Sexton The approach sounds stultifying, but this is a riveting watch, a masterclass in how to animate such material through inventive treatment. Montage and cross-cutting are always effective in documentaries, but Riefenstahl goes much further.
Posted May 07, 2025  Edit critic review
Parthenope (2024) David Sexton So bella figura conquers all. So much beauty, so senselessly.
Posted May 05, 2025  Edit critic review
April (2024) Simran Hans It’s a serious approach that declines to show the audience the mother’s catharsis, a challenge to the idea that birth is always joy, and abortion always terror.
Posted Apr 28, 2025  Edit critic review
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