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The Spectator

Tomatometer-approved publication.

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Rating Title | Year Author Quote
Rental Family (2025) Deborah Ross The film wants to hug you, rather than unsettle. But there are pluses. It is wonderfully filmed by director Hikari, infusing Tokyo with the most astonishing beauty, and there is a clever twist towards the end.
Posted Jan 15, 2026  Edit critic review
Hamnet (2025) Deborah Ross Mescal, rightly, takes a back seat while Buckley lets rip with the most astounding ferocity. It is ruthlessly manipulative and maybe you will be able to resist. But I’d take a hanky all the same.
Posted Jan 15, 2026  Edit critic review
Alice in Wonderland (1951) Edward Hodgkin Watching this film is to become more aware than ever that the two qualities which make the Alice books eternal are their verbal wit, and the mad logic in them -- the sort of logic which is the heart of nonsense. In the film these qualities disappear.
Posted Jan 08, 2026  Edit critic review
Song Sung Blue (2025) Deborah Ross It stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, who is so sublime that we may even opt to forgive her for How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days and similar.
Posted Jan 02, 2026  Edit critic review
Goodbye June (2025) Deborah Ross The cast is so formidable it should be a slam-dunk festive weepie. But the characters are, alas, too thinly sketched, while their various trajectories take us into the kind of banal, maudlin territory most suited to a Call The Midwife special.
Posted Dec 19, 2025  Edit critic review
Jay Kelly (2025) Deborah Ross For a director of Baumbach’s calibre, it all feels like very low-hanging fruit. That said, it’s not such an ordeal to spend a couple of hours in the company of Clooney as the golden Tuscan sunshine beats down. I found I could cope.
Posted Dec 04, 2025  Edit critic review
Left-Handed Girl (2025) Deborah Ross It’s one of those films where the stakes don’t appear that high, yet we become so attached to this family and their survival it will all matter a great deal.
Posted Dec 02, 2025  Edit critic review
The Thing with Feathers (2025) Deborah Ross The film hangs on Cumberbatch giving good anguish and he does give top, five-star anguish but it’s not sufficient to sustain a film that otherwise has barely any plot.
Posted Nov 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Nuremberg (2025) Deborah Ross It’s serviceable rather than inspired, plodding rather than tense, its running time (two and a half hours) trying. (Keep a Red Bull to hand.) It also takes some horrible missteps. Mrs Göring, sympathetic? Please.
Posted Nov 13, 2025  Edit critic review
Frankenstein (2025) Deborah Ross Haven’t we always been asked to pity the monster? Hasn’t the father/son dynamic always been integral? Things often slip into cliché and sentimentality. Still, it’s aways gorgeous to look at and though it does drag, it’s on Netflix so that’s not a problem.
Posted Nov 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Bugonia (2025) Deborah Ross You certainly get value for money; it smashes together several genres and takes a swipe at everything from capitalism and conglomerates to echo chambers and internet rabbit holes. But whether it adds up to much or has anything to say, also still not sure.
Posted Oct 30, 2025  Edit critic review
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) Deborah Ross This will doubtless satisfy the completists. But non-completists – I could have named only two of his songs, tops – may wonder if it’s that interesting.
Posted Oct 24, 2025  Edit critic review
One Battle After Another (2025) Deborah Ross The film never flags, bounding from moments of high tension to ones that are sublime. The comedy, meanwhile, always feels integral.
Posted Oct 02, 2025  Edit critic review
Dead of Winter (2025) Deborah Ross It’s well made, tense, fun, and if you’ve longed to see an ordinary, sixty-something-year-old woman brandish a gun or put a claw hammer through someone’s foot you will not be disappointed.
Posted Sep 25, 2025  Edit critic review
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025) Deborah Ross The direction is prosaic and sentimental, while Robbie and Farrell have zero chemistry, not a squeak, and understandably fail to breathe life into such poorly written characters.
Posted Sep 18, 2025  Edit critic review
The Cut (2024) Deborah Ross It’s a story that’s been told umpteen times but what set this apart, I would suggest, is its deep and unremitting unpleasantness.
Posted Sep 04, 2025  Edit critic review
The Roses (2025) Deborah Ross There’s some fun in watching Colman and Cumberbatch go head-to-head and there are some decent lines. But it’s not a relationship you can believe in and it fails to outshine the original.
Posted Aug 29, 2025  Edit critic review
The Thursday Murder Club (2025) Deborah Ross Columbus doesn’t introduce much suspense or tension. And the cast’s talent is barely made use of. But, overall, it’s a loving salute to an old-fashioned kind of storytelling -- and a book that I’ll never read.
Posted Aug 22, 2025  Edit critic review
Materialists (2025) Deborah Ross It’s lushly photographed and beautifully framed and it’s not a nightmare to sit through but whereas Past Lives stayed with you, I can feel this leaving me already.
Posted Aug 15, 2025  Edit critic review
My Oxford Year (2025) James Delingpole My Oxford Year may be a work of accidental genius, but it’s a work of genius nonetheless. You will squirm, you will laugh derisively, you will cringe. By the end, though, you will be forced to admit that you secretly enjoyed every moment.
Posted Aug 15, 2025  Edit critic review
The Kingdom (2024) Deborah Ross Think of it as The Godfather from the point of view of a teenage Connie Corleone. Or The Sopranos from the perspective of Meadow. Or just take it for what it is, which is tense, brilliant and rivetingly convincing.
Posted Aug 07, 2025  Edit critic review
The Naked Gun (2025) Deborah Ross Within the first few minutes I heard a strange noise and felt a peculiar sensation and realised I was laughing. It happened quite a few times more, in fact. I was as surprised as anybody.
Posted Jul 31, 2025  Edit critic review
Bring Her Back (2025) Deborah Ross It’s ultimately pretty simplistic. Still, the Philippou brothers know how to scare the bejesus out of you and the performances are all excellent, particularly Hawkins and Wren Phillips.
Posted Jul 24, 2025  Edit critic review
Four Letters of Love (2024) Deborah Ross Steele directs with a sure hand and there is much else to delight in here. The cinematography has never made the Irish coast look so gorgeous (or sunny) or the cottages, with their jewel-coloured interiors, so cosy and the performances are all excellent.
Posted Jul 17, 2025  Edit critic review
The Trouble with Mr Doodle (2024) James Walton A curious tale, efficiently, if somewhat incuriously, told.
Posted Jul 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Superman (2025) Deborah Ross The plot, which also incorporates geopolitics, is all over the place, convoluted and confusing. Die-hard fans may find it less so but have we stopped inviting everybody in?
Posted Jul 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) Deborah Ross It’s always astonishing to think that these beasts did once roam the Earth and it was this thought that stopped me slipping into sleep.
Posted Jul 03, 2025  Edit critic review
28 Years Later (2025) Deborah Ross It’s entertaining but not outstanding. The biggest surprise is its tonal swerve into sentimentality. Jodie Comer and Ralph Fiennes, however, bring character and heft and, just to put your minds at rest, yes, it’s as magnificently bloodthirsty as ever.
Posted Jun 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Tornado (2025) Deborah Ross It’s a super-bloody revenge story filmed in just 25 days with a running time of 90 minutes. We love a 90-minute film, so I feel bad saying this, but it does feel as if it needed more time to cook.
Posted Jun 12, 2025  Edit critic review
Falling Into Place (2023) Deborah Ross I knew within the first few minutes we were in safe hands and I was set to like this Aylin Tezel. In Falling Into Place she’s created a literate and sensitive romance that is allowed to unfold gently.
Posted Jun 05, 2025  Edit critic review
Rollerball (1975) Kenneth Robinson It really is effective.
Posted Jun 05, 2025  Edit critic review
Night Moves (1975) Kenneth Robinson They have made a film with characters who are credible and interesting and a story that is teasing and fascinating. The brutal climax sends the mind searching back over earlier events, to chain together the links of People's reactions to each other.
Posted Jun 05, 2025  Edit critic review
The Salt Path (2024) Deborah Ross The film will frustrate those who like a juicy plot but Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs make it rather glorious.
Posted May 29, 2025  Edit critic review
Riefenstahl (2024) Deborah Ross This documentary wants to get to the truth. But even if you’ve already made your own mind up -- I had! -- it’s still a mesmerising portrait of the kind of person who cannot give up on the lies they’ve told themselves.
Posted May 08, 2025  Edit critic review
Flame (1975) Deborah Ross We know the beats: young lads dream of making it big, do make it big, but are destroyed by a business that only sees them as cash cows. Nevertheless it is told with a raw energy.
Posted May 01, 2025  Edit critic review
The Friend (2024) Deborah Ross Even if you’re not into the ‘non-action’ genre, the film’s worth it for the dog. There is a dog by the way, did I say?
Posted Apr 24, 2025  Edit critic review
Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story (2024) Deborah Ross You could say it’s impossible to make a poor documentary about the writer Edna O’Brien as she’s never said or done anything uninteresting in her life. Point a camera and we’re away. But Sinead O’Shea’s Blue Road... is especially rewarding.
Posted Apr 17, 2025  Edit critic review
The Return (2024) Deborah Ross Fiennes and Binoche are, of course, spellbinding. I could look at their faces all day. But the narrative is so parched and meditative it’s ultimately enervating and seems as depressed as the hero himself.
Posted Apr 10, 2025  Edit critic review
Mr. Burton (2025) Deborah Ross The film is too devoted and sedate to fly as a cinematic event. It has the feel of a Sunday evening television drama. Nothing wrong with that -- although you could just stay home on a Sunday evening and watch television if that’s what you’re after.
Posted Apr 03, 2025  Edit critic review
The End (2024) Deborah Ross Just as you’re expecting a confrontation or events to escalate -- just as you are expecting drama -- it all fizzles to nothing. Scenarios bubble up, then disappear.
Posted Mar 27, 2025  Edit critic review
Disney's Snow White (2025) Deborah Ross The production values are high and all the enchanted animals are cute, but where are the jokes? And where is the personality?
Posted Mar 20, 2025  Edit critic review
Mickey 17 (2025) Deborah Ross It eventually descends into a cartoonish, sub-Armando Iannucci comic caper with, as far as I could ascertain, nothing fresh to say. It’s not the biggest disappointment I’ve had in my life but it’s up there.
Posted Mar 06, 2025  Edit critic review
The Last Showgirl (2024) Deborah Ross We’re never allowed to sit with any of the characters, which makes them feel underexplored. Elegiac as it is, the film doesn’t offer deep insights. Anderson, however, is transfixing.
Posted Feb 27, 2025  Edit critic review
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2025) Deborah Ross It may not have the sardonic bite of the first film, and it sometimes slips into sentimentality, but it sharply marries the contemporary with the age-old and I enjoyed it.
Posted Feb 13, 2025  Edit critic review
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) Deborah Ross It is brave cinema, and daring cinema, as well as great cinema.
Posted Feb 06, 2025  Edit critic review
Hard Truths (2024) Deborah Ross Jean-Baptiste is magnificent, and the film is compelling, and it will linger in the mind, but it is also 90 minutes of watching someone being aggressively unhappy without properly knowing why. This Pansy certainly brought out my inner Pansy.
Posted Jan 30, 2025  Edit critic review
The Brutalist (2024) Deborah Ross This is a film of ambition and swagger and Brody’s performance, suffused with pain and longing, is terrific. However, there are some odd decisions.
Posted Jan 23, 2025  Edit critic review
A Complete Unknown (2024) Deborah Ross It’s captivating, even if you could argue that it’s dramatically underpowered. The events building up to Newport are listless in nature, but it has a seductive, meditative, cumulative power. I wasn’t bored for a single second.
Posted Jan 16, 2025  Edit critic review
Maria (2024) Deborah Ross It’s hard to fathom what Larrain, and screenwriter Steven Knight, want to say about her. Or how we are meant to feel... The film never gets to the truth of her, or her art, which is why the singing doesn’t feel true, either.
Posted Jan 09, 2025  Edit critic review
We Live in Time (2024) Deborah Ross Though I am a crier by nature, my tears were not jerked. I checked -- and double-checked: eyes dry as anything. I couldn’t get beyond the phoniness. You might do better.
Posted Jan 02, 2025  Edit critic review
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