Deborah Ross

Hamnet is an imagined account of William Shakespeare’s marriage to Agnes (Anne) Hathaway, their unspeakable grief at the death of their son (the titular Hamnet) and how this may have inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet. It stars Paul Mescal and an extraordinary Jessie Buckley, who will likely win every award going, yet be warned: it

Song Sung Blue is a musical biopic of the real-life Milwaukee couple who formed a Neil Diamond tribute act and never hit the big time, or anywhere near. At its heart is a love story – one that is beautifully told. It stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson, who is so sublime that we may

The Christmas film Goodbye June marks Kate Winslet’s directorial debut. It’s based on a screenplay by Joe Anders – the 21-year-old son she had with Sam Mendes. I would like to be gracious about it. But it would help if it were a better film. It’s about four, fractious adult children who are forced to

Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly stars George Clooney as a handsome movie star playing a handsome movie star who has an identity crisis and is forced to reflect on his life. It’s being sold as a Hollywood satire, but it’s far too affectionate to be biting, and contains moments where it drowns in schmaltz. For a

Left-Handed Girl is a Taiwanese drama about a single mother who moves back to Taipei with her two daughters to run a noodle stand in the night market. It’s one of those films where the stakes don’t appear that high – will the mother make the rent this month?; will the littlest daughter settle at

The Thing With Feathers is an adaptation of Max Porter’s acclaimed novella about a widower who is left to raise his two sons after his beloved wife’s sudden death and whose grief is embodied in the form of a monstrous, giant black crow. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch, who gives his absolute all, but while the

Nuremberg is one of those films that falls short on everything it wants to be and everything it could be. It’s a historical drama, set just before the trials, where an American psychiatrist (Rami Malek) is charged with assessing whether Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe), Hitler’s second in command, is fit to stand trial and to

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac (Baron Victor Frankenstein) and Jacob Elordi (‘the creature’) and retells the basics of Mary Shelley’s story – man creates monster, man rejects monster, monster goes off on one – with high-camp sumptuousness. Del Toro’s spin is to include a redemptive arc, plus he throws in some invented characters.

Bugonia is the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, The Lobster, Poor Things) and it’s about a conspiracy theorist who kidnaps a pharmaceutical boss. It’s extremely wacky – possibly in a good way, still not sure. You certainly get value for money; it smashes together several genres (absurdist comedy, sci-fi, thriller, body horror) and

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is a biopic of ‘the boss’ starring Jeremy Allen White. It is not cradle to grave and do not expect the usual crowd-pleasing beats. There isn’t a single montage. Instead, it focuses on 1981, the making of his sixth album, Nebraska, and his mental troubles at that time. This will

Is Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest as good as everyone is saying? That it has a run time of nearly three hours and I didn’t drop off, and didn’t have to fight dropping off, may say it all. But if you want more, I can also vouch that One Battle After Another is funny and fantastically

Dead of Winter is an action thriller starring Emma Thompson and you have to hand it to her. Has such a thoroughly ordinary, sixty-something-year-old woman (no superpowers) ever carried an action thriller before? Not that I can think of. That’s not to say it’s devoid of clichés. I think we all know that it’s best

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is, I have to tell you, anything but. I should have trusted the trailer. When I caught this, my first thought was ‘heck, that looks bad’. Stupidly, I was not put off. The film is written by Seth Reiss (co-writer of The Menu) and directed by Kogonada (if you haven’t

What set this apart, I would suggest, is its deep and unremitting unpleasantness The Cut stars Orlando Bloom as a boxer who comes out of retirement for one last shot at glory. You may be wondering: how does this film about a boxer coming out of retirement for one last shot at glory differ from

The Roses is a remake of The War of the Roses (1989), the diabolically funny black bitter comedy that was directed by Danny DeVito and starred Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas as a couple who start out in love, then hate each other like poison, and once their battle is under way it’s no holds

Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, which is set in a retirement village and features pensioners solving murders, was a publishing sensation. (There are now four books in the series, with combined sales of more than ten million copies.) I’ve never read it. ‘Cosy crime’, as it’s called, is either your bag or it isn’t.

Celine Song’s first film, the wonderful Past Lives (2023), earned two Oscar nominations. So expectations were riding high for Materialists. Perhaps way too high. And, yes, it’s a letdown. It feels like an early Woody Allen but blunter, shallower, with no zingers, and a lead character that’s hard to care about. Dakota Johnson is our

The Kingdom is a mafia drama like no other. It’s directed by Julien Colonna whose father was a Corsican mob boss who died in 2006 (officially in a car crash although it’s generally believed he was ‘whacked’). And it’s told through the eyes of a young girl. Think of it as The Godfather from the

As the lights went down for The Naked Gun – the ‘legacy sequel’ to the spoof cop franchise – I found myself praying: ‘Please God, let it be deliciously and relentlessly stupid or I will be heartbroken.’ I was not hopeful. I never am when it comes to a ‘legacy sequel’. What they usually mean