Deborah Ross

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

The Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou started off as YouTubers known for their comically violent shorts – Ronald McDonald Chicken Store Massacre (2014) has accrued 67 million views. They then raised the money to make their first feature. This was the quietly disquieting Talk To Me (2022), which cost $4.5 million and made $92

In the brief lull between last week’s summer blockbuster (Superman) and next week’s (Fantastic Four) you may wish to catch Four Letters of Love. Based on the internationally bestselling novel (1997) by Niall Williams, it’s a quiet, lyrical, Irish love story featuring a superb cast (Helena Bonham Carter, Pierce Brosnan, Gabriel Byrne) and no dinosaurs

My father took us to the cinema (Odeon, Leicester Square) once a year at Christmas and in 1978 the film was Superman. I remember it vividly, and I remember it as thrilling, but hadn’t seen it since so I rewatched it and it is everything a superhero movie should be, the gold standard. It has

Midway through Jurassic World Rebirth the scientist character played by Jonathan Bailey, whom we can all immediately spot as a scientist (he wears glasses), tells us that intelligence is not especially useful for a species. Look at dinosaurs, he continues, ‘who are dumb but survived for 165 million years’. These Jurassic films have been going

First it was 28 Days Later (directed by Danny Boyle, 2002), then 28 Weeks Later  (Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, 2007) and now Boyle is back at the helm with 28 Years Later, which is, as I understand it, the first in a new trilogy. This post-apocalyptic horror franchise could go on for ever. As the last

Tornado is a samurai spaghetti western starring Tim Roth, Jack Lowden and Takehiro Hira (among others). Samurai spaghetti westerns aren’t anything new. In fact, we wouldn’t have spaghetti westerns if it weren’t for the samurai genre – Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964) was, as Clint Eastwood conceded, an ‘obvious rip-off’* of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo

Falling Into Place is a love story written by Aylin Tezel, directed by Aylin Tezel, and starring Aylin Tezel. That’s a lot of Aylin Tezel so I was nervous going in. What if it’s too much Aylin Tezel? What if Aylin Tezel and I don’t get along? Who even is Aylin Tezel? But I knew

The Salt Path is an adaptation of the best-selling book by Raynor Winn. It tells the true story of how she and her husband, Moth, lost their home and lost all their money. At one point they go to a bank to withdraw all their funds: £1.38. And if that wasn’t bad enough he’s then

Leni Riefenstahl: what are we to make of her? What did she know? Often described as ‘Hitler’s favourite filmmaker’, she always claimed that she knew nothing of any atrocities. She was a naive artist, not a collaborator in a murderous regime. This documentary wants to get to the truth. But even if you’ve already made

Slade in Flame was glam-rock band Slade’s first foray into film – and also their last. It was a flop on its release in 1975 and that would have been that, end of story, gone and forgotten, except it has been rediscovered in recent years, with critic Mark Kermode even hailing it as ‘the Citizen

The Friend is an adaptation of the novel by Sigrid Nunez starring a harlequin Great Dane. If I remember rightly, Naomi Watts and Bill Murray are also in the mix somewhere but I can’t be sure. Who could notice anything but Apollo in all his noble, giant, majesty? Watts and Murray are fine – if

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: The Edna O’Brien Story is especially rewarding as it is not only beautifully constructed but also includes diary

Uberto Pasolini’s The Return stars Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche in a retelling of the last section of Homer’s Odyssey. He is Odysseus and she is Penelope in a stripped-back tale that presents the pair as psychologically plausible human beings rather than characters from Greek myth. Fiennes and Binoche are, of course, spellbinding. I could

Mr Burton is a biopic of Richard Burton’s early years and an origins story, if you like. It stars Harry Lawtey as young Richard and Toby Jones as Philip Burton, the inspirational teacher whose name he would take. It’s a fascinating story. In essence, Richard’s drunkard father sold him for £50. But the film is

Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End is a ‘post-apocalyptic musical’ starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon that is being sold as a ‘bold vision’. And as you know I’m all for bold visions – except perhaps ones that go on for two and a half hours (I genuinely feared The End would never end) and give the

Disney’s new Snow White is a live-action remake of the beloved 1937 classic that was cinema’s first full-length animated feature and is still regarded as Walt’s greatest masterpiece – even if fans of The Jungle Book will always have something to say about that. It stars Rachel Zegler, which set the cat among the pigeons,

Mickey 17 is the latest film from the South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho, who won an Oscar for Parasite and made Snowpiercer and Okja. It’s a dystopian sci-fi satire starring Robert Pattinson twice over (all will be explained) but while it initially kicks some decent ideas around, it eventually descends into a cartoonish, sub-Armando Iannucci