Deborah Ross is the chief film critic of The Spectator
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The Invention of Lying 12A, Nationwide The Invention of Lying is Ricky Gervais’s first film as a Hollywood writer and director — well, co-writer and co-director, with newcomer Matthew Robinson — and it is a disappointment. Probably, it won’t be the biggest or most tragic disappointment of your life. If you’ve always dreamed of becoming
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The Soloist 12A, Nationwide The Soloist is ‘based on a true story’ and the book by LA Times columnist Steve Lopez entitled: The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music, which is exactly the sort of thing I’d race past in Waterstones. (Well, dawdle past, but while picking up
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Away We Go 15, Nationwide Away We Go is a comic drama directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road) and it’s sweet, I suppose, but it’s also oddly inconsequential, fake and annoying. It’s a sort of road movie, following the journey of an expectant couple who travel the US in search
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Julie & Julia 12A, Nationwide Fish Tank 15, Nationwide If you love food, as I do — I even get excited about the meal trolley on planes, and count the number of aisles before it is going to get to me — and if you love Meryl Streep, as anyone in their right mind should,
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(500) Days of Summer 12A, Nationwide (500) Days of Summer is a Hollywood romantic comedy with (unnecessary and annoying brackets) in the title just so we know it’s quirky, which it rather is, but it’s so in love with its own quirkiness it gets tiresome after a while. It’s just not as clever as it
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Deborah Ross meets Anya Hindmarch, Britain’s accessory queen, and finally gets to the bottom of our obsession with fashionable bags Look, can I be totally honest? I know, I know, it’s not usually my style, but today I’m going to be honest and what I want to honestly say is this: I may be a
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The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 15, Nationwide The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is a remake of the 1974 film which starred Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw — remember the ending; the sneeze and the gesundheit? — and I don’t know how this remake got off the ground exactly, but I’m imagining
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Antichrist 18, Nationwide As you probably already know, Antichrist has been called ‘disgusting’ and ‘depraved’ and ‘the most offensive film ever made’, although I don’t personally get what all the fuss is about. Yes, there is extreme violence. Yes, there is explicit, penetrative sex. Yes, there is a genital mutilation scene involving rusty scissors. But,
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Brüno 18, Nationwide Listen, and there is no easy way of putting this, so I’ll just come straight out with it: I think the joke may be over. I say ‘may’ because Brüno is still very funny, for which we must be intensely grateful, but Brüno is no Borat. I am sorry to be the
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Public Enemies 15, Nationwide Public Enemies is Michael Mann’s film about the last year in the life of American bank robber John Dillinger (as played by Johnny Depp) and it just kind of drags. I think it may be because unlike other films of this type following outlaws of this type — Bonnie and Clyde,
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Dominic West is the actor who plays the homicide cop Jimmy McNulty in the HBO series The Wire and if you don’t watch The Wire you are a big, big dummy, as it has to be the best thing on television ever. And if you do? Then you will know this: while one fully appreciates
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Year One 12A, Nationwide Year One is the latest Jack Black comedy and while I would not wish to put you off — my job is to gently guide, not instruct — it is fantastically bad and you’d be mad to go see it. Anything would be better, and more amusing. Self-harming in a bathroom
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Telstar 15, Key Cities Telstar is a biopic about the ‘ground breaking’ 1960s song writer and independent record producer Joe Meek, but unless you know a lot about Joe already — and, I confess, I didn’t — you’re never that clear about what ground he broke exactly. If you fancy seeing this film, I would
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Looking for Eric 15, Nationwide Looking for Eric is Ken Loach’s latest film, and while one worships Ken Loach generally and his early work in particular — Cathy Come Home; Family Life; Kes; all of which will still blow your socks off today — I’m just not at all sure about this. I mean, it’s
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Drag Me To Hell 15, Nationwide Although there is much I don’t understand about people generally — why do some take so long at the cashpoint, for example? What are they doing? — one of the main things I don’t understand is why anyone enjoys horror films. The last time I actually saw one at
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Sleep Furiously U, Key Cities Fireflies in the Garden 15, Key Cities Sleep Furiously is a film (obviously) which, by rights, should make you Sleep Soundly (very) as there is no narrative, almost no dialogue to speak of, and no regular characters beyond the driver of a mobile library who at least takes hair-pin bends
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Everlasting Moments 15, Key Cities Awaydays 18, Nationwide Oh, what heaven, what joy, and if you don’t bother to see Everlasting Moments, then you are a bigger fool than I thought you were. (If it were possible.) It’s a Swedish period drama, set around 1900, and is full of simple yet rich, old-fashioned pleasures and
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Angels & Demons 12A, Nationwide Angels & Demons is based on the book by Dan ‘Da Vinci Code’ Brown and is directed by Ron Howard and stars Tom Hanks and all I can really say about it is this: if there is one movie you don’t see this year, do make it this one. Or,
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Star Trek: The Future Begins 12A, Nationwide Listen, I’m no Trekkie, I don’t speak Klingon, I’ve never boldly been anywhere in the least bit exciting — my fear of motorways has always hampered me horribly in this respect — and I don’t like action epics but Star Trek: The Future Begins is quite fun. I’m
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Is Anybody There? 12A, Nationwide Is Anybody There? stars Michael Caine as a grumpy old fella who, begrudgingly, goes to live in an old people’s home where his fellow residents are played by Rosemary Harris, Elizabeth Spriggs, Peter Vaughan, Thelma Barlow, Sylvia Syms and Leslie Phillips but not Peter O’Toole, who appears to be the