Cinema
The Great Gatsby dazzles Deborah Ross
OK, old sports, Baz Luhrmann’s version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, as produced by Jay-Z, and with Kanye West on the soundtrack, has already riled the purists, who… Read more
Benedict Cumberbatch is brilliant in Star Trek Into Darkness
P.D. James is a figure of fun in my household. She used to be a regular pundit on Newsnight Review, the old BBC arts programme, and her film criticism was… Read more
Deborah Ross is so NOT excited by Almodovar
I was so excited about I’m So Excited but now I am just so disappointed. I love Pedro Almodóvar, usually. I would be his bitch any day, I’d have said,… Read more
Cinema: The Look of Love
The Look of Love is the biopic of Paul Raymond and although it wants to be a tragedy — I could feel it straining at the leash to go in… Read more
Cinema: Love Is All You Need
Love Is All You Need is a romantic comedy that isn’t romantic or comic or much of anything. It stars Pierce Brosnan as Philip, a widowed, all-work-no-play Englishman working in… Read more
The Place Beyond the Pines - don't read this review!
The Place Beyond the Pines stars both Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper — you spoil us, ambassador! — and is a generational feud film about fathers and sons and legacy.… Read more
Composition and catharsis: Review of 'A Late Quartet'.
Why the sudden spate of movies about classical music quartets and impending death? Early this year, we had Quartet, about four senior singers in a retirement home. Now we have… Read more
Trance: not Danny Boyle's finest hour
Obviously, we all love Danny Boyle and want to have his babies — I’d like at least two of his babies — but his latest film, Trance, is a horrid… Read more
No questions asked
Compliance is a small film that says big things rather than one of those big films that say very little, if anything. It’s written and directed by no one you… Read more
Get a life
Welcome to the Punch is a British crime action thriller and here is why you may wish to see it: it is set in a night-time London so magnificently lit… Read more
Robot & Frank
Robot & Frank is about a robot, and Frank, and I’d like to say it is as charmingly irresistible as you might suppose from the cute posters all around town,… Read more
Secrets and lies
After a succession of epic films including three hours of watching Cloud Atlas disappear up its own bottom — if you are going to disappear up your own bottom, at… Read more
Only disconnect
Cloud Atlas is part-sci-fi, part-thriller, part-romance, part-comedy, part-action flick, part-this, part-that and it all adds up to? A whole lot of not very much. Based on David Mitchell’s novel, this… Read more
Mid-life crisis
This is 40. Or perhaps I should say, is this 40? I haven’t yet reached that rounded age myself, so don’t have much of a frame of reference. But a… Read more
What kind of film does ‘Hitchcock’ think it is?
Hitchcock is one of those films which would have been much better off if it had taken a moment to sit down and decide on its own sensibility. Before a… Read more
A Cirque to irk
Just as Les Mis was soaringly monotonous, Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away (3D) is soaringly pointless. No point to it whatsoever. I looked. I looked everywhere for a point, even… Read more
Telling tales
I cannot tell you about all the things Steven Spielberg can and cannot do. I cannot tell you, for example, if he can make decent goblets from Quality Street wrappers… Read more
The monotony of Les Misérables
Les Misérables is one of the longest-running, most popular stage musicals in history, having been seen by 60 million people in 42 countries — sit on that, Cats! — and… Read more
Friends reunited
You know how television is becoming like the movies, more expansive and more expensive? Well, what if the movies were to meet television halfway, becoming smaller and more routine? The… Read more
Latest blogs
- The Liberal Democrats, the natural party of government? James Forsyth
- Lord Mandelson gives Miliband two big tasks Isabel Hardman
- Scotland’s 2013 Eurovision triumph Fraser Nelson
- Andrew Feldman denies calling Tory activists ‘swivel-eyed loons’ Fraser Nelson
- The swivel-eyed loons in the Conservative party are revolting. And they are right to revolt. Alex Massie
- Top Tory calls party activists ‘mad swivel-eyed loons’ James Forsyth
- Spectator Play: what’s worth watching, listening to or going to this weekend Camilla Swift
