Deborah Ross is the chief film critic of The Spectator
Ben X 15, Key cities August is a hopeless month for movies — it’s when the big studios dump their worst films on us, pretty much — and so there is very little worth seeing, let alone reviewing. I did think about seeing the new Will Ferrell comedy, Step Brothers, but after catching the tail
Elegy 15, London and Key Cities Elegy is about an ageing professor (Ben Kingsley) and a beautiful young woman (Penelope Cruz), and it is based on the Philip Roth novel The Dying Animal, which, in turn, takes its title from Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’, in which the poet describes his soul as ‘sick with desire/and
The X-Files: I Want to Believe 15, Nationwide OK, straight to the point, because we are busy people, right? And when we are not busy we are pretending to be busy, right? So, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, worth your time? No. As it is, it’s 104 minutes that I won’t be getting back.
Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging 12A, Nationwide Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is a teen movie as may be rather obvious from the title — come on, it was hardly going to explore the terrible reality of Bosnia’s post-war traumas; get a grip — and we are all for teen movies, aren’t we? A teen
It’s easy to see the way opera Inszenierung is going. We are in for a spate of US-located productions, just as we emerge from 19th-century industrial locations and nondescript car parks. Hollywood, Las Vegas, the prairies, Texas oilfields and the omnipresence of TV, something we are hardly likely to forget, are where Poppea, Giulio Cesare,
WALL.E, the latest CGI animation from Pixar in collaboration with Disney, has already been hailed as a ‘modern masterpiece’ — in America, at least — but I’m not so sure. It has a cracking, enthralling, wonderfully dystopian first half, but after that it appears mostly concerned with hurtling towards one of those predictable endings that
Mamma Mia PG, Nationwide Mamma Mia has to be the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Or is it off? When you get to my age, it’s such a struggle to remember. Either way, though, if you are now expecting this review to be subtly and cleverly interweaved with punning ABBA song
The Edge of Love 15, Nationwide The Edge of Love, which is based loosely on real events, explores the ménage à quatre that existed for a few years between the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys), his wife Caitlin (Sienna Miller), his childhood friend Vera Phillips (Keira Knightley) and her eventual husband, William Killick (Cillian
Irina Palm 15, Barbican and key cities The big film this week is, I suppose, The Incredible Hulk but I chose not to see it because, aside from anything else, isn’t this the second Hulk film in about ten minutes? When was the Ang Lee one? I have no idea why it’s come round again
Mongol 15, Nationwide Mongol traces the early years of the legendary warrior Genghis Khan and does not feature, at any point, the world’s greatest adventurer/archaeologist or four fortysomething women living and loving in New York. Yes, it is probably safe to come out now. They’re all gone! However, having said that, the other morning when
Sex and the City 15, Nationwide I do know that not everyone gets Sex and the City. Bubbles, for example, does not get Sex and the City. ‘I don’t know what you see in this crap,’ he would say, whenever I watched it on television, and before going off to do something pointedly manly in
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 12A, Nationwide After a 19-year break, Indiana Jones, the world’s greatest adventurer and probably the world’s worst ever archaeologist — listen, even I know you can’t go around ripping open ancient mummies whenever you so fancy — is back. He is back because he has to
Caramel PG, Key cities Caramel is a lovely and engaging film and just what we all need right now. You may well ask: how do I know what you need? Have I canvassed your friends? Your family? Of course. And what they all say is: yes, this is just the sort of film you need
Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? 12A, Nationwide OK, we’re busy people, so straight to the point on this one, and yet I’m already struggling, because there isn’t any point to get straight to. This is a pointless film. It is sans point, has zilch point, scores nul points in the point department.
Iron Man 12A, Nationwide Iron Man is a Hollywood superhero blockbuster and probably the first of a franchise, even though it already feels like the 64th. These movies are always, in their way, whopping piles of junk, but they can be hugely enjoyable whopping piles of junk. The first Superman with Christopher Reeve, Tim Burton’s
Persepolis 12A, London and key cities Persepolis, an animated feature about coming of age in Iran, is kind of interesting and is kind of original but its telling moments are told so often it’s like going out to dinner and being served the same course over and over. You’ll look at it coming and think,
In Bruges 18, Nationwide This film is about two Irish hitmen, Ken and Ray, who are forced to take a sort of minibreak in Bruges (hence the title; hence why this film isn’t, say, In Milton Keynes) on the instruction of their boss, Harry, who wants them to lie low for a while. The film
Leatherheads PG, Nationwide Leatherheads is George Clooney’s third outing as a director and the first in which he plays a starring role, and it must have looked good on paper, just as anything with George Clooney’s name attached to it probably looks good on paper. A musical based on the plumbing-supplies aisle in B&Q would
Son of Rambow 12A, nationwide Son of Rambow is the tale of two young boys — one from a strict religious background; the other a troubled troublemaker — who come together to shoot a backyard version of Rambo: First Blood to enter it into the BBC’s Screen Test competition. It is a British film, set
Beaufort 15, Key Cities Beaufort is the Israeli war film that won the Silver Bear at Berlin and was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign language film and it is very, very dull. After I had seen it I sent a friend to see it who is much more war-literate than I am and