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Deborah Ross

Deborah Ross

The Times

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Should beautiful actors be allowed to play those with plain faces?

Sometimes I Think About Dying is one of those titles you want to shout back at – what? Only sometimes? It is co-produced by, and stars, Daisy Ridley...

yesterday 3

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Better than expected (but my expectations were low): Back to Black reviewed

When the trailer for Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic of Amy Winehouse, Back to Black, first landed, her fans were gracious. ‘This,’ they said, ‘is...

11.04.2024 6

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

You’ll want to claw your face off: Scoop reviewed

04.04.2024 4

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

You’ll want to claw your face off: Scoop reviewed

Scoop is a dramatised account of the events leading up to the BBC’s 2019 Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. The one he imagined would allow him...

04.04.2024 5

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Readers, I welled up! At a cartoon! Robot Dreams reviewed

Robot Dreams is an animated film from the Spanish writer-director Pablo Berger and while it doesn’t have the production values of something by Pixar...

21.03.2024 8

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / Affecting, heartfelt and cleverly constructed: Monster reviewed

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster is a drama based on misunderstandings, which, when it comes to annoying narratives, is up at the very top, surely. I...

15.03.2024 4

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

John Galliano shows the cancelled can be uncancelled

Kevin Macdonald’s documentary High & Low: John Galliano charts the highs and (spectacular) low of the British fashion designer who was fired as...

07.03.2024 30

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

All I kept thinking was how the sand must get everywhere: Dune – Part Two reviewed

Dune: Part Two is not a sequel but a continuation of Dune, so picks up exactly at the point you’d started to wonder if it would ever end. All I can...

29.02.2024 7

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

It should be boring – but it never is / Perfect Days reviewed

Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days is a film about a Tokyo public toilet cleaner and if the gentle, meditative narrative doesn’t grab you, the toilets...

22.02.2024 3

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Sensuous, languorous, soothing and rich: The Taste of Things reviewed

The Taste of Things, which is this year’s French entry for best international film at the Oscars, is a gastro-film but it is not of the ‘Angry...

15.02.2024 20

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

An endurance test that I constantly failed: Occupied City reviewed

Occupied City is Steve McQueen’s meditative essay on Amsterdam during Nazi occupation, with a running time of four hours and 22 minutes. There is no...

08.02.2024 6

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

It’ll haunt you forever: The Zone of Interest reviewed

I don’t know if it’s a Jewish thing, but I’m certainly always bracing myself for the latest Holocaust film. There have been some horribly dim...

01.02.2024 3

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Mesmerising: All of Us Strangers reviewed

Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers is an aching tale of grief, loss and loneliness starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal, so I probably don’t need...

25.01.2024 6

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Poor Things is weird and wonderful – but not so weird I had to Google it afterwards

I’ve heard a few people say that, based on the trailer, Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest film, Poor Things, looks too weird for their tastes. To be...

11.01.2024 9

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

It’ll make you cry despite being very ordinary: One Life reviewed

One Life is the story of Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins), the British stockbroker who arranged the Kindertransport that saved hundreds of children...

04.01.2024 9

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Fine for the kiddies, given they're clueless / Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget reviewed

The original Chicken Run (2000), which is generally considered the best riff on The Great Escape ever made starring stop-motion poultry, did not...

17.12.2023 8

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Kaurismaki is the business / Fallen Leaves reviewed

Even though Aki Kaurismaki has won every award going and is a household name in his native Finland, where he is treated like a god, it may be that...

04.12.2023 40

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

A bit too short / Napoleon reviewed

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, starring Joaquin Phoenix, has a running time of two hours and 40 minutes, which is scant by today’s standards, but...

23.11.2023 5

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Fearless and intoxicating / Saltburn reviewed

Even if you are suffering from eat-the-rich fatigue (see The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, The Lesson, Parasite, Bait, The White Lotus, Succession etc.)...

16.11.2023 7

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / Outstanding and eye-opening doc about North Korea: Beyond Utopia review

The documentary Beyond Utopia follows various families as they attempt to flee North Korea. It is eye-opening and outstanding. In essence, it is a...

07.11.2023 9

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Basic, plodding and lacking any actual horror: Doctor Jekyll reviewed

Tis the season of horror, as it’s Halloween, which we celebrate in this house by turning off all the lights and pretending not to be in. (We look...

26.10.2023 4

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / Epic, immersive and tiresomely long: Killers of the Flower Moon reviewed

Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a Western crime drama that runs to three-and-a-half hours. (Sit on that, Oppenheimer!) But which is...

22.10.2023 8

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

The miracle of The Miracle Club is that it does, I promise, end

The Miracle Club, which is about a group of Irish women who travel to Lourdes, has a magnificent cast – Maggie Smith, Kathy Bates, Laura Linney –...

12.10.2023 3

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Soapy and sentimental: Ken Loach’s The Old Oak reviewed

Ken Loach has said The Old Oak will be his last film – he’s 87; the golf course probably beckons. It’s not one of the ones he’ll be remembered...

28.09.2023 4

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Menacingly entertaining thriller, despite the clichés: A Lesson reviewed

The Lesson is a literary thriller that is occasionally heavy-handed but also menacingly entertaining, plus you get Richard E. Grant in his full pomp....

21.09.2023 7

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / Someone stop Kenneth Branagh: A Haunting in Venice reviewed

A Haunting in Venice is Kenneth Branagh’s third Poirot film (after Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile) and as each one is worse than...

15.09.2023 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / The best drama without any drama that you’ll see: Past Lives reviewed

Past Lives is an exquisite film made with great precision and care about what could have been, even if what could have been does not mean it should...

10.09.2023 6

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

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