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Deborah Ross

Deborah Ross

The Times

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Hugh Grant is an amazingly convincing villain – who’d have thought it?

Heretic is the latest horror film from writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (A Quite Place) and stars Hugh Grant, now enjoying the villainous...

31.10.2024 8

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Great knits – shame about the film: Almodovar’s The Room Next Door reviewed

The Room Next Door is Pedro Almodovar’s first film in the English language and if it is his last we can probably live with that. The film, which is...

24.10.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Serious and gripping – though Trump disagrees: The Apprentice reviewed

The Apprentice is a dramatised biopic of Donald Trump, covering his early business years. He has called the film ‘FAKE and CLASSLESS’ and...

17.10.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / Joker: Folie à Deux makes me long for the Joker of my childhood

Joker: Folie à Deux is the sequel to Joker (2019), and you have to admire Todd Phillips for returning with a jukebox musical, co-starring Lady Gaga,...

12.10.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Melodramatic body-horror – but I don’t regret seeing it: A Different Man reviewed

Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man is ‘a darkly comic psychological thriller’ that plays like an inverted Beauty and the Beast. What happens when...

03.10.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Baffling and plainly nuts – but worth it: Megalopolis reviewed

Megalopolis, which draws parallels between the fall of the Roman empire and modern-day America, is a film by Francis Ford Coppola – and it...

26.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

When is anyone going to properly appreciate what critics have to go through?

The Critic is a period drama starring Ian McKellen as a newspaper theatre critic famed for his savagery and it did sound as if it had all the makings...

12.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / A historical abomination: Firebrand reviewed

Firebrand is a period drama about Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr. It is sumptuously photographed – it’s as if Hans Holbein...

05.09.2024 4

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

The Terminator is still the best

The Terminator is James Cameron’s first film, made a star of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is celebrating its 40th anniversary – there’s a 4K...

29.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

The best film you won’t go and see this week: Widow Clicquot reviewed

August is known as ‘dump month’. It’s when the most forgettable films are released on the grounds that people don’t go to the cinema much in...

22.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

A demented must-watch: Caligula – The Ultimate Cut reviewed

Caligula: The Ultimate Cut is a new version of the 1979 Caligula that is still banned in some countries (Belarus). The most expensive independent...

08.08.2024 8

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Funny, authentic and takes you right back to being 13: Didi reviewed

Didi is a coming-of-age drama by the Taiwanese-American writer-director Sean Wang. It’s set in the summer of 2008 and based on his own adolescence...

01.08.2024 9

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Oblique and long but never boring: About Dry Grasses reviewed

About Dry Grasses is the latest film from Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan and it had better – I thought to myself as the lights dimmed – have a...

25.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Impossible to doze through, sadly: Twisters reviewed

Twisters is an action-disaster film that follows ‘storm-chasers’ and is so relentless in its own pursuit of tornadoes that plot, character and...

18.07.2024 9

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Acceptable for a hangover day: Fly Me to the Moon reviewed

Fly Me to the Moon is a romantic comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum set during the 1960s space race but, unlike Apollo 11, this...

11.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Sly, sexy and smart: The Nature of Love reviewed

The Nature of Love is a French-Canadian film about an academic who considers herself happily married but then encounters a builder and sparks fly....

04.07.2024 9

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cowboys and clichés: Horizon – An American Saga reviewed

Horizon: An American Saga is a Western directed by Kevin Costner. It also stars Kevin Costner and is co-written by Kevin Costner and has been...

27.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / Stylish and potent: The Bikeriders reviewed

Jeff Nichols’s The Bikeriders is based on the book by photojournalist Danny Lyon, first published in 1968, about his years embedded with a lawless...

23.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Limp and lifeless: Freud’s Last Session reviewed

Freud’s Last Session stars Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode and is a work of speculative fiction asking what would have happened if Sigmund Freud...

13.06.2024 20

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / Minor Linklater but fun: Hit Man reviewed

Richard Linklater’s Hit Man is a minor Linklater but a minor Linklater is still an event. Also, after all those contemplative, existential films...

11.06.2024 10

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Craving some alien spider insanity? Sting’s the film for you

This week, a horror film – and with it, a whole load of alien spider insanity. If you’ve been hankering after a whole load of alien spider...

30.05.2024 20

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Predictable but has a certain French verve: Two Tickets to Greece reviewed

Within the first five minutes of Two Tickets to Greece you know what it is and where it’s going. It’s based on what I call ‘the hate-love...

16.05.2024 30

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / Wonderfully special: La chimera reviewed

15.05.2024 30

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

Cinema / A true popcorn movie: The Fall Guy reviewed

The Fall Guy, starring Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling, is a gloriously fun, screwball action film that pokes fun at action films and this, I now know,...

08.05.2024 30

The Spectator

Deborah Ross

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...

18.04.2024 8

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 30

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 10

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 7

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 7

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 20

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 10

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 40

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 10

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 20

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

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