Deborah Ross is the chief film critic of The Spectator
The greatest compliment I can pay Seth MacFarlane’s Ted is that although this is essentially one of those slacker, stoner comedies, and such comedies aren’t really my thing — too old, too tired, only once had a joint and it made me feel sick then my knees went all funny — this did make me
In the late 1960s, a Mexican-American singer-songwriter is signed to a record label after two Motown producers see him performing in a seedy Detroit dive called The Sewer. He delivers two albums, which receive rave reviews (he is compared to Bob Dylan; some say he is better than Bob Dylan), but nobody buys them, so
Two films this week, one about oldies who play table tennis at an international level and another that is a love story funded by an Oxfordshire village, whose inhabitants feature as bit-part characters and extras. And I’ll be upfront about it: one is rather good whereas, although I’d have liked to like the other, and
For those of you who scan speedily to the bottom of reviews to see if a film is worth seeing — don’t worry; I always do it myself — I thought I would do you a favour and put the last paragraph first, as follows: Is Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike worth seeing? Yes. But also
The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t so amazing, actually, and is a reboot of a remake, or a remake of a reboot, or a remake rebooted, and remade, rebootingly. It’s hard to keep up with these franchises when they swish back and forth all the time, determined to squeeze every last penny out of cinemagoers who should
So, another week, and another Judd Apatow comedy — The Five-Year Engagement — rolls into town, and blah-de-blah-de-blah and yet more blah-de-blah-de-blah although the difference this time, which I feel honour-bound to mention, is that I totally loved it. I laughed. I cried (twice; properly). It is funny, even though no one falls on top
A Royal Affair is a beautifully mounted historical drama which goes right where so many films of this type go wrong: it doesn’t get distracted by carriages and candlelight and pretty frocks and balls and sumptuous feasts, but keeps its eye firmly and surely on character and story and, my, what a fascinating story it
Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share, which has just won the Jury Prize at Cannes, is part social realism, part comedy caper, and so good-natured, warm and affectionate it’s rather a joy, even though it doesn’t exactly add up; even though its climax is implausible, its tonal shifts are sometimes jarring, and it feels so familiar.
As a general rule, what to expect when you are expecting is a baby, which is always kind of miraculous, but the way everyone carries on in this film you’d think nobody had ever had one before. This is odd, particularly as the latest research has proven that having babies predates the iPod, internet and
The first thing you should know is that I love, adore and worship Sacha Baron Cohen and have this fantasy whereby we get married and set up home in Notting Hill as a power couple and when the phone rings and it’s Richard Branson I will say, ‘I’m so sorry, Dick, but we can’t come
Jeff, Who Lives at Home is a film about Jeff, who lives at home, and that’s enough subordinate clauses for one day. (Don’t be greedy; you know how fattening they are.) It’s a comedy from the Duplass brothers, Mark and Jay, who have previously made small films that have been well received (The Puffy Chair,
OK, no funny business this week. Just a straightforward review. No interrogative techniques. No verse. No sky-writing. I don’t have the time. Or the energy. I have a life. It’s quite a crappy one, full of ennui — who are these people who say there aren’t enough hours in the day? There are far too
As last week I believe I provided the world’s first entirely interrogative film review, I thought that this week I would up the stakes and embroider this review on antimacassars, in mirror writing — this has also never been done before, as far as I know — but time, alas, proved my great enemy, so
Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, anyone who happens to be passing, I have decided to quiz myself about this week’s film, for no other reason than the idea occurred to me, and I fancied it, so here goes: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, any good? No. That it? OK, if this film teaches us
If you go down to The Cabin in the Woods today you can be sure of very little in the surprise department and an insufferably dreary time of it. It’s a comic horror film and although I do not like horror, comic or otherwise, it’s the only major release this week, so I felt compelled.
Switch is a French action thriller starring that lumbering wooden legend of French cinema, Eric Cantona, and it’s awful, but at least it is one of my favourite kinds of awful film: so awful it’s a triumph. If I were ever invited to lecture at film school — remarkably, I have yet to receive such
Totally unexpectedly, as I don’t like Brit gangster films particularly — so many sociopaths, so little time — I loved, loved, loved, loved, loved Wild Bill and, for those of you who are slow on the uptake, let me say four times more: I loved, loved, loved, loved it. It may not even be a
We Bought a Zoo — in which a family buys a zoo — does what it says on the tin and if you like this sort of film you will like this and if you don’t you won’t, and you have to ask yourself why you buy The Spectator every week? It’s for analysis like
Bel Ami is based on Guy de Maupassant’s 1895 novel of the same name about a young man who sleeps himself to the top of Parisian society — I once slept myself to the top of Parisian society, but by the time I got there I was far too exhausted to properly enjoy it —
The first and perhaps only thing to really say about Hunky Dory is that it is anything but. It is not hunky dory at all. Instead, it is half-baked and tiresome. I’d had rather high hopes for it. It’s a ‘let’s-put-on-a-show!’ film set in a Welsh comprehensive during the long hot summer of 1976 —
