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Donald Clarke

Tomatometer-approved critic
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DJ Ahmet (2025) 94% 4/5 EDIT “Revelling in bright fabrics and seductive horizons, the director, despite all the conflicts, is here to argue for both the warmth of traditional families and the excitement of contemporary youth culture. ” – Irish Times Apr 9, 2026 Full Review Kim Novak's Vertigo (2025) 89% 3.5/5 EDIT “Philippe brings few stylistic flourishes to the film, but the fascinating conversation, punctuated by delving into her personal archives, should be more than enough to satisfy the serious cinephile.” – Irish Times Apr 9, 2026 Full Review Fuze (2025) 79% 3/5 EDIT “Cast in impressive depth – Theo James and Sam Worthington lead the heist – Fuze just about sustains interest over that often too-busy closing section. Mackenzie knows how to shoot a car chase and a gun fight.” – Irish Times Apr 9, 2026 Full Review You, Me & Tuscany (2026) 70% 1/5 EDIT “This project exists to establish the new Super Mario film, currently eating the box office alive, as, by comparison, a ruggedly authentic depiction of the Italian character to compare with neo-realistic classics such as Bicycle Thieves.” – Irish Times Apr 9, 2026 Full Review Sirāt (2025) 90% 5/5 EDIT “"Sirat" is an Arabic word for road or path, and, appropriately enough, this is a director with a firm notion of where he is going and what he wants to tell us along the way.” – Irish Times Mar 20, 2026 Full Review One Last Deal (2026) 3/5 EDIT “Happily, our star – helped out by some energetic voice work down the old blower – has just about enough saucy graft to keep the project aloft.” – Irish Times Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Resurrection (2025) 90% 5/5 EDIT “Resurrection, shot with extravagant beauty by Dong Jingsong, makes more sense on first viewing than the director perhaps allows. Each story is whole in itself. But it has the quality of a gorgeous knot that will never fully be untied. ” – Irish Times Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Midwinter Break (2026) 63% 3.5/5 EDIT “Hinds and Manville skilfully convey a relationship founded on the most fragile of intertwining insecurities. We get a sense that both understand the evasions they are making and accept them for fear of bringing the whole structure down upon their heads. ” – Irish Times Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Project Hail Mary (2026) 94% 4/5 EDIT “If it were not for an unfortunate outbreak of too-many-endings syndrome – a hangover from the book – we might have had a classic for the ages. It is still pretty darn strong.” – Irish Times Mar 10, 2026 Full Review THE BRIDE! (2026) 58% 2/5 EDIT “It is loud. It is brash. It is wilfully discordant. But it also, alas, exhibits a contrasting strain of clunkiness that would be more at home in an undergraduate revue.” – Irish Times Mar 4, 2026 Full Review Crime 101 (2026) 88% 3/5 EDIT “We don’t demand hard realism from such a project, but a little more edge would have been nice. Solid, middlebrow entertainment, nonetheless. ” – Irish Times Feb 26, 2026 Full Review The Moment (2026) 67% 3/5 EDIT “The film’s sardonic edge is dulled by a reliance on stereotypical depictions of philistine self-interest. Who would dream that music-industry hangers-on would be up-speaking solipsists? Well, almost everybody.” – Irish Times Feb 25, 2026 Full Review Wuthering Heights (2026) 58% 3/5 EDIT “The wallowing in sexually suggestive egg yolk. The hilariously phallic architecture. Oliver chained to the fireplace. Better that than another politely reverent variation on Sunday-evening telly.” – Irish Times Feb 9, 2026 Full Review Send Help (2026) 93% 4/5 EDIT “All hail Sam Raimi – a different sort of treasure – for fashioning an entertainment that exploits all McAdams’s gifts to delightful and disturbing ” – Irish Times Feb 4, 2026 Full Review Nouvelle Vague (2025) 92% 4/5 EDIT “Linklater repays the debt in a beautiful film that eschews granular analysis of the art for a broad celebration of Frenchness at its most proudly awkward.” – Irish Times Feb 4, 2026 Full Review Melania (2026) 10% 1/5 EDIT “No good impression emerges of the former Slovenian model. No bad impression emerges either. Ratner’s film achieves, rather, a sort of passive distance – as you might get by pointing a camera, for close to two hours, at a waterfall or a wheat field. ” – Irish Times Jan 31, 2026 Full Review Rental Family (2025) 88% 3/5 EDIT “It could be enormously clunky, but the quiet warmth of Fraser’s performance, the delicacy of Hikari’s direction and the ravishing location work just about distract from the teeth-smarting sentimentality. ” – Irish Times Jan 26, 2026 Full Review Mercy (2026) 25% 2/5 EDIT “There are no insights on screen that you won’t expect from speed-watching the trailer (or speed-reading this review). If this worst-case scenario does yet happen, it will surely not turn out quite so boringly.” – Irish Times Jan 26, 2026 Full Review The History of Sound (2025) 69% 3/5 EDIT “There is ... the sense throughout of a film rustling through its own innards in search of an emotional ember that refuses to catch fire. Nice to look at. Nice to listen too. Easily forgotten.” – Irish Times Jan 26, 2026 Full Review Song Sung Blue (2025) 77% 3/5 EDIT “This lachrymose yarn ... believes very much in its own irresistibility. That such a claim proves borderline justified is mostly down to bravura performances from two old troopers and charming ones from two committed youngsters. ” – Irish Times Jan 13, 2026 Full Review Giant (2025) 61% 3/5 EDIT “The core (largely true) story is just about strong enough to keep the film on its feet through all 12 rounds. A narrow victory on points.” – Irish Times Jan 13, 2026 Full Review 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) 92% 3/5 EDIT “Part one sweated to establish a Britain mired in fantastic decay that echoed developments in the real world. The new film, evocatively shot by Sean Bobbitt, feels like a trivial, if entertaining, diversion on the way to a more substantial closing fall.” – Irish Times Jan 13, 2026 Full Review Marty Supreme (2025) 93% 5/5 EDIT “For all the trademark Safdie unease, Marty Supreme remains an enormously good time at the cinema. The 150 minutes speed by as we encounter an array of brilliantly cast cameos.” – Irish Times Dec 31, 2025 Full Review Palestine '36 (2025) 98% 3/5 EDIT “Making skilful use of colourised archive footage, the film drags up not just unavoidable pointers to the area’s current miseries, but also reminders of similar western interventions in parts as remote as Vietnam and (yes) Ireland.” – Irish Times Dec 20, 2025 Full Review Born That Way (2025) 5/5 EDIT “ The edit moves seamlessly from biography to a discussion of rights often denied children with exceptional needs. "Their issues are not health issues," Lydon says. "They are who they are." ” – Irish Times Dec 20, 2025 Full Review
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