Deborah Ross

Deborah Ross
Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:
(Photo Credit: Andy Butterton - PA Images / PA Images / Getty Images)
Publications: The Mail on Sunday (UK), The Spectator

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
31% Blithe Spirit (2020) Better if she'd been left to rest in peace, and, after seeing this film adaption, you may well wish the play had been left to rest in peace too. Don't dig it up! Leave well alone! - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 21, 2021
91% The White Tiger (2020) I watched it once and thought: I could easily watch that again. So I did. Unheard of. And one last thing I want you to know: Bahrani may be a genius. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 21, 2021
97% Dear Comrades! (2021) I have made it sound grim and dour and depressing but the storytelling is fantastically propulsive and while Lyuda is not especially likeable, you empathise with her mounting desperation and horror at the system she had helped create. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 11, 2021
92% Sylvie's Love (2020) Sylvie's Love is an exquisitely styled, swooning, old-school, period Hollywood romance and while it has been described as 'glib' in some quarters, it's Christmas, we've had a rotten year, and it may be just what the doctor ordered. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 30, 2020
4/5 No Score Yet Albion (2020) It's sometimes funny, but mostly it is extremely powerful and involving, with a wonderful cast of secondary characters. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 25, 2020
2/5 80% Derren Brown: 20 Years of Mind Control (2020) Admittedly, he is brilliant at what he does. You're always left scratching your head. How? How? How did he do that? But here, alas, we didn't even properly see what he did. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 24, 2020
4/5 100% The Life and Times of Captain Sir Tom (2020) This documentary on Captain Sir Tom Moore -- he enjoyed being knighted "very much" -- was every bit as charming as Sir Tom himself. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 20, 2020
3/5 100% Everything: The Real Thing Story (2019) This was not a groundbreaking documentary. It was the usual. Talking heads. Old footage. But it was still absorbing as the surviving band members recollected. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2020
100% Make Up (2020) It's a thriller but not quite a thriller, and a horror flick but not quite a horror flick, and a psychosexual fantasy but not wholly a psychosexual fantasy... It may be we can settle only on one thing, and the one thing is this: it is very, very good. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 30, 2020
92% Clemency (2019) A masterwork. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 29, 2020
3/5 No Score Yet The Hidden Wilds of the Motorway (2020) [Helen Macdonald] was terrific. Indeed, her use of language is so literate and seductive that I almost forgot the M25 is essentially the place you get stuck for three hours while trying not to cry. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 6, 2020
92% Da 5 Bloods (2020) It may be all over place, but it feels absolutely necessary. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 11, 2020
46% A Rainy Day in New York (2020) The film is mostly plain creepy. And you'll wonder: why, Mr Allen, why? - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 6, 2020
20% Cats (2019) The film is flat, without any of the camp, kitsch high energy that characterised the stage show, but its wrongness is never less than mesmerising. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted May 30, 2020
4/5 No Score Yet What's the Matter with Tony Slattery? (2020) It was riveting, haunting TV, even if you did wonder whether TV was the place for it (she says, pompously). Slattery isn't someone I ever warmed to for some reason, but you couldn't help but warm to him here. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted May 26, 2020
94% Vertigo (1958) The storytelling isn't up to much. It drags and drags. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted May 18, 2020
92% The Assistant (2020) Garner is superb at conveying her character's increasing concern, degradation and inner conflict. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 30, 2020
20% Iron Mask (2019) It's the sort of film that, in fact, makes the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise look like a series of elegant, coherent masterworks. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 24, 2020
88% The Truth (La vérité) (2020) Deneuve is mesmerising, but I was also sometimes irritated, particularly by the wistful piano music that would never shut up. It is worth seeing but not, perhaps, as much as Kore-eda's other films, which you would do well to search out online. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 1, 2020
93% And Then We Danced (2020) And Then We Danced... it is truly wonderful and gorgeous. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 1, 2020
98% Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) (2020) It's about two women falling in love and it's rapturous, scorching, ravishing and will lock your eyes to the screen. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 28, 2020
48% Greed (2020) Greed is good, greed works, Gordon Gekko famously said in Wall Street. But in this instance it isn't. And doesn't. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 20, 2020
98% Parasite (Gisaengchung) (2019) It works on every level which is, perhaps, fitting for a film about levels and whether you are at the top or bottom in life. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 7, 2020
3/5 100% The Windermere Children (2020) The Windermere Children told this story as a drama, which is a good thing, as memories can't be allowed to fade, and it all helps, but it was serviceable rather than anything more memorable. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 3, 2020
No Score Yet Auschwitz Untold (2020) It is amazing what colour can do. It is magical. Suddenly, everything springs vividly to life, and it stops being about people from way back then who are somehow not the same as people of today. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 3, 2020
90% The Lighthouse (2019) It's the kind of language that roots you to the spot, and it's terrific, much like everything else. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 30, 2020
92% The Personal History of David Copperfield (2020) Armando Iannucci's adaptation of Charles Dickens's David Copperfield is a romp told at a lick, and while it's fun and likeable with fantastic casting - Hugh Laurie as Mr Dick is especially sublime - it is not particularly immersive or memorable. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 23, 2020
81% A Hidden Life (2019) It does have a certain hypnotic, cumulative power - it may just be all those mountains - if you can stick with it. But there is no guarantee that you will be able to. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 17, 2020
89% 1917 (2020) But while it is narratively samey, with jeopardy heaped upon jeopardy, and never strays from dramatic convention - it's a race-against-time thriller, as well as an against-all-the-odds one - it is also urgent and involving and we care. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 9, 2020
1/5 52% A Christmas Carol (2019) It was bleak. It was joyless. It was all taken from a desolate colour palette. It was about as Christmassy as piles. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 30, 2019
4/5 No Score Yet Responsible Child (2019) Barratt's performance was superb. He had a blank stare but, still, you understood the pain he was in and all the emotional turmoil roiling underneath. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 23, 2019
95% Little Women (2019) This is an adaptation that is as satisfying as it is intelligent. New generation? Old generation? Who cares? - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 18, 2019
5/5 92% Elizabeth is Missing (2019) Jackson is 83 and not diminished. Age does not wither her... Her performance cut everything away, taking us right to the emotional core of a woman who is confused, frightened, frustrated, angry, proud and some-times impossible. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 16, 2019
5/5 No Score Yet The Prince and the Epstein Scandal (2019) This took us right to the dark heart of money and power. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 10, 2019
93% Ordinary Love (2020) Not very Christmassy, you might think, but it's not a 'cancer story', as has been said in some quarters, it's a love story, told profoundly and beautifully and honestly rather than cloyingly or sentimentally. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 5, 2019
4/5 No Score Yet Meat: A Threat to Our Planet? (2019) There is no right way to do the wrong thing, essentially, but I do hope that, at the very least, this programme did get some people thinking. It's time. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 2, 2019
89% The Two Popes (2019) Unquestionably, it is the most papal fun I've had in years. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2019
1/5 No Score Yet Ant Middleton & Liam Payne: Straight Talking (2019) Ant Middleton And Liam Payne: Straight Talking was set in Namibia, but it could have been Hampshire, as all Payne was required to do was carry a tree branch to the camp I don't think they actually slept in - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 18, 2019
94% Marriage Story (2019) It's certainly not the most fun you'll ever have at the cinema - although it is witty and there are some brilliantly comic lines - but you will see something riveting, detailed, authentic and excellent. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 15, 2019
95% The Irishman (2019) I wasn't bored for a single minute which, given there are 210 of them, has to be a triumph, surely. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 7, 2019
2/5 No Score Yet Prince Charles: Inside the Duchy of Cornwall (2019) Made me laugh and laugh and laugh. And laugh. It shouldn't have. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 28, 2019
1/5 No Score Yet Charlotte Church: My Family & Me (2019) Plain baffling... I can't imagine any of them needed the money, or a free holiday in Devon that was the opposite of swish. So why would she invade her own privacy like this? Deeply baffling, like I said. - The Mail on Sunday (UK) EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 22, 2019
39% Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) Spectacle is no substitute for storytelling and the storytelling is a leaden mess. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 17, 2019
64% The Day Shall Come (2019) It is funny, fitfully, but it asks us to laugh at someone I wasn't sure we should be laughing at, plus it is repetitive and acts like we didn't get the joke the first time, when we did. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 10, 2019
82% Judy (2019) Zellweger captures Garland's jittery, broken-bird fragility (if not the singing voice) and I was often on the edge of my seat. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 3, 2019
68% Joker (2019) A masterpiece, or irresponsible trash? You decide. Or just step away, and spare yourself the grief. That's probably for the best. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 3, 2019
24% The Goldfinch (2019) It is, indeed, beautiful to look at, but it's not layered or textured or meaningful and it plays like a tiresome, empty blockbuster that goes on and on and on. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 26, 2019
98% The Farewell (2019) There are no grand declarations or tear-stained confrontations, as it's not Downton, mercifully. And if you think grandma knows the truth and is fooling everybody else, you will need to think again, as it's just not clichéd in this way. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 19, 2019
84% Downton Abbey (2019) It's critic-proof and the fans will race to see it even though it is, in truth, extremely predictable as well as extremely dull. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 12, 2019
60% Scarborough (2019) It is well directed and it is well performed and while certain plot points don't add up... there is a neat twist at the end that you absolutely don't see coming. - The Spectator EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 5, 2019