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Donald Clarke

Tomatometer-approved critic
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Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Rental Family (2025) 87% 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) 24% 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) 70% 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) 78% 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) 100% 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 Testimony (2025) 3.5/4 EDIT “The film, edited with characteristic fluency by Emer Reynolds, makes no pretence that all issues have been tidied away. But it does at least allow that the survivors are achieving the status of national heroes. Few will complain at that. ” – Irish Times Dec 20, 2025 Full Review Christy (2025) 67% 3/5 EDIT “The inevitable redemption is handled with great vim and a shameless determination to cause audiences to punch air and dab eyes. Only those with the coldest of hearts will be able to resist.” – Irish Times Dec 20, 2025 Full Review Pillion (2025) 100% 4/5 EDIT “At the heart of Pillion, a very English class of reasonableness brushes against an equally English interest in hierarchical kink. Nothing wrong with that sort of thing, but doesn’t it play terrible havoc with the knees. ” – Irish Times Dec 20, 2025 Full Review Eternity (2025) 77% 4/5 EDIT “One ends up longing for a sniff of reality. But the three leads demonstrate absolute belief in romantic absolutes as we drift towards a class of sob-heavy denouement Hollywood now rarely attempts. ” – Irish Times Dec 20, 2025 Full Review It Was Just an Accident (2025) 98% 5/5 EDIT “As ever, Panahi works with amateur actors to secure a connection with everyday realities. The huge moral dilemmas spin out from the personal concerns of fleshy, believable human beings. ” – Irish Times Dec 20, 2025 Full Review Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) 92% 3/5 EDIT “A huge-budget variation on Sunday-evening mystery telly. As such, it will entertain Netflix viewers over Christmas. Though one or two might wonder if the streamer could have got three or four Poirots and a Marple for the same money.” – Irish Times Dec 20, 2025 Full Review Hamnet (2025) 86% 5/5 EDIT “There is much else to admire in this beautifully shot, cruelly raw film, but, with some justification, most of the talk will be about the female lead. One can think of few other actors who can so unashamedly access such torrents of simulated emotion.” – Irish Times Dec 19, 2025 Full Review Goodbye June (2025) 65% 2.5/5 EDIT “There are, thanks not least to the presence of Timothy Spall, a few flavours of Mike Leigh early on, but Joe Anders’s screenplay soon sinks into a fuzzy mess of warm hugs and cheap epiphanies.” – Irish Times Dec 19, 2025 Full Review Breakdown: 1975 (2025) 77% 4/5 EDIT “Sharp analysis of a body politic apparently unaware of its own psychological instability. Dickens was really on to something with that "best of times ... worst of times" stuff. The age of wisdom. The age of foolishness. ” – Irish Times Dec 19, 2025 Full Review Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) 66% 2/5 EDIT “ Not surprisingly for a film that stretches to three hours and 17 minutes, the pacing, despite the surfeit of action, has all the breakneck oomph you’d expect from an Antiques Roadshow marathon.” – Irish Times Dec 16, 2025 Full Review Wicked: For Good (2025) 66% 2/5 EDIT “If you bought the first film’s brash visual aesthetic – the result of a giant toddler vomiting candyfloss all over Walt Disney World – then you will be relieved to discover it has got no less stomach-unsettling.” – Irish Times Nov 18, 2025 Full Review Alpha (2025) 56% 4/5 EDIT “That overbearing mass of existential angst almost certainly contributes to the many negative responses, but few will endure its attack without admitting they’ve sat through something out of the ordinary.” – Irish Times Nov 14, 2025 Full Review Anemone (2025) 53% 2/5 EDIT “And now the weather. The morning will be overcast, with heavy bursts of pathetic fallacy moving in during late afternoon. Expect thunder, lightning, torrential rain and hailstones the size of monkey skulls. ” – Irish Times Nov 5, 2025 Full Review Bugonia (2025) 88% 4/5 EDIT “A careering exercise in mid-ranking Yorgosia that just about justifies its many indulgences. We should remain grateful that a talent so odd remains somewhere adjacent to the mainstream.” – Irish Times Nov 2, 2025 Full Review Ballad of a Small Player (2025) 48% 3/5 EDIT “It remains to be seen if viewers feel [the] well-constructed ambience compensates for a rickety edit that feels hurried and half-finished. A classy film that doesn’t entirely make sense. ” – Irish Times Oct 24, 2025 Full Review After the Hunt (2025) 37% 2/5 EDIT “Every scene, like the effusions of the worst social-media bore, dares different bits of the audience to get righteously furious. Few will be minded to bother.” – Irish Times Oct 24, 2025 Full Review
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