Paul O'Callaghan

Paul O'Callaghan
Paul O'Callaghan's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s): Sight and Sound Slant Magazine Little White Lies
Publications: Sight and Sound, Slant Magazine, Little White Lies

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
80% The Times of Bill Cunningham (2020) When detailing Cunningham's work as a discreet queer activist, the film packs an emotional punch. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 8, 2020
No Score Yet A Voluntary Year (Das freiwillige Jahr) (2019) Ulrich Köhler and Henner Winckler do a fine job of eliciting sympathy for their deeply flawed characters. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2019
100% Echo (Bergmál) (2019) The film ultimately coheres into a vivid portrait of contemporary Iceland that's equal parts bleak and beguiling. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2019
60% Technoboss (2019) Ultimately, the film is too narratively slight and tonally monotonous to justify its two-hour running time. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 21, 2019
100% Advocate (2020) The filmmakers eschew many of the conventions of biographical documentary to deliver a propulsive, cool-headed courtroom drama. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 21, 2019
6 100% Brief Story from the Green Planet (Breve historia del planeta verde) (2019) Brief Story is one of the weaker Teddy winners of recent years - but it's hard to begrudge this playfully inventive, big-hearted little film its moment in the spotlight. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 3, 2019
2.5/4 86% The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019) Chiwetel Ejiofor announces himself as a sensitive, shrewdly restrained filmmaker with his quietly assured directorial debut. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 22, 2019
86% The Nightingale (2019) Kent hammers her concerns home with blunt force. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 2, 2019
2/4 82% Ben is Back (2018) In its early scenes, Ben Is Back is more unpredictable and slyly entertaining than its earnest-sounding premise might suggest. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 3, 2018
93% Diane (2019) A loose-limbed, deceptively modest portrait of small-town Massachusetts as seen through the eyes of a stoic septuagenarian widow, whose loved ones are falling sick and dropping dead at a rather alarming rate. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 13, 2018
61% Vox Lux (2018) As brashly provocative as the first act may be, Portman's outrageously over-the-top turn may still come as a shock. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2018
90% A Star Is Born (2018) The occasional bum note aside, this is broad-strokes filmmaking of the highest calibre. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 8, 2018
3/4 93% The Favourite (2018) The Favourite's biggest revelation may be that Yorgos Lanthimos treats his characters here with a degree of compassion, rather than regard them with his usual smirking indifference. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 6, 2018
2.5/4 87% First Man (2018) Damien Chazelle is clearly in awe of the collective efforts it took to propel Neil Armstrong to the moon, but he remains ambivalent about whether it was all ultimately worth such immense sacrifice. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 2, 2018
No Score Yet M (2018) Yolande Zauberman delivers a formally inventive film which is angry but empathetic, and which leaves the viewer with a sense that recovery from even the most appalling trauma is possible. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 15, 2018
96% Ray & Liz (2019) With this remarkably assured film, artist Richard Billingham reaches further into the dark recesses of his childhood to deliver a richly evocative portrait of working-class life in the British Midlands. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 15, 2018
98% Too Late to Die Young (Tarde para morir joven) (2019) Though the social milieu it depicts is markedly different, the film is strikingly reminiscent of Call Me by Your Name in its nostalgia-tinged evocation of a bucolic haven for artists, intellectuals, and free spirits. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2018
89% Genesis (Genèse) (2019) Philippe Lesage is presumably sympathetic to his main female character's plight, but his penchant for lingering tracking shots lends some of her scenes an unsettlingly voyeurism. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 10, 2018
2.5/4 45% Generation Wealth (2018) Into a broad-strokes picture of a culture in crisis, Lauren Greenfield attempts to incorporate autobiographical elements, which results in some awkward narrative pivots and jarringly clunky voiceover. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 18, 2018
1.5/4 67% Ideal Home (2018) The broad strokes of the performances make the film's occasional lurches into sentimentality seem especially jarring. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 26, 2018
2.5/4 78% Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (2018) Lorna Tucker's documentary sustains a tone that oscillates between earnest admiration and wry exasperation. - Slant Magazine EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 4, 2018
92% Hard Paint (Tinta Bruta) (2018) Matzembacher and Reolon perform a deft balancing act, crafting a character study that is empathetic and emotionally engaging yet unflinching and unsentimental, and unapologetically erotic. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 8, 2018
59% Touch Me Not (2019) Touch Me Not should strike a chord most readily with those who've struggled to understand or express their own identity, but adventurous viewers of all persuasions should approach this celebration of female and minority sexuality with an open mind. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 26, 2018
88% Madeline's Madeline (2018) At once intimidatingly dense and breezily concise, uncompromisingly experimental and riotously entertaining. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 19, 2018
96% Custody (Jusqu'à la garde) (2018) One hell of a calling card, and perhaps the most dazzling fusion of grim social realism and giddy genre thrills since Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 19, 2017
94% Foxtrot (2018) As the full story of Jonathan's demise finally takes shape, it transpires that Maoz has kept a final, bitterly cruel trick up his sleeves. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 12, 2017
90% Lean on Pete (2018) Haigh has rearranged the building blocks of mawkish teen melodrama into a bracing and bittersweet coming-of-age fable. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 5, 2017
94% Call Me by Your Name (2018) Stripped of the baggage that so often complicates and corrupts queer romance, Call Me by Your Name is allowed to flourish as an unfiltered evocation of the agony and ecstasy of first love. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 22, 2017
98% God's Own Country (2017) This is one of the most assured, fully-formed British debuts of recent years. - Sight and Sound EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 20, 2017
3/5 81% Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) A relatively modest B-movie bolstered by A-grade technical wizardry. - Little White Lies EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 11, 2011
2/5 53% Last Night (2011) Leaves you to fill in the gaps, but you won't care enough to bother. - Little White Lies EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2011
3/5 86% Cedar Rapids (2011) Its breezy charm papers over narrative cracks and minor annoyances. - Little White Lies EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 28, 2011