Philip De Semlyen

Philip De Semlyen's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s): Empire Magazine Time Out

Publications: Empire Magazine, Time Out

Movie Reviews Only

Movies

	T-Meter	Title \| Year	Review
4/5	100%	Only You (2018)	Part old-school romance, part fertility horror film, it should resonate deeply with anyone who's been touched by the struggle to conceive. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 5, 2019
3/5	78%	Armstrong (2019)	It's all watchable enough but hardly a giant leap for documentary making. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 5, 2019
2/5	72%	The Command (Kursk) (2019)	Thomas Vinterberg, usually so good at stripping his characters down to their barest states, doesn't feel like a good fit for the material. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 5, 2019
1/5	42%	Stuber (2019)	Clearly surge pricing also applies to jokes, because it's mostly about as funny as a traffic jam. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 5, 2019
2/5	50%	Ibiza: The Silent Movie (2019)	As acid house smileys bounce across the screen and we cut away to another pair of boobs, you're left thinking this is probably not how Werner Herzog would have done it. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 3, 2019
3/5	100%	The Cold Blue (2019)	'The Cold Blue' gives a real sense of what it was like to be strapped into one of these jolting, juddering, bomb-filled crates. They were called the greatest generation for a reason. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 1, 2019
3/5	89%	Article 15 (2019)	A major Bollywood star, the charismatic Khurrana handles this moodier milieu with restrained skill. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 28, 2019
3/5	68%	Stockholm (2019)	It's fun watching Ethan Hawke's oddball robber socking it to The Man in a wig and stick-on handlebars. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 26, 2019
4/5	99%	Maiden (2019)	Tautly edited and unfussily directed, it's a knuckle-whitening tale of courage and grit. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 18, 2019
4/5	97%	Thunder Road (2018)	In the spirit of many great comedians, Jim Cummings has a knack for taking lines that shouldn't be funny and transforming them into accidental zingers. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 10, 2019
3/5	23%	Dark Phoenix (2019)	It's not nearly as good as 'Logan' or 'X2', but it's a whole lot better than the eyeball-poking affliction that was 'X-Men: Apocalypse'. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 5, 2019
4/5	85%	Diego Maradona (2019)	Asif Kapadia's doc has the football and the drugs - think 'Scarface' with screamers - but it's a surprisingly emotional ride too. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted May 20, 2019
4/5	90%	Rocketman (2019)	The songs explode from the screen, time jumps catapult the story forward with exhilarating élan and even the emotional stuff lands, for the most part. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted May 16, 2019
4/5	73%	Les Misérables (2019)	It's a vivid dissection of modern-day France's social ills that's juiced up with smart acting, tense standoffs and a nagging sense of despair. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted May 16, 2019
3/5	54%	The Dead Don't Die (2019)	Welcome to Night of the Living Deadpan. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted May 15, 2019
4/5	96%	Birds of Passage (Pájaros de verano) (2019)	It's a mesmerising and transporting drug epic like no other. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted May 13, 2019
2/5	53%	Destination Wedding (2018)	It's basically the Phil and Rita dynamic from 'Groundhog Day', only with two Phils and a fifth of the jokes. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted May 7, 2019
3/5	67%	Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019)	If you're not a Pokémon devotee, imagine watching 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' after a PCP binge and you'll get the idea. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted May 7, 2019
2/5	51%	Tolkien (2019)	Director Dome Karukoski peppers the film with cutaways to imaginary CGI battles and mythological beasties, but none is a fraction as thrilling as the opening moments of Peter Jackson's 'The Fellowship of the Ring'. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 29, 2019
2/5	No Score Yet	Once Upon A Time In London (2019)	There's so many kickings, beatings and slashings administered, it almost tips into self-parody. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 15, 2019
2/5	30%	Red Joan (2019)	It's all about as tense as a gentle punt down the Cam. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 15, 2019
1/5	18%	Hellboy (2019)	It's two hours long but feels like an eternity, lurching incoherently from one noisy set-piece to another. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 10, 2019
3/5	100%	A Deal with the Universe (2018)	A film of little moments and a big heart. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Apr 9, 2019
3/5	94%	The Keeper (Trautmann) (2018)	It's an old cliché about biopics that if the story wasn't true, you probably wouldn't believe it. Here, it's taken a step further: you know it's true and you still don't believe it. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 29, 2019
3/5	46%	Dumbo (2019)	With production designer Rick Heinrichs, Burton forsakes his beloved gothic touches for an art deco style that lends it all a Gatsby-esque decadence. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 26, 2019
5/5	97%	Border (Gräns) (2018)	Writer-director Ali Abbasi has crafted something eerie and rather wonderful with this pungent allegory of outsiderdom. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Mar 1, 2019
4/5	75%	Old Boys (2018)	This charmingly oddball rom-com exists somewhere between 'If....' and 'Rushmore' in the canon of schoolboy eccentricity. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Feb 21, 2019
2/5	61%	Alita: Battle Angel (2019)	It's a rare thing to say about a James Cameron project, but you come out feeling like you've seen it all before. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 31, 2019
3/5	89%	The Kid Who Would Be King (2019)	It falls short of enchanting but it's never less than fun and likable. Watch it through the eyes of your inner teenager and you'll have a blast. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 25, 2019
3/5	91%	How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019)	The visual soars but the franchise's emotional heartbeat struggles to make itself heard over the din of subplots and the annoying banter of Hiccup's teen tribemates. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 25, 2019
4/5	85%	Monsters and Men (2018)	John David Washington's role is more muted than in 'BlacKkKlansman', but he shows tantalising glimpses of dad Denzel's effortless charisma. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jan 21, 2019
4/5	93%	Stan & Ollie (2019)	It's a love song played in a minor key, and it leaves an unexpectedly lingering impression. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 21, 2018
4/5	97%	Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)	By the time it's chucked a Spider-pig (yes, really), Banksy jokes and buckets of Day-glo-bathed spectacle at you, resistance will be futile. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 7, 2018
3/5	77%	The Man from Mo'Wax (2018)	A warts-and-all tales of hubris and heavyweight beats. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Dec 6, 2018
4/5	88%	Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)	It's not every animation that features an eBay-spoofing riff involving a corn chip shaped like Beyoncé. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 23, 2018
3/5	No Score Yet		Only the band's confetti-strewn stadium gigs, seemingly choreographed by a drunk Italian wedding planner, are as irrepressible as Chris Martin. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 12, 2018
4/5	95%	If Beale Street Could Talk (2019)	Barry Jenkins channels all of James Baldwin's lyricism and anger into a story of love and injustice that burns with a gentle flame, occasionally blazing into a white heat. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Nov 7, 2018
3/5	75%	Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)	As with 'The Cabin in the Woods', Drew Goddard has a blast toying with genre expectations, although here the payoff is a lot less satisfying. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Oct 10, 2018
4/5	85%	The Captain (Der Hauptmann) (2018)	You've heard of 'Stalag 17', now meet Stalag 666. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 20, 2018
3/5	80%	22 July (2018)	'22 July' offers few surprises, and even fewer opportunities for Paul Greengrass to flex his filmmaking muscles. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 5, 2018
2/5	59%	Sunset (Napszállta) (2019)	The bustle and vibrancy of pre-Great War Budapest remain frustratingly out of focus throughout. After 140 minutes, your eyeballs will know the feeling. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 4, 2018
4/5	87%	The Sisters Brothers (2018)	You don't need a deep love of westerns to get a kick out of Jacques Audiard's wry, surprising, and often plain hilarious frontier story. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 2, 2018
3/5	65%	Peterloo (2019)	The authenticity is immersive, even if the historical exposition occasionally feels like prep for an exam no one's warned you about. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Sep 1, 2018
4/5	91%	The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)	Richly entertaining and blackly funny but told with sincerity and heart, the half-dozen Western tales packed into The Ballad of Buster Scruggs show the Coen brothers loading up their six-shooter and firing barely a blank. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 31, 2018
5/5	92%	Cold War (Zimna wojna) (2018)	One of the most colourful things you'll ever see in black and white. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 28, 2018
4/5	91%	Searching (2018)	Strip away the tech trappings and you'll find the same propulsive joys that powered '90s thrillers like 'Presumed Innocent' and 'The Fugitive'. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 22, 2018
4/5	96%	BlacKkKlansman (2018)	Veering from a blaxploitation spoof to an undercover thriller and ending with a no-punches-pulled real-life coda, BlacKkKlansman is riotously fun one minute, savagely biting the next. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Aug 10, 2018
2/5	47%	Marrowbone (2018)	Sergio G. Sánchez struggles to locate the frights, with underwritten characters draining his shocks of their emotional payoff. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 18, 2018
4/5	89%	Whitney (2018)	You don't have to be a fan of Whitney Houston's music to love director Kevin Macdonald's sharp-edged, revelatory and seriously emotional documentary about her life. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jul 2, 2018
4/5	93%	The Endless (2018)	This impressive low-budget indie weaves a genre-defying tapestry of weirdness, atmospherics and cultish horrors across a dusty US setting. - Time Out EDIT Read More \| Posted Jun 28, 2018