Ryan Gilbey

Ryan Gilbey
Tomatometer-approved critic
Publications: Guardian, Independent (UK), Sight and Sound, Observer (UK), Heat Magazine, New Statesman, London Review of Books

Movie Reviews Only

T-Meter Title | Year
56% The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021) [Director Lee Daniels'] strengths don't really lie in the sane or the straightforward, which explains why The United States vs Billie Holiday only fully comes to life when it deviates from the biopic playbook. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 26, 2021
88% News of the World (2020) News of the World has many of these wise, unforced moments on its way to a final scene in which the on-screen audience applauds wildly. My sentiments exactly. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 10, 2021
100% Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020) [Writer-director Jasmila banic] has shaped the factual into an eloquent and conscientious picture that purrs along as suspensefully as any ticking-bomb thriller, using Ðuricic's performance as its engine. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 27, 2021
76% Pieces of a Woman (2020) [Director Kornél Mundruczó] and the screenwriter, Kata Wéber, sometimes reach for an effect without knowing quite how to achieve it. - Guardian EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2021
98% David Byrne's American Utopia (2020) While no Stop Making Sense, it's still thrilling to see the singer and his 11-strong band, barefoot in their grey wool suits, romp through Talking Heads favourites, solo hits and a churning Janelle Monae protest song. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 10, 2020
55% The Prom (2020) I kept gawping at this prom, with its grisly, charmless show-tunes and crash-bang choreography, and thinking: where's Carrie and her bucket of blood when you need them? - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 10, 2020
98% Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) Boseman's dialogue is often close to the bone, though his performance, with its exposed nerve endings, would be impressive in any context. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 10, 2020
95% Soul (2020) Most of the script's ideas are recycled -- or rather, reincarnated -- from A Matter of Life and Death and All of Me, but Soul has its own visual elegance, and an appealing line in pet-based humour. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 10, 2020
83% Mank (2020) Fincher has mounted the movie like a Hollywood classic, from the jazzy, rat-a-tat score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross to the intricately lit black-and-white cinematography by Eric Messerschmidt. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 25, 2020
99% Collective (Colectiv) (2020) As the film moves from the dogged journalists to the offices of the cheery, new-broom health minister, its approach is clear-sighted and unfussy. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 11, 2020
94% Boys State (2020) Cinema has been noticeably light recently on blockbuster spectacle, but the sight of this malleable young man learning about himself in real time as the camera rolls can feel as wondrous as any special effects. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 11, 2020
85% Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) Borat Subsequent Moviefilm faces an uphill struggle in shocking a world inured to outrage, but it does its valiant best to keep horror -- and hope -- alive. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 21, 2020
98% Time (2020) Time moves elegantly back and forth between those evocatively degraded video clips, with their cramped frame and muddy sound, and the pristine latter-day cinematography, which glows and blazes brightly. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 14, 2020
87% On The Rocks (2020) Sweet but with no nutritional value. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 30, 2020
100% White Riot (2019) To her credit, the director Rubika Shah resists the temptation to editorialize. She lets the pictures, and the participants, tell the story. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 17, 2020
70% Tenet (2020) The more everyone explains the plot, the more needlessly complicated it becomes. The "grandfather paradox" is mentioned, but Back to the Future and The Terminator handled the same idea with less heavy lifting. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 2, 2020
82% I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020) I'm Thinking of Ending Things presents its share of frustrations... [But] at least the movie has a pulse, as well as performances rich in complexity. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Sep 2, 2020
89% Socrates (2019) The film crams a lot of hardship into its 70 minutes, as well as an abundance of humanity. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 19, 2020
66% Matthias & Maxime (2019) It is Dolan's weakness for the music promo aesthetic... that has stood in his way of being a truly great director. Thankfully, there are fewer of those sugar highs in Matthias & Maxime, which displays a more contemplative aspect. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Aug 19, 2020
79% How to Build a Girl (2020) Moran's script is sharp on the particular dishonesty of 1990s sexism, glossed as it was with a wipe-clean coating of irony, and Feldstein makes an ebullient ringmaster. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 22, 2020
92% Clemency (2019) [Alfre Woodard's] work in the death row drama Clemency offers ample proof that she is operating at the highest altitude of screen acting. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Jul 15, 2020
99% On the Record (2020) The film deftly shows how the complexities of racism have played a part in silencing BAME victims of sexual abuse. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 19, 2020
92% Da 5 Bloods (2020) Some films dealing with historic injustices require an effort on the part of the viewer to imagine the far-off struggles of a distant age. Not this one. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Jun 10, 2020
99% Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) [Eliza] Hittman's script fills in the blanks without resorting to anything as prosaic as straightforward exposition. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted May 14, 2020
82% The Whistlers (2020) It's as though in finally embracing genre conventions he previously spurned, [Corneliu] Porumboiu has thrown his arms around the whole of cinema. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted May 6, 2020
100% Infinite Football (2018) Deadpan humour does arise out of simple edits, such as a close-up of [Laurentiu] Ginghina talking that cuts to a mid-shot which reveals he has been brandishing a pointer and standing in front of a whiteboard the whole time. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted May 6, 2020
92% The Assistant (2020) [Kitty] Green's masterstroke is to keep Jane's boss hidden from view, showing only the damage he causes and the detritus he leaves behind. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 30, 2020
92% Holy Motors (2012) As wild and wayward as Carax's vision might appear... it touches recognisable human experience at enough points to sustain an emotional connection. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Apr 28, 2020
94% System Crasher (Systemsprenger) (2019) System Crasher is an absorbing piece of film-making . - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 26, 2020
88% The Truth (La vérité) (2020) The Truth is Kore-eda's first non-Japanese film... but any problems it has can't be blamed on cultural misunderstandings so much as the material's flimsiness and its overfamiliar allusions. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 19, 2020
85% Misbehaviour (2020) The director Philippa Lowthorpe and the screenwriters Rebecca Frayn and Gaby Chiappe are not in the business of letting the audience work things out for themselves. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 11, 2020
88% Onward (2020) Tthe detail of the animation is as exceptional as ever, from Barley's beard fluff and the fraying cut-off sleeves of his denim waistcoat to the dull gleam of petrol-station neon in the oily, rain-soaked tarmac. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Mar 4, 2020
98% Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) (2020) The film is at its strongest when [Céline] Sciamma challenges the conventional dynamic between sitter and artist, observed and observer, asking where one ends and the other begins. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 27, 2020
68% Little Joe (2019) Only occasionally will the director permit us the partial release of an old-fashioned shock. When violence does break out, she finds a way to stage it so that we feel the punch, as it were, without actually seeing it. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 19, 2020
86% Emma. (2020) [Autumn] de Wilde seems at a loss for what to do with the camera and isn't always in control of what she shows us. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 13, 2020
98% Parasite (Gisaengchung) (2019) Parasite works as entertainment and analysis, treat and treatise. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Feb 5, 2020
90% The Lighthouse (2019) It is perfectly possible to admire the film and to still feel that it amounts to little more than a storm in a teacup. A painstakingly sourced authentic period teacup with original 19th-century patterning, of course, but a teacup all the same. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 30, 2020
92% The Personal History of David Copperfield (2020) The film is nothing if not brisk. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 22, 2020
68% Bombshell (2019) [Charlize] Theron, [Nicole] Kidman and [Margot] Robbie are highly watchable performers who are hardly stretched by this material. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 15, 2020
89% 1917 (2020) Audiences who should be absorbed by the physical challenges inherent in the soldiers' mission are likely to be thinking instead of the technical ones faced by the film-makers. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Jan 9, 2020
95% Little Women (2019) In her zesty adaptation, Greta Gerwig develops ingeniously the theme of women finding their voices. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 12, 2019
100% So Long, My Son (Di jiu tian chang) (2019) Its power lies in the non-chronological structure, as well as the tantalising slowness with which vital information is revealed. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 5, 2019
97% Knives Out (2019) [Rian] Johnson throws in every theatrical prop he can think of and ensures that the film is both as amusing as send-ups like Clue or Murder By Death and as robust as any Christie classic. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Dec 2, 2019
96% Atlantics (2019) The cinematographer Claire Mathon has form when it comes to making water a character in its own right. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 21, 2019
94% Marriage Story (2019) It is [Scarlett] Johansson and [Adam] Driver who give the picture its weight, clarifying movingly the couple's love for one another even as they're falling apart. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 14, 2019
95% The Irishman (2019) The picture's virtues, and its affectingly plangent mood, outweigh any not-so-special effects. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Nov 7, 2019
88% Sorry We Missed You (2020) It's rarely said about salt-of-the-earth characters that their strongest component is usually sugar. Even so, the screenwriter Paul Laverty, a long-time collaborator of [Ken] Loach's, has found nuance and wiggle-room. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 31, 2019
82% Official Secrets (2019) Gavin Hood's Official Secrets isn't a poor film so much as an unremarkable one, and if there is any suspense or stylistic innovation to be wrung from this important story then the director is keeping it under his hat. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 24, 2019
87% Non-Fiction (Doubles vies) (2019) [Olivier] Assayas's innate interest in character prevents it from being dry or dusty. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 17, 2019
56% Farming (2019) [Adewale] Akinnuoye-Agbaje's slightly numbed screenplay never gets to grips with who Eni is, resorting instead to using other characters' observations to define him. - New Statesman EDIT
Read More | Posted Oct 9, 2019