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 | Review | |
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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
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| Posted Feb 26, 2021
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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
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| Posted Feb 10, 2021
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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
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| Posted Jan 27, 2021
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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
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| Posted Jan 5, 2021
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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
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| Posted Dec 10, 2020
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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
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| Posted Dec 10, 2020
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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
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| Posted Dec 10, 2020
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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
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| Posted Dec 10, 2020
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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
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| Posted Nov 25, 2020
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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
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| Posted Nov 11, 2020
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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
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| Posted Nov 11, 2020
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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
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| Posted Oct 21, 2020
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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
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| Posted Oct 14, 2020
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87% | On The Rocks (2020) |
Sweet but with no nutritional value. - New Statesman
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| Posted Sep 30, 2020
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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
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| Posted Sep 17, 2020
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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
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| Posted Sep 2, 2020
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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
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| Posted Sep 2, 2020
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89% | Socrates (2019) |
The film crams a lot of hardship into its 70 minutes, as well as an abundance of humanity. - New Statesman
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| Posted Aug 19, 2020
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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
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| Posted Aug 19, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jul 22, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jul 15, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 19, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jun 10, 2020
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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
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| Posted May 14, 2020
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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
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| Posted May 6, 2020
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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
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| Posted May 6, 2020
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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
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| Posted Apr 30, 2020
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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
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| Posted Apr 28, 2020
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94% | System Crasher (Systemsprenger) (2019) |
System Crasher is an absorbing piece of film-making . - New Statesman
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| Posted Mar 26, 2020
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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
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| Posted Mar 19, 2020
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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
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| Posted Mar 11, 2020
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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
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| Posted Mar 4, 2020
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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
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| Posted Feb 27, 2020
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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
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| Posted Feb 19, 2020
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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
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| Posted Feb 13, 2020
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98% | Parasite (Gisaengchung) (2019) |
Parasite works as entertainment and analysis, treat and treatise. - New Statesman
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| Posted Feb 5, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jan 30, 2020
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92% | The Personal History of David Copperfield (2020) |
The film is nothing if not brisk. - New Statesman
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| Posted Jan 22, 2020
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68% | Bombshell (2019) |
[Charlize] Theron, [Nicole] Kidman and [Margot] Robbie are highly watchable performers who are hardly stretched by this material. - New Statesman
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| Posted Jan 15, 2020
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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
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| Posted Jan 9, 2020
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95% | Little Women (2019) |
In her zesty adaptation, Greta Gerwig develops ingeniously the theme of women finding their voices. - New Statesman
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| Posted Dec 12, 2019
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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
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| Posted Dec 5, 2019
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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
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| Posted Dec 2, 2019
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96% | Atlantics (2019) |
The cinematographer Claire Mathon has form when it comes to making water a character in its own right. - New Statesman
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| Posted Nov 21, 2019
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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
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| Posted Nov 14, 2019
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95% | The Irishman (2019) |
The picture's virtues, and its affectingly plangent mood, outweigh any not-so-special effects. - New Statesman
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| Posted Nov 7, 2019
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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
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| Posted Oct 31, 2019
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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
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| Posted Oct 24, 2019
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87% | Non-Fiction (Doubles vies) (2019) |
[Olivier] Assayas's innate interest in character prevents it from being dry or dusty. - New Statesman
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| Posted Oct 17, 2019
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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
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| Posted Oct 9, 2019
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