Ryan Gilbey
Ryan Gilbey's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer when
published at the following Tomatometer-approved publication(s):
Guardian,
Independent (UK),
Sight and Sound,
Observer (UK),
Heat Magazine,
New Statesman
Movie Reviews Only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61% | Slack Bay (Ma loute) (2017) |
By encouraging famously subtle actors to give recklessly over-the-top performances, the director distances their characters sharply from the world they inhabit.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Jun 16, 2017
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| 76% | Berlin Syndrome (2017) |
No one who sees Shortland's movie will be minded to inflict it on their friends, or much thanked if they do.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Jun 15, 2017
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| 94% | The Dark Knight (2008) |
Too much psychology and not enough pop. It's possible to be too serious, you know. ‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Jun 2, 2017
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| 46% | Spaceship (2016) |
The performances are thrillingly uninhibited; don't be surprised if the careers of several future stars are traced back to this film.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted May 25, 2017
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| 80% | Colossal (2017) |
The Spanish writer-director Nacho Vigalondo is in complete control of his material as he moves between apparently incompatible genres, as well as up and down the emotional register.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted May 25, 2017
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| 28% | King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (2017) |
In a poor film, the use of David Beckham in a minor but significant role stands out as an own goal. It's a towering misjudgement and a good example of the way filmmaking for Ritchie is really just an extension of socialising.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted May 18, 2017
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| 71% | Alien: Covenant (2017) |
What distinguishes Alien: Covenant is its flair in elevating horror beyond the purely physical.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted May 11, 2017
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| 81% | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) |
It's dispiriting to settle down for a Guardians of the Galaxy picture only to find you're watching Field of Dreams with added asteroids.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted May 4, 2017
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| 92% | Lady Macbeth (2017) |
The actors are good enough to convince even when the plot doesn't. A larger problem is that Lady Macbeth grows less psychologically plausible the higher the body count rises.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Apr 20, 2017
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| 98% | I Am Not Your Negro (2017) |
The result is not a documentary about Baldwin but a vision of America through his appalled and compassionate eyes.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Apr 6, 2017
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| 94% | Neruda (2016) |
It's a clever, analytical film, as opposed to an absorbing one, which holds a funhouse mirror up to its subject in place of a looking-glass.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Apr 6, 2017
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| 67% | Free Fire (2017) |
Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy and Armie Hammer can be glimpsed amid the smoke and dust, but in the absence of any distinguishable characters it scarcely matters that we have a hard time working out who is firing at whom.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Mar 31, 2017
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| 45% | Ghost in the Shell (2017) |
Ghost in the Shell is a largely humourless affair that draws from the usual reference points, not least Blade Runner.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Mar 31, 2017
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| 88% | The Lost City of Z (2017) |
The dense colours are soaked deep into the grain of the filmstock. They tell a story not available in pixels.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2017
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| 97% | Aquarius (2016) |
Aquarius is a leisurely character study that is also urgently political in its treatment of race, class and commerce.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Mar 29, 2017
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| 79% | Personal Shopper (2017) |
Whether anything remains in the soul of someone whose life is built around the ephemeral and the superficial is a point the picture leaves moot. The irony is that Stewart herself is commandingly deep.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Mar 16, 2017
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| 90% | Elle (2016) |
Elle leaves you feeling shell-shocked, but also rather like you've been tickled.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Mar 9, 2017
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| 92% | Certain Women (2016) |
This is an undemonstrative picture, richer in detail than incident, and ever-so-slightly wholegrain and dull.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Mar 2, 2017
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| 93% | Fences (2016) |
There is a powerful drama here about the legacy of racism but Washington doesn't know how to liberate it from the stage.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2017
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| 98% | Moonlight (2016) |
Material that should by rights be harrowing has become, in Jenkins's hands, euphoric. ‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Feb 16, 2017
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| 3/5 | 50% | Return to Montauk (2017) |
Nothing really rings true in Return to Montauk until the pain breaks through and the tears start to flow. Perhaps that's the point.‐ Guardian
Read More | Posted Feb 15, 2017
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| 5/5 | 100% | A Fantastic Woman (Una mujer fantástica) (2017) |
It may be a timely film, but it is its timelessness, as well as its depths of compassion, that qualify it as a great one.‐ Guardian
Read More | Posted Feb 14, 2017
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| 3/5 | 60% | California Dreams (2017) |
A film that is easier on the eye than the soul.‐ Guardian
Read More | Posted Feb 13, 2017
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| 89% | 20th Century Women (2017) |
20th Century Women, deeply charming though it is, takes its cues from Dorothea's parenting. It may seem all loosey-goosey but there's a dictatorial streak underneath, as there is in so much US filmmaking, indie or otherwise.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Feb 9, 2017
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| 78% | T2 Trainspotting (2017) |
There's a thin line between depicting nostalgia and succumbing to it, and T2 Trainspotting isn't always on the right side.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Jan 26, 2017
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| 4/5 | 83% | Lost In London Live (2017) |
Harrelson is an affectionate director, finding memorable bits for performers all across the cast list, and his writing is peppered with arresting phrases.‐ Guardian
Read More | Posted Jan 20, 2017
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| 88% | Christine (2016) |
That the film does break through is down to Hall, who illuminates the pain that Christine can't express, and to the score by Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2017
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| 89% | Jackie (2016) |
For all the bustle around her, the film insists on Jackie's aloneness and Portman gives a performance in which there is as much tantalisingly concealed as fearlessly exposed.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Jan 19, 2017
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| 93% | La La Land (2016) |
The film is at its most convincing in those intimate exchanges between Gosling, with his melted eyes, and Stone, with her anime face.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Jan 12, 2017
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| 87% | A Monster Calls (2017) |
Tthe movie's emotional and dramatic roots are deep and its writer, Patrick Ness, who adapted his own novel, has brought to the screen intact the idea that life can only be lived one way: messily ever after.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Jan 5, 2017
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| 31% | Passengers (2016) |
No movie starring Lawrence is ever likely to be flat-out dumb -- for all that her looks have played a part in her career ascendancy, her defining quality is toughness, even coarseness. Passengers, though, comes dangerously close. ‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Dec 21, 2016
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| 18% | Assassin's Creed (2016) |
Assassin's Creed, an adaptation of the popular videogame, is a terrible film that doesn't even have the decency to be bad in interesting ways.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Dec 21, 2016
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| 85% | Silence (2017) |
If ever there was a film that was both thought-provoking and deathly dull, it is this one.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Dec 15, 2016
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| 85% | Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) |
The story clicks nicely into place with the events of Star Wars but that narrative is really just a blank sky in which the film's other elements can sparkle like stars.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Dec 14, 2016
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| 61% | Snowden (2016) |
The movie falls between two stools, however, lacking either the irreverence of satire or the tautness of a well-tooled thriller.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Dec 8, 2016
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| 80% | Chi-Raq (2015) |
[Chi-Raq], if often muddled, is rarely dull.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2016
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| No Score Yet | We Are Never Alone (Nikdy nejsme sami) (2016) |
What saves We Are Never Alone from being oppressively grim is Václav's unusual, offbeat eye for framing and tone.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Dec 1, 2016
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| 71% | I, Olga Hepnarová (Já, Olga Hepnarová) (2017) |
Easy to admire but hard to recommend.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Nov 30, 2016
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| 96% | Paterson (2016) |
Driver, with his long, sloping brow and soulful lips, is both formidable and sympathetic, like an Easter Island statue that's a really good listener.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Nov 29, 2016
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| 73% | Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) |
For all the sophisticated special effects, it's rather like being trapped in a two-hour game of Pokémon Go.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Nov 17, 2016
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| 93% | Arrival (2016) |
Where Close Encounters of the Third Kind gazed outward in awe at the universe, Arrival asks only how its mysteries might provide succour and illumination for us. ‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Nov 10, 2016
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| 43% | The Paperboy (2012) |
Daniels turns out to be the ideal director for a film about the tendency of desire to turn sane minds to guacamole.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Nov 9, 2016
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| 74% | Nocturnal Animals (2016) |
Ford made his priorities clear when he named his film after Edward's novel rather than allowing the story, as Tony and Susan did, to occupy a space equidistant between art and life.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2016
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| No Score Yet | Further Beyond (2016) |
Quite unexpectedly, Further Beyond builds up an emotional weight, partly because the material is so poignant but also because of the manner in which that material is presented, without any special expectations of how we should react.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2016
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| 59% | The Light Between Oceans (2016) |
Cianfrance's film is like a form pushed under our noses. On the dotted line at the bottom you can just make out the words: "Cry here."‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Nov 3, 2016
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| 37% | Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) |
Reassurance and confidence are the main tools in Reacher's arsenal, but the director Edward Zwick doesn't seem to have spotted that endless reiterations of a character's prowess can be fatal to suspense.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2016
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| 93% | Queen of Katwe (2016) |
There is always something to tickle the eye.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2016
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| 100% | Sonita (2015) |
Ghaemmaghami could be accused of steering the action to make a stronger film but her attempt to save Sonita from being married off is far more important than that.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Oct 20, 2016
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| 92% | I, Daniel Blake (2017) |
The greatest virtue of I, Daniel Blake is its patience in confronting painstakingly the incremental humiliations visited on the neediest in society.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Oct 13, 2016
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| 78% | American Honey (2016) |
Every corner of American Honey is crammed with colour, vitality and pulsing music. Though it is overlong at nearly three hours, the level of immersion in Star's adventures wouldn't have been as intense with a shorter film.‐ New Statesman
Read More | Posted Oct 13, 2016
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