Cath Clarke

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The Guardian, Time Out, Time Out London
For 508 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 32% higher than the average critic
  • 9% same as the average critic
  • 59% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 5.9 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Cath Clarke's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 60
Highest review score: 100 Some Like It Hot
Lowest review score: 20 Diana
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 129 out of 508
  2. Mixed: 367 out of 508
  3. Negative: 12 out of 508
508 movie reviews
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    • 37 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Outcome
    It might perhaps have been more ruthless. The movie ends on a bit of a flat note too, with personal growth where you might have hoped for a murder, or at the very least a public humiliation. Still the performances are unfailingly entertaining.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Bone Keeper
    It all adds up to a serviceable horror that at times feels like a B-movie without the fun, containing scenes that could almost work as a spoof.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    DJ Ahmet
    The script steadily goes about its mission of freeing its characters from all forms of oppression – but it’s generous and unpatronising too.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Swedish Connection
    For good to prosper, it seems, all it takes is enough good people to take action. It’s an uplifting message in a watchable movie.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    GOAT
    Goat lacks heart and soul, and a sense of genuine emotions.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Another World
    The movie is about how people ruin everything with their destructiveness, but also about the beauty of the human heart. It’s so inventive and imaginative that I wanted to love it more, but in the end found it a little bit psychologically uninvolving, perhaps because of its nonstop swirl of ideas and stories.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Pike River
    At times, it feels hopeless. But eventually the victories come, sometimes from unlikely quarters.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
    The plot pings about hyperactively, so dizzying that Cosmic Princess Kaguya! may leave audiences over 15 years old feeling more ancient than the original tale.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Christmas, Again
    Poekel’s style is far too authentic-indie and unaffected to get slushy or sentimental about Christmas; through his lens Christmas tree lights blink like police lights. But in its own low-key way, he pitches his film just right for a little squeeze of festive warmth.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Belén
    The film is essentially a legal procedural: solid, mostly entertaining and occasionally gripping.
    • 48 Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    The Twits
    Any of Dahl’s gruesome sense of fun is obliterated by a bulldozing message of empathy and kindness, thanks to a plucky orphan Beesha (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and her pals pulling together an opposition to the Twits. This is vile and revolting in all the wrong ways.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie
    This film really is a sunny delight as the weather turns cold.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Sovereign
    This is muscular stuff, with a firm grip on your attention.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Vice Is Broke
    This isn’t meant unkindly, but Vice Is Broke will be essential viewing for anybody who ever worked there, with its details about who had what job title and when.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    40 Acres
    Deadwyler’s performance is the driving force here. Without her, the audience’s attention might drift to the predictability of a plotline that hinges on Manny’s adolescent rebellion against his mum.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Bad Guys 2
    There’s more wit and energy this time around, and a genuinely sweet message about friendship. Even the fart joke (every kids’ movie must have at least one) was a cut above and had the adults giggling.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Dora and the Search for Sol Dorado
    The movie is not lacking in adventure, perhaps what’s missing is a sense of fun.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Other Way Around
    Afterwards, everyone smiles reassuringly – then one man pipes up: “Don’t take this the wrong way, but …” and a begins a pretentious intellectual takedown. Like the film it’s a funny-smart moment, witty and grownup.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
    The comedy takes a bit of an IQ dip when the film crosses the Channel and the dialogue switches to English. Still, it glides along on Rutherford’s performance as Agathe – witty, warm, keenly observant, a bit clumsy and Bridget Jones-ish, but never, not even for a moment, cringy.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Salt Path
    Making her feature-film debut, Elliott handles their story gently, with patience – though it might feel a bit slow for some.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    When the Light Breaks
    The two women’s scenes together give the film its most interesting moments.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    A Sloth Story
    It’s perfectly adequate for little kids but with little character of its own and a straight-to-download-style blandness.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Dog Man
    Dog Man is packed with goofy gags that whizz past, with no let up from the hectic pace.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Bank of Dave 2 : The Loan Ranger
    It would be grating were it not for Kinnear, and some nicely performed supporting roles.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Get Away
    The trouble with Nick Frost’s knowingly cartoonish and silly comedy paying homage to folk horrors such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar is that Frost has done this kind of movie before, and better.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Scrap
    Kerr’s script doesn’t always match the quality of her interesting, layered lead performance.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland
    There are some lovely playful moments: his favourite elf eats a magic shroom and grows to monstrous proportions. But there is a lot of padding and the decision to stick with the book’s rhyming scheme becomes annoying.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Pimpinero: Blood and Oil
    Strangely, this film keeps to the speed limit; it’s like Formula One with enhanced health and safety, slow-paced and a little low on adrenaline.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Lost Children
    The film, with its clanging score, felt to me slightly tactless in its approach, like a Hollywood-ised version of a human interest story.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Bookworm
    This is a shameless heartstring plucker. But it’s charming and sometimes very funny.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Studio One Forever
    [An] affectionate, nostalgic documentary.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person
    It’s stylishly shot by first-timer Louis-Seize, a bit reminiscent of an early Jim Jarmusch movie with its deadpan sense of humour, never trying too hard, just a little bit too cool for school.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Queen of My Dreams
    It slips just a little too easily into the generic pigeonholing of first generation south Asian narratives, but rattles along with fun and energy.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    In Camera
    In Camera is the kind of ambitious intelligent cinema that invites your most mulled-over theories. It will exasperate some; others will be engrossed by an intriguing movie.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Night Courier
    I didn’t feel the movie maintained the dramatic tension enough to work as a lean thriller, but as a portrait of a toxic man who thinks he could be a contender it’s funny and disturbing, with an impressive lead performance by Aldokhei.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    And Mrs
    The upside to casting Bea in a comedy is that she’s an absolute hoot. When Hollywood stars play ordinary civilians, there’s often a slumming-it quality to their performances, but Bea is funny and real, sarky and very likable as Gemma, who’s feeling guilty after Nathan dies.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Cadejo Blanco
    The tension leaks away in the second half; the film could have done with being snipped by a good 20 minutes.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Together 99
    The original delivered some big laughs, scenes that were an absolute joy. This is less good-natured; it is a film with streak of misanthropy, more likely to leave a sour taste in the mouth than a smile on your face.
    • 36 Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    My Spy: The Eternal City
    There are some nice enough performances, particularly from Ken Jeong as JJ’s CIA boss and Anna Faris playing the high school deputy principal leading the choir trip. But tonally the movie is all over the place.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Unicorns
    Co-directing Unicorns with James Krishna Floyd (the star of My Brother the Devil), who wrote the script, El Hosaini brings a streak of hopefulness to gritty social realism, with the added attraction of superstar drag queens.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Wilding
    Knepp is a heartwarming speck of biodiversity good news among the depressing headlines.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Food, Inc. 2
    Like I say, there’s nothing new here for even casual followers of the food crisis. But it will make you think twice about what you put in your supermarket basket.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Hard Miles
    I warmed to its sensitivity; it possesses an insistence that these difficult boys are vulnerable and scared kids (undermined only slightly by the fact that the actors playing them look well into their 20s).
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Sting
    Sting, black with a lethal red stripe, is never silly looking, though some of horror references feel a bit obvious and fanboy-ish.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    A Family Affair
    It’s as if director Warren Fischer has forgotten to write jokes in his script. No one says anything remotely humorous; instead there’s just a parade of lowest-common-denominator gags.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill
    It’s perhaps less fun than you might have hoped for, though Shatner is undoubtedly charismatic, and a pretty decent raconteur. He’s often entertaining, if not always necessarily in the way he intended.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Breathe
    The script seems so focused on the family’s resilience it never really confronts the horror of surviving, and being alive in a world with no oxygen, where nothing grows.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    I.S.S.
    ISS does deliver one knock-out terrific death in space: a screwdriver to the neck, perfect little bubbles of blood floating prettily away in zero gravity.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    The Stolen Valley
    The cinematography here, capturing the fierce beauty of the craggy landscape, raises the quality an inch or two above hokey cheapness. In the end though, this is movie with right on its side but not a scrap of believability.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Kung Fu Panda 4
    It’s a hurricane of slapstick (some of it in fact very funny) and age-appropriate energetic fight scenes, but lacks the sweetness and charm of the franchise at its best.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Origin of Evil
    Without a doubt this is easy entertainment, never dull, and it has some shrewd things to say about class and money – though the satire might have been sharper and the running time shorter by a good 20 minutes.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Robot Dreams
    This is a sweet, fuzzy movie, possibly a little soft-hearted. Still, I dare anyone to watch the final moments without a lump in the throat.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Persian Version
    The Persian Version feels a bit soft focus some of the time, but it takes on real depth and force when the action hops further back, to 1960s Iran, where Shireen is a 13-year-old girl (now played by Kamand Shafieisabet).
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Out of Darkness
    Miraculously this film is never silly. The recreation of stone age life feels unexpectedly convincing – partly I suspect, because of the sensible decision to have the actors speak a made-up stone age language instead of English (bolted together, apparently, from bits of Arabic, Basque and Sanskrit).
    • 56 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Migration
    A perfectly acceptable family animation.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Forever Young
    In the end, this is a shallow drama passing itself off as saying something meaningful.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    June
    This is a respectful film, but it does pick a little at the myth of the Johnny’n’June love story.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    One More Shot
    More than a little suspension of disbelief is required and, increasingly, I felt as if I was watching a video game. It’s a movie with a fairly low IQ too – violent, boring and a bit soulless, always on the edge of running out of steam from the 45 minute mark.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Goldfinger
    Leung Chiu-wai has a predatory glint behind the salesman’s grin, and Lau has the beaten look of a man bested for much of the movie. What’s really missing is a Leung/Lau face off, an epic confrontation.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Simple Minds: Everything is Possible
    Both Kerr and Burchill come across as unpretentious, down to earth and likable.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Your Christmas or Mine 2
    The script is mostly tasteless, a buffet of blandness. Instantly forgettable.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    There's Something in the Barn
    It’s a silly horror that’s not as good, or as bad, as you’d hoped: neither funny enough nor ever properly scary. That said, there are some cheerfully gory bits and a smattering of decent culture clash gags.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Eismayer
    The film is a surprisingly gentle, touching story about acceptance, though it is less than sizzling as a romance.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Queens of the Qing Dynasty
    It’s a disorientating, unrelaxing two-hour experience, but rewarding.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Muzzle
    The dogs give the film a touch of class, but as a whole this is forgettable.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Lockdown Tower
    The Tower is a hellish vision of isolation that must surely have been dreamed up during the pandemic lockdown; it made me want to switch on The Road for a bit of light entertainment. Not easy to recommend, this.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Showdown at the Grand
    It makes for some fun moments and a funny showdown with the baddies. In the old days this would probably have gone straight to tape, so straight-to-download feels like the right place.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Road Dance
    It’s sentimental, though the way Kirsty is helped by women boiling with fury at the injustice does feel modern.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    The Retirement Plan
    Cage dials it down nicely, keeping his freaky at a gentle 6 out 10. The film cruises along on his charm; it’s otherwise a totally disposable but mostly entertaining action comedy drama with a really stupid plot and a few good laughs.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Nettle Dress
    The film too has a meditative effect, with its soothing, gentle rhythms, watching the seasons changing, and sense of time passing.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Rotting in the Sun
    Silva packs in more penises in five minutes on the beach than I’ve seen on cinema screens in a decade of movie-watching; his representation of hedonistic gay culture feels nicely casual and natural.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Cassandro
    The focus is on his star quality and the qualities that made him a pioneer: sunniness, grit, passion for his sport, the unconditional love and support of his mother, and his unbreakable confidence to be himself. It’s undeniably heartwarming.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    A Life on the Farm
    The documentary’s director, Oscar Harding, explains that his grandfather was a neighbour of Carson’s in the wonderfully named village of Huish Champflower, and he was first shown A Life on the Farm age six. Stretching this curiosity of a man and his work into a full-length documentary is perhaps pushing it.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Dalíland
    The cleverness of Kingsley’s performance is the twinkle in his eye that leaves you wondering whether Dalí has disappeared entirely up his own myth. How much of the eccentricity is a put-on, brazen self-publicity to maximise sales? Disappointingly, the script invents a fictional art school dropout to be our guide to Dalí’s universe.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Innocent
    It’s a broad, enjoyable, lighthearted movie with a fair few not-insignificant plot holes, but a genuinely surprising storyline that keeps you guessing to the end.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Dive
    What follows is a race against the clock, cleverly constructed by director Maximilian Erlenwein and co-writer Joachim Hedén. Their script throws in plenty of calamities to nobble the diver’s escape, but didn’t quite manage – for me at least – to spark a vertiginous clammy terror.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Medusa Deluxe
    Without a doubt, it is an impressive debut from director Thomas Hardiman, even if his script doesn’t quite pull off a first-class whodunnit.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir, The Movie
    With Ladybug doing as much mooning as superheroing the girl power message feels more afterthought than heartfelt.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    The End of Sex
    A smarter, sharper film might have explored what happens next in an otherwise happy marriage when the spark goes out. Instead, the comedy here is as broad as it gets, with some wildly unconvincing and unhilarious set-pieces.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    La Syndicaliste
    It’s a political thriller that tells the story matter-of-factly, and is perhaps a little lacking in the pace department. But Isabelle Huppert carries it along with a performance every bit as gripping as you’d expect.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Carmen
    It’s a striking, ambitious film, but there is something about the tone – both glossy and grittily real, stylising everything to mythic proportions – that left me a bit cold.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Sisu
    It’s super fun entertainment, which mostly disguises the fact it’s not going to stick in the mind for long.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Butterfly Vision
    Though she might have turned the dial up, Burkovska conveys Lilya’s depression and anxiety, and finally her resilience, with a muted, powerful performance. This might be one to file away for the future, when the current conflict has ended.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Hilma
    What a shortchanging of Af Klint’s extraordinary life and work this is.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Thief Collector
    The film offers a fascinating glimpse into the mystery of other people, especially other people’s marriages. Friends and family still look dazed that the Alters – Rita and Jerry! – were behind the theft.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Cow Who Sang a Song Into the Future
    While, yes, TCWSSF is a dreamy magical realist fable with an environmental message, Alegría weaves into her tale an emotionally satisfying, gripping family drama, with singing cows – and fish too.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Stalker
    That sweaty, close-to-a-nervous breakdown tense feeling of being trapped is nowhere in the film. And where the script goes in its pulpy nasty final twist felt to me like a disturbingly misogynist move.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    The Magician's Elephant
    It’s heartfelt and sweetly earnest, but humdrum and disappointingly unmagical. The animation doesn’t help: characters speak with blank paralysed faces as if they’ve had botched Botox.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Three Day Millionaire
    What’s missing is a sense of what’s at stake – we never quite get a feeling for how desperate these men are, and for the most part they feel a bit too familiar from the Britcom playbook. That said, Burrows brings cheeky-chappie warmth to the character of Curly.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Epic Tails
    Nearly everything about Epic Tails feels a bit underwhelming, and limited imagination-wise.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Daughter
    At points I wondered if this is a film that tells us anything about anything. Some of its ideas feel a bit thrown together.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Nelly & Nadine
    The film gives us a precious glimpse into LGBTQ+ life in the postwar period.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    The Amazing Maurice
    This is a film with a lot of charm, and gives cinema its most lovable rats since Ratatouille. But I did wonder at points who the audience is.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Skinamarink
    There is without a doubt something uncanny, almost seance-like, in the way Canadian film-maker Kyle Edward Ball evokes childhood fear of the dark.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Pathaan
    The film sags a little towards the end, with a few too many implausible action sequences: characters jumping out of helicopters and fighting on top of speeding SUVs, the choreography glossing over the basics of gravity and physics. Still, the cheers kept coming.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Bank of Dave
    It’s a film with a decent bit of charm, and it’s hard to argue with the greed-is-bad message.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    In from the Side
    The script gives us less about their emotional connection and to be honest, the will-they-won’t-they-stay-together drama is a bit of a snore. The best scenes are down the rugby club, portrayed with tremendous warmth as a happy-ish semi-dysfunctional family.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    India Sweets and Spices
    The impossibility of ever really knowing our parents is a familiar storyline, but it’s told here with real generosity and warmth. Malik slyly pokes fun, but never meanly. This is satire with the thermostat turned up to 22 degrees.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Cath Clarke
    Utama
    It’s a gentle and superbly shot film.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 40 Cath Clarke
    Strange World
    The clunky script feels like it’s been re-drafted and re-drafted to the point of incomprehension – blowing any chance of conveying a message. However well-meaning, it makes for a surprisingly dull watch. That said, my five-and-three-quarter-year-old (and clearly a few other younger people in the cinema) were a bit scared by some of the dicier moments of action-adventure peril.
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