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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    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo
    What gives the film its distinct flavour is a slightly feverish tone and dream-like logic. In places, it’s hard to see what the magic realism adds, and the script’s ideas about gender and gaze feel underexplored. Perhaps in the end, this sense of unreality opens the door to its characters finding love in this harsh and hopeless place. A touching and moving film.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    The Extraordinary Miss Flower
    Flower herself remains elusive – which is the point, perhaps, since the perspective here is mostly lovers’ projections written on a delirious high, reconstructed from the letters.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Sketch
    This is a family film with an IQ higher than the average – though before you book your half-term tickets, ask yourself if your little one is ready to watch a kid take a DIY flamethrower to the face of a scary monster.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    The Librarians
    Incredibly principled and brave, the librarians talk about their vocation and standing up for the young people for whom libraries are a safe space where they can discover their identity in the pages of books. They really are superwomen.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Deaf President Now!
    With a blend of archive footage and re-enactments the film-makers skilfully recreate the urgency, passion and energy of their protest.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Holy Cow
    Holy Cow is sentimental in the best of ways, with its warmth and hope in human nature.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Flow
    As visions of apocalypse go, it’s rather lovely: a world lush with nature, animals learning to get by together.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
    Her poems, read by Giovanni herself and the actor Taraji P Henson, made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Never Look Away
    This documentary about [Moth's] life, directed by the actor Lucy Lawless, is a fascinating portrait of a woman who had two mottoes: “no regrets” and “don’t be boring”.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Girls Will Be Girls
    It’s a quiet film, and Panigrahi plays Mira with such poise and intelligence, conveying her innermost thoughts with a slight lift of the chin here or lingering look there.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Daughters
    It’s a tender, painful, intimate film, made over several years as we watch four girls in the months before the dance.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Ama Gloria
    Àma Gloria is a small-scale film, barely over 80 minutes, but it leaves an almighty impression.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Frida
    Each new sentence adds more: more complexity, more woman.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    The Disappearance of Shere Hite
    If this documentary doesn’t make Hite a household name among a new generation of feminists, the biopic that should really follow it certainly will.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Subject
    The question of who gets to tell stories is discussed (spoiler: mostly white men, until recently), and for a 97-minute film, Subject squeezes in a lot of ethical biggies.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Bobi Wine: The People's President
    It’s an intimate portrait combined with increasingly shocking footage as his opposition movement comes under attack.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Revoir Paris
    It’s a measured, quietly powerful film with a performance from Virginie Efira that seems almost telepathic at times; in scenes where she doesn’t say a word, barely twitching a muscle in her face, yet somehow you know what she’s feeling.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Hello, Bookstore
    It’s the only documentary I’ve ever watched with a reading list in the credits – what a treat this film is.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Full Time
    Calamy is utterly convincing, giving a performance that pulls us right into Julie’s inner world.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    A Bunch of Amateurs
    A Bunch of Amateurs is a thoughtful film about film-making and has some unexpectedly deep things to say too about camaraderie, community and male friendship – though there are a couple of women in the club’s ageing membership.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    The Blue Caftan
    At times I wondered if the film is a bit too tasteful and tactful about the pain that Halim and Mina have to suppress, but still it’s a hugely compassionate and emotionally satisfying movie.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Stop-Zemlia
    This gentle, authentic-feeling coming-of-age drama from Ukrainian film-maker Kateryna Gornostai premiered at the Berlin festival in 2021. Released in the UK almost a year to the day since the Russian invasion, her film has become unbearably poignant.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    I Get Knocked Down
    Chumbawamba split up in 2012. They’re still mates and come across here as extremely likable, not taking themselves at all too seriously. Scenes of them nattering together, having a giggle now, are lovely.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Wildcat
    What an intimate, thoughtful film. I can’t remember the last time I watched a documentary so desperately wanting a happy ending for everyone – human and ocelot.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Eternal Spring
    This is a painful, important film, made more urgent in light of China’s tightening of religious freedoms and human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Muslims.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    The Territory
    The film is grimly depressing in places. I covered my eyes during Google Earth time-lapse sequences showing the pace of deforestation in the Amazon; the violence of it is too much. And yet, there is Bitaté: still a teenager, he’s already a skilled communicator.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Official Competition
    It’s a very funny film, sending-up human absurdities without being too mean. Cruz is a talented comedian, but she smartly plays it straight-ish here. You never doubt for a moment Lola is the real deal. Nor that Cruz is either.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Girls Can't Surf
    The director is Christopher Nelius, himself a surfer, who has done a brilliant job with editor Julie-Anne De Ruvo of assembling the archive to capture the sport at a moment in time, all youth and energy. Smartly, he lets this exceptional group of funny, tough, talented women surfers, now in their 50s, do the talking.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Free Chol Soo Lee
    What makes the film so engrossing is how much attention the film-makers give to Lee’s complicated life after prison.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Cath Clarke
    Faith
    It’s a deeply uncomfortable film but also weirdly gripping.
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