Donald Clarke

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The Irish Times
For 560 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 3% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.2 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Donald Clarke's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Son of Saul
Lowest review score: 20 Sonic the Hedgehog
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 283 out of 560
  2. Mixed: 256 out of 560
  3. Negative: 21 out of 560
560 movie reviews
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Paradise Is Burning
    Though immaculately made in every respect, Paradise Is Burning never quite finds its narrative rhythms. The story is happily fussing over here and then gets distracted by something over there. But Sine Vadstrup Brooker’s lovely cinematography, drifting in the liminal spaces between city and country, keeps the viewer uneasily gripped throughout.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Rose Plays Julie
    Occasionally frustrating, but worth getting frustrated about.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    A Man Called Otto
    The thing still works well enough as a middlebrow hankie dampener.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
    The seat-of-the-pants grit of the first film seems as distant as kitchen-sink verite.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    The Racer
    It is a strong, stoic performance from Talpe in a film that doesn’t allow its secondary characters much nuance.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
    The new film, evocatively shot by Sean Bobbitt, feels like a trivial, if entertaining, diversion on the way to a more substantial closing fall.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    The Flash
    It is still a thundering mess that ends with the usual boring battle in a CGI sky. But, on a scene-by-scene basis, The Flash passes the time better than Gunn’s own puzzlingly lauded Suicide Squad.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
    It is 15 minutes too long and, with all the emotional and literal clamour, loses some of the intimacy you desire for a rural golden-age-of-crime lampoon.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    The Beast
    The film has its flaws, but worriers will find much with which to identify.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Song Sung Blue
    It is all very on the nose. It’s all shamelessly manipulative. Mind you, a cynic might argue you could say the same of Diamond’s best songs. And there’s nothing wrong with a hatful of Neil.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Dune: Part Two
    Ultimately, we end up with an abundance of craft and a forest of lore wrapped around personal narratives too flimsy to sustain marching feet.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
    As directed by Sophie Hyde, who made the recent Irish film Animals, the picture never fully collapses beneath its own compromises. Credit for that must go to Thompson and McCormack. You get a sense of actors from different generations relishing the opportunity to tug at the ragged screenplay like handsome dogs squabbling over an old blanket.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Under the Fig Trees
    A lovely, pastoral pleasure that admits its share of blood-drawing barbs.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    Disenchanted
    What we really needed was something in the vein of the second Scream film – a sequel that, rather than just deconstructing classic Disney tropes, satirised emerging conventions of the streaming sequel.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Maestro
    What is most conspicuously absence is a hint, in even the vaguest technical terms, of what made Bernstein such an admired conductor and composer. It is not enough to have people tell us (and him) he’s a genius. The film does, however, give us a dramatic tribute to the passion he put into his work.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Olga
    Here is an interesting, beautifully acted if somewhat underpowered drama about the connections between the public and the personal in the life of a Ukrainian gymnast during the Maidan disturbances of 2014.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story
    A worthy, if workmanlike, tribute.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Once Upon a Time in America
    Once Upon a Time in America remains the most “problematic” of Leone’s major pictures. It is enveloping, operatic and slightly mad. We can forgive the confusion and the non- synchronised dialogue. But to this day the misogyny remains indigestible. [2014 re-release]
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    The French Dispatch
    The French Dispatch is a lovely, lovely thing. But it is as impossible to grasp as a handful of water.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    The Bob's Burgers Movie
    The amiable big-screen spin-off will satisfy fans but – unlike, say, The Inbetweeners Movie – is unlikely to win over those unfamiliar with the show’s pianissimo pleasures.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Origin
    For all its flaws, however, Origin does have power as both didactic treatise and drama of recovery. There is something reassuring being said here about the restorative power of work.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Will & Harper
    Will & Harper, a natural Netflix entertainment, oscillates between sincere openness and painful artifice.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    Highest 2 Lowest
    The film is never boring, but, once that delightful opening winds down, the action clunks where it should purr.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    tick, tick...Boom!
    Lin-Manuel Miranda’s translation of the late Jonathan Larson’s semi-autobiographical musical, a cult hit off-Broadway in the early 1990s, asks a lot of even the most indulgent audience.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Queen & Slim
    Some of the stylistic flourishes are delightful. Others work too hard for their own good.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Final Destination: Bloodlines
    Bloodlines, after that first-class opening section, isn’t quite so clever in its constructions as were the earlier episodes. There is more reliance on out-of-nowhere splatter than on amusingly inevitable disaster.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Creed III
    Michael B Jordan, who bossed the previous two rounds as Adonis Creed, shuffles behind the camera for a film that intersperses soapy sentiment with first-class acting duels.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Wicked
    It is hard to gripe at a movie that sends one out in such buoyant mood. Job just about achieved.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    The Last Right
    All this might be unbearable were it not for some lovely performances and, despite the familiar tropes, a commitment to treat Louis and his condition with respect.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Jay Kelly
    The film does indeed reflect how megastardom goes about its business. The script, by the director and Emily Mortimer, piles on the irony with admirable diligence. But this is about as cutting-edge as making fun of Donald Trump for being orange.
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