Donald Clarke

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The Irish Times
For 572 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 43% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 2.1 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Donald Clarke's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 68
Highest review score: 100 Amour
Lowest review score: 20 You, Me & Tuscany
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 290 out of 572
  2. Mixed: 261 out of 572
  3. Negative: 21 out of 572
572 movie reviews
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    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    Superman
    The cartoonish closing battles make it clear that, not for the first time, Gunn is striving for high trash, but what he achieves here is low garbage. Utterly charmless. Devoid of humanity. As funny as toothache.
    • 43 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    Where the Crawdads Sing
    Daisy Edgar-Jones does her best, but no actor could make sense of the insanely compromised protagonist.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    A Haunting in Venice
    Branagh’s decent performance and Christie’s indestructible reputation may just be enough to see the film through to a modest profit and, later, decent figures on Disney+. But A Haunting in Venice feels like a misguided experimental sprig from an already compromised operation.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    Mickey 17
    Mickey 17, adapted from a novel by Edward Ashton, feels like a rickety compromise bolted together from incompatible parts.
    • 41 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    Black Adam
    Astonishingly, Black Adam does seem to have once had ambitions to say something big and important about the world. But any parallel with current unhappiness is drawn and then quickly dropped like the truly scalding potato it is.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Wild Mountain Thyme
    Viewing the entire film as it finally arrives to video on demand, one remains staggered that sentient human beings who walk upright and use cutlery believed this was a respectable use of their valuable time.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Freelance
    You would get more sparks from rubbing a wet flannel with a wetter rock. But try it anyway. It could hardly be more tedious than waiting for Freelance to crawl to its predictable denouement.
    • 34 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Backtrace
    Time moves so slowly one begins to fear it may turn backwards and return us to the far distant opening credits.
    • 54 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    M3GAN 2.0
    Oh no. The sequel to M3gan is absolutely t3rribl3.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Fortress
    Almost entirely plotless, it consists mostly of the characters pointing guns and wracking their brains for the next terrible line. Yet they had enough money to pay Willis whatever he asks to sit in two different chairs for a few hours (and he may charge by the chair). Nothing adds up.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Sonic the Hedgehog
    It’s not quite as bad as the awful trailer threatened. Just dull, bland and pointless.
    • 26 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Madame Web
    For all its gimcrack incoherence, Madame Web – which would be nothing without Johnson’s charm – is a darn sight less pompous and up itself than the overstuffed Disney content.
    • 5 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Melania
    No good impression emerges of the former Slovenian model. No bad impression emerges either. Ratner’s film achieves, rather, a sort of passive distance – as you might get by pointing a camera, for close to two hours, at a waterfall or a wheat field.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Deep Water
    Nobody looks to have helped Affleck get to grips with the author’s signature sociopath and, rather than appearing coldly ruthless, this cuboid-headed anti-hero comes across as a bored man queuing for an uninteresting clerical formality.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Inheritance
    Look elsewhere for virtual methadone to hold you over until the real stuff gets back in the supply chain. Just awful.
    • 35 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    The Turning
    The movie doesn’t quite stop mid-sentence, but it comes as close as any film I’ve seen. That can’t be it. Can it? ... A total waste of time.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    The Marvels
    All involved deserve better.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Eye for an Eye
    An early contender for turkey of the year.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Survive the Game
    Embarrassingly for a film that actually features a star of Pulp Fiction, Killing Field is still harbouring an undignified passion for early Tarantino.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Juliet & Romeo
    The thing is unremittingly dull and bland (not to mention cold, apparently). If it is good for anything it is good for providing deserved paid holidays to venerable older actors and their long johns.
    • 42 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
    Some loyalists do still give a fig. They will still get something from the volume and the visual clutter. Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Even the most dedicated will, however, surely baulk at one of the stupidest final shots in the history of cinema. That surely doesn’t count as a spoiler.
    • 46 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
    The reverence for the past here does nobody any favours. It is as if a 1984 kids’ film tried to get them interested in the collected lore and backstory of Abbott and Costello. We all need to move on.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    The Whale
    The director of shockers such as Requiem for a Dream and Mother! has had his mainstream moments, but he has never before been quite so at home to tawdry soap opera.
    • 31 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    The Starling
    There are plenty of reasons to yell at The Starling. The pile-up of dreary sub-country songs eventually takes on the quality of something the CIA would have played outside General Noriega’s compound.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    You, Me & Tuscany
    As ever, all these thumping stereotypes would matter less if there was some chemistry between the two leads. Page has sufficient charisma to skirt through the absurdity unscathed. In contrast, Bailey seems dazzled and bemused – neither crafty enough nor ingenuous enough to make sense of the central deceit.
    • 56 Metascore
    • 20 Donald Clarke
    Deadpool & Wolverine
    The creators of Deadpool will argue, lamely in my view, that by admitting the puerile nature of the humour they inure themselves to criticism in that area, but no such excuses are offered for the onanistic self-regard. After two hours of this infantile mugging, one is left longing for the genuinely upending humour of the Batman TV series from 60 years ago. Awful. Just awful.
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