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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    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    The Invisible Man
    Working from his own tight script, Whannell demonstrates an admirable ability to place the wet-yourself shocks where you least expect them. Benjamin Wallfisch’s insidious score complements later action, but the director is prepared to play out the opening conflicts with no music whatsoever. Great thought has gone into the architecture of this ingenious structure
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    The Batman
    Swelling the running time close to three hours, the story, though well worked, has ideas above its humble station. One longs for the strings to be tightened. One yearns for just a smidgeon of levity.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
    Destin Daniel Cretton, director of Just Mercy and Short Term 12, continues Marvel’s reasonably successful practices of unlikely hires from the indie sector. The dialogue is snappy. The action has real kinetic clatter. What a strange industry this has become.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Luca
    It’s well-meaning. It’s lively. It’s moderately funny. But it is no Finding Nemo.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Spider-Man: No Way Home
    What makes the thing really fly – and it does still fly – is the witty energy of Jon Watts’s direction and the fizzy chemistry between the core actors.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Wildcat
    Wildcat remains a tense, diverting study of a man struggling with internal demons while doing his best for an initially helpless creature.
    • 52 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    The United States vs. Billie Holiday
    For all its abundant flaws, The United States vs Billie Holiday is clearly the work of a man with hot celluloid running through his lymphatic system. I guess that is a compliment.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    A Quiet Place Part II
    The set-ups are every bit as tense as before. The cast continue to throw themselves at the material with admirable gusto.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    The Booksellers
    DW Young’s film, a study of New York’s independent and antiquarian booksellers, looks to have modelled itself on that aimless pleasure. Never aspiring to anything like a structure, it meanders from shelf to shelf, sometimes picking up a volume and placing it straight down, sometimes leafing more carefully through the pages.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Emma.
    There are some good ideas here. The overpowering prettiness is welcome in the windy months. But the characters are somewhat lost in a busy rush to find some new angle (any new angle) on a much-adapted text.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    The Perfect Candidate
    Beefed up with one too many musical numbers from the protagonist’s dad, The Perfect Candidate feels a bit slight on plot and character. But Zahrani’s performance and the urgency of the issues elevate it from the ordinary. A great last shot compensates for all deficiencies.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Blitz
    For all the disappointments, McQueen has delivered a grand mainstream entertainment that puts pressure on the tear ducts as it uncovers unspoken truths.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Castro's Spies
    One is tempted to demand a dramatic movie based on these yarns, but Castro’s Spies tells its story so compellingly that no such compromise is necessary.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Theater Camp
    Theater Camp is itself shamelessly infatuated with the great American musical, but it also enjoys poking affectionate fun at the kids’ creative tunnel vision.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Plan 75
    The high concept becomes a near irrelevance as we struggle with a humanist story that lacks the emotional zest Hirokazu Koreeda habitually brings to related material. The messages are inarguable. The means of delivery leaves something to be desired.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    A Complete Unknown
    Adaptations of Ivanhoe have imagined the past less romantically.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    The Bikeriders
    Most contemporary westerns end up mourning a vanished era of compromised freedom. The Bikeriders doesn’t quite believe in that myth, but it still finds time to dampen a handkerchief as its shadow recedes. A flawed, fascinating film.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    The Friend
    Murray and Watts make something genuinely touching of Iris’s quest to discover what prompted the writer to end it all.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    The Devil Wears Prada 2
    At its best, The Devil Wears Prada 2 engages saltily with the social and economic changes that have set in since the 2006 original. One yearns for a little more of Miranda’s amusingly half-hearted attempts to accommodate woke restrictions on her acidic put-downs.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Emilia Pérez
    This is a bold, brassy entertainment that breaks new ground as it hugs venerable genres to its chest.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Herself
    Dunne’s script, co-written with Malcolm Campbell, packs too much plot in its final 10 minutes, but it hits the emotional beats with gusto throughout. It was, when it was shot two years ago, an effective comment on an absurd crisis. Sadly, it is still that.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    In Camera
    This is a deliberately puzzling, oblique affair that never runs when it can sneak.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Men
    Alex Garland’s folk horror takes the broadest of swipes at various colours of toxic masculinity without opening up many new lines of investigation.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    The Old Guard
    Sadly, the film itself is not quite as silly as it should be (something of an achievement given what you’ve just read). Everyone is taking it very seriously. We don’t get enough characters pulling their limbs together after being hacked to pieces by combine harvester. Some very good actors have been cast in the wrong roles. No matter. Theron makes it work.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 90 Donald Clarke
    Materialists
    Materialists has received the odd puzzled review in its home territory, but it has the welcome oddness of a future classic.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    God's Creatures
    God’s Creatures doesn’t quite manage its daring blend of maritime realism and Greek catastrophe. The huge final gesture feels just a little too heightened for this otherwise everyday world. The effort was, however, worth making. A bitter, unforgiving entertainment.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Only the Animals
    Few will complain about the delicious perplexities of the opening hour. The film’s focus on the sadness of remote lives – everyone here seems alone – adds satisfactory emotional ballast.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Censor
    A clever concept carried out with great invention and some emotional honesty.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    How to Train Your Dragon
    One could bang on all day about how familiar so much of this seems. But it is only fair to acknowledge that, judged as an independent entity (if such an assessment is possible), the current How to Train Your Dragon works as sleek, charming, funny entertainment.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Evil Dead Rise
    Evil Dead Rises is not quite so unambiguously comic as that early work, but Cronin never forgets we are here to have a bloody good time.
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