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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    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    The Fabelmans
    The result is neither as sentimental nor as moving – if those adjectives can be separated – as the director’s more personal 20th century films. It does, however, feel complete in itself. Cleanly shot. Immaculately performed. And, no, you probably don’t need to know Spielberg from Carlsberg to have a good time.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Let the Wrong One In
    The perfunctory attempts to address social issues do not really come off. But it works through its tolerable high concepts with a great deal of verve and charm.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 70 Donald Clarke
    Babylon
    For all its confusion, Babylon really does function as celebration of an increasingly threatened medium.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    M3GAN
    Alas, the film does slip towards industry-standard punch-ups in the last 15 minutes. But there is enough promise in this cheeky, witty, incisive shocker to let us look forward to inevitable sequels with something like enthusiasm.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Donald Clarke
    TÁR
    The middle body of the picture, shot impeccably by Florian Hoffmeister, takes on the quality of an oblique ghost story as, struggling to prepare a performance of Mahler’s Fifth, she finds her fragile carapace creaking and cracking.
    • 38 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    The Enforcer
    The film is sometimes too sleazy, but it is, more often, not sleazy enough.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    A Man Called Otto
    The thing still works well enough as a middlebrow hankie dampener.
    • 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.
    • 51 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody
    I Wanna Dance with Somebody plays by the rules of the TV movie to efficient, if scarcely groundbreaking, effect. It will change no minds about Whitney Houston.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    Avatar: The Way of Water
    No doubt millions will be have no difficulty ferreting out the emotional core and propelling The Way of Water to box office success. But the indulgence of it all causes one to yearn for the raw, propulsive action of Cameron’s first two Terminator movies.
    • 89 Metascore
    • 100 Donald Clarke
    The Quiet Girl
    The action is unsettling throughout. There is a pervasive sense of unspoken menace lurking just outside the frame (or somewhere in the near past or future). But it is also a celebration of uncomplicated human kindness.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    White Noise
    Few film adaptations so awkwardly aligned deliver quite so many full-on belly laughs. It doesn’t exactly work but, no, we won’t throw “bore” at the filmmakers.
    • 59 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    The Silent Twins
    Though certainly at home to overcast misery, the film incorporates spooky, stop-motion animation and musical interludes that might have amused Ken Russell. It works in surprising ways.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Tori and Lokita
    The latest film from the Dardenne brothers, a heart-rending tale of misused immigrants in contemporary Belgium, arrives just two weeks after Frank Berry’s Aisha pondered similar misfortunes in Ireland. Both are roughly in the social-realist mode, but the tone and the perspectives are quite different.
    • 55 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    Violent Night
    Sadly, the unfunny, unexciting Violent Night fails to deliver on its substantial promise.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    She Said
    An exciting and often powerful piece of mainstream film-making that allows its heroes to emerge as normal people who make everyday mistakes. Highly recommended.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
    For all that self-aware fuss, Glass Onion works darn well as a mystery romp. It is a little smooth to the touch, but there are beautiful chicanes along the route to a satisfactorily clamorous conclusion.
    • 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.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Armageddon Time
    Perhaps Gray’s best film so far.
    • 95 Metascore
    • 100 Donald Clarke
    Aftersun
    Aftersun’s greatest achievement is to gradually reveal the imminence of a tragedy that, though never explicitly confirmed, feels inescapable by the already celebrated final shot. It is hard to think of another film that has pulled off this trick so effectively.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 40 Donald Clarke
    Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
    Coogler and his team have pulled together a functional time-passer in difficult circumstances. As before, the costumes are a gorgeous exercise in Afrofuturist chic. The music neatly works ethnic elements in with triumphant orchestral swirls. And the actors are consistently strong.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    My Father's Dragon
    In some ways it is Cartoon Saloon’s most “normal” film, but, stuffed with visual elan and powered by good nature, it confirms the studio’s desire to stretch in hitherto unexplored directions.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Donald Clarke
    Bros
    The two lead actors are strong. The conversations around the museum amusingly tease out tensions between factions in the LGBT community. But Bros fails to satisfactorily map out its own space. Passes the time well enough. Doesn’t quite pull down the barriers.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Triangle of Sadness
    For all the plum-on-the-nose satire, Östlund does not, however, fall into the trap of making every target a monster.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    The Banshees of Inisherin
    Gleeson and Farrell play off one another in a perfect complement — sulky gorilla opposite enthusiastic puppy — that, as awards season kicks up a gear, has been entertaining premiere audiences on both red carpets and inside the auditorium.
    • 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.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    Nobody could mistake All Quiet on the Western Front for anything other than an anti-war film, but the deafening, careering action — shot in predictably desaturated tones by James Friend — still works to create an unhealthy surge in the viewer.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Nothing Compares
    Sadly, Prince’s estate refused the rights to the audio of Nothing Compares 2 U. That could have been a big problem, but her famous version’s status as the ghost that didn’t come to the feast adds mystery to an already hugely engaging film. For fans and the uninitiated alike.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    The Woman King
    You will learn something of Agojie, the all-woman Dahomean army, from The Woman King, but this is largely popcorn-friendly fantasy pitched at maximum volume.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Donald Clarke
    Flux Gourmet
    Strickland has expressed a passion for This is Spinal Tap and Flux Gourmet has much to do with how close confinement causes creative types to claw out one another’s eyes. The characters here are every bit as cleanly drawn as the members of that fictional rock group and, even if they generate less open affection, they also encourage one to take sides.
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