Jonathan Romney

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Los Angeles Times, Screen Daily, The Guardian, The Observer (UK)
For 296 reviews, this critic has graded:
  • 54% higher than the average critic
  • 1% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this critic grades 7 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)

Jonathan Romney's Scores

  • Movies
  • TV
Average review score: 73
Highest review score: 100 The Other Side of the Wind
Lowest review score: 30 Woodshock
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 217 out of 296
  2. Mixed: 75 out of 296
  3. Negative: 4 out of 296
296 movie reviews
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    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Small Things Like These
    Murphy’s performance, Tim Mielants’s controlled direction and subtle emotional heft combine to make this low-key adaption of Claire Keegan’s Booker-nominated 2021 novella very much a proposition to be reckoned with.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Apocalypse in the Tropics
    Her film definitely offers a chance to look more closely not just at the political condition of Brazil but, by extension, at the rise of far-right populism worldwide.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    The Waldheim Waltz
    While the film recounts events three decades ago, it couldn’t be more relevant today.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    From Ground Zero
    A 21-film anthology on everyday life under bombing in Gaza, From Ground Zero offers a vivid range of insights into the daily challenges faced by civilians, particularly valuable given the restrictions on news reporting there.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    Captain Volkonogov Escaped
    A powerful and troubling drama about the Stalin era. ... This is a film to revel in, and to argue about – and for some, no doubt, to recoil from – but it’s one of the most original works of the year, and a stand-out of what is proving a rich spell in Russian cinema.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    The Climb
    Kuperstein’s roaming camera may sometimes overwhelm the film with its artful choreography, but generally manages to take the viewer by surprise – as does a comic narrative which constantly takes unexpected turns.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Intregalde
    Muntean leads us into a playfully caustic realm of social satire, as his characters find themselves in unknown territory without either GPS or a clear moral compass.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Western
    Bernhard Keller’s fine photography gives this tense realist drama a streak of no-frills outdoor poetry, without overstressing its genre affinities. A strong cast, grizzled non-professionals in the great neo-realist tradition, are totally convincing.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    State Funeral
    Loznitsa’s essay raises questions about the nature and ideological mechanisms of totalitarian myth-making, and the nature of public grief as propagandist display.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    Youth (Homecoming)
    Wang’s brutally revealing trilogy presents a challenging statement about working-class life, urban and rural, and urges us to think about economic exploitation and the nature of labour in the globalised world.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    Jackie
    Larraín’s highly varied visual invention and command of complex structure serve as a reminder of how vitally an imaginative director can skew what otherwise might have emerged in more mainstream colours.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    Raw
    The young cast, from the newbie leads to an army of go-for-it extras, are terrific, and Marillier is something else – ferociously expressive in a performance that’s no-holds-barred on every front.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 40 Jonathan Romney
    The King
    Michôd’s film is a determinedly solemn and violent affair, which makes a sober political point at the end – but not before it has treated us to two hours of bleakly realistic historical reconstruction and some lugubrious drama.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Jonathan Romney
    Lost Illusions
    It’s a shame that Giannoli’s film, while ambitious, confidently executed and more than honourable, nevertheless feels like something of a relic.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Romney
    Rimini
    Michael Thomas’ imposing performance will be the hook for a film that, while executed with Seidl’s typical steely control, might strike his followers as being a touch too familiar – while non-adepts will find its darker dimensions altogether too bleak for comfort.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Romney
    Tantura
    Tantura makes for a fascinating, troubling watch, although it doesn’t altogether come across as rigorously objective, given rhetorical touches in both music (ominous ambient drones, ironically boisterous kibbutz songs) and visuals (thriller-style close-ups of Katz’s cassettes playing, a pointed insert of a see-no-evil monkey statuette).
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    Uppercase Print
    Working with Carbunariu, Jude offers a spare, visually striking evocation of the methods of Ceausescu’s secret police, the Securitate, in its pursuit and punishment of a young dissident.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Romney
    Perfect Days
    For all its poetic charm, this is a slender work that comes across as something of a ’mindfulness movie’, in a faintly self-satisfied vein.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Passages
    Its dramatic heft and its stars’ upfront audacity make it a sexy proposition in every respect.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Jonathan Romney
    American Honey
    While American Honey exudes ample energy, this episodic piece doesn’t muster much narrative drive over its daunting running time of two and three quarter hours. There’s probably a stronger, tighter film in here, but fair game at least to Arnold in her commitment to following the winding back roads of filmic experiment rather than the well-mapped highway of storytelling.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    The Divide
    Even though it sometimes feels as if Corsini is trying to keep too many plates spinning, the whole risky exercise pays off to provocative effect.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Jonathan Romney
    Bergman Island
    It’s a film made with honesty, integrity and a certain grace, but it can’t quite overcome an earnestness that was never a problem in Hansen-Love’s best films, which carried their literary and cinematic inspirations lightly.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    The Beast
    Each of the film’s three strands has its own dramatic flaws and virtues. But what is most intriguing is the way that the stories are braided, both in editor Anita Roth’s intercutting and in the establishing of visual parallels.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Romney
    Compartment No. 6
    Compartment No. 6 is something of a minimalist shaggy dog story, ending on a bittersweet low-key note.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    The Box
    La Caja is a canny blend of detective story, political drama and rites of passage vignette, and is the sort of film that comes across as so simple and direct that it’s easy to miss how meticulously conceived and constructed it is.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Jonathan Romney
    The Other Side of the Wind
    It’s a safe bet that many contemporary viewers will find the film confusing, abrasive, pretentious and antediluvian in its sexual politics. But there’s no denying the audacity of Welles’s undertaking, and of the reconstruction project. What can be said with certainty is that this version of Wind is perplexing, sometimes exhausting but never less than fascinating.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Wife of a Spy
    A film of sober elegance and control, Wife Of A Spy never quite delivers on the tautness of its build-up, but it is beautifully executed and features a number of teasingly ambivalent performances, notably from lead Yu Aoi.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Small, Slow But Steady
    The film refrains from diagnosing or analysing – either Keiko’s psyche or her condition – but describes and evokes her world with subtle detached insight. It does so on a miniature scale that some might find frustrating or non-committal, but that allows director Miyake to give us Keiko in close-up, yet in a manner that’s scrupulously non-intrusive too.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Romney
    In Our Day
    Narratively spare ... Less substantial and approachable than Hong’s 2022 features The Novelist’s Film and Walk Up, the fragile, fragmentary In Our Day won’t earn Hong any new fans, but avid followers will enjoy its elusive felicities and love puzzling over its enigmatic gaps.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Celebration
    An elegant, sometimes eerie film, Celebration does not editorialise: its only implicit commentary is a futuristic electronic score, which suggests that Saint-Laurent is something of an extra-terrestrial being. A tender, more melancholic work than its title would imply, Celebration should not be construed as a debunking of its subject, more as a gentle lament for an institution fading into the sunset.
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