Jonathan Romney

Select another critic »
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
view
per page
    • 67 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything
    As Maria, Burow shines in a phenomenally demanding role that challenges us to tune in empathetically to a character whose actions and motives are rarely less than problematic, but are always limned with a fine brush.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 40 Jonathan Romney
    Superpower
    Undeniably well-meaning and impassioned about the country, its people and its struggle, documentary Superpower is a cluttered account of the war so far, the facts distractingly filtered through the dominant idea that the Hollywood actor is there on the ground, filming history as it happens.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    Afire
    While, on one level, it seems to belong to international cinema’s increasingly prevalent strain of climate catastrophe dramas, on another it’s a brittle character piece, a comedy of social embarrassment with a dark and ultimately tragic undertow. Until, that is, a coda ties it off in another register entirely.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Suzume
    Suzume is hardly a film for all tastes, but is certain to thrill anime buffs across all ages and continents.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Disco Boy
    While Disco Boy doesn’t entirely weave all its threads to satisfying effect, the film crackles with ideas.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Romney
    The Adults
    The Adults is a gift to its actors, allowing them to explore the tensed-up taciturnity of emotional repression but also to go haywire with the voices and the crazily choreographed body language.
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Jonathan Romney
    A Radiant Girl
    This is a film with some grace and exuberance, but a cavalier attitude to period verisimilitude only adds to the impression that, when it comes to facing ugly historical reality, Kiberlain’s approach is naïvely inadequate.
    • 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.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Let It Be Morning
    The situation of Israel’s Arab population is treated with poised satirical acidity in Let It Be Morning, a film mixing social comedy with a touch of absurdism that, though rooted in real-world conflict, has distinct echoes of Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Passages
    Its dramatic heft and its stars’ upfront audacity make it a sexy proposition in every respect.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Corsage
    At moments, however, the pacing treads a fine line between stately and somnolent. What consistently mesmerises, however, is the lead performance by Krieps.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Romney
    Freedom on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom
    Mixing often horrifying war footage with testimonies from a wide range of Ukrainians of varying ages, Freedom on Fire is an urgent, somewhat hectic, at times cluttered film – but that’s partly explained by the fact that Afineevsky has been able to assemble it so rapidly, only six months after the invasion began.
    • 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).
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Jonathan Romney
    Memories of My Father
    Above all, there is the generous, often mischievous performance by Cámara, with a promisingly vivid juvenile lead from Nicolas Reyes as young Quinín, and a nice ensemble buzz from other family members, including Patricia Tamayo as mother Cecilia; otherwise it all comes across as a fondly soft-focus blur.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Master Gardener
    For all the film’s provocations, both serious and mischievous, it’s a remarkably elegant, subtle piece.
    • 93 Metascore
    • 100 Jonathan Romney
    No Bears
    A complex work of novelistic density, this is among the boldest and most accomplished statements from one of the world’s exemplary filmmakers.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    The Banshees of Inisherin
    There’s more than a hint of other-worldly tragedy here, limned in parallel with the allusions to political conflict whose root causes no-one can quite remember.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    Dos Estaciones
    Given that it’s about a tequila factory, Mexican drama Dos Estaciones is as sobering as they come – but it’s also a bracingly potent distillation of drama, psychological portraiture and passionate flouting of clichés, both national and sexual.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    The Blue Caftan
    The Blue Caftan is a keenly tuned, non-judgmental exploration of an enduring relationship that has thrived despite the stresses of conflicting desires and the pressures of social norms.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    We Met in Virtual Reality
    British director Joe Hunting has made a tender, affecting documentary about love, friendship and people finding a place where they can be themselves.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    Burning Days
    By the time we reach a genuinely unnerving climax, Alper has pulled off something special – a film that works at once as a highly-charged suspenser, a savvy piece of tightly-enclosed world-building and a sharp critique of machismo, populism and their very tangible dangers.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    Rodeo
    [Quivoron] emerges as a formidably kinetic director, who could easily have a career making pedal-to-the-metal action movies - although her way with character and deep-dive exploration of working-class subculture suggest that she is way too individual to take a straight generic path.
    • 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.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 90 Jonathan Romney
    Tori and Lokita
    Moving, politically committed and with an absolute ring of hard-researched reality, this is at the very least their finest since 2011’s The Kid With The Bike, and arguably one of their very best.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Romney
    Stars at Noon
    The result – something like a female-fronted version of Antonioni’s The Passenger - isn’t likely to entirely satisfy anyone in either the arthouse or mainstream camps. But if taken as an oblique tropical reverie, the film definitely has pleasures to offer – not least an oddball but often riveting lead performance by Margaret Qualley.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 80 Jonathan Romney
    EO
    A potent emotional charge, very contemporary eco-consciousness, and film-making that at its best fairly sizzles in its strangeness mark out EO as an animal film that stands defiantly on its own hooves.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Jonathan Romney
    Triangle of Sadness
    There are flashes of the incisive, caustic insight of his Force Majeure and Palme d’Or-winning art-world satire The Square. But this rather laborious take on the excesses of capitalism, depicted as a luxury yacht headed inexorably for farcical disaster, lacks the pitiless ironic cool that made those two films so memorable.
    • 50 Metascore
    • 40 Jonathan Romney
    Tchaikovsky's Wife
    A sometimes mesmerisingly intense lead performance by Alena Mikhailova is the trump card of this sprawling, sumptuously mounted revisionist drama ... But for all its sometimes-crazed energies, it feels ponderous and overwrought.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Romney
    Human Factors
    This deviously constructed puzzle film plays cat and mouse (or to be exact, pet rat) with the viewer, yields subtly disconcerting insights into the fault lines of bourgeois life, and features terrific lead performances from Sabine Timoteo and Mark Waschke.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 70 Jonathan Romney
    Jane by Charlotte
    This small, engaging film doesn’t offer much in the way of introduction to Birkin for non-initiates - there’s nothing about her acting career, for example. But for the devoted audience of a star who can – for once – genuinely be called an icon, the film offers a tender and quite illuminating portrait of a mother-daughter relationship seen both within, and far away from, the public sphere of celebrity.
Page:

Top Trailers

See all »
See all trailers »