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John McDonald

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Since 2011 I've been writing a weekly film column for the Australian Financial Review, which is also posted on my personal website, johnmcdonald.net.au which has a free subscription.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Nuremberg (2025) 72% EDIT “What [Kelley] discovered was not at all what he had expected. Instead of a cabal of monsters who would shed light on the nature of evil, he found these mass murderers to be disturbingly normal.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Feb 10, 2026 Full Review No Other Choice (2025) 97% EDIT “He’s not a killer by nature, merely through necessity. As such, he is the model for a new breed of corporate survivor. ” – johnmcdonald.net.au Feb 10, 2026 Full Review Kokuho (2025) 94% EDIT “The setting may be distinctively Japanese, but the moral of the story echoes the famous words of Mark 8:36: "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"” – johnmcdonald.net.au Feb 10, 2026 Full Review Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025) 66% EDIT “I’m not reflexively opposed to long films, only boring, self-indulgent ones, and the latest Avatar, like all Cameron’s movies, is a vanity project. ” – johnmcdonald.net.au Dec 23, 2025 Full Review Twiggy (2024) 100% EDIT “Joanna Lumley speaks about Twiggy’s resilience, and that may be the defining characteristic of her personality.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Dec 12, 2025 Full Review The Running Man (2025) 62% EDIT “For us the major interest is how this chase will end, which renders two hours of furious action merely academic. Wright is obviously hoping we’ll be so engrossed in following Ben’s next move that we’ll live imaginatively within the film moment by moment. ” – johnmcdonald.net.au Nov 27, 2025 Full Review Bugonia (2025) 88% EDIT “While there are moments of irony and absurdity, Bugonia is a very dark experience, poised always on the edge of violence, occasionally stepping over the line.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Nov 25, 2025 Full Review The Choral (2025) 68% EDIT “Elgar’s oratorio is about the redemption of a soul, but everyone in this increasingly secular age has their own private version of heaven or hell. ” – johnmcdonald.net.au Nov 25, 2025 Full Review Die My Love (2025) 74% EDIT “In this film, Lawrence spends so long slinking around on her hands and knees, bum in the air, it feels unsettling when she walks on her hind legs.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Nov 7, 2025 Full Review Frankenstein (2025) 85% EDIT “The frequent action scenes and the monster’s superhero powers feel extrinsic to the deeper story del Toro is trying to tell. It’s as if he needed to make the film appeal to the kind of popular audience that flocks to the Marvel Comics movies.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Oct 29, 2025 Full Review After the Hunt (2025) 37% EDIT “The film engages with the booming politics of identity that have left their mark on America’s universities, overturning tradition and commonsense, but with so many flawed characters it becomes difficult to disentangle the public from the personal.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Oct 22, 2025 Full Review Christy (2025) 100% EDIT “The wonder of this film, which has a relentlessly grimy and gloomy ambience, is that it keeps lifting us, almost imperceptibly, out of the doldrums along with Christy.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Oct 22, 2025 Full Review Fran the Man (2025) EDIT “Fran the Man is an example of a rare variety of movie – a comedy that’s actually funny.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Oct 22, 2025 Full Review One Battle After Another (2025) 94% EDIT “At no point in this long movie does Anderson allow the narrative to slacken, even when we’re sitting in Bob’s loungeroom watching him take another toke from his pipe.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Sep 30, 2025 Full Review National Theatre Live: Inter Alia (2025) EDIT “The judge’s dilemma is also that of her creator, Suzie Miller, who has used the stage as a way of exploring complicated topics that are being treated in brutally dismissive fashion by ideologues and opportunistic politicians.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Sep 30, 2025 Full Review The Roses (2025) 64% EDIT “It's tempting to say all the best scenes grow out of the cultural gulf that separates the British expats from their American hosts. ” – johnmcdonald.net.au Sep 30, 2025 Full Review Honey Don't! (2025) 45% EDIT “This, presumably, is Coen and Cooke’s idea of a B-movie, but it’s too slick and self-aware to be an authentic B, and too devoid of drama.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Sep 6, 2025 Full Review An Ordinary Case (2024) EDIT “The film owes a huge debt to the performances of Auteuil and Gadebois who draw us into a story that might have felt mechanical with lesser talents.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Sep 6, 2025 Full Review Eddington (2025) 69% EDIT “I found myself ticking off a checklist of all the appalling things we’ve seen coming out of America over the past five years, condensed and adapted to one nondescript town.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Aug 27, 2025 Full Review The Life of Chuck (2024) 80% EDIT “Perhaps the scariest part is that the film is being widely described as “life affirming”, which instinctively puts me on the defensive, worried that a bucket of treacle lies in wait for the unwary viewer.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Aug 15, 2025 Full Review Four Letters of Love (2024) 44% EDIT “Those who are not hopeless romantics might feel the filmmakers are laying it on a bit thick. Must all Irish people have these deeply poetic souls? ” – johnmcdonald.net.au Aug 15, 2025 Full Review Auction (2024) 90% EDIT “Talking to an art dealer recently who had previously worked as a merchant banker, I was a little surprised when he said the art business was ten times more shady and more complex. ” – johnmcdonald.net.au Aug 15, 2025 Full Review Materialists (2025) 77% EDIT “Jane Eyre can declare: “Reader I married him,” and we put down the book feeling satisfied, and confident of her future. For Lucy, there is no ultimate right or wrong. ” – johnmcdonald.net.au Jul 22, 2025 Full Review Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 (2025) 83% EDIT “To read Orwell today is to be struck by the predictive value of his work. He may have been too pessimistic about the year 1984, but the world is trying to hard re-fashion itself in conformity with his worst imaginings.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Jul 22, 2025 Full Review One to One: John & Yoko (2024) 90% EDIT “...it’s almost touching to see the faith that figures such as Jerry Rubin, John and Yoko had in “the people” – the same people who gorged themselves on consumer junk, spent their lives watching TV, and voted for Nixon in record numbers.” – johnmcdonald.net.au Jun 10, 2025 Full Review
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