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Jonathan Romney

Tomatometer-approved critic

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Dao (2026) EDIT “Dao’s sheer capaciousness will either pull viewers in completely or deter them, but anyone willing to immerse themselves in its teasing drift between realism and experiment will find it a compelling proposition.” – Screen International Feb 14, 2026 Full Review Only Rebels Win (2026) EDIT “Most successful overall is the interplay between Benrachid and Abbass. He has a warm, gentle demeanour, affectingly portraying an easy-going, tender-hearted but fallible young man, while Abbass gives a characteristically authoritative performance. ” – Screen International Feb 14, 2026 Full Review Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (2025) 97% 3/5 EDIT “There are themes of cultural conflict that the film raises, but is too delicate to fully confront, and the gratingly twinkly score doesn’t help. Still, there is undeniably beauty here — if you can handle it all being a bit watery. ” – Financial Times Feb 12, 2026 Full Review Crime 101 (2026) 86% 4/5 EDIT “The film is manifestly aware of its ancestors, among them the Michael Mann canon, Walter Hill’s The Driver and the Steve McQueen titles that are prominently namechecked. That’s some calibre; Crime 101 pretty compellingly measures up to it. ” – Financial Times Feb 11, 2026 Full Review The Chronology of Water (2025) 90% 3/5 EDIT “The film isn’t entirely compelling — its relentlessness may distance you as much as draw you in... But you have to applaud Stewart and Poots for climbing on to a high board and diving in fearlessly.” – Financial Times Feb 6, 2026 Full Review My Father's Shadow (2025) 98% 4/5 EDIT “The casting is inspired... And Dìrísù’s tender, thoughtful, strong presence — his face often framed in the tightest of close-ups — evokes Folarin’s virtues as a father and a man, as well as his imperfections. ” – Financial Times Feb 6, 2026 Full Review 100 Nights of Hero (2025) 68% 3/5 EDIT “...overall, Jackman contrives to balance message, mischief and idiosyncratic jewel-box elegance. ” – Financial Times Feb 6, 2026 Full Review Rabbit Trap (2025) 47% 4/5 EDIT “The script occasionally lapses into awkward passages of mystico-poetic rhetoric; otherwise, Rabbit Trap creates an insidious imagistic poetry of its own.” – Financial Times Jan 29, 2026 Full Review Saipan (2025) 92% 3/5 EDIT “...Saipan may not always be transparent to non-initiates, but it astutely balances the episode’s resonance — rooting it in Irish national self-confidence at that period — with droll touches of humdrum domesticity. ” – Financial Times Jan 23, 2026 Full Review Mercy (2026) 24% 2/5 EDIT “...Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) makes Mercy...a brain-frying mess of noisy agitation.” – Financial Times Jan 23, 2026 Full Review People We Meet on Vacation (2026) 76% 1/5 EDIT “As it happens, neither the film nor its couple is terribly interested in anyone they meet on vacation, they’re so smugly absorbed in each other...” – Financial Times Jan 9, 2026 Full Review Giant (2025) 61% 3/5 EDIT “Giant is solid, energetic, at times visibly somewhat cut-price. It’s also more than a little schematic, but in terms of its going back to the simple lessons of the tarnished-triumph sports drama, you can see why Stallone would want to be involved ” – Financial Times Jan 8, 2026 Full Review Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros (2023) 100% 4/5 EDIT “The subject matter may be cooked, but Wiseman serves it fresh and ungarnished.” – Financial Times Jan 2, 2026 Full Review The Fall Guy (2024) 82% EDIT “They all bring characterful flesh-and- blood mischief to what could otherwise have been a calculated mirror game of reality and illusion.” – Sight & Sound Dec 31, 2025 Full Review David Bowie: The Final Act (2025) 70% 2/5 EDIT “Stiasny’s account feels scrappy and unfocused, though it contains occasional grist.” – Financial Times Dec 30, 2025 Full Review The Housemaid (2025) 74% 2/5 EDIT “Everything is twisty — except the clichés, which come at us dead straight.” – Financial Times Dec 30, 2025 Full Review Sky Peals (2023) 100% EDIT “The connecting thread throughout Sky Peals is the extraordinary lead performance by Faraz Ayub. Soft-spoken, recalcitrant, at times even childlike, his Adam is all inwardness, as if folding in himself, imploding slowly into a black hole of self. ” – Sight & Sound Dec 19, 2025 Full Review The Six Billion Dollar Man (2025) 79% 4/5 EDIT “It may not include a huge amount that is unfamiliar, but it stands out in being comprehensive and up to date, tying up loose threads in the story while also following the odd new avenue that merits further exploration. ” – Financial Times Dec 18, 2025 Full Review Ella McCay (2025) 23% 1/5 EDIT “This is a woolly, self-congratulatory fossil of a film, nostalgic for an imaginary past in US politics when an idealist’s only real obstacle was the jadedness of an older generation. ” – Financial Times Dec 16, 2025 Full Review The Tale of Silyan (2025) 100% 3/5 EDIT “The ending is upbeat, perhaps contrivedly so, but Kotevska cannily pulls you in, merging a feel-good nature story with her depiction of forbidding rural economics. Ultimately, it’s the realism that grips you, even while you’re charmed by the clattering. ” – Financial Times Dec 11, 2025 Full Review Fackham Hall (2025) 74% 3/5 EDIT “As a raunchier alternative in panto season, Fackham Hall should more than pass muster — though, might I suggest, it may be enhanced by the addition of intoxicating liquors.” – Financial Times Dec 11, 2025 Full Review Eleanor the Great (2025) 66% 1/5 EDIT “The premise could theoretically have yielded a provocatively uncomfortable comedy in the hands of, say, an Isaac Bashevis Singer or a Larry David; Johansson, alas, approaches it with an uncertain sentimental touch. ” – Financial Times Dec 11, 2025 Full Review Eternity (2025) 76% 2/5 EDIT “This is what movie purgatory must be: great ideas condemned to weary reincarnation.” – Financial Times Dec 4, 2025 Full Review Prime Minister (2025) 93% 3/5 EDIT “The film can be read as a record of glorious achievement, or...a tale of tragic failure. But, above all, Ardern is shown proving that it is possible to be a sensitive, compassionate, sane person and a politician...” – Financial Times Dec 4, 2025 Full Review Blue Moon (2025) 91% 4/5 EDIT “...Blue Moon is nostalgic for old Broadway glamour, but also acutely attuned to the desolation behind the glitz. Not so much old-fashioned, then, as resembling an Old Fashioned: freshly mixed, generous with the bitters, a sophisticated, poignant pleasure.” – Financial Times Dec 3, 2025 Full Review
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