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Donald Clarke

Tomatometer-approved critic
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Fatherland (2026) 96% 5/5 EDIT “Fatherland also becomes, as the car moves eastwards, increasingly taken up with the ravages of grief and the responsibility of the artist. Those themes come together in a beautiful, sad epiphany that closes out a terse film with divine economy.” – Irish Times May 15, 2026 Full Review Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (2026) 100% EDIT “This picture is, in part, an attempt to assuage guilt at enjoying the teen-camp slasher at its most misogynistic and transphobic. It is also, as the director would admit, an amusing send-up of where they now find themselves. ” – Irish Times May 15, 2026 Full Review Butterfly Jam (2026) 59% 3/5 EDIT “The introduction of a stranded pelican feels like one enormous metaphor too far. The unlikely celebrity cameo at the close should, however, win over a few resistant brains. ” – Irish Times May 14, 2026 Full Review Obsession (2025) 94% 5/5 EDIT “The supernatural premise is unsettling. More disturbing still are the film’s pessimistic conclusions about human relationships. Loneliness is torture. But love is (maybe literal) hell.” – Irish Times May 13, 2026 Full Review Abode (2025) 80% 3/5 EDIT “The tight budget does show through here and there, but experienced actors such as Brendan Conroy, Mary Murray and Marion O’Dwyer keep it aloft.” – Irish Times Apr 29, 2026 Full Review Mother Mary (2026) 71% 4/5 EDIT “Themes are expounded with an invention and wit that add bounce to a film draped in rich, oil-painterly gloom. Approach with the most open of minds.” – Irish Times Apr 29, 2026 Full Review The Devil Wears Prada 2 (2026) 78% 3/5 EDIT “[It] does provide a soothing evening in the dark, but one feels this may be one of those so-so sequels that, a few years after it has progressed to streaming, seems to have scarcely ever existed.” – Irish Times Apr 29, 2026 Full Review Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026) 46% 4/5 EDIT “A blast for those who like their horror propulsive, transgressive and (in a good way) nauseating. Cronin and his team haven’t quite solved the age-old problem of what to do with the Mummy, but they have confirmed that it remains a dilemma worth tackling. ” – Irish Times Apr 16, 2026 Full Review DJ Ahmet (2025) 94% 4/5 EDIT “Revelling in bright fabrics and seductive horizons, the director, despite all the conflicts, is here to argue for both the warmth of traditional families and the excitement of contemporary youth culture. ” – Irish Times Apr 9, 2026 Full Review Kim Novak's Vertigo (2025) 89% 3.5/5 EDIT “Philippe brings few stylistic flourishes to the film, but the fascinating conversation, punctuated by delving into her personal archives, should be more than enough to satisfy the serious cinephile.” – Irish Times Apr 9, 2026 Full Review Fuze (2025) 73% 3/5 EDIT “Cast in impressive depth – Theo James and Sam Worthington lead the heist – Fuze just about sustains interest over that often too-busy closing section. Mackenzie knows how to shoot a car chase and a gun fight.” – Irish Times Apr 9, 2026 Full Review You, Me & Tuscany (2026) 66% 1/5 EDIT “This project exists to establish the new Super Mario film, currently eating the box office alive, as, by comparison, a ruggedly authentic depiction of the Italian character to compare with neo-realistic classics such as Bicycle Thieves.” – Irish Times Apr 9, 2026 Full Review Sirāt (2025) 90% 5/5 EDIT “"Sirat" is an Arabic word for road or path, and, appropriately enough, this is a director with a firm notion of where he is going and what he wants to tell us along the way.” – Irish Times Mar 20, 2026 Full Review One Last Deal (2026) 3/5 EDIT “Happily, our star – helped out by some energetic voice work down the old blower – has just about enough saucy graft to keep the project aloft.” – Irish Times Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Resurrection (2025) 91% 5/5 EDIT “Resurrection, shot with extravagant beauty by Dong Jingsong, makes more sense on first viewing than the director perhaps allows. Each story is whole in itself. But it has the quality of a gorgeous knot that will never fully be untied. ” – Irish Times Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Midwinter Break (2026) 65% 3.5/5 EDIT “Hinds and Manville skilfully convey a relationship founded on the most fragile of intertwining insecurities. We get a sense that both understand the evasions they are making and accept them for fear of bringing the whole structure down upon their heads. ” – Irish Times Mar 20, 2026 Full Review Project Hail Mary (2026) 94% 4/5 EDIT “If it were not for an unfortunate outbreak of too-many-endings syndrome – a hangover from the book – we might have had a classic for the ages. It is still pretty darn strong.” – Irish Times Mar 10, 2026 Full Review THE BRIDE! (2026) 57% 2/5 EDIT “It is loud. It is brash. It is wilfully discordant. But it also, alas, exhibits a contrasting strain of clunkiness that would be more at home in an undergraduate revue.” – Irish Times Mar 4, 2026 Full Review Crime 101 (2026) 88% 3/5 EDIT “We don’t demand hard realism from such a project, but a little more edge would have been nice. Solid, middlebrow entertainment, nonetheless. ” – Irish Times Feb 26, 2026 Full Review The Moment (2026) 66% 3/5 EDIT “The film’s sardonic edge is dulled by a reliance on stereotypical depictions of philistine self-interest. Who would dream that music-industry hangers-on would be up-speaking solipsists? Well, almost everybody.” – Irish Times Feb 25, 2026 Full Review Wuthering Heights (2026) 57% 3/5 EDIT “The wallowing in sexually suggestive egg yolk. The hilariously phallic architecture. Oliver chained to the fireplace. Better that than another politely reverent variation on Sunday-evening telly.” – Irish Times Feb 9, 2026 Full Review Send Help (2026) 93% 4/5 EDIT “All hail Sam Raimi – a different sort of treasure – for fashioning an entertainment that exploits all McAdams’s gifts to delightful and disturbing ” – Irish Times Feb 4, 2026 Full Review Nouvelle Vague (2025) 92% 4/5 EDIT “Linklater repays the debt in a beautiful film that eschews granular analysis of the art for a broad celebration of Frenchness at its most proudly awkward.” – Irish Times Feb 4, 2026 Full Review Melania (2026) 10% 1/5 EDIT “No good impression emerges of the former Slovenian model. No bad impression emerges either. Ratner’s film achieves, rather, a sort of passive distance – as you might get by pointing a camera, for close to two hours, at a waterfall or a wheat field. ” – Irish Times Jan 31, 2026 Full Review Rental Family (2025) 88% 3/5 EDIT “It could be enormously clunky, but the quiet warmth of Fraser’s performance, the delicacy of Hikari’s direction and the ravishing location work just about distract from the teeth-smarting sentimentality. ” – Irish Times Jan 26, 2026 Full Review
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