Deborah Ross is the chief film critic of The Spectator
Mark David Chapman killed John Lennon on 8 December 1980 as he returned to his New York home after a recording session. As Lennon entered his apartment building, Chapman drew a pistol, called out to Lennon, then shot him several times. This film, based on Chapman’s own journals as well as various transcripts, is told
As the holiday season is all but upon us, I thought I would take a moment to reflect on Christmas movies of the past and the standards that have been set. There was one called Jingle All the Way that I liked very much indeed. It was about a man of foreign heritage who spoke
My partner has bought a wood. Seriously, he has. He simply came home one day and said, ‘I have something to tell you.’ Oh good, I thought, he’s leaving me. Now at last I can get on with my life. ‘I’ve bought a wood,’ he said. My partner likes the outdoor life and camping. He’ll
Tell me, what hope is there left in the world when Harold Pinter, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh — and maybe Jude Law, should you wish to count him in — can come together and make a film as sterile, mindless, pointless and wearisome as this? I’d like to bang their heads together. I’d like to
Well, it’s not as good as Monica Ali’s book. I’m not convinced it does the book justice. I didn’t think it captures the book. Is it true to the book? And blah-de-blah-de-blah, but if you want my advice, which you should, as I am very good at advice: ditch the book. This is a film
Do you remember when, the other week, I went to St Alban, got lost and ended up in the wrong restaurant entirely, where I said, ‘Am I in St Alban?’ and was told, ‘No, we’re Divo, a Ukrainian restaurant. St Alban is over the road’? Well, what I didn’t say was that while in Divo
This film is described on the posters as ‘a powerful and gripping story that digs behind the news, the politics and a nation divided to explore the human consequences of a complicated war’. Should you encounter this poster and should you have a marker pen upon you, you may wish to add graffiti beneath: ‘You
Already, the word is out that Elizabeth: The Golden Age isn’t up to much, and it isn’t. It may even be a dog’s dinner although, I should stress, not our dog’s dinner. Our dog, Woofie, likes sushi, which he eats tidily with chopsticks before cracking the top of his crème brûlée with a teaspoon. You’ve
St Alban, 4–12 Regent Street, London SW1 St Alban is the latest restaurant from Chris Corbin and Jeremy King, who have almost mythic status as restaurateurs, and rightly so. They are, after all, the team that at various times have been behind The Ivy, Le Caprice, J. Sheekey and The Wolseley but never Garfunkel’s, which
This is either a seriously good film with some flaws or a seriously flawed film with some good elements. I am hoping to work out which it is by the finish of this, otherwise I will have denied you a proper ending, and we all know how irritating that is. Eastern Promises opens with a
OK, here we have a fantasy film and I absolutely hate fantasy films. They bore me to hell and back, plus what if one day I don’t actually make it back? What if I end up stuck for all eternity in some place where, for example, everyone insists on speaking Elvish and having three-day message-board
Now, let me see if I can get this right. My sister’s husband has a brother who has a friend who is friends with a couple in Zimbabwe who read The Spectator and are ‘very big fans’ of mine. I think that’s it. Anyway, might I email them, just to say ‘hello’? They’d be really
Now, listen, and listen good, or I’ll come round and box your ears. Should anyone happen to say to you, ‘Shall we go see The Nanny Diaries tonight?’, you must answer, ‘No.’ There should be no need to embellish this. Just say ‘no’. It’s very simple. Practise it now. No, no, no, no, no. Should
Although And When Did You Last See Your Father? is probably not a great work of cinema, and may not even be a work of cinema at all — it could easily be 90 minutes of above-par Sunday night telly — it is touching and the cast are wonderful. That Jim Broadbent, can he do
Michael Clayton is one of those American films about American lawyers doing American lawyer stuff which isn’t usually my kind of thing. And, anyway, didn’t money-hungry men in neat suits stop being cool or interesting in about 1982? But you know what? This is a pretty decent corporate thriller: tense, exciting, involving, and best of
3:10 to Yuma has everything you might want from a western apart from anything original or interesting, and as for Russell Crowe, he’s actually pretty crap. Obviously, I can’t say what the director, James Mangold (Walk the Line), who apparently fought hard to make this project, was thinking of. What shopping to get in on
There has been such a lot of fuss and hype around this adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel — as if this is all anybody has ever been waiting for — that I did wonder if I had anything new or useful to say. But then I realised: 1) it’s never stopped me before and
As you’d expect — doh! — The Simpsons Movie has some glorious lines in it. Lisa to Marge: ‘I’m so angry.’ Marge to Lisa: ‘You’re a woman. You can hold it in for years.’ Bart to Homer: ‘This is the worst day of my life.’ Homer to Bart: ‘No, son. This is the worst day
This film is fun. It is fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. It might be the most fun you can have with your clothes on or, if you have been married a good while, then with them off. John Travolta as Mrs Edna Turnblad is fun. Christopher Walken as Mr Wilbur Turnblad is riotous fun. Newcomer
Don’t care about Harry Potter. Don’t care about the children who love him. Don’t care about the middle-aged weirdos who read the books on the Tube. (Some muggles are too dumb for shame, even.) Don’t care about J.K. Rowling, although I will ask this about her: why does she always look so miserable? If you