Jonathan Romney

London

Film Critic and Writer at Freelance

Film, misc. Writer @FilmComment, @SightSoundMag, @ObsNewReview, @Screendaily.Screenwriter, Fiona Tan's HISTORY'S FUTURE. Now teaching @NFTSFilmTV

Articles

The Ballad of Wallis Island review: Gig economy

4 weeks ago | bfi.org.uk | Francesca Steele |Nicolas Rapold |Jonathan Romney |Christina Newland

Like a jauntier Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), The Ballad of Wallis Island is an affecting comedy that contemplates the pains and pleasures of a musical career in freefall. And as it happens, like the Coen brothers’ film, it stars Carey Mulligan as a woman who represents the protagonist’s romantic failure. Tom Basden is McGwyer, an arrogant, embittered musician racked with self-loathing over desperate celebrity behaviour, like teeth-whitening.
The Mastermind review: Reichardt’s perfect slow heist

4 weeks ago | bfi.org.uk | Nicolas Rapold Festivals |Nicolas Rapold |Jonathan Romney |Christina Newland

Josh O’Connor stars as a wannabe criminal who fumbles a small-time art robbery in Reichardt’s ingenious evocation of 1970s suburban Massachusetts. 29 May 2025Reviewed from the 2025 Cannes Film FestivalHeist movies run on the mechanics of escape and the thrill of getting away with it, but Kelly Reichardt’s latest detoured story brilliantly turns the genre on its head.
Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi wins Palme d’Or in Cannes

1 month ago | ft.com | Jonathan Romney

The closing night of the Cannes Film Festival is notorious for making jaws drop.
Highest 2 Lowest review: An erratic Spike Lee joint

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Christina Newland |Henry Miller |Mark Asch |Jonathan Romney

Reviewed from the 2025 Cannes Film FestivalLong live Spike Lee and long live Denzel Washington. The filmmaker and the towering star of some of his greatest films – not least Malcolm X – are together again for Lee’s latest joint, Highest 2 Lowest, a corporate drama and crime thriller combined into one that’s all about power, money, and self-interest in the world of modern Black capitalism and the music biz.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Henry Miller |Mark Asch |Jonathan Romney |Giovanni Marchini Camia |Henry Miller

In what is probably his final outing as Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise squares up against AI in a series of spectacular set-pieces in the sky and sea. 23 May 2025Ethan Hunt’s adversary in the eighth and final (?) Mission: Impossible is AI, but his nemesis, all along, has been gravity. The first he will gladly destroy, taking the internet with it, but the other he has kept coming back to, most memorably in the ‘black vault’ at Langley in the first film and the Burj Khalifa sequence in the fourth.
The Secret Agent review: Tropical thriller

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Giovanni Marchini Camia |Mark Asch |Jonathan Romney |John Bleasdale

Reviewed from the 2025 Cannes Film FestivalHaving already proved himself a virtuoso of scene-setting openers with Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau (2019), Kleber Mendonça Filho pulls off a hattrick with The Secret Agent. A vivid yellow VW Beetle drives into a rural petrol station while titles inform us that we’re in Brazil in 1977, “a time of great mischief”. Not far from the pumps, a dead body lies under a sheet of cardboard and a swarm of flies.
When the Light Breaks review: the difference of a day

1 month ago | bfi.org.uk | Jonathan Romney |Mark Asch |Giovanni Marchini Camia |John Bleasdale

The Icelandic drama When the Light Breaks – the original, more succinct title is Ljósbrot, ‘refraction’ – is built around a simple question. How can a person deal with the loss of a loved one when circumstances demand that they hide the extent of their emotion? The quandary is especially painful when it affects someone of college age, still beginning to grapple with life’s harsher emotional challenges, even while presenting themselves as mature and unbreakably robust.
‘Colours Of Time’ review: Cédric Klapisch delivers a crowdpleasing comedy of France past and present

1 month ago | screendaily.com | Jonathan Romney

Suzanne Lindon headlines a film which is ‘entertaining and classy, if shamelessly contrived’ Source: Cannes International Film Festival Dir. Cédric Klapisch. France 2025. 124 mins Past, present and a generous helping of poetic license all merge entertainingly in Cédric Klapisch’s classy, if shamelessly contrived Colours of Time.
‘Woman And Child’ review: Saeed Roustaee drama heaps misfortune on an Iranian widow

1 month ago | screendaily.com | Jonathan Romney

Parinaz Izadyar stars in overwrought Cannes Competition title Source: Cannes International Film Festival Dir. Saeed Roustaee. Iran/France 2025. 131mins The ‘raining stones’ principle of piling up catastrophe after catastrophe has always been a basic of social realism but requires handling with the utmost care, lest it tip over into the realm of melodrama or soap opera. Those are two areas perilously skirted by Iranian feature Woman And Child.
‘Yes’ review: Nadav Lapid’s post-October 7 satire is loudly divisive

1 month ago | screendaily.com | Jonathan Romney

Ariel Bronz stars as a musician tasked with composing a new Israeli national anthem Source: Les Films du Bal, Chi-Fou-Mi Productions Dir: Nadav Lapid. France/Israel/Cyprus/Germany. 2025. 149mins The October 7 attacks by Hamas, and Israel’s continuing campaign of retaliation in Gaza: most film-makers would consider these as topics to be tackled with the utmost seriousness and delicacy.