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James Saynor

James Saynor's reviews only count toward the Tomatometer® when published at Tomatometer-approved publication(s).
Publications:

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025) 95% 5/5 EDIT “[Kaouther Ben Hania] shoots the claustrophobic events with Paul Greengrass-ish jittery intensity and busy differential focus. ” – The Arts Desk Jan 16, 2026 Full Review Hamnet (2025) 86% 4/5 EDIT “As with most Shakespeare biopics, Hamnet is less a window onto the Bard and more a mirror for us.” – The Arts Desk Jan 9, 2026 Full Review Lurker (2025) 95% 3/5 EDIT “Writer-director Alex Russell (a producer on TV’s The Bear) shoots and edits this debut feature a little like an episode of MTV Cribs, jangly and lo-fi, appealing to the college demographic while undermining their lolling values. ” – The Arts Desk Dec 13, 2025 Full Review Dreamers (2025) 92% 4/5 EDIT “ Performances, particularly from Adekoluejo, are punchy, and even actors thanklessly playing the guards hit precise chords of indifference.” – The Arts Desk Dec 10, 2025 Full Review Anemone (2025) 53% 4/5 EDIT “The narrative has little forward movement...but as with many static and ostensibly “boring” films, there’s often something interesting about being boring, as we’ve seen going back to at least the films of Andrei Tarkovsky.” – The Arts Desk Nov 7, 2025 Full Review I Swear (2025) 100% 4/5 EDIT “We might all have shadow selves, constructive and destructive, and this movie reminds us that we can be more than one person at any one time.” – The Arts Desk Oct 10, 2025 Full Review Happyend (2024) 98% 3/5 EDIT “Yet the kind of suppressed simmerings seen in those canny [Japanese film] classics face a struggle, in this precision-tooled offering, to emerge – and hence engage and move us quite as fully as they might.” – The Arts Desk Sep 19, 2025 Full Review Honey Don't! (2025) 45% 3/5 EDIT “Honey Don’t! has its droll moments and reminders of happy days in dark cinemas of old, but it’s unlikely that even its modest maker would see it as much more than a squib – a thinking person’s drive-in movie in the desert.” – The Arts Desk Sep 8, 2025 Full Review Beating Hearts (2024) 44% 3/5 EDIT “The movie, taken from a novel by Neville Thompson, might have been trying for the kind of heightened realism and poetry in Jacques Audiard’s shaggy and highly cinematic sagas, but Beating Hearts has more of the blood sugar levels of TV drama.” – The Arts Desk Aug 14, 2025 Full Review Harvest (2024) 74% 3/5 EDIT “When it comes to adaptations, people in the film world often say, “Pick a bad novel and then hugely re-invent it.” It’s just a little unfortunate that the dictum has been doubly forgotten here.” – The Arts Desk Jul 18, 2025 Full Review The Shrouds (2024) 75% 4/5 EDIT “Like other of Cronenberg’s whacked ideas, the central grave-peeking conceit has elements of the “Funny Old World” column in Private Eye, and Cronenberg insists on a comic aspect to his films amid their fetid moods of doom.” – The Arts Desk Jul 3, 2025 Full Review Red Path (2024) 91% 5/5 EDIT “This “small” film is a big canvas of resilience and introspection and weeping. People may not flock to it, but the distributor deserves credit for putting it out because it’s the kind of reason many of us grew up needing cinema.” – The Arts Desk Jun 23, 2025 Full Review Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (2024) 82% 3/5 EDIT “We’re carried through by the wonderfully supple performance of Camille Rutherford as Agathe, her face a minuet of bemusement, prickliness and frustration – the whole panoply of miffed. Her features are a script unto itself...” – The Arts Desk Jun 13, 2025 Full Review Magic Farm (2025) 51% 3/5 EDIT “Magic Farm, though, has too much of a purely aimless, centrifugal feel, as if it’s one long trailer in search of a movie. People wander in and out to express random emotions that seem disconnected from clear motivation or story point.” – The Arts Desk May 16, 2025 Full Review The Ugly Stepsister (2025) 96% 3/5 EDIT “Without the need for grue and splurge, amid the galumphing and toppling, we witness the impossibility, and general undesirability, of transforming flesh and blood into weightless, ethereal fantasy.” – The Arts Desk Apr 25, 2025 Full Review Sister Midnight (2024) 98% 4/5 EDIT “There’s repetitiveness in Kandhari’s film, to be sure, and not all his gags work, but there’s also madness with a purpose in this bitingly facetious offering. ” – The Arts Desk Mar 13, 2025 Full Review To a Land Unknown (2024) 98% 4/5 EDIT “...an instantly engrossing piece of storytelling done to stylish standards.” – The Arts Desk Feb 14, 2025 Full Review The Brutalist (2024) 93% EDIT “The brilliant Brody gives us an utterly immersive László, a contrarian buried within himself, torn in half by living backwards and forwards in history, and as miserable throughout as a leftover dog biscuit. ” – The Arts Desk Jan 24, 2025 Full Review Sujo (2024) 94% 3/5 EDIT “The film’s echoing feel comes with a ruminative pace, along with curt dialogue and often plain performances... Sujo’s watchfulness cuts against our expected pessimistic thrills.” – The Arts Desk Dec 16, 2024 Full Review The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024) 49% 2/5 EDIT “For those fed up with the cyber look of Pixar, there’s not the crafted flow of the Studio Ghibli films nor yet the 2D-within-3D vibe of the brilliant Spider-Verse movies. The script, full of backstory gubbins, also lacks zing. ” – The Arts Desk Dec 12, 2024 Full Review Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) 31% 2/5 EDIT “As follies go Folie à Deux is dull and underwhelming.” – The Arts Desk Oct 4, 2024 Full Review Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) 75% 3/5 EDIT “As with many sequels, getting the old gang together again feels as though 20 per cent of it is for the benefit of the old gang. But it’s an enjoyable homecoming nonetheless. ” – The Arts Desk Sep 10, 2024 Full Review Firebrand (2023) 58% 3/5 EDIT “It falls to Jude Law to dig out the glimmers of charm that might have attracted Vikander to him in the first place. The two of them are scarily good together.” – The Arts Desk Sep 7, 2024 Full Review Black Dog (2024) 98% 3/5 EDIT “Guan is clearly a director with a good mix of technique and commitment, plus a healthy eye for the oddball. He’s interested in the stresses of rural depopulation, but doesn’t want to scold his society for too many deeper flaws.” – The Arts Desk Aug 30, 2024 Full Review Borderlands (2024) 10% 1/5 EDIT “Come back Madame Web, all is forgiven.” – The Arts Desk Aug 12, 2024 Full Review
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