Cinema
Rattigan’s films are as important as his plays
A campaign is under way to rename the West End’s Duchess Theatre after the playwright Terence Rattigan. Supported as it…
Ambition and delusion: The Director, by Daniel Kehlmann, reviewed
Returning from Hollywood to Austria to care for his mother in 1939, the film director G.W. Pabst is seduced by ‘good scripts, high budgets and the best actors’ into working for Dr Goebbels
Cartoonish, sub-Armando Iannucci comic caper: Mickey 17 reviewed
Mickey 17 is the latest film from the South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho, who won an Oscar for Parasite and…
Spreads emotions like jam: Festen, at the Royal Opera House, reviewed
Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new opera Festen opened at Covent Garden earlier this month, and reader, I messed up. I broke my…
The cinema is the worst place to watch a film
I’ve always loved cinema, but hardly ever cinemas. It’s no surprise to me that movie-going audiences are in decline. Ticket…
Smart, taut and stunning: Conclave reviewed
Conclave is a papal thriller based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris and it stars a magnificent Ralph Fiennes.…
Heart-warming but safe biographical drama: Going for Gold, at Park90, reviewed
Going for Gold is a biographical drama about a forgotten star of the 1970s. Frankie Lucas was a middleweight boxing…
Too cautious and wildly over the top at the same time: Paddington in Peru reviewed
Toy Story or The Godfather? Which way would Paddington in Peru go? Would the third instalment of a much-cherished series…
Great knits – shame about the film: Almodovar’s The Room Next Door reviewed
The Room Next Door is Pedro Almodovar’s first film in the English language and if it is his last we…
The triumph of surrealism
When Max Ernst was asked by an American artist to define surrealism at a New York gathering of exiles in…
Joker: Folie à Deux makes me long for the Joker of my childhood
Joker: Folie à Deux is the sequel to Joker (2019), and you have to admire Todd Phillips for returning with…
Melodramatic body-horror – but I don’t regret seeing it: A Different Man reviewed
Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man is ‘a darkly comic psychological thriller’ that plays like an inverted Beauty and the Beast.…
Baffling and plainly nuts – but worth it: Megalopolis reviewed
Megalopolis, which draws parallels between the fall of the Roman empire and modern-day America, is a film by Francis Ford…
Not for the squeamish: The Substance reviewed
Both horribly familiar and wonderfully shocking, this body-horror film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat does a very traditional thing…
When is anyone going to properly appreciate what critics have to go through?
The Critic is a period drama starring Ian McKellen as a newspaper theatre critic famed for his savagery and it…
The Terminator is still the best
The Terminator is James Cameron’s first film, made a star of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is celebrating its 40th anniversary – there’s…
Please stop making Alien movies
In the Alien films, a xenomorph is a monstrous, all-consuming life form that exists only to make more and more…
Limp and lifeless: Freud’s Last Session reviewed
Freud’s Last Session stars Anthony Hopkins and Matthew Goode and is a work of speculative fiction asking what would have…
Predictable but has a certain French verve: Two Tickets to Greece reviewed
Within the first five minutes of Two Tickets to Greece you know what it is and where it’s going. It’s…
‘I couldn’t afford loo roll’: Bruce Robinson on being skint, Zeffirelli’s advances and Withnail’s return
Bruce Robinson is ramming a huge log into the grate of his ancient fireplace in mud-clogged Herefordshire. He’s 77 and…
Learning to live
Sometimes I Think About Dying is one of those titles you want to shout back at – what? Only sometimes?…
Better than expected (but my expectations were low): Back to Black reviewed
When the trailer for Sam Taylor-Johnson’s biopic of Amy Winehouse, Back to Black, first landed, her fans were gracious. ‘This,’…
