Film
Not like any serial-killer thriller you’ve seen before: Beast reviewed
When I first read that Beast is a serial-killer thriller my heart sank like a stone — yet more women…
Maxine Peake is blistering in Funny Cow
Two films about women this week. One, Funny Cow, is about a woman who daringly takes on men at their…
My knuckles went pure white and have yet to return to full colour: Custody reviewed
Custody is both social realism and a thriller and it’s terrific. It is smart, beautifully acted, never crass about the…
Plenty to wonder at – like who thought it was a good idea to make it: Wonderstruck reviewed
Wonderstruck is a film by Todd Haynes and you will certainly be struck by wonder, often. You will wonder at…
It was good but I preferred slurping my genitals: Deborah’s dog reviews Isle of Dogs
The latest film from Wes Anderson is a doggy animation set in a fantasy Japan and as there was a…
Unsensitive, Unhumane and Uncredible: Unsane reviewed
Steven Soderbergh’s latest film, Unsane, is a psychological thriller about a woman who is incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital even…
Intelligent, poetic and profound: Tacita Dean at the National and National Portrait galleries
Andy Warhol would probably have been surprised to learn that his 1964 film ‘Empire’ had given rise to an entire…
The subtly savage world of filmmaker Ruben Ostlund
There is a culty YouTube video shot three years ago on the laptop camera of Ruben Ostlund. It shows the…
I, Tonya is not quite a gold-medal masterpiece
Films about the Winter Olympics don’t grow on conifers. Twenty-five years ago there was Cool Runnings about the Jamaican bobsleigh…
The dangers of taking a blind friend to see Fifty Shades of Grey
Audio description, or AD, as it is fondly called, is coming of age. Once consigned to the utility room of…
Heavy-going and heavy-handed: Dark River reviewed
Dark River is the much-anticipated third feature from British writer/director Clio Barnard and it is one of those bleak, rural-…
I liked Shape of Water well enough but Lady Bird is where it’s at
Lady Bird is a semi-autobiographical film written and directed by Greta Gerwig with a plot synopsis that need not detain…
Wonderfully fixating and wholly non-formulaic: Phantom Thread reviewed
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread is a lush psychosexual drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a pampered, tyrannical, pernickety 1950s couturier…
Downsizing throws away its brilliant premise
Downsizing is a film with the most brilliant premise. What if, to save the planet, we were all made tiny?…
You just can’t argue against Hanks and Streep: The Post reviewed
Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which dramatizes the Washington Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, doesn’t exactly push at…
Andrew Roberts’s guide to Churchill on screen
Gary Oldman has joined a long list of actors who have portrayed Winston Churchill — no fewer than 35 of…
Three Billboards is a hoot and a blast, which I never thought I’d say about a rape movie
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri does, indeed, feature three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri. They have been placed at the roadside…
Indulgent rather than stinging satire: Brad’s Status reviewed
Brad’s Status is a midlife crisis film starring Ben Stiller as a nearly 50-year-old man whose status anxiety is through…
Time to update our notions of disability and quit with the pity – and Tiny Tim
Here we go again. Partridges in pear trees. Lovely big Christmas turkey. The Queen’s speech. And then, at some point…
Showman, con man, family man: P.T. Barnum’s many faces
‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’ That was the P.T. Barnum battle cry. It has come to have a ring…
If this is Aaron Sorkin’s riposte to those who criticise his portrayal of women, God help us
Molly’s Game marks the directorial debut of Hollywood’s most celebrated screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, and is based on his adaptation of…
From good witch to female Alan Bennett: the Queen on the big screen
If cinema is propaganda, Elizabeth II can be grateful to it. Film is a conservative art form, and almost nothing…
My favourite frum film of the year – thus far: Menashe reviewed
Menashe is a drama set amid Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic community. It is performed entirely in the Yiddish language. It is…
An exceptional new film about Jane Goodall unearths a remarkable love story
There are times when our national passion for cutting people down to size is a little tiring. I left Brett…
The heart is unstirred in Haneke’s morose critique of a fractured society: Happy End reviewed
The films of Michael Haneke wear a long face. Psychological terror, domestic horror, sick sex, genital self-harm — these are…
