Film
What a ride
Moonage Daydream is a music documentary like no other, which is fitting as the subject is David Bowie. If it’s…
Gore-fest meets snooze-fest
You always have to brace yourself for the latest David Cronenberg film, but with Crimes of the Future it’s not…
Falling stars
If you want real acting in films, forget the leads – it’s in the supporting roles that you’ll find true talent, says Tanya Gold
Curiouser and curiouser
My Old School is a documentary exploring a true story that would have to be true as it’s too preposterous…
High and dry
Eiffel is a romantic drama purporting to show how a passionate but forbidden love inspired Gustave Eiffel to design and…
Howard’s way
About ten minutes in to Thirteen Lives, Boy came in and asked me whether it was any good. I said:…
Mob mentality
It’s hard to imagine in the wake of GoodFellas, The Sopranos and Gomorrah but there was a time, not so…
Spare us the preaching
It doesn’t help the cause of The Railway Children Return that the original 1970 Railway Children film is currently on…
Some like it hot
Mary Wakefield on Katia and Maurice Krafft, who loved volcanoes and each other
Where the wild things aren’t
Where the Crawdads Sing is based on the bestselling book (by Delia Owens) that I picked up from one of…
Brought to book
You may already have read early reviews of Netflix’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion saying it’s ‘the worst adaptation ever’…
One man and his robot
Brian and Charles is a sweetly funny mockumentary about a lonely Welsh inventor who is not that good at inventing.…
P is for pointless
The Princess, a new documentary film, is the first re-framing of the Princess Diana story since it was last re-framed,…
Fever pitch
Elvis is Baz Luhrmann’s biopic of Elvis Presley and it’s cradle to grave but told at such a gallop you’ll…
Shooting star
Tanjil Rashid on the polymathic Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray, who spearheaded a new school of Indian cinema
Let’s talk about sex
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande stars Emma Thompson as a retired, widowed religious education teacher in her sixties who…
High life
He is a rich English lord with a very large house and his wife is a beautiful American with a…
Friends reunited
All My Friends Hate Me is a film about a university reunion weekend and should you have an upcoming university…
Fantastic beasts
Sam Kriss on the power of paleoart
The timeless mystery of Charlie Chaplin
Eleven years ago, I was summoned to the Manoir de Ban, a huge white house overlooking Lake Geneva, to meet…
The closing of the Chinese mind
I was born in Nanjing five years after the Tiananmen Square protests. By then, records of the demonstrations and the…
For meta or worse
Bergman Island sounds, on first acquaintance, like a theme-park attraction. Roll up, roll up! Let us speed you through the…
Fresh knickers
Last April Fools’ Day, Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo wound up their award-winning film review show on BBC Radio 5…
It pierces the heart
Terence Davies’s Benediction is a biopic of the first world war poet Siegfried Sassoon told with great feeling and tenderness.…
Poetry in motion
Craig Raine on the challenges of translating poets’ lives and work to the screen
