Farming today
There are bigger entities landing at your local multiplex this week. An ancient indestructible franchise is re-re-(re-)booted in Alien: Covenant.…
Parting shots
Gurinder Chadha’s modern comedies have fun with cultural divides. Girls kick footballs in Bend It Like Beckham. A gaggle of…
Parting shots
Gurinder Chadha’s modern comedies have fun with cultural divides. Girls kick footballs in Bend It Like Beckham. A gaggle of…
No peace, no pussy
The bizarro concept of a ‘President-elect Trump’ came to pass despite the wishes, clearly stated on the stump, of the…
No peace, no pussy
The bizarro concept of a ‘President-elect Trump’ came to pass despite the wishes, clearly stated on the stump, of the…
Heaven knows they’re miserable now
The Light Between Oceans is one of those films that comes issued with a handy how-to-use manual. Shudder as hero…
Heaven knows they’re miserable now
The Light Between Oceans is one of those films that comes issued with a handy how-to-use manual. Shudder as hero…
Red hot
Everything about Julieta feels totally Almodóvarian. It’s a family saga that smoothly blends tragedy and levity, with exquisite performances from…
Red hot
Everything about Julieta feels totally Almodóvarian. It’s a family saga that smoothly blends tragedy and levity, with exquisite performances from…
Paean to the Starman
On 11 January 2016 Paul Morley was awoken by an urgent voicemail from the Today Programme. Could he talk about…
Dahl by Spielberg
Nobody who witnessed it can have forgotten Mark Rylance summoning giants to his aid in Jerusalem. As Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron,…
Dahl by Spielberg
Nobody who witnessed it can have forgotten Mark Rylance summoning giants to his aid in Jerusalem. As Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron,…
Punchlines and punches
Regular filmgoers must be losing count of the Rabelaisian revelries they’ve been invited to of late. You may recognise the…
‘Do black movies really not sell?’
The musical biopic is a staple of the Hollywood economy. Like an Airfix model kit it comes with the necessary…
Bitter sweet
The French master film-maker Jacques Audiard has never been anywhere near Hollywood plot school. His films contain gathering menace —…
Touching the void
Scholarly filmgoers may recall a movement that sprouted from Danish soil called Dogme 95. It worked to a Spartan set…
The still point
Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song is the best-remembered title of a short career. Born in 1901, he was dead by…
The man who wouldn’t be king
Not that long ago the BBC trumpeted a new Stakhanovite project to big up the arts in its many and…
Hunted blows a fresh breeze through the stale world of reality TV
Television used to employ entertainers to entertain the public. Back then you could count the channels on the fingers of…
Speech impediment
Who goes to big-screen Shakespeare? Not theatre-goers much, and with reason. Apart from the odd corker by Kurosawa, arguably Olivier…
There will be blood
If you don’t want to spend hundreds of euros on a good seat, the best place to watch the Palio…
The Trump doctrine
Were you ever not very nice at school? A bit of a tosspot to others, perhaps. Ever so slightly a…
Sexed-up pacifism
Big-screen documentaries never change the world. Blackfish has not shortened the queues to see maltreated killer whales leap through hoops…
To the maddest max
No one goes slack-jawed in wonder at the movies any more. In our cyber-enabled times, kid designers can mega-pixelate any…
Rock bottom
The oeuvre of Chris Rock may not be fully known in this parish. He was the African-American stand-up who made…
