Cinema
Not merely funny but somehow also joyous: Sky One's Brassic reviewed
Danny Brocklehurst, the scriptwriter for Sky One’s Brassic, used to work for Shameless in its glory days — although if…
The director that everyone loved to hate: David Thomson interviews Peter Bogdanovich
David Thomson talks to the director about Buster Keaton, falling out of favour with Hollywood, and his mentor Orson Welles
The film that shaped my vision of the world
Joyce Marriott of Pyrton, Oxford, has written a letter to the Times on the subject of how a person’s imagination…
I’ve found the perfect family film (eventually)
As a member of Bafta, I get sent about 75 ‘screeners’ during the awards season, which is always a treat…
How could any woman fail to be won over by my new cinema room?
As Christmas approaches, fighting has broken out in the Young household. No, I’m not talking about my three boys, aged…
Quentin Tarantino on how spaghetti westerns shaped modern cinema
The movie that made me consider filmmaking, the movie that showed me how a director does what he does, how…
Manspreading, The Movie: Loro reviewed
Fans of Paolo Sorrentino’s Il Divo, The Great Beauty (which won an Oscar) and his HBO series, The Young Pope,…
A captivating addition to the filmography of the first world war: The Guardians reviewed
There are moments in The Guardians when you can imagine you’re in the wrong art form. Time stills, the frame…
Don’t believe the sales figures – DVDs are thriving
According to the accountants’ ledgers, DVDs are dying. Sales of those shiny discs, along with their shinier sibling the Blu-ray,…
The death of cosy Christie
This is not Midsomer Murders. The new film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is thick with…
Art of darkness
Stephen King, 69, has sold more than 350 million books, and tries not to apologise for being working-class, or imaginative,…
I swear this is the last Marvel film I see: Captain America reviewed
Captain America: Civil War is the 897th instalment — or something like it — in the Marvel comic franchise. This…
With the release of Oculus Rift, cinema will never be the same again
With the release of Oculus Rift – virtual reality you can buy from a shop – cinema will never be the same again, says Peter Hoskin
Homage to awesome Welles on his centenary
One day in May 1948 in the Frascati hills southeast of Rome, Orson Welles took his new secretary, Rita Ribolla,…
Giselle has floored many a ballerina — it did so again last week
English has all sorts of emotive metaphors for how we feel about the ground. We’re floored. Or well grounded. Or…
What I learned from reshooting the dullest film ever made
Stephen Smith finally sees the point of Empire, one of the dullest films in cinema history
Stunning, riveting, horrifying: Joshua Oppenheimer's The Look of Silence reviewed
With Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing you’d be minded to think that’s it, that’s the Indonesian genocide (1965–66) done,…
The Dear Leader’s passion for films — and the real-life horror movie it led to
Ahead of last year’s release of The Interview, the Seth Rogen film about two journalists instructed to assassinate Kim Jong-un,…
Met Opera Live's Macbeth: Netrebko's singing stirred almost as much as her décolletage
This season of live Met relays got off to a most impressive start, with an electrifying account of Verdi’s tenth…
From Anthony Trollope to Meryl Streep: the theatre of politics on stage and screen
On 1 October 1950 the BBC broadcast a seemingly innocuous little play by Val Gielgud. A light-hearted and critically unremarkable…
Dear Mary: How to stop cinema iPhone pests
Q. At a private screening of a documentary about the artist David Bomberg, a woman sitting near me in the…
Jennifer Lawrence is plain brilliant in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
In the future, everyone will have silly names. Some people will be called Haymitch Abernathy. Others will be Effie Trinket…
How I learned to start screaming and love the horror movie
Peter Hoskin looks forward to being scared witless courtesy of the BFI’s feast of Gothic cinema
Philomena is Dame Judi’s film
Philomena is based on the true story of an Irish woman searching for the son stolen from her by the…
