Documentaries
Compelling and somewhat heartbreaking: Girls State, on Apple TV+, reviewed
Here’s a fun thought experiment: instead of entrusting the future of American democracy to one of two old men, what…
Surprisingly addictive and heartwarming: Netflix’s Beckham reviewed
If you’re not remotely interested in football or celebrity, I recommend Netflix’s four-part documentary series Beckham. Yes, I know it’s…
Rewriting history
If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was…
‘Netflix are incredibly conservative’: documentary-maker Nick Broomfield interviewed
Adam Sweeting talks to the documentary-maker Nick Broomfield about the forgotten Rolling Stone
The nightmare of making films about poets
Craig Raine on the challenges of translating poets’ lives and work to the screen
More mesmerising than it should be – Disney+'s The Beatles: Get Back reviewed
My late friend Alexander Nekrassov loathed the Beatles, which I used to think was a wantonly contrary position akin to…
Blair & Brown: The New Labour Revolution should be called ‘The Tragedy of Gordon Brown'
Murder Island features eight real-life ‘ordinary people’ seeking to solve a fictional killing on a fictional Scottish island. What follows…
Somewhere between eye-opening and jaw-dropping: Sky's Hawking – Can You Hear Me? reviewed
It is, of course, not unknown for a man to become famous with the support of his family — and,…
Lame and formulaic: Black Widow reviewed
Black Widow is the latest Marvel film and although I’d sworn off these films a while ago, due to sheer…
Thoughtful and impeccable: Ken Burns's Hemingway reviewed
Ken Burns made his name in 1990 with The Civil War, the justly celebrated 11-and-a-half-hour documentary series that gave America’s…
The mediums who pioneered abstract art
The mediumistic art of various cranks, crackpots and old dowagers is finally being taken seriously – and about time too, says Laura Gascoigne
Dysfunctional music for dysfunctional people: The Public Image is Rotten reviewed
A star is born, but instead of emerging into the world beaming for the cameras, he spits and snarls and…
One of the more disturbing films I’ve seen: Arena’s The Changin’ Times of Ike White reviewed
Arena: The Changin’ Times of Ike White (Monday) had an extraordinary story to tell — but one that, halfway through…
Joyous and very, very funny: Beastie Boys Story reviewed
The music of the Beastie Boys was entirely an expression of their personalities, a chance to delightedly splurge out on…
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
Why a whole new generation of young Europeans are turning to old-school reggae
Acamera sweeps across the verdant, shimmering beauty of Jamaica before descending on to a raffishly charming wooden house built into…
All the good non-fiction that was ever on TV was made by middle-aged men
All the good non-fiction things that were ever on TV — from Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation to David Attenborough’s Planet Earth…
Is television at its best when it mimics radio?
Not that long ago the BBC trumpeted a new Stakhanovite project to big up the arts in its many and…
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,…
How Hollywood is killing the art of screenwriting
Cinema is tough right now for writers. Thomas W. Hodgkinson reports from the front line at the Austin Film Festival
We need more opinionated English eccentrics making documentaries like, ahem, me...
Is it just me or are almost all TV documentaries completely unwatchable these days? I remember when I first started…
