Film
Suite Francaise review: what is this film playing at, when it comes to Jews in attics?
Suite Française is being billed as a second world war romance about ‘forbidden love’ and, in this regard, it is…
How Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic, Blade Runner, foresaw the way we live today
How Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, made 33 years ago, foresaw the way we live today, by William Cook
Still Alice review: you can see why Julianne Moore won an Oscar but the film’s still boring
There’s always seemed something masklike about Julianne Moore’s face: she seems walled in by her beauty. When she smiles, the…
All radio drama should be as good as this Conrad adaptation
The aching hum of crickets. The susurrus of reeds. The lapping of waves. The unmistakable noise of a sound technician…
The Boy Next Door reviewed: a terrible new J-Lo movie that's disturbingly enjoyable
Stateside critics, who panned Jennifer Lopez’s new film The Boy Next Door on its US release last month, may be…
Fifty Shades of Grey, review: ‘Use a condom!’ my sister shouted
And so, in the end, I went with my sister, Toni, to see Fifty Shades of Grey and we saw…
My moment of mortification with Saint Joan Collins
My time with Joan Collins was wonderful – except for one mortifying moment
Selma review: rich, nuanced, heartbreaking
Selma, the civil rights film that stars David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, undoubtedly contains the best and most powerful…
How Japan became a pop culture superpower
Peter Hoskin on the island nation that has taken over popular culture
Trash, review: trash by name, trash by nature
Trash is the sort of film one desperately wishes to be kind about — heart supremely, if not burstingly, in…
How consumer habits are subject to the law of unintended consequences
Some time in the 1960s, a group of people in an advertising agency (among them Llewelyn Thomas, son of Dylan)…
A Most Violent Year, review: mesmerising performances - and coats
A Most Violent Year is a riveting drama even though I can’t tell you what it’s about, or even what…
Shirley Williams: Saving my mother from the scriptwriters
Jasper Rees talks to Shirley Williams about the forthcoming screen portrayal of her mother
Wild made me want to puke
Wild is yet another film based on a true story, as currently seems to be in vogue for some reason.…
What The Theory of Everything doesn’t tell you about Stephen Hawking
What’s missing from Stephen Hawking’s hagiographic new biopic
What unites Churchill, Dali and T.S. Eliot? They all worshipped the Marx Brothers
Ian Thomson celebrates the anarchic genius of Groucho and his brothers
Foxcatcher: piercing, shattering, spellbinding
Foxcatcher is a crime drama (of sorts) that has already been dubbed ‘Oscarcatcher!’ as it barely puts a foot wrong.…
Birdman: plenty to see, little to feel
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, which stars Michael Keaton as a one-time superhero movie star (just like Keaton himself), is audacious…
St. Vincent: too much lovability and not enough roguishness from Bill Murray
Is Bill Murray fit for sainthood? Certainly his fans have him figure as some sort of lesser divinity, maybe one…
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
Paddington review: put your mind at rest - no one gets marmalade up the bum
‘Please look after this bear,’ reads the famous label hanging round Paddington’s neck, and this film does that, admirably, handsomely,…
Just because The Homesman has a few women in it doesn’t make it a ‘feminist western’
The Homesman, which stars Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones and is set in the Nebraska territory in the 1850s,…
The Imitation Game: a film that's as much in the closet as Alan Turing was
The Imitation Game is a biopic starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician who broke the German’s Enigma…
Interstellar: like Star Trek – but dumber and more tiring
Christopher Nolan’s futuristic epic Interstellar isn’t a clever film, or even a dumb film with a clever film trying to…