Film
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…
100 years of Pyrex, processed cheese and nudes in movies
Marking a century Some things which celebrate their 100th birthday in 2015: 3-D films The first was shown at the…
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…
Mr Turner: the gruntiest, snortiest, huffiest film of the year - and the most beautiful too
Mr Turner may be the gruntiest film of the year, possibly the gruntiest film ever. ‘Grunt, grunt, grunt,’ goes Mr…
Fury: the men blow stuff up, then Brad Pitt takes his top off
Fury is a second world war drama that plays with us viscerally and unsparingly — I think I saw a…
Mike Leigh interview: ‘A guy in the Guardian wants to sue me for defamation of Ruskin!’
Hermione Eyre talks to filmmaker Mike Leigh about Mr Turner, Hollywood, and making films his own way
The Best of Me is more of a sleepie than a weepie - especially when our old friend No Sexual Chemistry makes an appearance
Take tissues to The Best of Me, I’d read, as it’s such a weepie, so I took tissues, being a…
Without sci-fi, there would be no cinema
Without sci-fi, there would be no cinema, writes Peter Hoskin
Effie Gray can effie off
Effie Gray, which has been written by Emma Thompson and recounts the doomed marriage of Victorian art critic John Ruskin…
David Fincher plays Gone Girl for laughs - at least I hope he is
Gone Girl is David Fincher’s adaptation of the bestselling thriller by Gillian Flynn, a relentless page-turner which I’ve heard people…
