Hollywood
The genius of Basic Instinct
Our occasional series on cinema’s most underrated films arrives at what many have considered the peak of misogynistic trash. We’re…
Return to LA Confidential: Widespread Panic, by James Ellroy, reviewed
Even by James Ellroy’s standards, the narrator of his latest novel is not a man much given to the quiet…
A nicer side of Nero
New York I haven’t felt such shirt-dripping, mind-clogging wet heat since Saigon back in 1971. The Bagel is a steam…
A Shakespeare play at the Globe whose best features have nothing to do with Shakespeare
Back to the Globe after more than a year. The theatre has zealously maintained its pre–Covid staffing levels. On press…
Why Mick Jagger is an insult to rock
New York Orthodox Easter Sunday came late in May this year, and I spent it at an old friend’s Fifth…
Audiences don’t want woke: comic-book writer Mark Millar interviewed
James Delingpole talks to comic-book writer Mark Millar about the joy of Catholicism, our sorry lack of male action figures and his childhood superpower
Is it time to cancel Sophocles?
Gstaad The sun has returned, the snow is so-so, and exercise has replaced everything, including romance. What a way to…
From bad joke to 21st-century classic: the best recordings of Korngold’s Violin Concerto
Erich Korngold was what you might call an early adopter. As a child prodigy in Habsburg Vienna, he’d astonished the…
Gina Carano and the hypocrisy of Hollywood
Godwin’s Law has become a way of life in our polarised political times. Go on social media any given day…
Even I, a bitter and cynical middle-aged woman, felt stirred: Sylvie’s Love reviewed
Sylvie’s Love is an exquisitely styled, swooning, old-school, period Hollywood romance and while it has been described as ‘glib’ in…
Wistful thinking: Mr Wilder & Me, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed
Mr Wilder & Me is not in any way a state- of-the-nation novel — and thank goodness. Brilliant as Jonathan…
The genius of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen
Claudia Massie explores the cinematic majesty and mind-bending visual trickery of stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen
My nights of passion with Juliette Gréco
Gstaad Juliette Gréco’s recent death in her nineties brought back some melodramatic memories. In 1957 Gréco was one of France’s…
Would be much better without Bill or Ted: Bill & Ted Face the Music reviewed
I think I am supposed to say that Bill & Ted Face the Music, the third in a franchise about…
Hollywood’s transrace hypocrisy
It is an article of fashionable faith that genetic differences in sex are meaningless and malleable, but genetic differences in…
Olivia de Havilland’s Red Scare
Olivia de Havilland, who has died aged 104, will forever be remembered for the role of Melanie Hamilton in Gone…
Where can patriotic Americans find America?
If we’ve confirmed anything in 2020, it is that liberal-progressives really do control the major influencers in America. This puts…
Drive-in cinemas are back – but for how long?
Tanya Gold on the rise and fall of drive-in cinema
From bashful teenager to supermodel: Susanna Moore’s fairytale memoir
There’s a kind of writing about LA that I am a sucker for. Gossipy, lyrical, with a surface of affectless…
The unstoppable rise of television-rewatch podcasts
Talking Sopranos — a new weekly podcast which launched this month— is another example of a seemingly unstoppable sub-genre occupying…
Movie-makers should look to the Athenians before cashing in on this crisis
Covid-19 has not yet reached its peak but already the moguls of the small screen are plotting how to monetise,…
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
Even the Oscars after-parties have lost their shine
Reading about the Oscars this week, I couldn’t help thinking back to a time when they actually meant something. When…
Alfred Dreyfus is being erased all over again
In London to promote a book, I received an invitation to a secret screening of An Officer and a Spy,…
Ricky Gervais has given Hollywood the thrashing it richly deserves
Finally, Hollywood has received the thrashing it so richly deserves. The self-satisfied movie elites have been called out — to…
