The power and the glory
Todd Field’s Tár stars an insanely glorious Cate Blanchett – if she doesn’t win an Oscar I’ll eat my hat…
Write and wrong
Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light, which he wrote as well as directed, is billed as a ‘love letter to cinema’…
The lady vanishes
Corsage is a biopic of Empress Elisabeth of Austria who was prized for her beauty and fashion sense and may…
Love me tender
If you’re of my generation, I expect your first encounter with D.H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was the (well-thumbed) book…
Measured in love
If you’re planning on seeing The Last Flight Home at the cinema, don’t make any plans for afterwards as you’ll…
Dine with the Devil
The Menu is a comedy-horror-thriller set in an exclusive restaurant on a private island and it gives the rich a…
Hide and seek
Jafar Panahi’s No Bears is, first and foremost, a wonderful film. More than this, you don’t need to know but…
A matter of life and death
Living is a remake of one of the great existential masterpieces of the 20th century, Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), which didn’t…
Sick at heart
The latest film from Ruben Ostlund received an eight-minute standing ovation after its screening in Cannes and also won the…
Full marks for the bottom
My Policemanis a forbidden love drama starring both Harry Styles – whose bid for movie stardom continues apace – and…
Weird and wonderful
The life of Emily Brontë is an enduring object of fascination. So small, the life, so sparse, so limited. Yet…
Bones of contention
The Lost King is a comedy-drama based on the 2012 discovery of the remains of King Richard III beneath a…
French fancies
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris is a comedy-drama based on the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico about a cheerful, kind-hearted…
Fine but forgettable
Catherine Called Birdy is written and directed by Lena Dunham and it’s a medieval comedy about a 14-year-old girl resisting…
What a ride
Moonage Daydream is a music documentary like no other, which is fitting as the subject is David Bowie. If it’s…
Gore-fest meets snooze-fest
You always have to brace yourself for the latest David Cronenberg film, but with Crimes of the Future it’s not…
The beautiful and damned
The Forgiven is based on the novel by Lawrence Osborne and stars Ralph Fiennes (terrific) and Jessica Chastain (ditto) as…
Less than meets the eye
Beast is, the blurb tells us, a ‘pulse-pounding thriller about a father and his daughters who find themselves hunted by…
Curiouser and curiouser
My Old School is a documentary exploring a true story that would have to be true as it’s too preposterous…
High and dry
Eiffel is a romantic drama purporting to show how a passionate but forbidden love inspired Gustave Eiffel to design and…
Where the wild things aren’t
Where the Crawdads Sing is based on the bestselling book (by Delia Owens) that I picked up from one of…
Brought to book
You may already have read early reviews of Netflix’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion saying it’s ‘the worst adaptation ever’…
One man and his robot
Brian and Charles is a sweetly funny mockumentary about a lonely Welsh inventor who is not that good at inventing.…
P is for pointless
The Princess, a new documentary film, is the first re-framing of the Princess Diana story since it was last re-framed,…
Fever pitch
Elvis is Baz Luhrmann’s biopic of Elvis Presley and it’s cradle to grave but told at such a gallop you’ll…
