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…
Let’s talk about sex
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande stars Emma Thompson as a retired, widowed religious education teacher in her sixties who…
Friends reunited
All My Friends Hate Me is a film about a university reunion weekend and should you have an upcoming university…
For meta or worse
Bergman Island sounds, on first acquaintance, like a theme-park attraction. Roll up, roll up! Let us speed you through the…
Cruise control
Top Gun is back, nearly 40 years after the original, with reprised roles for Tom Cruise (59) and Val Kilmer…
It pierces the heart
Terence Davies’s Benediction is a biopic of the first world war poet Siegfried Sassoon told with great feeling and tenderness.…
Slippery slope
Downton Abbey: A New Era is the second film spin-off from the TV series and, like the first, it doesn’t…
You’re Nicked
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent stars Nicolas Cage playing a version of Nicolas Cage, in a parody of Nicolas…
The great deceit
Operation Mincemeat is based on the book by Ben Macintyre, which in turn is based on what Sir Hugh Trevor-Roper…
Strangers on a train
Compartment No. 6 is set aboard a long train journey across Russia, a country we don’t hear much of these…
Safe and sound
This year the Oscar for best film went to the drama Coda– ‘Child of Deaf Adults’ – but the ceremony…
Norwegian wood
The Worst Person in the World is a Norwegian film that has made a big splash. To date, its star…
Bunker mentality
Phantom of the Open is a comedy-drama telling a true story that would have to be true as no one…
