Jasper Rees

Alienatingly sweet and warm: BBC2's The Newsreader reviewed

30 July 2022 9:00 am

When TV makes shows about TV, it rarely has a good word to say for itself. In the likes of…

The subtleties of her songbook were lost in this enormodome: Diana Ross at the O2 reviewed

2 July 2022 9:00 am

When Motown first packaged up a roster of artists and songs that could be embraced by a non-black audience, no…

The return of the implausibly more-ish Borgen

28 May 2022 9:00 am

Borgen star Sidse Babett Knudsen talks to Jasper Rees about why, after a break of ten years, the implausibly more-ish series is returning for a fourth season

The unseen Victoria Wood

13 November 2021 9:00 am

For a few years now I have been living with Victoria Wood. That sounds all wrong, obviously, and yet no…

'What do you think the English will say?' Pablo Larrain on his pop horror Diana film

30 October 2021 9:00 am

Jasper Rees talks to the Chilean director Pablo Larrain about his new film, Spencer, which makes The Crown look like royalist propaganda

Remembering David Storey, giant of postwar English culture

12 June 2021 9:00 am

Jasper Rees remembers David Storey, giant of postwar English culture and wry teller of tales, whose newly published memoir is perhaps his most remarkable work

Scooby Doo with better CGI: Doctor Sleep reviewed

2 November 2019 9:00 am

Wheeeere’s Johnny? Nearly 40 years ago Jack Nicholson went berserk in a snowbound Rockies hotel, smashing an axe through a…

Sweet but formulaic: Blinded by Light reviewed

10 August 2019 9:00 am

Once upon a time two men sat in a New York bar lamenting the state of Broadway. So they decided…

You’ve got a friend in me: Woody and Forky getting acquainted in Toy Story 4

Still reliably fab: Toy Story 4 reviewed

22 June 2019 9:00 am

Nearly 25 years on from its immaculate birth, Toy Story — like Wagner’s Ring, like John Updike’s Rabbit novels —…

The tropes of noir and the spaghetti western are passed through a magical prism: a scene from Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s Birds of Passage

Startlingly fresh and jaggedly strange: Birds of Passage reviewed

18 May 2019 9:00 am

You don’t come across too many films from Colombia, but every few years one wriggles its way through the festival…

Mighty resurrection: Aretha Franklin in Amazing Grace

A mighty resurrection: Amazing Grace reviewed

11 May 2019 9:00 am

Each December in Washington DC, the Kennedy Center Honors anoints five performing artists who have contributed to American life. In…

Mercury rising: Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody

A succession of predigested clichés: Bohemian Rhapsody reviewed

27 October 2018 9:00 am

There is a moment in Bohemian Rhapsody when the screen swims with print. The reviews for Queen’s epic new single…

Still life: Iris Bry, Laura Smet and Natalie Baye in The Guardians

A captivating addition to the filmography of the first world war: The Guardians reviewed

18 August 2018 9:00 am

There are moments in The Guardians when you can imagine you’re in the wrong art form. Time stills, the frame…

For any politician spoiling for a fight over Ireland’s border, Under the Tree is required viewing

11 August 2018 9:00 am

Every so often there’s a news story in which neighbours quarrel over rampaging leylandii. The police are summoned, the case…

It will save some marriages – or end others: The Escape reviewed

4 August 2018 9:00 am

Dominic Savage had an early start. In Barry Lyndon (1975), Stanley Kubrick’s sprawling take on Thackeray, he played a prepubescent…

Lean on Pete is a beauty

5 May 2018 9:00 am

Andrew Haigh makes inaction films. Weekend (2011) tells of two young homosexuals getting to know each other in Nottingham. In…

Discomfort and joy: the director Ruben Ostlund, whose films are funny but subtly savage

The subtly savage world of filmmaker Ruben Ostlund

17 March 2018 9:00 am

There is a culty YouTube video shot three years ago on the laptop camera of Ruben Ostlund. It shows the…

The big chill: Allison Janney as LaVona Golden

I, Tonya is not quite a gold-medal masterpiece

3 March 2018 9:00 am

Films about the Winter Olympics don’t grow on conifers. Twenty-five years ago there was Cool Runnings about the Jamaican bobsleigh…

The 1958 world première of Pinter’s The Birthday Party at the Lyric Hammersmith: John Stratton as McCann, John Slater as Goldberg and Richard Pearson as Stanley

The last survivor of The Birthday Party’s 1958 première remembers the traumatic first night

17 February 2018 9:00 am

‘Mad, wearying and inconsequential gabble,’ sighed the Financial Times in 1958. ‘One quails in slack-jawed dismay.’ Here’s the FT at…

Unhappy families: Fantine Harduin, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Isabelle Huppert, Laura Verlinden and Toby Jones in Happy End

The heart is unstirred in Haneke’s morose critique of a fractured society: Happy End reviewed

2 December 2017 9:00 am

The films of Michael Haneke wear a long face. Psychological terror, domestic horror, sick sex, genital self-harm — these are…

Hideously watchable: Nicole Kidman as ophthalmologist Anna and Colin Farrell as surgeon Steven

Hideously watchable: Killing of a Sacred Deer reviewed

4 November 2017 9:00 am

You know where you aren’t with director Yorgos Lanthimos. The Greek allegorist creates parallel worlds which superficially resemble our own.…

The art of the football shirt

28 October 2017 9:00 am

Part canvas, part sandwich board, club kits don’t always work – but their designs can be addictive

Unhappy days

30 September 2017 9:00 am

Scriptwriters love to feast on the lives of children’s authors. The themes tend not to vary: they may have brought…

An out-of-work steel worker walking through Port Talbot, 1964

Made in Port Talbot

9 September 2017 9:00 am

Port Talbot, on the coast of South Wales, is literally overlooked. Most experience the town while flying over it on…

A side order of extra Marmite comes in the considerable silhouette of Russell Crowe as Jackson Healy

Russell Crowe knows how to wear a pair of inverted commas: The Nice Guys reviewed

4 June 2016 9:00 am

Regular filmgoers must be losing count of the Rabelaisian revelries they’ve been invited to of late. You may recognise the…