Cinema
Gripping: Melania reviewed
The documentary Melania, which follows the first lady in the 20 days leading up to her husband’s 2025 presidential inauguration,…
Beautiful if hagiographic portrait of Godard
Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague dramatises the (chaotic) making of Breathless (1960), Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic. It’s a film…
The cruelty of H is for Hawk
The cruelty of H is for Hawk
Brendan Fraser is the king of the everyman: Rental Family reviewed
Rental Family stars Brendan Fraser as an out-of-work American actor living in Tokyo. He accepts employment with an agency that…
Ruthlessly manipulative: Hamnet reviewed
Hamnet is an imagined account of William Shakespeare’s marriage to Agnes (Anne) Hathaway, their unspeakable grief at the death of…
Sublime: Song Sung Blue reviewed
Song Sung Blue is a musical biopic of the real-life Milwaukee couple who formed a Neil Diamond tribute act and…
Noah Baumbach needs to try harder: Jay Kelly reviewed
Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly stars George Clooney as a handsome movie star playing a handsome movie star who has an…
The cult of Powell & Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going!
I know where I’m going. I’m on the sleeper train chugging out of Euston and heading to Fort William. A…
Disastrous adaptation of a wonderful book
The Thing With Feathers is an adaptation of Max Porter’s acclaimed novella about a widower who is left to raise…
Mrs Göring is far too sympathetic: Nuremberg reviewed
Nuremberg is one of those films that falls short on everything it wants to be and everything it could be.…
Dimes Square on screen
I can’t watch films anymore without looking at my phone. If I watch a film on my laptop, I’ll be…
Peak wackiness: Lanthimos’s Bugonia reviewed
Bugonia is the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite, The Lobster, Poor Things) and it’s about a conspiracy theorist…
The new Springsteen biopic is cringe
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is a biopic of ‘the boss’ starring Jeremy Allen White. It is not cradle to…
Very pretty and pretty gruesome: Ballad of a Small Player reviewed
Ballad of a Small Player opens with Lord Doyle, played by Colin Farrell, hiding from security in his trashed casino…
Propulsive, funny – and what a car chase: One Battle After Another reviewed
Is Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest as good as everyone is saying? That it has a run time of nearly three…
Emma Thompson is surprisingly convincing as the star of this action thriller
Dead of Winter is an action thriller starring Emma Thompson and you have to hand it to her. Has such…
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is anything but
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is, I have to tell you, anything but. I should have trusted the trailer. When…
Lower your expectations for Spinal Tap II
This Is Spinal Tap is now such a deserved comedy behemoth that it’s easy to forget how gradual its ascent…
I could never sit through it again: The Cut reviewed
What set this apart, I would suggest, is its deep and unremitting unpleasantness The Cut stars Orlando Bloom as a…
Fails to outshine the original: The Roses reviewed
The Roses is a remake of The War of the Roses (1989), the diabolically funny black bitter comedy that was…
Woody Allen without the zingers: Materialists reviewed
Celine Song’s first film, the wonderful Past Lives (2023), earned two Oscar nominations. So expectations were riding high for Materialists.…
A mafia drama like no other
The Kingdom is a mafia drama like no other. It’s directed by Julien Colonna whose father was a Corsican mob…
Be warned: the new Naked Gun is actually funny
As the lights went down for The Naked Gun – the ‘legacy sequel’ to the spoof cop franchise – I…
I watched it between my fingers: Bring Her Back reviewed
The Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou started off as YouTubers known for their comically violent shorts – Ronald McDonald…
Definitely the film of the week: Four Letters of Love reviewed
In the brief lull between last week’s summer blockbuster (Superman) and next week’s (Fantastic Four) you may wish to catch…
