Cinema
I reshot Andy Warhol
Stephen Smith finally sees the point of Empire, one of the dullest films in cinema history
Dead behind the eyes
With Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing you’d be minded to think that’s it, that’s the Indonesian genocide (1965–66) done,…
A James Bond thriller for real
Ahead of last year’s release of The Interview, the Seth Rogen film about two journalists instructed to assassinate Kim Jong-un,…
Sexy ladies
This season of live Met relays got off to a most impressive start, with an electrifying account of Verdi’s tenth…
The theatre of politics
On 1 October 1950 the BBC broadcast a seemingly innocuous little play by Val Gielgud. A light-hearted and critically unremarkable…
Dear Mary
Q. At a private screening of a documentary about the artist David Bomberg, a woman sitting near me in the…
The killing fields
In the future, everyone will have silly names. Some people will be called Haymitch Abernathy. Others will be Effie Trinket…
Darkness visible
Peter Hoskin looks forward to being scared witless courtesy of the BFI’s feast of Gothic cinema
Mother courage
Philomena is based on the true story of an Irish woman searching for the son stolen from her by the…
