Film
Lowering the baa
Rams is an average film with a better film trying to get out, and you may already have seen that…
What lies beneath
Just before the outbreak of the second world war a discovery was made in a riverside field at Sutton Hoo…
The rise of opera film
I’m still waiting for the Royal Opera to step up. Nearly a year into the Covid crisis and what do…
Think twice
The White Tiger is adapted from the Booker-prize winning novel (2008) by Aravind Adiga. It is directed by Ramin Bahrani…
They wouldn’t let it lie
The comedy Blithe Spiritwas written by Noël Coward in 1941. It is, essentially, about a séance going wrong and a…
The trying game
Rosie Millard dispels the myth that persistence is always rewarded
The secret history
Andrei Konchalovsky’s Dear Comrades! is based on a true event and set in 1962 in the Russian city of Novocherkassk…
Supernatural power
The triumph of Korean cinema
A fine romance
Sylvie’s Love is an exquisitely styled, swooning, old-school, period Hollywood romance and while it has been described as ‘glib’ in…
Pandemic panto
This pantomime was filmed by ‘legendary Blue Peter presenter’ Peter Duncan in his back garden over the summer. It was…
Poetry in motion
How did the universe begin? Did the great god Bumba vomit us up, as the Kuba believe? Or did we…
This will hurt
County Lines is the kind of social realism that the British do so well, if not too well. In other…
It’ll blow you away
When I recommend this documentary to people, telling them it follows the journalistic investigation into a fire that broke out…
Whiplash
Hillbilly Elegy is an adaptation of the best-selling memoir, published in 2016, by J.D. Vance and it’s quite a story.…
The outsiders
Tanya Gold on the journalists who scripted the golden age of Hollywood
Blue notes
This documentary about Billie Holiday is transfixing. Not just because it’s about Billie Holiday — I am not into jazz…
A star is reborn
The Life Ahead stars Sophia Loren, and if there is one reason to see The Life Ahead it is this:…
Riveting twosome
This week, two electrifying performances in two excellent films rather than two mediocre performances in the one mediocre film —…
Cinema paradiso
Going to the movies was a religious experience
Bros your mind
The Climb is, essentially, a bickering bromance as two longtime pals bicker bromantically down the years, and it doesn’t sound…
Saints and sinners
Saint Maud is a first feature from writer-director Rose Glass and it’s being billed as a horror film. But it’s…
Are you reading this, Rishi?
Curious thing, writer’s block. If you believe it exists. Terry Pratchett didn’t. ‘There’s no such thing,’ he said. ‘It was…
Zinger ping pong
Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 — don’t worry, you haven’t missed six earlier films — is a…
What cinema is for
Cuties is the subject of a moral panic and a hashtag #CancelNetflix. It tells the story of Amy (Fathia Youssouf),…
Savage beauty
The Painted Bird opens with a young boy (Jewish) running through a forest and clutching his pet ferret. He is…
