Film
Hideously watchable: Killing of a Sacred Deer reviewed
You know where you aren’t with director Yorgos Lanthimos. The Greek allegorist creates parallel worlds which superficially resemble our own.…
Why talking about death is a essential part of living
Mandy was 38 when she was told she was ‘in the end stage’, suffering from COPD and finding it more…
The death of cosy Christie
This is not Midsomer Murders. The new film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is thick with…
Amazing Grace
In the first scene of this distinctly odd documentary, Grace Jones meets a group of fans, who squeal with delight…
The ties that bound us
Only Neil MacGregor could do it — take us in a single thread from a blackened copper coin, about the…
Gathering storm
Sally Potter’s The Party, which unfolds in real time during a politician’s soirée to celebrate her promotion, is just 71…
Back to the future
Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner first came out in cinemas 35 years ago, which I was going to say probably…
Unhappy days
Scriptwriters love to feast on the lives of children’s authors. The themes tend not to vary: they may have brought…
No balls
Borg vs McEnroe is a dramatised account of one of the greatest tennis rivalries of all time — between Bjorn…
Nut job
The film-maker Darren Aronofsky says he wrote Mother! in five days as if in a ‘fever dream’ and, as a…
Art of darkness
Stephen King, 69, has sold more than 350 million books, and tries not to apologise for being working-class, or imaginative,…
Male order
The starting point for Taylor Sheridan’s crime-thriller Wind River is explicitly stated at the end when the following words come…
Silent films
On 15 September 1888 Vincent van Gogh was intrigued to read an account of an up-to-date artist’s house in the…
Moral maze
Una is a psychological drama about a woman who was abused by a man when she was 12, and who…
Moor and more
In 1824 an ambitious teenage actor fled to England from his native New York where he had been beaten up…
Losing the plot
Steven Soderbergh’s Logan Lucky is a heist caper that, to be fair, does what it says on the can. There…
In praise of Netflix
All this week I have been trying, with considerable success, to avoid being bludgeoned by TV programmes telling me in…
Tricky, and slightly sicky
The Big Sick is a rom-com that’s smarter than most rom-coms, which isn’t saying much, admittedly. It stars a Muslim…
Ivory towers
Great novels rarely make great movies, but for half a century one director has been showing all the others how…
Visual, visceral, confusing
Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk has already been described as ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘a glorious, breathtakingly vivid triumph’, but we need to…
Do not be afraid
It Comes at Night is a horror film and I can’t say horror is my favourite genre. In fact, as…
Match made in heaven
Tennis is best played with a wooden racket on a shady lawn somewhere close to Dorking. There is no need…
Spellbound
A blushing James Woodall is riveted by Isabelle Huppert’s performance in Phaedra(s)
Punchlines and punches
Regular filmgoers must be losing count of the Rabelaisian revelries they’ve been invited to of late. You may recognise the…
Junk Bond
After six decades, it’s time we were done with 007
