Film
Slowly, slowly, catchy, catchy
Foxcatcher is a crime drama (of sorts) that has already been dubbed ‘Oscarcatcher!’ as it barely puts a foot wrong.…
Birdbrained
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, which stars Michael Keaton as a one-time superhero movie star (just like Keaton himself), is audacious…
Barometer
Marking a century Some things which celebrate their 100th birthday in 2015: 3-D films The first was shown at the…
Saints and sinners
Is Bill Murray fit for sainthood? Certainly his fans have him figure as some sort of lesser divinity, maybe one…
Death of a screenwriter
Cinema is tough right now for writers. Thomas W. Hodgkinson reports from the front line at the Austin Film Festival
Bear necessity
‘Please look after this bear,’ reads the famous label hanging round Paddington’s neck, and this film does that, admirably, handsomely,…
On the Wayne
The Homesman, which stars Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones and is set in the Nebraska territory in the 1850s,…
In the closet
The Imitation Game is a biopic starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician who broke the German’s Enigma…
Dumb and dumber
Christopher Nolan’s futuristic epic Interstellar isn’t a clever film, or even a dumb film with a clever film trying to…
Art of grunting
Mr Turner may be the gruntiest film of the year, possibly the gruntiest film ever. ‘Grunt, grunt, grunt,’ goes Mr…
Signifying nothing
Fury is a second world war drama that plays with us viscerally and unsparingly — I think I saw a…
Leigh’s late flowering
Hermione Eyre talks to filmmaker Mike Leigh about Mr Turner, Hollywood, and making films his own way
See it and sleep
Take tissues to The Best of Me, I’d read, as it’s such a weepie, so I took tissues, being a…
Live long and prosper
Without sci-fi, there would be no cinema, writes Peter Hoskin
Effie off
Effie Gray, which has been written by Emma Thompson and recounts the doomed marriage of Victorian art critic John Ruskin…
Playing it for laughs
Gone Girl is David Fincher’s adaptation of the bestselling thriller by Gillian Flynn, a relentless page-turner which I’ve heard people…
Disaster movie
What We Did On Our Holiday is written and directed by Guy Jenkin and Andy Hamilton, the pair who created…
Watch that man
Inspired by Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never (2011), Katy Perry’s Part of Me (2012) and One Direction’s This Is Us…
Pride and prejudice
1984 and all that. Which side were you on? The side of Margaret Thatcher, her hairdo and person standing rigid…
Brain drain
Before I Go To Sleep is Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of S.J. Watson’s bestselling thriller of 2011, but whereas the book…
The enigma of Werner Herzog
William Cook watches a new box set from the BFI that reveals the full extent of the German director’s genius – and insanity
Dambusters
Night Moves is a film by Kelly Reichardt, who also made the heart-wrenching Wendy and Lucy (2008), which may be…
Superhuman Scarlett
Here’s an idea for an article: The Tree of Life (2011) is the most influential film of the past decade.…
Barometer
The not-so-great charter David Cameron wants every child to be taught about Magna Carta. Some bits he might want to…
The forgotten liberator
Slavery was ended in England not through blood and glory, but by the common law
