films
A life among movie stars can damage your health
So Dustin Hoffman tells the teenage Matthew Specktor as they share cigarette breaks at CAA, the Los Angeles talent agency they both frequent
‘We are stuck like chicken feathers to tar’: Elizabeth Taylor’s description of the fabled romance
The Burton-Taylor relationship was either one of the greatest love stories of all time or a suicide pact carried out in relentless slow motion
To have and to hold
Lauren Bacall was 25 years younger than Humphrey Bogart. Unlike his previous wives, she stayed – though Roger Lewis finds something creepy about their relationship
A gasp and a guffaw
Blockbuster action movies are designed to stun the audience into submissive acceptance. Complexity, humanity, emotion and beauty are reduced to…
Evil geniuses
Does knowledge of the wrongs committed by Caravaggio, Picasso, Roman Polanski and other ‘monsters’ condition our response to their art, wonders Claire Dederer
How to save the Oscars
This Sunday’s Academy Awards will be a litmus test of whether Hollywood can uncouple itself from the political agenda of…
Time trial
Why do films have to go on for so long?
No Time to Die is a compelling mess
Times being what they are, James Bond can no longer just be the main character in the Bond films. He’s…
Big hooks but no mackerel
The narrative podcast remains a form in search of a genre. The template set by the hit show Serial —…
Brendel the Dadaist
How many people are celebrating the fact that, last week, one of Europe’s most inspired writers about music, modern art…
The Venus de Marlene
Tanjil Rashid on the legend of Dietrich
Nearly nul points
This comedy stars Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams as an Icelandic duo whose biggest dream is to represent their country…
The joy of the drive-by birthday party
It is a relief to parents that young children are allowed out a bit now as the length of the…
For now, age isn’t just a number
When I told my seven-year-old granddaughter, over Zoom, how much I missed being with her, I added: ‘Maybe it won’t…
An outbreak of bad manners
It all started on the day after the Brexit referendum. People who do not get the result they voted for…
‘I feel compelled to be disgraceful’
Miriam Margolyes chews the fat with Tanya Gold about mother love, anti-Zionism and too much shagging
How could any woman fail to be won over by my new cinema room?
As Christmas approaches, fighting has broken out in the Young household. No, I’m not talking about my three boys, aged…
A Dramatist’s Notebook
The nicest day of the year was spent at Charleston in May. The Sussex farmhouse shared by Duncan Grant and…
High life
I have always believed that the mission of most movies made after the Fred & Ginger era has been to…
