Spectator Life

It’s a rocky rural idyll on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The craggy sea cliffs – Europe’s highest – are swathed in the orange setting sun. Animals – sheep, cows, donkeys – gambol rather than walk on the ancient bog and jump over the babbling brooks. The sand is golden, the ocean as green

The fifth series of Netflix’s The Crown will soon be upon us. Scripted, as ever, by Peter Morgan, the show will cover the travails of the royal family throughout the 1990s, spanning everything from the then Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s marital difficulties and eventual divorce to the rumours of Prince Philip conducting an affair with a

As the credits rolled on the series finale of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, things got awkward. My partner turned to me to express his excitement for series two – just as I realised with absolute certainty that I couldn’t, in good conscience, watch the show again. My reaction came as

In a month that has seen more than its fair share of chaos, I had hoped the release of the first-ever Emily Brontë biopic would at last offer some cause for celebration. But Emily, which arrived in cinemas this week, has provided quite the opposite.  Frances O’Connor’s directorial debut focuses on a fling between Emily (played

After 9/11, American comedians found themselves in a tricky situation. Make fun of any of the usual standbys of their trade – politicians, authority figures, Rudy Giuliani, anyone who wore a badge for a living – and they were liable to be shouted down in an angry chorus of: ‘Too soon!’ Yet if all the

Mark Millar, creator of series including Netflix’s forthcoming American Jesus, has a theory that movie and TV fashions work in 11-year cycles and that we’re just starting a new one now. If he’s right – and I think he is – then it would explain a lot about the second-most disappointing series currently on TV,

Don’t Worry Darling, the highly anticipated psychological thriller directed by Olivia Wilde, has arrived in cinemas after months of online gossip and speculation about its production. The controversies include: an alleged affair between the director and main actor, Harry Styles, who also happens to be one of the most famous pop stars on Earth; the

There on my television screen, in a somewhat surreal sequence, was Boris Johnson contemplating the women in his life. And suddenly before me appeared the famous Wyatt features: first eyes, then a nose and then a mouth, right into camera. Medium-range shot and then a close-up. Ah, we had faces then. And then I looked harder,

You almost have to feel sorry for Sky. After spending 18 months building up to their big Boris Johnson drama, they end up releasing it at exactly the same time that British politics enters its own cliffhanger mode with drama that could rival any season finale. This England – which tells the story of the start

Why is Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings show taking so much flak? The way I see it, there are two (mostly separate) factors at play: Tolkien fandom and race. First, Tolkien fandom. Despite the best efforts of the Tolkien Society to ‘queer’ Tolkien studies, the Inkling’s biggest admirers tend to be Christians on the

If you were one of the many millions who watched Top Gun: Maverick this year, it may have been a pleasant surprise to see Jon Hamm in the (admittedly thankless) role of Vice Admiral Simpson, who has to look stern and angry at the various transgressions committed by Tom Cruise’s protagonist. Hamm has been cornering

On a recent trip from London to New Delhi, I found out that an acquaintance I see once or twice a year had pulled out of her wedding just 24 hours before the ceremony. An almighty row? Infidelity? Good old-fashioned cold feet? No – her family had simply decided they weren’t happy with the groom

‘Who are these people and why should we care about them?’ This is the most important question any screenwriter must ask before committing pen to paper. Sadly it’s a question I failed to come anywhere near answering during the interminable ‘realism’ of the BBC’s much discussed (and much praised) Marriage. Sean Bean and Nicola Walker

This December Brad Pitt will hit the grand old age of 59. Hard to believe, considering that he has retained much of his youthful appeal, despite a well-documented penchant for cigarettes, weed and booze, habits apparently now finally kicked to the kerb. As he approaches his seventh decade, Pitt has discussed his desire to transition

Wednesday saw a new entrant into the streaming world with the UK debut of Paramount+. The launch event in London on Tuesday didn’t hold back on star power, with Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone, Gillian Anderson, Viola Davis, David Oyelowo, Michelle Pfeiffer, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Bill Nighy, Naomie Harris and Jessica Chastain all in attendance. Unlike BritBox

Amazingly, at least to this reviewer, the first film in the popular Bourne franchise was released 20 long years ago. A fresh-faced Matt Damon (then aged 32) played the titular character (real name David Webb), a memory loss-afflicted master assassin with more than a little red in his ledger. In Robert Ludlum’s Bourne novels JB

Along with films about real life authors, poets, comedians and artists, biographies of musicians are notoriously difficult to translate successfully to the cinema screen. Why? Writing and painting aren’t inherently cinematic; live music has more visual potential (hence the greater number of motion pictures). But the challenges of lip-synching and the existence in most cases

When Queen Elizabeth II (Elizabeth I of Scotland) began her reign on 6 February 1952 (after the premature death of her father George VI) the British Empire was still very much in existence, with more than 70 overseas territories, despite the independence of India/Pakistan (‘The Jewel in The Crown’) in 1947. But, in the words of

After over a year of delays, Tom Cruise’s keenly anticipated sequel to the iconic Top Gun (1986) is released on 25 May. TG: Maverick’s seat-of-your-pants aviation sequences have whetted the appetite of both fans and non-fans for the picture, which has picked up almost universally positive reviews. Not unexpectedly for Cruise, he handled some of the

The news that Dave Chappelle has the unwelcome distinction of being the second big-name stand-up comic to be attacked on stage this year has the worrying signs of a possible trend. The first of course was when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock after the comedian made a tasteless joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair (or lack

Until recently a ‘special military operation’ typically referred to a particular action/plan rather than all-out war. Unless you happen to live in Putin’s Russia, that is. John Madden’s (Shakespeare in Love) take on the real-life Operation Mincemeat is a solid entry in the canon of WWII movies that concern themselves with a particular military objective and

This June will mark half a century since police arrested five of Richard Nixon’s ‘plumbers’ breaking into the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington DC’s Watergate complex. This anniversary appears to have given TV executives the impetus to commission a wave of shows about the break in and its world-changing (if not an overstatement) after-effects.

The best religious films aren’t always the obvious ones, featuring either clerics or bible stories (though there are some good movies of both kinds – and an awful lot of terrible ones). Rather, some of the best capture Christianity sideways, expressing the numinous or the fundamentals of faith through a human story or through a

Amid rising energy bills, the announcement that Netflix will hike its prices – with its basic package increasing by £1 a month to £6.99 – seemed to pass without too much fuss. But, as the cost of living crisis hits, many households will be looking at which subscriptions to prioritise. But with more of us subscribing

Joe Mankiewicz’s classic Olivier/Caine two-handed mystery thriller Sleuth will mark its 50th anniversary later this year, fortuitously in time for the release of Knives Out 2, which promises to be a similarly intriguing whodunnit – at least on the basis of 2019’s initial movie. Based on Anthony Shaffer’s Tony award-winning play, Sleuth depicts a battle of

One of the first films ever produced, 1903’s The Great Train Robbery, revolved around a robbery of a steam locomotive train, and ever since then the genre has continued to be one of the most enduring in cinema. It isn’t hard to see why. The core elements of the heist film are some of the