For my money – and lots of other people’s – Florian Zeller’s 2020 film The Father was pretty much a masterpiece. Oscar-winningly adapted from his own play by Zeller and Christopher Hampton, it plunged us into the fractured world of Anthony, an old man with dementia (as Oscar-winningly played by Anthony Hopkins). With different actors
Women Talking, which has received Oscar nominations for best picture and adapted screenplay, is one of those films that, on paper, is a hard sell. It is women talking, and talking and talking, after enduring the most horrifying experience at the hands of men. All of which sounds barely cinematic and even less entertaining. But
I can’t work out if Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, which stars Brendan Fraser as a man weighing 600lb – that’s 42 stone in real money – is ‘abhorrently cruel’, as some have said, or a film of ‘rare compassion’, as others have said. Either way, it is compelling, although whether that’s for the right reasons
There can’t be anyone anywhere who hasn’t somehow been touched by a Steven Spielberg film. Some of us, for example, haven’t dipped their toe into the sea for going on 40 years now. (Thanks for that, Jaws.) He has thus surely earned the right to finally turn the camera on himself, as he does with
Todd Field’s Tár stars an insanely glorious Cate Blanchett – if she doesn’t win an Oscar I’ll eat my hat – as a world-famous orchestral conductor about to record Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. There is also Elgar’s Cello Concerto in this film, and a bit of Bach, but it’s not about music. To say it’s about
Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light, which he wrote as well as directed, is billed as a ‘love letter to cinema’ although, alas, in this instance cinema does not appear to love him back. The magic of film-going is the theme but there is almost no film-going in it and what there is isn’t magic. Peculiarly
Corsage is a biopic of Empress Elisabeth of Austria who was prized for her beauty and fashion sense and may have been, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say, the Princess Diana of her day. But then disaster strikes: she turns 40. I know, but in 1877 that is old. That
These days, everyone who was knocking around a few decades ago predicted the internet. Marshall McLuhan famously predicted the internet in 1962. Orson Scott Card predicted the internet in 1986. Even David Bowie is supposed to have seen it coming. But I think Don DeLillo really did prophesise our 21st-century technological reality in his 1985
If you’re of my generation, I expect your first encounter with D.H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was the (well-thumbed) book passed around school and then maybe Ken Russell’s full-frontal, hut-shaking, 1993 television adaptation starring Joely Richardson and Sean Bean at his most Sean Bean. (‘I wan’ yer, m’lady.’) But this Netflix version doesn’t play it
If you’re planning on seeing The Last Flight Home at the cinema, don’t make any plans for afterwards as you’ll be completely done in. I soaked the top half of my jumper with the crying, and then needed to race home to wring it out. It’s an unflinching documentary from film-maker Ondi Timoner following her
The Menu is a comedy-horror-thriller set in an exclusive restaurant on a private island and it gives the rich a good kicking, like The Triangle of Sadness, except here they manage to keep their food down, mercifully. (At $1,200 a head, you’d hope so.) But the diners are not spared otherwise, and it’s nastily fun,
Jafar Panahi’s No Bears is, first and foremost, a wonderful film. More than this, you don’t need to know but I’ll tell you anyway. Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker, was banned from making films by the Iran government in 2010 yet has persisted clandestinely. One of his films (This Is Not a Film) was smuggled to
Living is a remake of one of the great existential masterpieces of the 20th century, Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), which didn’t need remaking, many will grumble, but once you’ve seen this you’ll be glad that it was. It is as profoundly and deeply felt as the original and as heartbreakingly tender. It asks the same question
The latest film from Ruben Ostlund received an eight-minute standing ovation after its screening in Cannes and also won the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, and this has left me entirely baffled: what, the film I’ve just seen? The one where every scene is far too long? The one billed as a ‘satirical black
My Policeman is a forbidden love drama starring both Harry Styles – whose bid for movie stardom continues apace – and his naked bottom. The bottom is good. Ten out of ten for the bottom, particularly during a scene in Venice when the light from the window casts it in a golden, buttery glow. But
The life of Emily Brontë is an enduring object of fascination. So small, the life, so sparse, so limited. Yet it delivered those magnificent poems and Wuthering Heights. How could this be? Genius, I suppose, paired with a vivid interior life. But as neither of those are cinematic, Emily imagines what could have led her
The Lost King is a comedy-drama based on the 2012 discovery of the remains of King Richard III beneath a Leicester car park. It’s a terrific story, an unforgettable story, but a fairly forgettable film. It’s directed by Stephen Frears, stars Sally Hawkins (as Philippa Langley, the amateur enthusiast who was proved right despite being
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris is a comedy-drama based on the 1958 novel by Paul Gallico about a cheerful, kind-hearted Battersea charlady who falls in love with a couture dress from Dior, decides she must have one of her own, and off she goes. If you are in the mood for something pleasantly untaxing you
Catherine Called Birdy is written and directed by Lena Dunham and it’s a medieval comedy about a 14-year-old girl resisting her father’s attempts to marry her off while yearning to do all the things women aren’t allowed to do. (She would especially like to attend a hanging, for example. And also ‘laugh very loud’.) It
Moonage Daydream is a music documentary like no other, which is fitting as the subject is David Bowie. If it’s David Bowie, make it special or just don’t bother. And this is special. It’s an immersive, trippy, hurtling, throbbing two hours and 15 minutes. If Disneyland did a Bowie ride, this would be it. Yet
