British actor Helen McCrory has died aged 52 after battling cancer, her husband confirmed in a statement this afternoon. Posting on Twitter, he wrote: “I’m heartbroken to announce that after an heroic battle with cancer, the beautiful and mighty woman that is Helen McCrory has died peacefully at home, surrounded by a wave of love […]Read More
Stuck on what to stream this month? Unlike other lists, we’re on hand to recommend a variety of films for every mood: from tear-jerkers to trailblazers. Here are our picks for the best films to stream in the UK this month. The Silver Screen Classic Sudden Fear (1952) dir. David Miller You can’t help but […]Read More
Tom Prior and Oleg Zagorodnii star as Soviet Air Force soldiers grappling with sexual tension and professional pride in Peeter Rebane’s debut feature. But with its familiar structure and sanitized approach, Firebird is perhaps enthralling to a fault. Based on a true story, Estonian director Peeter Rebane first discovered Sergey Fetiso when he read his […]Read More
A policeman must wrestle with his own remorse in Drift Away, a rippling drama that ultimately raises more issues than it can appraise. Not long into Xavier Beauvois’ picturesque 10th feature, Drift Away (Albatros), a pair of newlyweds have their beach photoshoot interrupted by a man who has just jumped from the above cliff to […]Read More
Dead Sexy: A Column on Erotic Thrillers David Cronenberg’s glacial and oddly moving fetish thriller Crash turns 25 this year. But has its depiction of futurism and kink become dated, or does this erotic thriller still shock? “Slow down, slow down, not so fast,” a man moans. Not during sex—he’s in a car, and his […]Read More
The beloved director has revealed 50 of his personal favourite films from British cinema, from Kind Hearts and Coronets to The Innocents. Edgar Wright, in a series of tweets posted today, explained that he emailed the Academy Award-winning director asking for “a list of British films that he admired or had inspired him growing up.” […]Read More
With countless iconic roles and three Academy Award nominations under his belt, Danish-American actor Viggo Mortensen has turned his hand to directing. The result is a foul-mouthed intergenerational drama that grapples with the slippery subject of dementia. It came as no surprise that Viggo Mortensen, the very definition of a polymath, had turned his hand […]Read More
What with the constant film release delays and cinema closures, the cinephile in your life may be feeling a little dejected this year. Luckily for them, we’ve compiled a mammoth list of gifts to cheer them up with this Christmas—the majority of which are sold by small businesses. From novelty treats to vouchers, merch and […]Read More
What do fictional serial killer Patrick Bateman and I have in common, aside from an encyclopaedic knowledge of the musical ‘Les Misérables’? Our favourite film is Body Double. Despite its schlocky veneer, make no mistake: Body Double is a carefully crafted masterpiece that parodies and pays homage in equal measure. Sure, in American Psycho the […]Read More
Dead Sexy: A Column on Erotic Thrillers How do you solve a problem like Paul Schrader? It’s difficult to think of a director with a filmography as varied in quality as Paul Schrader’s. Having penned the scripts for Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ and directed many celebrated films from First Reformed to […]Read More
Some may find the sweeping chilliness of Francis Lee’s sophomore feature too bleak, but consider this critic’s cockles warmed. Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet are devastatingly brilliant in Ammonite, forming an unlikely romance between a sickly young wife and a respected paleontologist. Though most take a little warming up to their craft, Francis Lee’s directorial […]Read More
Thirty-six years after Stop Making Sense set the bar stratospherically high for the concert film, an unlikely duo has created an urgently joyous match. Spike Lee and David Byrne’s new venture combines the rapturous joy of Byrne’s music with Lee’s trademark style of confronting us with contemporary truths. The result is nothing short of wondrous. […]Read More
Erica Riva plays a traumatised woman drowning in the sound of her own nightmares in this De Palma-esque thriller. The Intruder is an unnerving Argentine thriller from Natalia Meta, that sets out to explore how PTSD can manifest itself in the wake of horrific events. Erica Riva plays Inès, a fortysomething woman who relies on […]Read More
Supernova is an elegant, elegiac story of two soulmates facing the cruelty of dementia, with director Harry Macqueen crafting a mature, affecting story of galactic proportions. Every star in the night sky looks the same to me—glinting uniformly in the inky darkness, unthreatening in their anonymity. Would I find the night sky less beautiful if […]Read More
When Humphrey Bogart says “We’ll always have Paris” to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, he probably didn’t anticipate a deadly global pandemic that would prevent most travel and seriously test his romantic logic. With the majority of holidays cancelled, including my own holiday to Paris I was meant to go on back in June, we just […]Read More
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