thu 03/07/2025

Film reviews, news & interviews

The Shrouds review - he wouldn't let it lie

James Saynor

“Dying is an act of eroticism,” suggested one of the many disposable characters in David Cronenberg’s first full-length feature, Shivers (1975), and that slippery adage could sum up more than a few of the Canadian sensationalist’s movies in the past 50 years – not least his latest, The Shrouds, which was in competition at Cannes last year. As far back as the cheap and nasty Shivers, Cronenberg molested the line between the quick and the

Jurassic World Rebirth review - prehistoric franchise gets a new lease of life

Adam Sweeting

The first Jurassic Park movie now seems virtually Jurassic itself, having been released in the sepia-tinged year of 1993. Directed with pizzazz by Steven Spielberg, it was ground-breaking (and indeed ground-shaking) enough to earn admission to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry on account of being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Sudan, Remember Us review - the revolution will...

Hugh Barnes

In 2019, French-Tunisian journalist and documentary filmmaker Hind Meddeb flew to Sudan after the overthrow of hated dictator Omar al-Bashir, hoping...

theartsdesk Q&A: director Andreas Dresen on...

Pamela Jahn

Andreas Dresen directs socially engaged realist films that invariably relay personal and political messages; the result can be tough but is usually...

Chicken Town review - sluggish rural comedy with...

Helen Hawkins

Fans of the character comedian Graham Fellows will possibly turn up for this British film starring the man who created the punk parody single “Jilted...

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F1: The Movie review - Brad Pitt rolls back the years as maverick racer Sonny Hayes

Adam Sweeting

Joseph Kosinski's motorsport spectacle delivers bang for your buck

Bleak landscapes and banjos: composer Bernard Hughes discusses his score for 'Chicken Town'

Graham Rickson

Our critic talks about his recent film project

28 Years Later review - an unsentimental, undead education

Nick Hasted

Allegorical mayhem in an eerily familiar zombie Britain

Red Path review - the dead know everything

James Saynor

A compelling story of a trail of Tunisian tears

Blu-ray: Darling

Demetrios Matheou

John Schlesinger's Sixties classic now feels problematic, but retains an icky fascination

Tornado review - samurai swordswoman takes Scotland by storm

Justine Elias

East meets West meets North of the Border in a wintry 18th-century actioner

Lollipop review - a family torn apart

Graham Fuller

Posy Sterling brilliantly conveys the torment of a homeless single mother denied her kids

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the French can do you-know-who

James Saynor

An amiable cross-Channel literary rom com

Big Star: The Nick Skelton Story review - the ways of a man with his mount

Justine Elias

Documentary about the champion showjumping duo

Ballerina review - hollow point

Nick Hasted

Ana de Armas joins the Wick-verse to frenetic but soulless effect

Goebbels and the Führer review - behind the scenes from the Nazi perpetrators' perspective

Markie Robson-Scott

Joachim Lang's docudrama focuses on Goebbels as master of fake news

Blu-ray: Eclipse

John Carvill

The BFI has unearthed an unsettling 1977 thriller starring Tom Conti and Gay Hamilton

The Ballad of Wallis Island review - the healing power of the old songs

Anthony Cecil

Estranged folk duo reunites in a classy British comedy drama

The Salt Path review - the transformative power of nature

Markie Robson-Scott

Marianne Elliott brings Raynor Winn's memoir to the big screen

Bogancloch review - every frame a work of art

Sarah Kent

Living off grid might be the meaning of happiness

When the Light Breaks review - only lovers left alive

Nick Hasted

Tender close-up on young love, grief and growing-up in Iceland

Blu-ray: Strange New Worlds - Science Fiction at DEFA

Graham Rickson

Eye-popping Cold War sci-fi epics from East Germany, superbly remastered and annotated

Mongrel review - deeply empathetic filmmaking from Taiwan

Harry Thorfinn-George

Artful direction and vivid detail of rural life from Wei Liang Chiang

The Phoenician Scheme review - further adventures in the idiosyncratic world of Wes Anderson

Adam Sweeting

Benicio del Toro's megalomaniac tycoon heads a star-studded cast

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review - can this really be the end for Ethan Hunt?

Adam Sweeting

Tom Cruise's eighth M:I film shows symptoms of battle fatigue

Magic Farm review - numpties from the Nineties

James Saynor

A comedy about youth TV putting trends above truth

Good One review - a life lesson in the wild with her dad and his pal

Graham Fuller

A wise-beyond-her-years teen discovers male limitations in a deft indie drama

E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea review - dull docu-fiction take on the designer-architect

Saskia Baron

Iconic Irish modernist Eileen Gray gets an artsy and overly reverential appraisal

The Marching Band review - what's the French for 'Brassed Off'?

Sebastian Scotney

Brothers suddenly united in blood kinship – and music

Footnote: a brief history of British film

England was movie-mad long before the US. Contrary to appearances in a Hollywood-dominated world, the celluloid film process was patented in London in 1890 and by 1905 minute-long films of news and horse-racing were being made and shown widely in purpose-built cinemas, with added sound. The race to set up a film industry, though, was swiftly won by the entrepreneurial Americans, attracting eager new UK talents like Charlie Chaplin. However, it was a British film that in 1925 was the world's first in-flight movie, and soon the arrival of young suspense genius Alfred Hitchcock and a new legal requirement for a "quota" of British film in cinemas assisted a golden age for UK film. Under the leadership of Alexander Korda's London Films, Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) is considered the first true sound movie, documentary techniques developed and the first Technicolor movies were made.

Brief_EncounterWhen war intervened, British filmmakers turned effectively to lean, effective propaganda documentaries and heroic, studio-based war-films. After Hitchcock too left for Hollywood, David Lean launched into an epic career with Brief Encounter (pictured), Powell and Pressburger took up the fantasy mantle with The Red Shoes, while Carol Reed created Anglo films noirs such as The Third Man. Fifties tastes were more domestic, with Ealing comedies succeeded by Hammer horror and Carry-Ons; and more challenging in the Sixties, with New Wave films about sex and class by Lindsay Anderson, Joseph Losey and Tony Richardson. But it was Sixties British escapism which finally went global: the Bond films, Lean's Dr Zhivago, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music made Sean Connery, Julie Christie and Julie Andrews Hollywood's top stars.

In the 1970s, recession and the TV boom undermined cinema-going and censorship changes brought controversy: a British porn boom and scandals over The Devils, Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange. While Hollywood fielded Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese epics, Britain riposted with The Killing Fields, Chariots of Fire and Gandhi, but 1980s recession dealt a sharp blow to British cinema, and the Rank Organisation closed, after more than half a century. However more recently social comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Full Monty, and royal dramas such as The Queen and The King's Speech have enhanced British reputation for wit, social observation and character acting.

As more films are globally co-produced, the success of British individual talents has come to outweigh the modest showing of the industry itself. Every week The Arts Desk reviews latest releases as well as leading international film festivals, and features in-depth career interviews with leading stars. Its writers include Jasper Rees, Graham Fuller, Anne Billson, Nick Hasted, Alexandra Coghlan, Veronica Lee, Emma Simmonds, Adam Sweeting and Matt Wolf

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