Movie

Nope

While the rest of us were mastering sourdough, Jordan Peele spent the pandemic fusing sci-fi, horror and westerns to create a whole new kind of monster movie. The result – with no disrespect to any our baking efforts – was even better: an unnervy, unsettling and frequently funny third Peele effort, lit up by Keke Palmer’s livewire performance, a […]

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Hit the Road

It’s been a bittersweet 2022 for Iranian filmmaker Panah Panahi: his dad, legendary auteur Jafar (The White Balloon), was sentenced to six years in prison by the country’s oppressive regime; but it’s also been the year his debut film, a beguiling but quietly tumultuous family drama set on the dusty highways of Iran, met its

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Brian and Charles

It might sound like a poundshop Transformers on paper, but this lo-fi, seriously funny and utterly beguiling British robot comedy is proof that you don’t need Hollywood budgets to forge something special out of the sci-fi genre. Sometimes a mannequin’s head, an old washing machine and a big heart works even better.  That dummy’s head and Zanussi-shaped torso

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Happening

In a year in which the US Supreme Court put Roe v Wade in its crosshairs, Audrey Diwan’s tumultous, hard-hitting drama arrives to show the realities of illegal abortions. It’s not for the faint hearted – it goes further than Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake in depicting this bleak world – but it’s a gripping story of a

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The Northman

‘A widescreen rallying cry for cinema in the age of streaming’. So read Time Out’s admittedly fairly breathless appraisal of Robert Eggers’ brilliant, blood-soaked Viking epic when it landed in (smashed into? Ransacked?) cinemas in April. But the sentiment stands, because in an age increasingly dominated by streaming sites, The Northman is a useful reminder that the place

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Top Gun: Maverick

Okay, hands up who saw this practically flawless blockbuster coming? A few people probably did – this long-in-the-making Top Gun sequel was originally due out two years ago – but that enforced delay detracts not one iota from the purest widescreen thrill ride of the year so far. Tom Cruise’s ace pilot provides heart, soul and some

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