Category: Films
Remembering Maggie Smith: ‘Every day she and Judi would swim in their Victorian swimsuits and every day we would all laugh and laugh’
This one hurts. I knew she was ill, but I always believed she was immortal. And, of course, her work is. But it’s hard to [more…]
Maggie Smith was the grandest of grande dames – and a true cinematic superstar | Peter Bradshaw
Maggie Smith thought she was famous after The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, in 1969; she gave a glorious, Oscar-winning performance in her mid-30s in [more…]
Can Marvel’s Thunderbolts* avoid the mistakes of DC’s Suicide Squad?
The trouble with Thunderbolts* is that this is a superhero team made up almost entirely of all those Marvel characters you had completely forgotten existed. [more…]
Hellboy: The Crooked Man review – sputtering mess even a metric ton of makeup can’t conceal
Fans of comic books, 00s horror and Guillermo del Toro will recall the latter’s crack at launching a mass-market franchise with Hellboy in 2004, a [more…]
The Outrun review – Saoirse Ronan is mesmerising in sobering addiction drama
The title means an outlying coastal piece of farmland on Orkney; it is not suitable for cultivation, but so continually windswept with Atlantic spray that [more…]
The Teacher review – a Palestinian educator is troubled by his radical past
Here is a drama-thriller from British-Palestinian film-maker Farah Nabulsi, set in the West Bank: a geopolitical vale of angry tears. There is some pretty broad-brush [more…]
Home Sweet Home: Where Evil Lives review – fresh take on pregnant-woman-in-peril horror
When Maria (Nilam Farooq) shows up 37 weeks pregnant at the attractive but remote country home of her husband Viktor (David Kross), you sense immediately [more…]
Apartment 7A review – Rosemary’s Baby prequel is a vacant rehash
There wasn’t any urgent necessity to this April’s horror prequel The First Omen, a film that took us back to tell a tale we mostly [more…]
Unit 234: The Lock Up review – storage facility holds deadly secrets in fun thriller
Here is a fairly watchable thriller about a fine arts and philosophy graduate called Laurie (Isabelle Fuhrman), who is turning 25 and facing a quarter-life [more…]
Azrael: Angel of Death review – dialogue-free sci-fi horror takes cues from A Quiet Place
Here is a post-apocalyptic feature that works well as an exercise in tension-release horror-movie mechanics and features an admirably expressive, athletic, and entirely wordless lead [more…]
