3 h. ago Can I Get a Witness? review – Sandra Oh leads the line in dystopian future fable of planned death

There’s real chemistry between Oh and Keira Jang as a mother and daughter living in a society where pastoral scenes hide a more brutal realityAnn Marie Fleming’s dystopian fable opens, not with gnarly destruction, but birdsong and lush greenery. The sensorial calm of rustling ferns and blushing bell flowers envelop the frame, while the Ink Spots’ recording of I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire plays softly in the background. This music cue recurs throughout the film, with each appearance more menacing than the last. Indeed, something wicked is lurking within this Edenic cocoon.Things start out innocently enough. We see Ellie (Sandra Oh), a radiant single mother, entrusting her daughter Kiah (Keira Jang) to the care of Daniel (Joel Oulette) as the pair of young adults head off on an important mission. It is quickly revealed, however, that the pastoral beauty of their surroundings comes with a price. In the aftermath of catastrophic environmental disasters, the human race has decid...

Events

45 h. ago This natural rubber yoga mat lasted me a decade of daily practice

The JadeYoga Harmony helped me unlock a new form of fitness, and stuck with me for the long haulHave a buy it for life product recommendation – or disagree with our review? Email thefilter.us@theguardian.comSign up for the Filter US newsletter, your weekly guide to buying fewer, better things.The original yogis didn’t have rubber mats, or foam ones, for that matter. They had bare ground, grass mats and animal skins, if they were lucky. So when my wife suggested I spend $90 on a natural rubber yoga mat like the one she had, I balked. Is that really necessary?It turns out the answer was yes. Ten years later, I’m still using the JadeYoga Harmony mat I sprang for, and I’m no longer a skeptic, I’m an evangelist. Natural rubber provides enough cushion for comfort, enough grip to safely push my limits, and the durability of a truck tire. Continue reading...

Politics

60 h. ago Pingle Cottage review: countryside Chatsworth walks and relaxation with a Peak District backdrop

It's all about capturing the 'wow' moments, and while gazing for miles across the beautiful Derbyshire Peak District underneath the glowing hazy blanket of the late summer sun, I wouldn't have wished to be anywhere else in the world.

Politics

2 d. ago Not Your Superwoman at the Bush Theatre review: These stars need more to work with

Golda Rosheuvel and Letitia Wright are a pleasure to watch, but this short play still feels 20 minutes too long

Politics

3 d. ago Stephen Lawrence's mother urges witnesses to come forward as review into investigation of her son's murder begins

Stephen was murdered 32 years ago in Eltham, south-east London, but it was only after a long Daily Mail campaign that his racist killers began to be prosecuted.

Events

3 d. ago Stephen Lawrence's mum appeals for witnesses as review into murder opens

The College of Policing has launched an official review into the case, with investigators examining information held by the Metropolitan Police to identify any outstanding lines of inquiry

Events

4 d. ago Hotel Chocolat Velvetiser 2.0 review: The Velvetiser is back with a brand new design and cold drink option

The Velvetiser 2.0 is Hotel Chocolat's newest version of its cult hot chocolate maker. With this latest model, the brand has significantly upgraded the design and added a cold drink option

Politics

4 d. ago DWP quizzed on plans to review decision to withdraw universal Winter Fuel Payments

All pensioners with an income of under £35,000 a year will receive the payment

Economics

4 d. ago Stephen Lawrence’s mother makes plea for witnesses as review begins

Doreen Lawrence says review of decision to close investigation into her son’s murder is ‘last opportunity’ for justiceThe mother of Stephen Lawrence has urged witnesses to come forward to assist a review into her son’s racist murder more than 30 years ago.A gang chased, surrounded and stabbed Stephen, who was 18, near a south-east London bus stop in April 1993; two men were convicted of his murder in 2012, but at least three members of the gang remain at large. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago Cerys Hafana: Angel review – tracing the life cycle with the Welsh triple harp

(tak:til/Glitterbeat)On their third release in 18 months, this exceptional musician draws from folk story, Breton influences and nature to explore the sublime potential of its titleWelsh musician Cerys Hafana’s first release on the brilliant subsidiary of Hamburg-based global music label Glitterbeat explores the full sublime potential of its title, one all too often invoked to mean meekness and sweetness. Opening track Helynt Ryfeddol (An Incredible Ordeal) introduces a folk story about an old man drawn towards the purest music he has ever heard, sung by a bird, to which he listens until it stops. He returns home to find his house entirely changed and lived in by different people. Seven tracks later, the title track tells us that the bird was an angel, and that the man went away for 350 years, never to be seen again.Angel is the third release by this piercingly beautiful singer and exceptional, adventurous musician in 18 months. (Their collection of precise piano instrumentals, Difr...

Sport

4 d. ago Judge allows Trump to cut more than $1bn in National Science Foundation grants

Court declined preliminary injunction in case brought by scientists seeking to halt purge of more than 1,600 grantsThe Trump administration can go ahead and purge more than 1,600 research grants issued by National Science Foundation (NSF) worth more than $1bn, after a judge declined to grant a preliminary injunction in a case brought by a coalition of organizations representing thousands of scientists.The NSF is the premier federal investor in basic and cutting-edge science and engineering, which until Trump’s second term enjoyed bipartisan support, with the agency’s independent review process revered globally as the gold standard. Continue reading...

Politics

4 d. ago I Love You, Byeee by Adam Buxton audiobook review – warm and witty whimsy

A chatty, self-deprecating memoir recalls the podcaster’s start in TV and his lifelong friendship with comedian and film-maker Joe CornishThe writer and comic Adam Buxton’s first memoir, Ramble Book, dug into his childhood and his relationship with his father, who featured as the cantankerous BaaadDad in Buxton’s 1990s pop culture series The Adam and Joe Show. I Love You, Byeee is the follow up in which he remembers his late mother, Valerie, and reflects on his TV career which began with him landing a job at Takeover TV, a showcase for new talent on Channel 4, where he brought in his childhood friend Joe Cornish.Fans of The Adam and Joe Show will find reminiscences about the pair’s toy movies, where they recreated films such as Titanic and Trainspotting, and their radio shows on XFM and 6Music. Buxton is candid about the strain of their working relationship and his feelings of insecurity when Cornish went off to direct his first film, Attack the Block, without him. Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago Raise the £450k LISA limit to give London's first time buyers a helping hand

There is a strong case for committing to an annual review of the property price cap to ensure it keeps pace with the ever-changing market.

Economics

5 d. ago Pépé le Moko review – mysterious and passionately despairing French noir with a luminous Jean Gabin

Powerful French film that inspired Casablanca stars Gabin as a holed-up gangster in Algiers lured to his doom by infatuationJulien Duvivier’s mysterious and passionately despairing 1937 movie is rereleased, with its luminous lead performance from Jean Gabin as a charismatic Parisian criminal hiding out in the labyrinthine Casbah of Algiers; he is protected there by the dense polyglot population of Indigenous locals that the French colonial authorities consider it imprudent to provoke. He is effectively given sanctuary, but also imprisoned in the unpoliceable, unknowable quarter that, like Polanski’s Chinatown, is a place that baffles and thwarts the imperial powers-that-be.It was a film remade by Hollywood in 1938 as Algiers, which was the debut of Hedy Lamarr and made a huge star of its French lead Charles Boyer, who is much sleeker and more conventionally photogenic than Gabin (but forever stuck with the misquoted line: “Come with me to the Casbah !” always being purred by nightcl...

Politics

5 d. ago North Lanarkshire Council’s education committee approves new policy on school walking routes

This followed a motion which was passed at a meeting of the full council in October 2024 calling for review and consultation with regard to the policy, which was being updated following cuts to school transport provision.

Events

5 d. ago The Fence review – Claire Denis stumbles with a grim and grating misfire

Toronto film festival: French director has made of one her least effective movies with this dull and clunkily adapted version of 1979 play with a miscast Matt Dillon at its centreAfter trips to space (2018’s High Life) and Nicaragua (2022’s Stars at Noon), the French director Claire Denis has returned to more familiar territory: post-colonial west Africa. Denis, who grew up in several Francophone African countries, has made several movies that inquire into the troubled heart of such places, and now reaches into that well again for her new film, The Fence. In some ways, the film is hallmark Denis, flinty and strange and sometimes inscrutable. But it is also a disappointment, a leaden film whose points Denis has made more convincingly elsewhere.The Fence is based on a 1979 play by the late Bernard Marie-Koltès called Black Battles with Dogs. It tells the story of three white people living in a protected construction zone in a rural part of an unnamed west African nation. A fatal accid...

Events

6 d. ago Deaf review – cinema as empathy machine as a deaf mother struggles with parenting issues

Angela’s apparently idyllic family life begins to fray when she becomes pregnant and the hearing world’s old prejudices are reawakenedFar from the Tree, Andrew Solomon’s brilliant nonfiction book about parenting children different from oneself, offers the useful distinction between vertical and horizontal identities. Vertical identities are inherited – a family name, an ethnicity, or a nationality; horizontal identities are qualities that define us which parents may have nothing to do with, such as the kinship people with autism feel with one another, or being gay or deaf.Deaf, a Spanish-language film directed by Eva Libertad that stars Libertad’s own deaf sister Miriam Garlo, offers a near-perfect fictional illustration of the tension between vertical and horizontal identities within a newly minted nuclear family. Professional potter Angela (Garlo) is deaf, and married to farmer Hector, a hearing man, and the two mostly communicate through sign language. Almost as soon as they find...

Politics

6 d. ago Lesbian Space Princess review – A fizzy animated film with loads of laughs and a lot of heart

This award-winning Australian feature mixes madcap comedy with a who’s who of queer performers to produce a magical, joyful gemGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailIt’s hard being a lesbian space princess. In this buzzy and giddily ambitious new Australian animated film, Saira (Shabana Azeez) – once voted the most boring royal in gay space – is a perpetually single introvert with a passion for closeup magic (she’s “good with her hands”). After her heart is thoroughly broken by Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel), all finger-guns and sapphic swagger, Saira is devastated – but there’s no time to cry, because Kiki has been kidnapped by the Straight White Maliens (played by Mark Bonanno, Broden Kelly, and Zachary Ruane of Aunty Donna) and only Saira’s legendary magical labrys can save her.Except Saira has never been able to summon the labrys which is her birthright. And also, of course, a lesbian space princess can cry while she fights to not just save her ex but also win her back: it’s her qu...

Politics

7 d. ago BBC's Breakfast editor 'is cleared after bullying review' amid feud with Naga Munchetty

BBC Breakfast Editor Richard Frediani is said to have been cleared of bad behaviour by broadcaster bosses amid feud with 'furious' Naga Munchetty.

Politics

7 d. ago Hamnet review – stately Shakespeare drama with emotionally overwhelming finale

Toronto film festival: Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal are knockouts in Chloé Zhao’s poignant adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel with a stirring tearjerker endingMaggie O’Farrell’s lauded 2020 novel Hamnet is a dense and lyrical imagining of the lives of William Shakespeare’s family, full of interior thought and lush descriptions of the physical world. It would seem, upon reading, near impossible to adapt into a film. Or, at least, a film worthy of O’Farrell’s so finely woven sensory spell. Film-maker Chloé Zhao has attempted to do so anyway, and the result is a stately, occasionally lugubrious drama whose closing minutes are among the most poignant in recent memory.Zhao is a good fit for the material. She, too, is a close observer of nature and of the many aching, yearning people passing through it. But she has previously not made anything as traditionally tailored and refined as this. The humbler dimensions of her films The Rider and Nomadland are missed here; Hamnet too o...

Events