11 h. ago Concessions review – moviegoer melancholy for Michael Madsen’s final film

Madsen cameos as a stuntman visiting a smalltown movie theatre on its last day before closing down in this amiable, bittersweet story for cinephilesThe late Michael Madsen makes his final, posthumous appearance as a boozy stuntman called Rex Fuel in this laidback ensemble film from feature first-timer Mas Bouzidi, a piece of moviegoing melancholy developed from the director’s short of the same title. Bouzidi gives us the time-honoured scenario of a smalltown movie theatre’s last day before closing down, resonantly named the Royal Alamo and showing for its last stand a couple of films on 35mm. The place has been stricken, of course, by the prevalence of digital streaming, although the wistful mood doesn’t seem too different from Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show from 1971, when Netflix wasn’t a problem.The Royal Alamo is now a bittersweet place of memories whose spirit is perhaps epitomised by the two guys listlessly working at the concessions stand, and bickering amusingly like Ke...

Culture

41 h. ago Yorùbá Boy Running by Biyi Bándélé audiobook review – from enslaved teenager to celebrated preacher

The novelist’s final work tells a remarkable tale of resilience, based on the life of Samuel Àjàyí Crowther, who was kidnapped by slavers but won his freedomSet in 19th-century Òsogùn in what is now Nigeria, Yorùbá Boy Running opens with 13-year-old Àjàyí reporting a premonition to his mother about dark days ahead. A week later, the town is surrounded by Malian slave raiders and Àjàyí is kidnapped along with his mother, sister, best friend and neighbours. He is taken to Lagos and sold to Portuguese slavers preparing to ship their human cargo to the Americas. But they are intercepted by the British navy, which releases Àjàyí in Sierra Leone, where he is recruited by missionaries. From there, he is put on a path that leads to him to study at Oxford and become a celebrated preacher, linguist and abolitionist who meets Queen Victoria.A remarkable tale of barbarism and resilience, Yorùbá Boy Running is the final work by the Nigerian novelist and film-maker Biyi Bándélé, who died in 2022 ...

Culture

65 h. ago ‘I knew my job was to fulfil a man’s fantasy’: Elizabeth McGovern on Downton, early fame and co

As the Downton Abbey finale hits the big screen, the actor looks back on the pitfalls of scoring huge success so young – and the liberation she later found singing in a band and writing a play about Ava GardnerFor the maudlin among us, the final Downton Abbey film should perhaps come with a warning. Everything in it is tinged with wistfulness – a goodbye to cherished characters and a farewell to a stately home that was a sturdy presence in a transient world. When the ITV series started in 2010, wasn’t life better? Did Elizabeth McGovern feel this too, the sense of time passing? After all, her character, Cora, is now ageing out of custodianship of Downton along with her husband, Lord Grantham, in favour of a younger generation and a changing era as the 1930s dawn.“No!” says McGovern, snapping me out of my melancholy. “I feel very excited that I’m going into a gratifying new phase in my career.” As well as reviving Cora, there is the play she has written, Ava: The Secret Conversations...

Politics

6 d. ago Mektoub My Love: Canto Due review – gobsmackingly weird series drops another surreal sex shocker

Locarno film festivalBlue Is the Warmest Colour director Abdellatif Kechiche’s latest erotic melodrama delivers another heady dose of flirting, farce and bafflementSo here it is – the third but, incredibly, perhaps not the final episode in the most bizarre arthouse franchise in film history, and which, for its sheer melodramatic ker-aziness it commands attention. So, as it were, previously on Mektoub My Love The first film in the series from Tunisian-French director Abdellatif Kechiche, who had won the Cannes Palme d’Or for Blue Is the Warmest Colour (for which he was famously required to share the award with his two acting leads Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux), arrived in 2017. This first MML (called Mektoub My Love: Canto Uno) turned out to be an epic erotic summer romance set in the early 90s about a guy called Amin (Shaïn Boumedine) who comes back from Paris to his hometown of Sète, having abandoned his medical studies to follow his dream of being a screenwriter, and finds ...

Events

4 w. ago Ozzy Osbourne's final Black Sabbath gig set to be turned into film

Ozzy Osbourne played his last ever gig with Black Sabbath last summer - and now the iconic performance will be turned into a film with behind-the-scenes footage

Politics

4 w. ago 'Downton Abbey cast to reunite for emotional "farewell" documentary after final film

The Downton Abbey cast are reportedly set to reunite for an emotional 'farewell' documentary following the release of the third and final movie - but one major change is set to leave fans furious. 

Culture