3 h. ago Backlash and body horror: The story of Alpha, the most misunderstood film of the year

The acclaimed French director behind icky masterpieces ‘Raw’ and ‘Titane’ shocked festival audiences this summer by returning with an emotional drama about death and illness. But the initial response was silly, argues Sophie Monks Kaufman, who chats with filmmaker Julia Ducournau and star Tahar Rahim

Events

4 h. ago Christmas Karma review – Dickens adaptation has as much Yuletide spirit as a dead rat in the eggnog

Gurinder Chadha’s leaden update of the hardy seasonal chestnut with Kunal Nayyar is joyless and nausea-inducingKeen though I always am to indulge any and every new riff on Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, and keen also to hear from Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha, this cynically Christmassy movie is leaden, unconvincingly acted and about as welcome as a dead rat in the eggnog. It’s the worst Christmas film since last year’s Red One, in which Dwayne Johnson played the head of security for Santa Claus and more or less had us all rooting for anyone who could beat up Father Christmas.In this one, Big Bang Theory star Kunal Nayyar lifelessly and joylessly plays a Scrooge variant called Mr Sood, part of the Ugandan south Asian community expelled by Idi Amin in his childhood, and embittered by early poverty. An early romance soured because of his obsession with money, and he has become a grasping and unpleasant old guy in London (cue stock footage of the London skyline) in the ra...

Events

5 h. ago Shamima Begum 'should be allowed UK return' after six year controversy, review says

A bombshell report into Britain's counter-terrorism policy has concluded that Shamima Begum should be allowed back into the UK after the 26-year-old was stripped of her British citizenship

Politics

6 h. ago Iceland Airwaves review: This music festival will restore your faith in humanity

With mostly emerging acts from over 20 countries, Iceland Airwaves isn’t about the size of the headliners, it’s about the experience. And that’s exactly what makes it one of the best festivals in the world

Culture

6 h. ago I swapped my expensive blender for this one £480 cheaper and it makes soups in seconds

I've been using a blender for almost 10 years for souping, smoothies and purees, but as its performance began to dwindle, I wanted to try out a more affordable model

Economics

6 h. ago DWP issues update on plans to review benefit claimed by 1.4m people

Carer's Allowance is a benefit offered to those who care for someone for at least 35 hours a week

Politics

7 h. ago ‘I swapped my £600 blender for this £110 one and it makes perfect soups in seconds’

Beauty and wellness editor Laura Mulley put this multitasking blender to the test to see how well it whizzed up her favourite winter soups – and it's currently on sale

Economics

7 h. ago ‘Every account is slightly different’: who were the real Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday?

A new book, Brothers of the Gun, explores the unlikely friendship between a complicated lawman and a cursed gamblerThere’s a famous line from a John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Mark Lee Gardner is a leading historian of the old west whose new book, Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone, concerns two major figures in such history. He doesn’t like Ford’s line.“Every historian uses it, they just beat it to death,” Gardner says cheerfully, by video from Bozeman, Montana. Continue reading...

Politics

8 h. ago Roads set to be widened with plan for 200m turbines in Welsh village

Legal advice given to councillors said if they refused they could be exposed to a judicial review with potential costs of £100,000

Politics

8 h. ago Could Shamima Begum return to UK under Labour? Independent review says she should be saved from 'Britain's Guantanamo' camp in Syria

Begum is currently living in a detention camp in Syria after she fled her home in east London at the age of 15 to join Islamic State in 2015.

Politics

11 h. ago Keir Starmer 'desperately clinging to job' as PM addresses 'bloody coup' rumours

Earlier today on BBC Radio 4, Health Secretary Wes Streeting was forced to deny rumours he was part of a cabal plotting to take out the Prime Minister just two weeks before a crunch budget

Events

11 h. ago Air Force vet found dead in USPS mail hauling machine as his fiancée slams post office’s response as ‘inhumane’

Nicholas Acker had proposed to his fianceé just ten days before his remains were found in a mail handling machine at his workplace

Society

12 h. ago American influencer claims Meghan Markle's $64 candle was sold without a WICK in scathing review

Link Lauren, from Texas, recently reviewed new products from As Ever's holiday-inspired collection during a segment on his podcast Spot On with Link Lauren.

Politics

12 h. ago The Running Man review: What in the Schwarzeneggers were they thinking?

Edgar Wright’s reboot of the much-loved 1987 Arnie film is fun but a little thin

Events

13 h. ago Predators review – grimly compelling look at reality TV revenge hunt for child abusers

David Osit’s documentary takes a disturbing look at the televised shaming served up by the hit show To Catch a PredatorIt’s too soon to know for sure, but this may end up being ranked as one of the best nonfiction films of the year. At least let’s hope lots of people get to see this, even if it’s a mistake because they meant to buy a ticket for Predator: Badlands. Instead of an alien hunter with gnarly teeth, this offers a profoundly troubling meditation on our collective thirst for revenge – or at least the kind of bizarre performance art version of revenge as served up by reality TV show To Catch a Predator, a US series that ran from 2004 to 2007 and which featured weekly footage of paedophiles and would-be paedophiles being duped, shamed and arrested.Predators’ director David Osit, at first just an offscreen voice but eventually a fully seen (in every sense) presence, explains that he used to watch To Catch a Predator avidly as a young man. Every episode was roughly the same: a m...

Events

13 h. ago DWP timeline for PIP eligibility changes for new and existing claimants

PIP reforms have been put on hold until a comprehensive review of the benefit has been completed.

Politics

15 h. ago Being Eddie review – reverential Netflix doc paints limited portrait of Eddie Murphy

There’s great access in this look at the comedian and actor’s life, from time with the subject himself to his many peers, but there’s depth missingBeing Eddie, a new Netflix documentary on Eddie Murphy, isn’t his best movie. It isn’t his worst. It’s something to justify signing the 64-year-old to a $70m production deal in hopes that he might finally be moved to return to his standup comedy roots and deliver the long-anticipated follow-up to his seminal 1987 special Raw. With access to the subject and his archival material bought and paid for, Being Eddie is free to focus on other aspects of Murphy’s life, opening with indulgent shots of his gothic mansion and its retractable roof. While the camera gawks at the spoils of Murphy’s 40-plus year career, he remains at pains to tell viewers that his day-to-day routine isn’t much different from theirs: he goes to work, hangs out with his family and falls asleep to MTV’s Ridiculousness. He thinks it’s the funniest show on TV, in fact, and w...

Events

15 h. ago Trapped review – rough and ready abuse story that piles bleakness upon bleakness

This occasionally nuanced tale of a woman’s tough existence has some raw power, but is stymied by crude production and ropey performancesRaye, played by Gina Jones is, as the title of the film suggests, trapped. She is trapped in a bleak job, in a bleak relationship and in a bleak house. The bleakest element of this trifecta of bleakness is the relationship: she is involved with the utterly unlovely Frank (Shane McCormick) who, as one character observes, is the sort of guy who throws his entire life away then lashes out in every direction, blaming everyone but himself for how things have turned out. It’s hard to fathom why she stays with someone so awful – except, well, that’s the way the world works sometimes. Their dynamic is an abusive one, and in modern therapeutic parlance, they share the trauma bond of unstable, abusive childhoods. It’s not that Raye doesn’t know Frank’s no good; it’s that she doesn’t believe she deserves better, or that better exists.While Trapped’s poster ar...

Events

15 h. ago Loren Ipsum by Andrew Gallix review – chronically funny satire of the literary scene

Full of word games, in-jokes and grisly murders, this debut pours gleeful scorn on the pretensions of contemporary literary lifeFreud would have had a lot to say about a novel in which the central premise is writers being murdered. A manifestation of a repressed desire to eliminate rival literary talent? A clear case of the death drive? Either way, there’s some twisted business going on in Andrew Gallix’s chronically funny debut novel, Loren Ipsum.The morbid if intriguing premise quickly becomes secondary to an insouciant satire on the vanity fair of present-day literary culture. Not since Paul Ewen’s How to Be a Public Author has so much gleeful scorn for pretentious authors, critics and scenesters been poured on to the page. Taking its title from the placeholder text used while preparing a book for print, the novel features an eponymous protagonist, a journalist resident in Paris, who is researching a monograph on the reclusive English author Adam Wandle. ...

Politics

15 h. ago Coven at Kiln Theatre review: 'Witchcraft musical needs work'

The songs work in this musical about witch trials in the 1600s but not a great deal else

Culture