5 h. ago From Ripley to Ragnarok: Cate Blanchett’s 20 best film performances – ranked!

Ahead of her starring role in Steven Soderbergh’s thriller Black Bag, and as her London stage run in The Seagull continues, we look at the screen queen’s most commanding rolesCate Blanchett played a pretty generic “wife” role in this interesting, somewhat forgotten US comedy about air traffic controllers from director Mike Newell, whose title is their slang for guiding planes. It was saddled with a terrible ending by its screenwriters, Glen and Les Charles (creators of TV’s Cheers), and blitzed at the box office by The Matrix. Its genesis is amusingly described by its producer, Art Linson, in his memoir What Just Happened? Blanchett plays the wife of hotshot young air traffic controller John Cusack, who has an affair with Angelina Jolie – who is married to Cusack’s workplace rival, Billy Bob Thornton. Continue reading...

Politics

6 h. ago Steven Soderbergh’s new thriller Black Bag about married spies is brilliant, sexy, and as tight as a drum

Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett’s espionage aces share a marital bed – but not state secrets – in this immensely pleasurable new genre outing

Politics

6 h. ago Black Bag review – Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett intrigue in marital espionage

Steven Soderbergh’s spy comedy sends two married agents after a mole, who might turn out to be one of themThe months and years drag on with no new James Bond, no clear indication of how he is to be repurposed as IP. Into this vacuum has rushed a new generation of spy stories on streaming television: action-intelligence office procedurals such as Black Doves, The Day of the Jackal, Slow Horses and indeed The Agency, starring Michael Fassbender, remade from the French show Le Bureau Des Légendes. These are secret agent dramas that give us the violence and the tech, juxtaposing suspected treason and infidelity in the traditional way, but with a new kind of workaday realist sexiness, and more elaborately about showing up for work: much emphasis on ID badges of various security-clearance levels that beep on card readers and can be worn round your neck on lanyards.Steven Soderbergh’s downbeat, affectless tongue-in-cheek spy comedy (“caper” isn’t quite right) is in this new mode, though ta...

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3 d. ago Demi Moore fans declare 'robbery' as Mikey Madison wins Best Actress Oscar

Moore was nominated for her performance in body-horror film The Substance

Events

4 d. ago The Last Showgirl review – Pamela Anderson gives performance of a lifetime in rhinestone

The former Baywatch star’s turn as a veteran Vegas dancer single-handedly rewrites her career in Gia Coppola’s bruising and beautiful film A life spent in the service of dreams and fantasy collides with unforgiving reality: Pamela Anderson’s veteran Vegas showgirl Shelly is forced to face a future that no longer has need of her 1,000-watt smile and glitter-smeared decolletage. The third feature from Palo Alto-director Gia Coppola (granddaughter of Francis, niece of Sofia), The Last Showgirl is a wisp of a thing, clocking in at under 90 minutes and shot in just 18 days. The film’s structure, more a series of vignettes than a linear narrative, feels like the fleeting reflections of a life captured in the facets of a mirror ball. It’s initially tempting to dismiss the picture, like its central character with her breathy, little-girl voice, as superficial. But there’s a bruising cumulative power to this melancholy little paean to an ending era. And Anderson, whose character is left ques...

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7 d. ago Gene Hackman's Greatest Films: what were his 10 best performances?

Gene Hackman’s best on-screen work is amongst the best work by any actor, ever

Politics

7 d. ago The 10 best new London theatre shows to see in March, from Cate Blanchett to My Neighbour Totoro

The 10 best new London theatre shows to see in March, from Cate Blanchett to My Neighbour Totoro  Time Out London

Culture

7 d. ago Netflix adds 'stunning' film from last year with 'Oscar winning performance' from Saoirse Ronan

It has been described as an "emotional journey of self-discovery"

Politics

7 d. ago Cypress Hill to Release London Symphony Orchestra Performance as Film and Live Album

Cypress Hill to Release London Symphony Orchestra Performance as Film and Live Album  Billboard

Culture

9 d. ago Netflix streaming horror film dubbed 'modern Rear Window' with scream queen's 'best performance'

A chilling horror film has been branded a 'modern-day Rear Window' with a 'feminist twist' as fans encourage others to watch the gem on Netflix

Politics

1 week ago ‘We are very worried’: Conclave cast express concern for Pope Francis in health crisis

Italian actors Isabella Rossellini and Sergio Castellitto lead well-wishers at the Sag awards hoping the ailing pontiff makes a quick recoveryThe cast of papal election drama Conclave have expressed their concerns for Pope Francis, as reports continue of his critical condition.Actors Isabella Rossellini and Sergio Castellitto, who respectively play papal housekeeper Sister Agnes and conservative cleric Cardinal Tedesco in Conclave, were speaking as the film was given the award for outstanding performance by a cast in a motion picture by the Screen Actors Guild (Sag), an outcome that would appear to significantly boost its chances in the Oscar race. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago 2025 SAG Awards: Demi Moore, 62, shows off lithe frame in skintight black dress as she is up for The Substance

She was nominated that evening for her lead performance in The Substance, a body horror film about an aging actress who takes drastic measures in pursuit of youth.

Events

1 week ago Roksanda brings sculptural silhouettes to London Fashion Week

The Princess of Wales’ beloved designer played with space and shapes at London Fashion Week.

Culture

2 w. ago I’m Still Here review – Fernanda Torres’s stoic maternal mask never slips

Emotions hide beneath the surface and horrors lurk behind unseen doors in Walter Salles’s Oscar-nominated tale of the Brazilian disappearedThe subtlety and dignity of Fernanda Torres’s Oscar-nominated performance in Walter Salles’s new film have been rightly praised. This is a kind of mother-courage true story: the case of Eunice Paiva, a Brazilian woman who had to keep her family together and shield her five children from despair when her activist husband Rubens was brutally “disappeared” in 1971 by the military dictatorship. They refused even to admit he had been arrested, or later officially admit his death, in a state-sanctioned act of cruelty which was only finally acknowledged in the mid-90s after decades of campaigning, when the government issued a formal death certificate.I’m Still Here is a drama which intelligently seeks to intuit the courageously maintained calm that Eunice imposes on herself and the children when the thuggish secret police arrive. Torres is effectively t...

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