5 h. ago ‘Death always feels imminent’: a moving Netflix documentary on prison, music and forgiveness

In Songs from the Hole, a man convicted of murder when he was a teenager finds healing in music during his sentenceIn 2014, a sergeant at a California state prison sent James “JJ’88” Jacobs, who was 25 at the time, to “the hole” – solitary confinement in a 6-by-6 cell. One bunk, one strip of a window. Jacobs had already been incarcerated for a decade by then; at 15, he was given a double life sentence for second-degree murder. Alone in the hole, Jacobs thought, as he always did, about the most devastating month of his life, April 2004: on the 16th, he shot and killed a fellow teenager outside a nightclub in his home town of Long Beach, California. Three days later, another young man shot and killed his beloved older brother Victor. For years, Jacobs was caught in a terrible cycle of grief – for what he had done, for what had been done to him.In the hole, Jacobs would lie on the floor, eyes closed, and imagine his life outside prison. He’d make beats by pounding on his bunk or chest....

Events

6 h. ago ‘I don’t touch my phone. At home, I’d be scrolling’: why young people are flocking to independent cinemas

Young people are drawn in by the promise of a ‘no-distractions’ zone, rereleases of old classics and music documentaries by global artistsA new generation of film lovers is helping to drive an increase in cinema attendance across the UK. As the industry slowly recovers from the decline of audiences during the pandemic – there were 126.5m admissions in 2024 compared with 176.1m in 2019, the rise in younger people returning to cinema may be due to a newfound love for film developed during the lockdown years. Although figures are yet to be restored to pre-pandemic levels, admission rates are continuing to increase, and it is younger audiences in particular who are showing significant enthusiasm, with figures from the Cinema Advertising Association suggesting that under-35s make up 50% of cinemagoers across the board.This is a proportion, which includes all cinemas including mainstream multiplexes, has held steady over the last few years but the effect appears particularly marked on the...

Politics

12 h. ago Materialists review – Dakota Johnson torn between Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans in charming romcom

Johnson plays a matchmaker who has to choose between wealthy new suitor Pascal and broke ex Evans, but the outcome feels a little undramaticSay you are a single woman in New York and you are, in the words of the song, torn between two lovers: two handsome, intelligent, nice guys – one very poor and one very rich. All things being equal, who do you go for? The answer in real life is very different, in fact diametrically opposed, to the answer in a film. Few movie heroines have the candour of Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, who admitted to falling in love with Mr Darcy on seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.But this is the choice, which never quite ascends to the state of a dilemma, in this charming and watchable – yet for me somehow anticlimactic – romantic comedy-drama from South Korean-Canadian film-maker Celine Song: a love-triangle confection to follow the much realer, truer love triangle of Song’s much acclaimed debut Past Lives. When the decision is...

Politics

16 h. ago Oslo Stories Trilogy: Love review – gracefully grownup and breezy relationships drama

Doctor Marianne wonders if her gay colleague Tor’s approach to dating would work for her, in the second film of Dag Johan Haugerud’s absorbing trilogyHere is the second of Norwegian film-maker and novelist Dag Johan Haugerud’s seductive trilogy about affairs of the heart and mind, set in Oslo. (It comes between Sex and Dreams.) It is a thoroughly grownup and absorbing drama, acted with such sympathy and warmth, a ruminative and exploratory movie of ideas, and one that pays its audience the compliment of treating them as intelligent beings. Love is about a familiar question: can straight people learn from or even absorb the open and polygamous approach to sex that appears to come easier to gay people (and perhaps younger people of all sexualities), perhaps specifically gay men? Or is that idea stereotypical and naive?Andrea Braein Hovig plays Marianne, a urology consultant whose job it is to give bad news to a succession of men about their prostate cancer. She is single (though her p...

Events

30 h. ago In Flight episode one on Channel 4 review: this airplane thriller never quite takes off

Channel 4’s new drama doesn’t really make sense, but at least Katherine Kelly is good

Politics

58 h. ago Malqueridas review – blurry phone footage takes us inside Chile’s prisons with incarcerated mothers

Video shot by inmates opens the doors on the often painful realities of having children in the country’s jailsThis documentary about motherhood in Chile’s prison system is edited down from 4,000 photos and nearly 2,000 videos shot entirely on mobile phones by inmates of the country’s largest women’s jail. Phones are banned, so the images are often fuzzy and blurred, clips ending abruptly – sometimes with a hiss of “Hide the phone!” or “The guard is coming!”. At times, it can be hard to make sense of what is happening on screen. The voiceover is spoken by Karina Sánchez, who spent more than six years in prison, and she also voices the experiences of other incarcerated women. It’s not immediately clear she is telling multiple stories, however, so the voiceover becomes mildly disorientating.It’s estimated that 95% of women in Chile’s prisons are mothers, and their children can stay with them in jail until they turn two years old. A woman describes staying awake all night the night befo...

Events

63 h. ago ‘Our director is a madman’: a century on, Gloria Swanson’s disastrous film Queen Kelly is finished

The Hollywood icon played a convent girl falling for a prince in this bizarre film directed by Erich von Stroheim. Decades after it was abandoned, Queen Kelly will now be shown at the Venice film festivalIn the long history of Hollywood excess, there is no tale as torrid as that of Queen Kelly. This lavish silent melodrama starring Gloria Swanson and directed by Erich von Stroheim will screen as the pre-opening event at this year’s Venice film festival, with a new score by composer Eli Denson. The film is an outlandish saga of illicit love in sordid surroundings – and so is the story of its production.Queen Kelly is set in Europe before the first world war and tells the story of Patricia Kelly (Swanson), a convent girl who falls in love with a prince (British actor Walter Byron) who is engaged to a deranged queen. Patricia is sent away to Tanzania, where she is forced into marriage with a vile character called Jan, later earning the nickname Queen Kelly. It’s a far-fetched tale, whi...

Politics

3 d. ago Love? Actually, no: Emma Thompson reveals Donald Trump asked her on a date

Actor said Trump phoned her to make the offer on the day her divorce from Kenneth Branagh was confirmed in 1998Emma Thompson has accepted Academy Awards, Baftas and even a damehood over a glittering career, but there was one offer she had to turn down.The actor says she once got asked out on a date by Donald Trump on the same day her divorced was confirmed. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago ‘I wanted to be Nina Simone’: Jeff Buckley documentary shows female influences

It’s Never Over offers a new look at the short life of the musician and the importance women played in his lifeIn the years since Jeff Buckley’s shocking death at age 30 in 1997, his estate has sanctioned the release of 10 studio compilations, eight live collections, one box set, eight singles and five video recordings. In addition, there have been a rash of documentaries, produced in various countries around the world, as well as a dramatic depiction of him played by actor Penn Badgley in a movie whose title alludes to his musical father, Greetings from Tim Buckley. Collectively, that places him in the realm of other departed stars, including Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis and Eva Cassidy, whose catalogues have been mined for every ounce of gold they can possibly produce.In that context, the title of the new Jeff Buckley documentary, It’s Never Over, could easily read like a threat. Luckily, nothing could be further from the truth. The film winds up giving a largely familiar story a hol...

Culture

3 d. ago From White Lotus to the Fatberg Challenge: five immersive shows we can dream of seeing

Elvis, Grease and Traitors Live are all the rage this summer. But could audiences be tempted to try something a little different?This is the summer of the live immersive experience – Elvis, Grease, Traitors Live – but the biggest shows are expensive and tickets are already selling out. Never fear: there are plenty of other experiences out there for anyone looking to get immersed on a budget, or to try something a bit different. But what? We had a look at a few we could imagine happily queueing for. Book now, while places remain. Continue reading...

Events

4 d. ago Mel Gibson becomes emotional as he recalls ‘joy’ of making Braveheart

The Oscar-winning director and actor posed for selfies with fans and signed posters before attending a musical performance of movie songs in Co Meath.

Politics

4 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

5 d. ago Photos: Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical at Evolution London

Photos: Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical at Evolution London  Playbill

Culture

6 d. ago Ofwat appoints interim chief executive as current boss Black steps down

Chris Walters, senior director for the price review, will take the helm from August 30, Ofwat announced on Thursday.

Politics

6 d. ago Mafia The Old Country review – a beautiful but trivial take on what a crime gangster epic should be

This story of greed, crime, and forbidden love is wonderfully stunning to look at, yet disappoints for how unabashedly old-fashioned it is in almost every other regard.

Events

7 d. ago Grease – the Immersive Movie Musical review: 'a spectacularly ambitious show'

Secret Cinema take on the legendary Grease for an ambitious audience participation show which - if you like this kind of thing - will be the one that you want

Culture

7 d. ago 'Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical' review — takes everything we love about the film and makes it even more electrifyin'

'Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical' review — takes everything we love about the film and makes it even more electrifyin'  London Theatre tickets

Culture

9 d. ago Weatherman umbrella review: The brolly built to take the elements in its stride

You can't stand under my umbrella, but here's why you should get one of your own

Politics

1 week ago Authority: Essays on Being Right by Andrea Long Chu review – scorching hot takes

The Pulitzer-winning critic has some choice words for the likes of Zadie Smith, Hanya Yanagihara and Bret Easton EllisAndrea Long Chu stands accused of not playing by the rules, of appraising works of fiction as if they were essays or confessions rather than aesthetic objects. “It is true that I tend to treat a novel like an argument”, she writes in the introduction to Authority, a collection of essays and reviews published between 2018 and 2023 in outlets such as N+1, Bookforum and New York Magazine. Long Chu – who won a Pulitzer prize for criticism in 2023 – believes “all novels refract the veiled subjectivity of their authors”, and to pretend otherwise is to indulge a “pernicious form of commodity fetishism”. In her reviews, books betray their authors, invariably revealing some kernel of inadequacy – be it immaturity, myopia or just terminal dullness.This approach borders on the psychoanalytical, and makes for fun reading. Long Chu diagnoses a case of “Munchausen by proxy” i...

Culture

3 w. ago 'Best chemistry ever' in 'charming' film with 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating

Before Sunrise, starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, is the first film in the Before trilogy and has become synonymous with love and romance over the years

Politics