14 h. 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...

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14 h. ago Hamnet review – Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal excel in stately Shakespeare drama with overwhelming finale

Toronto film festival: The two stars 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 often gives off th...

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32 h. ago Jade: That’s Showbiz Baby! review – former Little Mix star thrives in chaos on an idiosyncratic debut

(Sony)Jade Thirlwall offers a wild ride through electroclash, Eurovision drama and emotive synth-pop – albeit one she can’t quite maintain for a whole albumLast month, the indefatigable Vice magazine published a piece on the “summer of British chaos”, documenting a scene of deranged social media provocateurs existing at the crispiest fringes of our nation’s cooked identity. Writer Clive Martin defined these graven images of the algorithm as being regionally specific, lurid, rowdy, funny and hedonistic. As a former member of Little Mix, a girl band put together via public vote on The X Factor, Jade Thirlwall might not seem like the likeliest bedfellow of this unhinged movement. But the South Shields pop star’s debut solo single, last year’s Angel of My Dreams, dodged focus-grouped smoothness to present a sublimely whacked-out, thoroughly British pop vision that felt like spinning through someone else’s for you page and realising they exist in a markedly different universe from your o...

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3 d. ago Steve review – Cillian Murphy is outstanding in ferocious reform school drama

Toronto film festival: adapted by Max Porter from his novella Shy and co-starring Little Simz, Emily Watson and Tracey Ullman this brutal but ultimately hopeful story is fiercely affectingProducer-star Cillian Murphy and director Tim Mielants last collaborated on a superlative adaptation of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, and their new project together could hardly be more different: a drama suffused with gonzo energy and the death-metal chaos of emotional pain, cut with slashes of bizarre black humour. Max Porter has adapted his own 2023 novella Shy for the screen and Murphy himself gives one of his most uninhibited and demonstrative performances.Murphy is Steve, a stressed, troubled but passionately committed headteacher with a secret alcohol and substance abuse problem, in charge of a residential reform school for delinquent teenage boys some time in the mid-90s. With his staff – deputy (Tracey Ullman), therapist-counsellor (Emily Watson) and a new teacher (Little Simz) ...

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9 d. ago 'Perfect' murder mystery to watch after Netflix's Thursday Murder Club let down

Thursday Murder Club has finally landed on Netflix but it has not been met with overwhelming acclaim

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1 week ago When does Love Is Blind UK's reunion show come out after explosive finale

Love Is Blind UK aired the final weddings this week, with fans rushing to social media to share their emotions over the drama and sweet speeches

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2 w. ago Sheridan Smith in tears as mum she plays in ITV drama makes emotional on

Sheridan Smith appeared on This Morning alongside real life mum she plays in her new ITV drama I Fought The Law

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3 w. ago Sheridan Smith in floods of tears while filming new ITV drama after painful family death

Sheridan Smith has been left with raw emotions after filming her new ITV drama I Fought The Law following the death of her brother

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