56 m. ago EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert review – Baz Luhrmann’s electric yet avoidant documentary

Toronto film festival: the bombastic director’s second film about the music legend shows the singer at his most mesmerizing but the picture remains incompleteBaz Luhrmann now has two Elvis movies under his bedazzled belt. The first is his epic biopic starring Austin Butler and now he has unleashed another called EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, remixing archival material with never-before-seen footage from the singer’s residency in Las Vegas. What’s remarkable about them both, apart from the director’s obvious affinity for his subject’s showmanship, is his refusal across so many hours of jiggling and swivelling to meaningfully hold Elvis to account.Luhrmann’s Oscar-nominated 2022 film acknowledged Elvis’s cultural appropriation: how his phenomenal success owed so much to the R&B, gospel and rock he grew up around and the racist institutions that put him on a pedestal while holding down the Black artists that birthed and gave that music its soul. The movie also painted Elvis as a ...

Culture

2 h. ago Charli XCX puts on a leggy display in a racy green negligee dress while Anya Taylor

The British hitmaker, 33, put on a leggy display in a racy green satin negligee dress, while Anya, 29, put on a striking display in a voluminous baby blue dress.

Politics

3 h. ago Good Fortune review – Aziz Ansari’s big comeback comedy struggles to find big laughs

Toronto film festival: The multi-hyphenate’s directorial debut has noble intentions in its timely class commentary but his brand of humour makes for an awkward fitThe absence of big-screen comedies, once an almost weekly occurrence, has become such a widely complained-about issue that the rare novelty of one actually being made has turned into a marketing tool. Last month’s remake of The Naked Gun employed a campaign that directly addressed this problem, with an ad that played like a PSA about such a lack and why supporting one was of societal importance (the plea only mildly worked, with the film finishing with decent, but not quite decent enough, box office). At the Toronto premiere of Aziz Ansari’s Good Fortune, festival chief Cameron Bailey made reference to the now unusual sensation of laughing with an audience, and the actor-writer-director himself has been impressing upon people his desire to make a theatrical comedy in the billion-dollar wake of Barbie. He believes in its im...

Politics

6 h. ago California Schemin’ review – James McAvoy’s directorial debut is an unlikely rap tale

Toronto film festival: the actor makes for a hit-and-miss first time film-maker with the undeniably involving true story of Scottish rappers who pretended to be AmericanAt the start of the century, a struggling Scottish rap duo decided to overhaul their image in extreme fashion: they began posing as two Americans from California, and managed to secure themselves a record deal with a label in London. Eventually the hoax was revealed, and one of them released a memoir about the charade. That wild story has now been adapted into a film, California Schemin’, which marks the alternately confident and unsteady directorial debut of actor James McAvoy.McAvoy is a son of Scotland himself, and perhaps feels some kinship with rappers Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, who found the cultural tastemakers of the south to be indifferent or even hostile to Scottish artists. Though McAvoy has fared just fine as an actor, Bain and Boyd – who would come to be known as Silibil N’ Brains – had a much tougher go...

Politics

6 h. ago Saint Carlo, film festivals and a colourful giant: photos of the weekend

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Culture

7 h. ago Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery review – whodunnit threequel is murderously good fun

Toronto film festival: after Glass Onion underwhelmed, Rian Johnson’s self-aware, star-packed Benoit Blanc series makes a barnstorming return to formIf Glass Onion wasn’t quite the deserving follow-up to Knives Out that many of us had hoped it would be (it was more focused on the bigger rather than better), it was at the very least a deserved victory lap. Writer-director Rian Johnson’s 2019 whodunnit brought us back to the starry, slippery fun of the 70s and 80s, when films like this would be a dime a dozen and it was a surprise hit, making almost eight times its budget at the global box office. While Kenneth Branagh had seen commercial success already with his Poirot revival two years prior, his retreads felt too musty, and the actor-director too miscast, for the genre to truly feel like it was entering an exciting new period.Johnson’s threequel, Wake Up Dead Man, is the second as part of his Netflix deal (one that cost an estimated $450m) and arrives as the whodunnit genre has fou...

Events

8 h. ago The Voice of Hind Rajab should have won Venice’s top prize. But the result wasn’t a cop

Many felt Kaouther Ben Hania’s Gaza docufiction was robbed when Jim Jarmusch’s latest took the top prize. Yet accusations of moral cowardice on the part of the jury are naive and unfairThere are standing ovations and there are jury decisions.Jim Jarmusch’s droll, quirky, very charming film Father Mother Sister Brother got a mere six minutes for its standing ovation at Venice – though one day we’re going to have to introduce some Olympic-style standardisation to these timings. But it got the top prize, the Golden Lion, from Alexander Payne’s jury. Continue reading...

Politics

8 h. ago The Voice of Hind Rajab was better than the film which won Venice. But that result wasn’t a cop

Many felt Kaouther Ben Hania’s Gaza docufiction was robbed when Jim Jarmusch’s latest took the top prize. Yet accusations of moral cowardice on the part of the jury are naive and unfairThere are standing ovations and there are jury decisions.Jim Jarmusch’s droll, quirky, very charming film Father Mother Sister Brother got a mere six minutes for its standing ovation at Venice – though one day we’re going to have to introduce some Olympic-style standardisation to these timings. But it got the top prize, the Golden Lion, from Alexander Payne’s jury. Continue reading...

Politics

15 h. ago The 2025 Venice Film Festival is over. Here's everything you need to know

The 82nd Venice Film Festival has wrapped up, but the buzz continues

Culture

18 h. ago Another 'Knives Out' makes another raucous premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival

For the third time, the knives were out at the Toronto International Film Festival

Politics

19 h. ago Winter of the Crow review – Lesley Manville commands cold war thriller

Toronto film festival: the Oscar nominee makes for a compelling heroine in a solid and intermittently suspenseful tale of a professor stuck in a nightmareThe specific brilliance of Lesley Manville had been on display for those who knew where to look long before her first Oscar nomination. She’d been part of the enviable Mike Leigh troupe (her first nomination should have been for Another Year) and a permanent small-screen fixture, even if the size of her roles hadn’t correlated to the size of her talent. But after Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s singular magnum opus, Manville has enjoyed a spectacular boom, a long-deserved reward for her and an even bigger one for those of us watching.The role came as she was entering her 60s, a period that can often leave female actors with grimly limited options, but she’s bucked the trend, not just through the sheer amount of work she’s found but also the unusual variety. She’s avoided the post-Book Club subgenre of mostly patronising come...

Events

22 h. ago Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, starring Cate Blanchett, surprise winner of Venice Golden Lion

The Voice of Hind Rajab, a harrowing account of a Palestinian child’s death in Gaza, won the runner-up Silver LionUS indie director Jim Jarmusch unexpectedly won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice film festival on Saturday with Father Mother Sister Brother, a three-part meditation on the uneasy tie between parents and their adult children.Although his gentle comedy received largely positive reviews, it had not been a favourite for the top prize, with many critics instead tipping the Voice of Hind Rajab, a harrowing true-life account of the killing of a five-year-old Palestinian girl during the Gaza war. In the end, the film directed by Tunisia’s Kaouther Ben Hania took the runner-up Silver Lion. Continue reading...

Politics

23 h. ago Venice Film Festival, by the numbers: From standing ovations to Campari spritzes

From a record-breaking standing ovation to the ever-present Campari spritzes to even on-screen subtitles, the 2025 Venice Film Festival was a bounty of interesting numbers

Culture

23 h. ago Photos from Venice Film Festival awards ceremony where Jim Jarmusch wins top honor

The 2025 Venice Film Festival wrapped up with Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother” taking the top prize, edging out higher-profile contenders. The film, starring Adam Driver, Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett, is a quietly humorous look at family relationships.

Culture

25 h. ago Kim Novak, 92, displays her incredibly smooth complexion at the Deauville American Film Festival in France as she accepts the Icon Award

The screen star, 92, was in attendance at the star-studded ceremony to accept the Icon Award in recognition of her remarkable career.

Events

26 h. ago Alessandra Ambrosio, 44, sizzles in a sweeping embellished gown as she attends the Venice Film Festival closing ceremony

The model, 44, stunned in a sweeping gold gown embellished with silver detailing.

Culture

28 h. ago The Lost Bus review – Paul Greengrass wildfire movie is as stressful as you’d expect

Toronto film festival: the director retells the worst wildfire in California’s history with expected technical prowess but he’s hampered by a soapy scriptEven before the wildfire has started to rage in fact-based docudrama The Lost Bus, Paul Greengrass has us on edge. We’re inside a schoolbus for the morning drop-off and we’re reminded of the dangers already faced on the day-to-day, young children without seatbelts being driven around the precarious rolling roads of the California hills, the director cranking up every little sound of a vehicle we’re told is in delayed need of a maintenance check. The world is dangerous enough.That nervy tension soon gets considerably ramped up and then rarely lets up for the next two-plus hours, an exhausting, assaultive experience aiming to both take us back to the horrors of 2018’s historically destructive Camp fire and to show us what Californians have been facing ever since and will bleakly continue to in the future. It’s ruthlessly efficient in...

Events

29 h. ago Photo Highlights from the Toronto International Film Festival

The Toronto International Film Festival kicked off on Thursday, Sept. 4.

Culture

30 h. ago Emma Watson is the queen of class in Gucci mini dress as she steps out for the last day of Venice Film Festival

The Harry Potter legend, 35, made a stylish appearance in the Italian city as she put on a very leggy display in the beige sleeveless number, featuring chic leather pockets.

Culture

33 h. ago Pamela Anderson addresses Liam Neeson romance and slams PR stunt claims in speech

Pamela Anderson addresses Liam Neeson romance speculation during an awards speech at a major film festival, hinting at where she stands on recent headlines about her personal life

Politics