8 h. ago MOVIE REVIEW: Were we hooked by horror 'requel' 'I Know What You Did Last Summer?'

Lazy writing and too many callbacks hinder shock reveals and some gnarly kills.

Events

3 d. ago The Wrong Paris review – Netflix Bachelor romcom makes few right choices

Miranda Cosgrove plays a woman involved in some reality show drama in another of the streamer’s many low-grade background watchesOne could argue that The Bachelor, the ABC reality juggernaut that has reified Christian-lite dating norms for 27 seasons, should be considered scripted content. The connections can be genuine, and the feelings often real, but the situations are contrived and manipulated, a pioneering brand of deliberately saccharine, hokey and ridiculous in the name of love and for the sake of entertainment. Watching The Bachelor and its spinoffs, as I occasionally have over its two-plus-decade run, is to be baffled, frustrated, annoyed and ultimately hooked. The show, with its in-group rituals and shocking sincerity, casts a strange spell over its contestants and its viewers; if you stick through one episode, you’re liable to start caring about what happens.No such spell exists for The Wrong Paris, Netflix’s latest attempt to build an in-house Hallmark Channel, in which ...

Politics

5 d. ago The Fence review – Claire Denis stumbles with a grim and grating misfire

Toronto film festival: French director has made of one her least effective movies with this dull and clunkily adapted version of 1979 play with a miscast Matt Dillon at its centreAfter trips to space (2018’s High Life) and Nicaragua (2022’s Stars at Noon), the French director Claire Denis has returned to more familiar territory: post-colonial west Africa. Denis, who grew up in several Francophone African countries, has made several movies that inquire into the troubled heart of such places, and now reaches into that well again for her new film, The Fence. In some ways, the film is hallmark Denis, flinty and strange and sometimes inscrutable. But it is also a disappointment, a leaden film whose points Denis has made more convincingly elsewhere.The Fence is based on a 1979 play by the late Bernard Marie-Koltès called Black Battles with Dogs. It tells the story of three white people living in a protected construction zone in a rural part of an unnamed west African nation. A fatal accid...

Events

5 d. ago Went Up the Hill review – icy ghost story feels a little empty

Dacre Montgomery and Vicky Krieps star as a pair of strangers tethered by a late mutual relative who begins to inhabit their bodies. It’s deadly serious – too seriousWent Up the Hill is one of those stiff, formally austere films that critics feel obliged to describe as “meditative” or “cerebral”. It’s a deeply pensive ghost story with a difference, following Jack (Dacre Montgomery), a man who learns about his mother, Elizabeth – who abandoned him as a child – via unconventional means. She speaks to him through her widowed wife, Jill (Vicky Krieps), after her death by suicide. And vice versa, she can also enter Jack and speak to Jill, creating a strange dynamic with three characters in two bodies.In a more conventional horror production, these “from the grave” conversations might be staged with wild eyes, demonic voices, spinning heads and splattering fluids. But this is a steely, deadly serious work, directed by Samuel Van Grinsven with a hand so steady it could thread a needle in a...

Politics

5 d. ago The Long Walk review – Stephen King death game dystopia is the grimmest mainstream movie for some time

Fifty young men compete in an endurance event, during which they are shot in the head at point-blank range if they slow down, in this horrific buddy story adaptationIf you like your dystopian scenarios lean and extremely mean, then look no further than this Stephen King adaptation, which is surely one of the grimmest mainstream movies we’ve had for some time. The blunt premise is custom built for death and suffering: 50 young American men are selected by lottery for an annual marathon march. If any walker slows to less than three miles per hour, or strays off the road, they are removed from the competition – by being shot in the head at point-blank range. The final survivor wins whatever they want, they’re promised.Why these men would volunteer for a competition with such unfavourable odds we’re left to wonder, as the broader authoritarian society in which the story is set – which looks a lot like 1960s America – is barely seen or explained. It’s clear who we’re rooting for though: ...

Sport

6 d. ago Couture review – Angelina Jolie is the wrong fit for inert fashion drama

Toronto film festival: the Oscar winner is adrift in Alice Winocour’s uninvolving film about three thinly written women involved in a Paris fashion week showThe otherworldly beauty and consuming, tattoo-strewn look of Angelina Jolie hasn’t always allowed for a great deal of versatility as an actor, a difficult face to seamlessly slot into most stories. The star hasn’t seemed to be all that interested in acting for a while anyway (since 2012, she has physically appeared on screen just seven times) and has preferred to spend time behind the camera and focusing on both her family and her philanthropic pursuits. Her films as a director have been of both genuinely noble intention and minimal cinematic value (her last effort, Without Blood, premiered at last year’s Toronto film festival but still doesn’t have US distribution) and as she enters her 50s, it seems like she’s rediscovered her passion for acting again.The catastrophic box office for her ill-advised entry into the Marvel univer...

Events

6 d. ago The Christophers review – Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel spar in smart Soderbergh original

Toronto film festival: the actors play off each other beautifully in an intimate London-set comedy drama about art, commerce and the mess in-betweenIt seems like Steven Soderbergh might have developed a late case of anglophilia, the retirement-teasing director situating himself in London for three films within the last two years. The first was a needless, throwaway Magic Mike sequel, but then this spring he gave us the delicious spy caper Black Bag, a juicy riff on both John le Carré and Agatha Christie that dared to imagine a monogamous and supportive marriage as the epitome of sexiness. Unlike Woody Allen, who cursed us with a string of London-set clunkers after Match Point (Cassandra’s Dream, a film that cast Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor as cockney brothers, easily the most heinous), Soderbergh seems to be sticking around for reasons other than a nice holiday, his second offering of 2025 also feeling notable. It’s a quieter project than his last, a delicate two-hander closer t...

Politics

7 d. ago Ballad of a Small Player review – Colin Farrell wins us over in flashy, slight gambler tale

Toronto film festival: Conclave director Edward Berger makes a less cohesive follow-up with an over-stylised adaptation of Lawrence Osborne’s novel sold by a killer central performanceIt was easy to understand why Edward Berger’s name was being bandied around in relation to the reinvention of 007, the director having shown himself to be more than capable of both extravagantly staged action (his Oscar-winning breakout All Quiet on the Western Front) and knife-edge intrigue (his Oscar-winning follow-up Conclave). He dismissed speculation at the time (with some mild annoyance) and the job has since landed at the feet of Denis Villeneuve – but his latest, China-set gambling drama Ballad of a Small Player, adds flashy bombast to his résumé and helps to explain why he even though he might have passed on Bond (and recently Ocean’s too), he’s in development on a Bourne.Berger is a canny commercial director, confidently switching between genre, language and location, the kind of able film-ma...

Sport

7 d. 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...

Events

7 d. 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...

Events

9 d. 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

9 d. ago Obsession review – nasty horror sees a wish for true love go horribly wrong

Toronto film festival: Writer-director Curry Barker follows up $800 YouTube hit Milk & Serial with a frighteningly effective, and head-smashingly gory, cautionary taleThis year’s Sundance saw the real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie play with the grotesque reality of being literally stuck to one another in the body horror Together, a wincingly effective lark that turned codependency into a curse. It didn’t really find its audience upon too-wide release this summer, a campaign that couldn’t succinctly explain the plot or convey a tone that went from horror to comedy and back again.At Toronto, YouTuber turned film-maker Curry Barker’s similarly themed Obsession should be an easier sell when it gets swiftly bought and packaged (it’s entering the festival as a sure-to-be-fought-over sales title). It’s a cleaner, more concise pitch – love spell gone wrong – and its reaction-securing moments of horrible violence even more alarming, a Midnight Madness winner that will probably ...

Events

1 week ago MOVIE REVIEW: We decide if we should keep our distance from body horror 'Together'

Icky effects mix with cutting barbs for an uncomfortable exploration of a troubled relationship.

Events

1 week ago A House of Dynamite review: The most exciting movie at Venice Film Festival could lead to Kathryn Bigelow's second Best Director Oscar, writes BRIAN VINER

How might the United States respond in the event of a nuclear attack, with less than 20 minutes before an incoming missile lands on Chicago? 

Culture

1 week ago Football’s Financial Shame: The Story of the V11 review – so moving you’ll pity these poor footballers

This gripping documentary follows early Premier League footballers who lost it all following investment advice that went wrong. It perfectly captures the melancholy of being an ex-proSympathy for the financial plight of former Premier League footballers, you say? No, wait, hear us out. You might be surprised by this previously untold story. Richard Milway’s documentary, Football’s Financial Shame: The Story of the V11, is a gripping, moving and human enough tale to inspire more than a little fellow feeling.The V11 may sound like a fictional spy ring from a shonky airport novel but they’re actually a group of retired footballers whose careers spanned the 90s and early 00s. This era-specificity is crucial. They are members of the Premier League’s in-between generation. They’re mid-rankers: household names but it depends on the household. Danny Murphy. Rod Wallace. Brian Deane. Tommy Johnson. Michael Thomas. Craig Short. If you know, you know. And they played at a time when wages were ...

Politics

1 week ago A House of Dynamite, Venice review – The most entertaining movie about mass destruction since Dr Strangelove

Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris and Tracy Letts are among the many recognisable names adding gravitas to this punchy Netflix thriller

Politics

2 w. ago MOVIE REVIEW: We see if it's worth getting to know thriller 'The Stranger in My Home'

Camp, cheap, dated thriller hampered by strange acting and directing choices.

Politics

2 w. ago Jay Kelly, Venice review – George Clooney is raw and revealing as an ageing movie star

A star-studded cast – including Adam Sandler, Laura Dern and Greta Gerwig – surround Clooney’s egotistical A-lister in Noah Baumbach’s new Netflix film

Politics

3 w. ago MOVIE REVIEW: We cheat death one again with Netflix sequel 'The Old Guard 2'

Mediocre plot and production issues hamper likeable leading crew.

Events

3 w. ago Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing review – candy

A garbled story of metaverse musicians based on a mobile game leaves its audience little to grasp hold ofEven by the standards of franchise anime that caters to the faithful and drops newcomers in blind, this is particularly incomprehensible. Based on the mobile game Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!, it features a barely characterised blur of wannabe musicians and actors who ascribe Manhattan Project importance to writing syrupy J-pop. As they interact with virtual counterparts in metaverses called “Sekai” created from users’ emotions, the film is like The Matrix if Neo had huffed a nitrous oxide canister before having every edition of Pop Idol downloaded into his cranium.One of the virtual pop stars, a rogue version of Hatsune Miku (voiced by Saki Fuijta), keeps invading high-school kids’ mobile phones and flatscreens, begging for help. Apparently issuing from a Sekai created by the emo angst of everyone about to give up on their creative ambitions, she is hoping to connect with these...

Politics