4 h. ago The Mastermind review – Josh O’Connor is world’s worst art thief in Kelly Reichardt’s unlikely heist movie

Cannes film festival Reichardt’s quietist, observational style is unexpectedly successful at creating a super-naturalistic depiction of an art gallery robberyIt needs hardly be said that the title is ironic. The abject non-hero of Kelly Reichardt’s engrossingly downbeat heist movie, set in 1970s Massachusetts, is weak, vain and utterly clueless. By the end, he’s a weirdly Updikean figure, though without the self-awareness: going on the run with no money and without a change of clothes, to escape from the grotesque mess he has made for himself and his family.This is James, played with hangdog near-charm by Josh O’Connor; he is an art school dropout and would-be architectural designer with two young sons, married to Terri (a minor complaint is that the excellent Alana Haim is not given enough to do). James depends on the social standing of his father Bill, a judge, formidably played by Bill Camp, and is borrowing large sums of money from his patrician mother Sarah (Hope Davis), ostens...

Politics

7 h. ago After 16 years, Joe Rogan reveals the worst guest he’s ever had on his podcast

Rogan has interviewed over 1,800 guests on his show, but slated the worst guest as ‘a close-minded fellow who's been in charge of gatekeeping all the knowledge’

Politics

34 h. ago Paul Mescal says comparing his film romance with Josh O’Connor to Brokeback Mountain is ‘lazy and frustrating’

In Cannes to promote The History of Sound, the actor said ‘I don’t see the parallels at all, other than we spent a little time in a tent’The actor Paul Mescal has hit out at critics who have drawn comparisons between The History of Sound, a gay romance in which he stars opposite Josh O’Connor, and Ang Lee’s landmark western Brokeback Mountain.Speaking at a press conference in Cannes the day after the film’s premiere, Mescal – who followed a supporting performance in Andrew Haigh’s acclaimed gay ghost story All of Us Strangers with playing the lead in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II – said he believes cinema is “moving away” from alpha male roles. Continue reading...

Politics

48 h. ago Sentimental Value review – Stellan Skarsgård is an egomaniac director in act of ancestor worship

Cannes film festivalJoachim Trier’s entertaining drama sees Norwegian auteur-on-the-slide Skarsgård putting his showbiz family through the wringer in the service of his fading careerHere is an exuberant, garrulous, self-aware picture about an ageing and egomaniac film director and his two grownup daughters; it comes from Norwegian film-maker Joachim Trier, who gave Cannes the marvellous romantic drama The Worst Person in the World in 2021, starring the award-winning Renate Reinsve, who stars in this one as well. The film cycles through a range of moods and ideas, and finally delivers a fair bit of that sentimentality from the title; it’s a movie of daddy issues and cinematic adventures in the manner of Fellini and Bergman, with a gag about overhearing a therapist’s session through the heating pipes, pinched from Woody Allen’s Another Woman.Stellan Skarsgård plays preening auteur Gustav Borg, whose career is on the slide; many years ago he left his wife, Sissel, a psychotherapist, an...

Politics

48 h. ago The History of Sound review – Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor romance is full

Cannes film festival A love story of two folk song aficionados in the early days of recorded music is told with tiresomely mournful awe at its own sadnessOliver Hermanus’s The History of Sound has admirers in Cannes; but I couldn’t help finding it an anaemic, laborious, achingly tasteful film, originally a short story by Ben Shattuck which has become a quasi-Brokeback Mountain film whose tone is one of persistent mournful awe at its own sadness.Hermanus has made great movies in the past including Beauty and Living but this is a film that is almost petrified by its own upmarket values, paralysed under the varnish of classiness. Continue reading...

Politics

52 h. ago History of Sound review: Paul Mescal's gay romance doesn't sing

Screening in Cannes, this folk music drama has a compelling affair between Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor but falls into monotony

Politics

4 d. ago This is why Starmer's Brexit deal could leave Britain trapped in the worst of all worlds: LEO MCKINSTRY

Almost a decade ago, the British people voted decisively to take back control from Brussels. Now Keir Starmer is seeking to put the EU back in charge.

Economics

7 d. ago Lewis Hamilton's dog fighting serious illness as F1 star admits 'my heart stops'

Lewis Hamilton's beloved dog Roscoe has been battling a serious illness, with the seven-time F1 world champion admitting he fears the worst for his pet in a heartbreaking update

Politics

9 d. ago Massive solar storm causes worldwide blackouts as experts warn the worst is yet to come

The sun has unleashed the strongest solar flare of the year, triggering strong radio blackouts across the globe.

Events

2 w. ago Minerals, mobile phones and militias: how war unfolded in DRC

How the global wrangle for natural resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is fuelling one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisesHello and welcome to The Long Wave. This week, after three months of fighting, a peace agreement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is in the works. I spoke to our east Africa correspondent, Carlos Mureithi, about the conflict, how quickly it escalated and the prospects for peace. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago Crash at 20: is it the worst best picture winner of all time?

Paul Haggis’s interconnected drama about racism in Los Angeles remains one of the most embarrassing Oscar decisions ever madeIt doesn’t take long for Paul Haggis’s Crash to end up on the shortest of shortlists for the worst film ever to win best picture at the Oscars, maybe the single worst in the color era since 1954’s Around the World in 80 Days. At the time, it was a dark-horse favorite to upset the widely acclaimed Brokeback Mountain, premiering a full year earlier at the Toronto film festival before riding an unexpected cultural wave to awards-season glory. Now 20 years later, it feels like a “you had to be there” moment that’s hard to explain, because the movie itself is so obviously rancid that it suggests few answers on its own. The job is probably better suited to cultural anthropologists than film critics.Nonetheless, Haggis’s ensemble piece about racial animus in Los Angeles seems to have struck a chord with, well, the many Academy voters from Los Angeles who reside in th...

Events

3 w. ago Britain tried to control migration – and created the worst of all worlds

Editorial: As The Independent reveals, up to £2bn of private contracts have been awarded since 2017 aimed at curbing illegal migration across the English Channel and the costs of asylum application processing. It is hard to point to any positive results of this gross expense

Politics

3 w. ago Even Tesla drivers seem to hate Elon Musk. Their honking protest warms the heart | Zoe Williams

The demonstration outside the Tesla showroom in west London was one of the smallest I have seen. But everyone who passed by was keen to show their supportPark Royal is the worst underground station in London and therefore the world. You come out of a stubby 1930s entrance hall that must have been cute once, right on to a dual carriageway. There’s a hotel on the other side of the road, and a tourist will most likely approach you, asking how she’s supposed to cross, and your answer will be just a sub-verbal collapse into nothingness. There is no obvious way to cross the road. This place was built for cars, and if you’re not a car, you’re stuck in a tube station now. There is actually an underpass, but that’s no excuse for dystopian urban planning.I was there helping the Stop Trump Coalition make a video before the US president’s state visit, whenever that might be, and they were there to see Tesla Takedown, which is not as antagonistic as it sounds, just a score of people, one dressed...

Events

3 w. ago I went to a Tesla protest this weekend – here’s what I learned | Zoe Williams

The demonstration outside the Tesla showroom in west London was one of the smallest I have seen. But everyone who passed by was keen to show their supportPark Royal is the worst underground station in London and therefore the world. You come out of a stubby 1930s entrance hall that must have been cute once, right on to a dual carriageway. There’s a hotel on the other side of the road, and a tourist will most likely approach you, asking how she’s supposed to cross, and your answer will be just a sub-verbal collapse into nothingness. There is no obvious way to cross the road. This place was built for cars, and if you’re not a car, you’re stuck in a tube station now. There is actually an underpass, but that’s no excuse for dystopian urban planning.I was there helping the Stop Trump Coalition make a video before the US president’s state visit, whenever that might be, and they were there to see Tesla Takedown, which is not as antagonistic as it sounds, just a score of people, one dressed...

Politics

3 w. ago Wrexham star shows himself to be  the world's WORST barman during wild celebrations following promotion party with Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds

A Wrexham star showed himself to be the world's worst barman as the Welsh side stormed into the Championship after beating Charlton 3-0 to reach the second tier for the first time since 1982.

Society

3 w. ago Scientists have birthed a ‘super cannibal’ that never grows up. Could it be key to combating Australia’s cane toad menace?

There’s quiet optimism that gene-edited ‘Peter Pan’ tadpoles could help control one of the world’s worst invasive speciesThe toad’s eyes seemed to glow red, its warty and poison-soaked skin – normally splodged in browns – instead a porridge of creamy whites. This albino toad was produced by a team of scientists with one foot in a Sydney university laboratory and the other in a research station on the vast tropical savannahs and wetlands far away to the north near Humpty Doo.It was September 2023 and for the man who dreamed it into being, the toad was but an opening act in a radical new play against one of the world’s worst invasive species.Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Danny Dyer's 'worst movie in the history of the world' has fans absolutely obsessed

The 2015 film Assassin, starring Danny Dyer and the Kemp brothers, was panned by critics but some viewers have hailed it as a "brilliant" and "underrated" movie

Culture

3 w. ago Danny Dyer's 'worst film in the history of the world' fans can't get enough of

Danny Dyer's Assassin has been dubbed “the worst film in the history of the world” by some viewers, but is absolutely adored by some who call it a “very underrated, brilliant movie”.

Culture

last month More than 80% of world’s coral reefs hit by worst bleaching event in history

‘We're looking at something that's completely changing the face of our planet,’ scientists warn

Events

last month More than 80% of the world’s reefs hit by bleaching after worst global event on record

An ashen pallor and an eerie stillness all that remains where there should fluttering fish and vibrant colours in the reefscape, one conservationist saysThe world’s coral reefs have been pushed into “uncharted territory” by the worst global bleaching event on record that has now hit more than 80% of the planet’s reefs, scientists have warned.Reefs in at least 82 countries and territories have been exposed to enough heat to turn corals white since the global event started in January 2023, the latest data from the US government’s Coral Reef Watch shows. Continue reading...

Events