4 d. ago Honor Magic V5 review: sleek design, powerful performance and epic photography features

Andy Beill takes Honor’s new foldable for a spin

Culture

5 d. ago Vice Is Broke review – epic levels of hubris on show in downfall of millennial media darling

Documentary about the rise and fall of a publishing empire, from edgy magazine to billionaire-backing to bankruptcy has a ‘you had to be there’ vibe‘Coolness is not a renewable resource,” says a contributor to this documentary about Vice magazine’s rise and fall. In the late 2000s and 2010s Vice grew from a punk magazine into a digital media empire by telling the world what was cool (more specifically by telling millennials, then in their cool-seeking prime). By 2017, it was valued at nearly $6bn; in 2023, Vice filed for bankruptcy. A man who saw it from the inside is TV chef Eddie Huang, the director and frontman of this film. He had a long-running show on the Viceland TV channel and says he’s still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties.Huang is also an advert for the best of Vice: fast, funny and authentic. The film begins with plenty of “you had to be there” stories about Brooklyn before gentrification, and interviews with early staff. This isn’t meant unkindly, but ...

Politics

7 d. ago Amanyanabo: The Eagle King review – a lavish Nollywood epic of crowns, gods and colonial tension

This visually stunning historical drama follows the rise of warrior-king Ibanichuka and combines dazzling pageantry with themes of power, faith and empireSet in the 19th-century kingdom of Okrika in the Niger delta, this Nollywood epic has a satisfying core of realpolitik and Kulturkampf that wouldn’t shame the likes of old-school classical-era equivalents such as Ben-Hur. Revolving around the accession to the throne of elite warrior Ibanichuka (Patrick Diabuah), it touches on questions of political legitimacy, politics as the art of the possible, the proselytisation of west Africa by Christians and – that still-simmering hot potato – white colonialism.One minute Ibanichuka is on leave for overzealously butchering enslaved people, the next the goddess Tamunoba anoints him in a lake as Okrika’s saviour. Though ratified by the elders, he is still under general suspicion for his devotion to his wife, Mboro, (Monalisa Chinda Coker), who is unable to bear children, and for generally bein...

Events

9 d. ago Coldplay Wembley review: Chris Martin cheekily refers to kisscam scandal in epic show

Associate Editor Tom Bryant is at Wembley Stadium for the first night of ten at the venue - and witnesses an "intoxicating show....that is a feast for the senses."

Politics

2 w. ago Helm by Sarah Hall review – a mighty epic of climate change in slow motion

A Cumbrian wind is the central character in this hugely ambitious, millennia-spanning novel, which was 20 years in the makingEven if Sarah Hall did not begin her acknowledgments by saying that it’s taken her 20 years to write Helm it would be evident. Not from a cursory glance at her bibliography, perhaps: in that time Hall has published six other novels and three volumes of extraordinary short stories. But in every other way, and the moment you begin reading.There’s the subject, for starters. Ever since the first paragraph of her first novel, Haweswater, in which an early 20th-century man drives his horse and cart through the waters of a Cumbrian valley recently drowned by a dam, Hall has been concerned with landscape, with weather, with nature in all its forms, with the ways in which we affect each other. In The Carhullan Army, climate change has already happened. Cumbria is semi-tropical, temperate England a folk memory; a dystopian vision that feels, this baked summer, uncomfort...

Politics

2 w. ago Dongji Rescue review – epic tale of British PoWs saved by Chinese fishers gets blockbuster treatment

With Imax cameras and an $80m budget, this second world war epic about the rescue of 384 British prisoners boasts stunning scenes but a simplistic scriptThe sinking of the Lisbon Maru, an extraordinary second world war story in which 384 British PoWs were saved from a bombed Japanese cargo liner by Chinese fishers, has recently been excavated in an exhaustive, emotional documentary. In Dongji Rescue, co-directed by Zhenxiang Fei and Guan Hu, this staggering tale gets a blockbuster makeover that involves Imax cameras and an $80m budget. The film opens with the stunning vista of the eponymous island, then under Japanese control. The seeds of discontent are there, as the local Chinese population are forbidden from fishing. Still, they endure the occupation with grim acceptance.Standing apart from the pack are a pair of brothers, Abi (Zhu Yilong) and Adang (Wu Lei), orphans said to descend from pirates. Their physical prowess acquires a near superhuman dimension as they are shot scaling...

Events

3 w. 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

3 w. ago Alien: Earth review: 'instant classic body horror epic about AI angst'

This new series on Disney is a prequel to the original Ridley Scott film that both echoes its brilliance and takes the Alien franchise into new territory to tackle contemporary tech angst

Events