wed 16/07/2025

Film reviews, news & interviews

S/HE IS STILL HER/E - The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary review - a shapeshifting open window onto a counter-cultural radical

Tim Cumming

“I like guns. At school we had to fight with guns in the army cadets. I’m actually a first-class sniper. I could shoot people from half a mile away.”

Blu-ray: Heart of Stone

Graham Rickson

Heart of Stone (Das kalte Herz) was the first colour film produced by East Germany’s state film studio DEFA, a big-budget spectacular which attracted huge audiences upon its release in 1950.

Superman review - America's ultimate...

Nick Hasted

A three-century-spanning countdown rapidly ticks to a version of now, and a beaten Superman (David Corenswet) ploughing into Arctic snow. His super-...

The Other Way Around review - teasing Spanish...

Helen Hawkins

Can a romcom be intellectually challenging while hitting all the sweet spots of the genre? Jonás Trueba, the director of the award-winning Spanish...

The Road to Patagonia review - journey to the end...

Hugh Barnes

The journey not the destination matters in The Road to Patagonia, an epic pilgrimage of 30,000 miles that, unexpectedly, turns into a love story....

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

theartsdesk Q&A: actor Emma Mackey on 'Hot Milk' and life education

Pamela Jahn

The Anglo-French star of 'Sex Education' talks about her new film’s turbulent mother-daughter bind

Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

John Carvill

The 'Citizen Kane' of jukebox musicals? Richard Lester's film captures Beatlemania in full flight

Hot Milk review - a mother of a problem

Graham Fuller

Emma Mackey shines as a daughter drawn to the deep end of a family trauma

The Shrouds review - he wouldn't let it lie

James Saynor

More from the gruesome internal affairs department of David Cronenberg

Jurassic World Rebirth review - prehistoric franchise gets a new lease of life

Adam Sweeting

Scarlett Johansson shines in roller-coaster dino-romp

Sudan, Remember Us review - the revolution will be memorised

Hugh Barnes

Gonzo documentary shines light on a lost opportunity in the Arab spring

theartsdesk Q&A: director Andreas Dresen on his anti-Nazi resistance drama 'From Hilde, with Love'

Pamela Jahn

The East German-born filmmaker explains why his biopic of the activist Hilde Coppi isn't bound to the 1940s

Chicken Town review - sluggish rural comedy with few laughs (and one chicken)

Helen Hawkins

A comedy great gets lost in an English backwater

F1: The Movie review - Brad Pitt rolls back the years as maverick racer Sonny Hayes

Adam Sweeting

Joseph Kosinski's motorsport spectacle delivers bang for your buck

Bleak landscapes and banjos: composer Bernard Hughes discusses his score for 'Chicken Town'

Graham Rickson

Our critic talks about his recent film project

28 Years Later review - an unsentimental, undead education

Nick Hasted

Allegorical mayhem in an eerily familiar zombie Britain

Red Path review - the dead know everything

James Saynor

A compelling story of a trail of Tunisian tears

Blu-ray: Darling

Demetrios Matheou

John Schlesinger's Sixties classic now feels problematic, but retains an icky fascination

Tornado review - samurai swordswoman takes Scotland by storm

Justine Elias

East meets West meets North of the Border in a wintry 18th-century actioner

Lollipop review - a family torn apart

Graham Fuller

Posy Sterling brilliantly conveys the torment of a homeless single mother denied her kids

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the French can do you-know-who

James Saynor

An amiable cross-Channel literary rom com

Big Star: The Nick Skelton Story review - the ways of a man with his mount

Justine Elias

Documentary about the champion showjumping duo

Ballerina review - hollow point

Nick Hasted

Ana de Armas joins the Wick-verse to frenetic but soulless effect

Goebbels and the Führer review - behind the scenes from the Nazi perpetrators' perspective

Markie Robson-Scott

Joachim Lang's docudrama focuses on Goebbels as master of fake news

Blu-ray: Eclipse

John Carvill

The BFI has unearthed an unsettling 1977 thriller starring Tom Conti and Gay Hamilton

The Ballad of Wallis Island review - the healing power of the old songs

Anthony Cecil

Estranged folk duo reunites in a classy British comedy drama

The Salt Path review - the transformative power of nature

Markie Robson-Scott

Marianne Elliott brings Raynor Winn's memoir to the big screen

Bogancloch review - every frame a work of art

Sarah Kent

Living off grid might be the meaning of happiness

When the Light Breaks review - only lovers left alive

Nick Hasted

Tender close-up on young love, grief and growing-up in Iceland

Footnote: a brief history of British film

England was movie-mad long before the US. Contrary to appearances in a Hollywood-dominated world, the celluloid film process was patented in London in 1890 and by 1905 minute-long films of news and horse-racing were being made and shown widely in purpose-built cinemas, with added sound. The race to set up a film industry, though, was swiftly won by the entrepreneurial Americans, attracting eager new UK talents like Charlie Chaplin. However, it was a British film that in 1925 was the world's first in-flight movie, and soon the arrival of young suspense genius Alfred Hitchcock and a new legal requirement for a "quota" of British film in cinemas assisted a golden age for UK film. Under the leadership of Alexander Korda's London Films, Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) is considered the first true sound movie, documentary techniques developed and the first Technicolor movies were made.

Brief_EncounterWhen war intervened, British filmmakers turned effectively to lean, effective propaganda documentaries and heroic, studio-based war-films. After Hitchcock too left for Hollywood, David Lean launched into an epic career with Brief Encounter (pictured), Powell and Pressburger took up the fantasy mantle with The Red Shoes, while Carol Reed created Anglo films noirs such as The Third Man. Fifties tastes were more domestic, with Ealing comedies succeeded by Hammer horror and Carry-Ons; and more challenging in the Sixties, with New Wave films about sex and class by Lindsay Anderson, Joseph Losey and Tony Richardson. But it was Sixties British escapism which finally went global: the Bond films, Lean's Dr Zhivago, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music made Sean Connery, Julie Christie and Julie Andrews Hollywood's top stars.

In the 1970s, recession and the TV boom undermined cinema-going and censorship changes brought controversy: a British porn boom and scandals over The Devils, Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange. While Hollywood fielded Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese epics, Britain riposted with The Killing Fields, Chariots of Fire and Gandhi, but 1980s recession dealt a sharp blow to British cinema, and the Rank Organisation closed, after more than half a century. However more recently social comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Full Monty, and royal dramas such as The Queen and The King's Speech have enhanced British reputation for wit, social observation and character acting.

As more films are globally co-produced, the success of British individual talents has come to outweigh the modest showing of the industry itself. Every week The Arts Desk reviews latest releases as well as leading international film festivals, and features in-depth career interviews with leading stars. Its writers include Jasper Rees, Graham Fuller, Anne Billson, Nick Hasted, Alexandra Coghlan, Veronica Lee, Emma Simmonds, Adam Sweeting and Matt Wolf

Close Footnote

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £49,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

latest in Today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Interview: Quinteto Astor Piazzolla on playing in London and...

“I still can’t believe that some pseudo-critics continue to accuse me of having murdered...

Sir Brian Clarke (1953-2025) - a personal tribute

Brian Clarke died on 1 July 2025, after a long illness. He was one of the most original British artists of our time – wide-ranging, ground-...

S/HE IS STILL HER/E - The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documen...

“I like guns. At school we had to fight with guns in the army cadets. I’m actually a first-class sniper. I could shoot people from half a mile...

Album: The Near Jazz Experience - Tritone

As the name suggests, the Near Jazz Experience owe a huge musical debt to jazz, but that’s not the full story by any means. For a start, the...

Billie Eilish, O2 review - power, authenticity and deep conn...

Billie Eilish may be one of the biggest names in new music, but here at the O2 Arena, she’s just Billie – the one who stares deep into your soul,...

Falstaff, Glyndebourne review - knockabout and nostalgia in...

From the animatronic cat on the bar of the Garter Inn to the rowers’ crew who haul their craft across the stage and the military ranks of “Dig for...

Blu-ray: Heart of Stone

Heart of Stone (Das kalte Herz) was the first colour film produced by...

Superman review - America's ultimate immigrant

A three-century-spanning countdown rapidly ticks to a version of now, and a beaten Superman (David Corenswet) ploughing into Arctic snow. His...

Salome, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - a partnership in a m...

A Salome without the head of John the Baptist is nothing new: several directors have perversely decided they could do without in recent...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters