film reviews
Tom Baily

It is appropriate that Keanu Reeves sounds especially croaky and muffled throughout Siberia. Business meetings for his character Lucas Hill (a diamond trader) don’t normally involve much talk, just a swift briefcase handover and a confidential handshake. He is forced to get engaged, however, when his partner Pyotr (Boris Gulyarin) disappears, forcing him to travel to Russia to meet with the clients and track down his colleague.

Joseph Walsh

Two years after the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, we return to the Wizarding World once again for the next, somewhat convoluted, chapter in the five planned prequel instalments, with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Nick Hasted

The first Suspiria was a sensation, and spectacularly, monomaniacally new. Its young heroine Susie Bannon’s ride from an innately hostile airport through eldritch woods in which a panicked girl ran from her destination, the Markos Academy of Dance, as Goblin’s rock score gibbered and pounded at the senses, was hysterical, relentless film-making.

Nick Hasted

Steve McQueen’s progress from video artist to Oscar-winning director has been deceptively smooth. The chasm between Bobby Sands’ emaciated martyrdom in his feature debut, Hunger (2008), and a star-packed heist film seems still greater.

Adam Sweeting

The trailer for Overlord promises havoc, horror, evil, madness, terror and rage, and to be fair it delivers on most of those.

Graham Fuller

A revelatory moment comes hallway through Wildlife when frustrated American housewife Jeanette Brinson (Carey Mulligan) is observed standing alone in her family’s backyard by her 14-year-old son Joe (Ed Oxenbould), the film’s anxious, steadfast protagonist. Wearing curlers, an off-white sweater and jeans, her face made-up to go out, Jeanette has a harsh, fatalistic look on her face that is new.

Veronica Lee

Considering how the UK prides itself on having created the "Mother of Parliaments" and its citizens having once chopped off a king's head for thwarting its will, remarkably little is taught in our schools about one of the seminal events on the way to fully democratising this country: the Peterloo Massacre.

Tom Baily

The Yukon Assignment tracks a 500-mile canoe journey along a remote river in Canada taken by a British adventurer and his father.

Marina Vaizey

What a charmer! An irresistible combination of diffidence and confidence, Michael Caine is so much more than Alfie, and this surprising book, his second after a delightful autobiography, is multi-layered, filled with tips for acting, on stage and screen.

Owen Richards

If a Queen biopic called for drama, scandal and outrage, then Bohemian Rhapsody spent its fill in production. Several Freddies had been and gone, rumours swirling about meddling band members, and then director Bryan Singer’s assault accusations caught up with him. In a way, it’s impressive the film came out so coherent.