Close-Up

Action movies aren't what they used to be. With the incredible advancement of CGI allowing for ever-increasing financial success, modern action has become all about sequels, remakes and adaptations. This...

In his essay on Richard Eyre’s Iris Murdoch biopic Iris for the Guardian, Martin Amis claims that ‘very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external.’ These supposed...

Tim Burton returns this weekend with his 19th feature film as director: a live-action version of Dumbo. While the lingering fascination with his films, and the cultural lure of a reimagined Disney gem like...

Wrack your brains for somewhere the DC Extended Universe has beaten its rival, Marvel, and you will probably land on Wonder Woman. As well as reintroducing female-led superhero movies after Elektra in 2005, it...

"I am who?” Tima, the child robot of Rintaro's Metropolis (2001), asks just before she plunges from the edge of a high-rise tower and Metropolis collapses around her. She is parroting the first words ever...

If we include the about-to-be-released Roma, Alfonso Cuarón has only directed eight feature films across a near 30-year career. The reason for this relative slimness of output is likely to have many factors...

Any conversation about the director Steve McQueen will involve his long shots. It’s impossible to think of Hunger without remembering Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham just chatting for 17 minutes, in...

Tom Ford’s directorial debut A Single Man (2009) is based on Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novella of the same name, but has its own unique style. Drawing both from personal experience and his professional...

Before its release back in 2003, no one quite knew what to expect from Lost in Translation, an indie romantic comedy set in Japan, starring Bill Murray and a then largely unknown 17-year-old Scarlett...

You’re trapped in a secluded farmhouse, surrounded by a growing horde of the ravenous undead. Do you hole up in the secure but inescapable cellar? Or do you stay above ground and try to fortify the...

True Romance turns 25 today. A quarter-century after that love letter to sex, violence, and Elvis Presley hit screens (and bombed), we have to ask ourselves: we’re all pretty much over Quentin Tarantino,...

With The Happytime Murders out this week and Melissa McCarthy’s previous release, Life of the Party, still managing to draw in crowds ready for a guaranteed laugh with the girls, it looks like her magical...

The plot of 2016 movie The Shallows is pretty easy and quick to sum up: it's Blake Lively versus a shark. This excellent, taut thriller sees her surfer, Nancy, get attacked and injured by a great white - then...

As a common sub-genre of crime films, the heist is going through a renaissance. In recent years, we have moved from the likes of The Bank Job, a film where Jason Statham does exactly what the title says on the...

Whether you're a Francophile or not, we’ve all seen and experienced at least one version of the streets of Paris. In 1951’s An American in Paris, Vincente Minnelli turned the Parisian streets into an...