Love Letter

Alexander Payne, the great satirist of Middle American mores, returns this weekend with his latest ditty of wry social commentary, Downsizing. Often when a filmmaker establishes such a distinctive formula as...

The title of The Greatest Showman, out this week, refers to the 19th-century circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum, though it could just as well refer to the movie’s star. Hugh Jackman has proved again and again...

“A game for those who seek to find/A way to leave their world behind” If you grew up in the ‘90s, chances are you went to see – and fell in love with – Jumanji. A Robin Williams-headlined family...

The Last Jedi is going to make Rian Johnson a star. Since Summer 2014, the film world has waited in heady anticipation for not only the true follow-up to legendary sequel Empire Strikes Back, but also this...

Every sequel ever made is royally screwed. Those poor filmmakers can go back to their hit movies with the purest intentions and the best bundle of influences, but how many second instalments can really hold a...

In 2008 Destin Daniel Cretton made a short film called Short Term 12. Five years later he developed it into a feature of the same name, which despite being relatively unknown has garnered a huge amount of...

Randomly select any episode from Seasons 3 through 8 of The Simpsons and you’ll most likely be greeted with one of the best episodes of TV comedy you could ever hope to see. Randomly select any episode from...

Have a quick think about your memories of the first Men in Black film. What immediately comes to mind is likely to include sharp suits, sunglasses, big-ass silver guns (and a certain tiny one), odd-couple...

It’s no exaggeration to say that the superhero movie is one of the most popular (and profitable) forms of entertainment today. Leading the charge – both in quantity and quality – is Marvel Studios....

Pure comedies don’t take much home come awards season. This makes sense if you're talking about the factory line of studio comedies, but in the case of Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz, it's an outrage. No comedy...

When awards season rolls round, romantic comedies generally don’t get to see much of the action. Since Annie Hall won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1978, only a select few have come close: Shakespeare in...

A strange phenomenon is upon us this weekend: the release of M. Night Shyamalan's latest movie, Split, which has received surprisingly positive early word-of-mouth. It presents film commentators with a...

Yes, it’s that time of the year, when all of the warm and fuzzy, tinsel-covered festive film favourites sleigh-ride back into our lives. Come December there’s nothing more enjoyable than settling down for...

It’s difficult to heap yet more praise onto a film that’s already so widely acclaimed, but there’s something so special about The Squid and the Whale that you can’t help but keep coming back to it....

Preposterous surfing in the hostile waters off North Korea. Perhaps the least realistic torture scene in cinematic history. An improbably gorgeous spy arising from the Caribbean Sea. Another round of...