Film

It is disappointing to learn that, after critics and cynical audiences everywhere had sharpened their fish knives in the expectation of the new live-action Little Mermaid film being a catastrophic disaster, early reviews have suggested that it is… fine. It attracted a great deal of attention, and some criticism, for the casting of the black singer-actress Halle Bailey in the lead role of Ariel, on the grounds that sea-dwelling mermaids must, after all, be white-skinned redheads, as she was in the seminal 1989 animated film. Yet Bailey’s performance has been universally acclaimed, with her delivery of ‘Part of Your World’ being singled out for particular praise. The reason why so many

There are a few things in this world that you can truly count on: death, taxes and Taylor Swift’s love life attracting headlines. To their number can be added the certain knowledge that, when Martin Scorsese collaborates with either of his two muses, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, the results are somewhere between fascinating (Gangs of New York; New York, New York) and stone-cold cinema classics (Goodfellas; The Wolf of Wall Street). Yet apart from a droll promotional film for a Macau casino (The Audition), the three men had never worked together. This has, finally, changed, as the trio unite for what looks like another Scorsese crime classic in the form of the

The late director Anthony Minghella made three films with actor Jude Law: The Talented Mr Ripley, Cold Mountain and Breaking and Entering. They would undoubtedly have made more if Minghella hadn’t died at the cruelly young age of 54 in 2008. He referred to the actor as ‘my muse’, but had a more perceptive comment about him too. ‘Jude is a beautiful boy with the mind of a man. A true character actor struggling to get out of a beautiful body.’ For years, Law seemed to struggle with the weight of his good looks, taking on mediocre roles that talent agencies and producers had shoehorned him into. Now, at the age of 50, he

We might never have taken the Eurovision Song Contest terribly seriously in the UK – but with British Ted Neeley lookalike Sam Ryder winning second place last year and the staging of this year’s event in Liverpool, some are singing to a different tune. This year’s UK entry comes from Mae Muller – ‘I Wrote a Song’ is a serviceable enough generic toe-tapper, but no ‘Puppet on a String’ (Sandie Shaw, 1967 winner) if you ask me. Or even ‘Ooh Aah… Just a Little Bit’, Gina G’s 1996 banger that claimed eighth place in the contest. Ahead of tomorrow night’s final, here are ten movies to get you in the

This year’s Cannes Film Festival promises to be interesting viewing, with a record number of female directors in contention (a stark contrast to the 2023 Academy Awards) and a greater than usual representation of old-guard auteurs (including Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Ken Loach and Finnish maverick Aki Kaurismäki). Fans will no doubt be enthused by the return of Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) with his first picture since 2013’s acclaimed Under the Skin. I can’t say Glazer’s choice of material – Martin Amis’s 2014 concentration camp novel Zone of Interest – particularly grabs me, but the director’s work is always worth checking out. This year’s blockbuster spot, meanwhile, will be taken

‘In her big, white dress the Queen looks like a balloon that’s about to float up to the roof of Westminster Abbey and bob about up there amongst the gilded arches and roof bosses. To prevent this happening people keep weighing her down with cloaks and robes, orbs and spectres, until she’s so heavy that bishops and archbishops have to help propel her around.’ This is the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 as described by one-year-old Ruby Lennox in Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. These observations might seem preternaturally advanced from a narrator not yet old enough to walk and talk, but that is consistent for

Before Westminster Abbey opens its doors on Saturday, what better way to get in the spirit than to explore the storied history of coronations in the movies? The sheer spectacle of a monarch’s formal coronation has an inherently cinematic aspect – and it’s one that motion pictures have long exploited. Here are ten films to savour before the event: The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King (2003) – NOW, Amazon Rent/Buy Impressive as King Charles III’s coronation is sure to be, it’s unlikely to match the crowning of Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) as King Elessar in the final instalment of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. After

Afew weeks ago, news broke that Paramount was planning to embark on a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo with a starring role for Robert Downey Jr. You are forgiven if your reaction is one of deep scepticism. What can possibly be gained by remaking a film widely regarded as the apex of the art form? What director today can step into the shoes of the Master of Suspense? And who would ever mistake the star of Iron Man for Jimmy Stewart?  Gut reactions of this sort remind us of the scorn with which remakes in general are usually – sometimes unfairly – met. After all, remakes are considered by all fair observers to be inherently synthetic

From bucket hats to Britney Spears, the 1990s and 2000s are back in vogue. Who could have predicted that the cringe-inducing baggy trousers and All Saints-esque crop tops that filled teenage wardrobes 20 years ago would be resurrected with such gusto by Gen Z? But there’s one part of turn-of-the-century culture that remains firmly consigned to the past. Unlike the clothing of the era, the romcom has proved remarkably resistant to modern reinvention – no matter how hard Hollywood tries. Last month, two romantic comedy veterans – Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher – reunited in a stoic effort to woo audiences back to the genre. But their film – Your Place or

The received wisdom that the Oscar for Best Picture always goes to mainstream, generally inoffensive ‘quality’ pictures is only partially true. There have been multiple exceptions to this – and increasingly so over recent years, with an influx of younger Academy voters and a desire to be seen as more progressive than in the past. Who knows what it might mean for this year’s Best Picture nominees – which are All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: The Way of Water, The Banshees of Inisherin, Elvis, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Fabelmans, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, Triangle of Sadness and Women Talking. But while we wait to find out

In 1969, for my seventh birthday, I was taken – dragged, probably – ‘up west’ to the theatre to see a musical. As I recall, it didn’t fill me with joy to be going, but it turned out to be fantastic. The songs, the acting, the dancing: it was great fun. Then we went for pasta in Soho, which was also a special event in those days. More importantly, though, I think it was the first time I became truly aware of a vital part of my identity: that I was here because decades earlier my great-grandfather had arrived on these shores, driven out of his native Russia by a

I was interested to read that the next Joker film has the subtitle ‘Folie à Deux’ – a lovely phrase not used enough these days. When shrinks talk about folie à deux (also known as Lasègue-Falret Syndrome, after the 19th-century French psychiatrists who discovered it) they mean a ‘shared delusional disorder’ in which symptoms of an irrational belief are transmitted from one individual to another – including folie en famille or folie à plusieurs (‘madness of several’), sometimes leading to violence and even murder. But in popular culture, we generally mean a pair of lovers who act in such a way that anyone outside their set-up sees them as insane

I never made it to the end of Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin, which won four Baftas on Sunday and has been tipped for further success at the Oscars next month. Inisherin is a fictional place that apparently translates as ‘Island Ireland’. I know it’s probably churlish of me, but, being Irish, I was turned off by the film’s maudlin sentimentality mixed with self-obsession, self-harm, child abuse, wanton violence, dead pets and suicidal ideation. It bothered me that the film trotted out as many Oirish stereotypes as were in Gone With the Wind, released in 1939. Let me list some of the most obvious of these at the outset.

In December 1996, audiences lining up to see a teen horror picture starring Drew Barrymore, from the director of A Nightmare on Elm Street, got the shock of their lives. Not only was Barrymore, the best-known actor in the film, murdered in the first 15 minutes, but the opening set-piece was arguably the most shocking moment in movies since Janet Leigh had met a grisly end in the shower in Psycho. As Barrymore is stalked, first by telephone and then in person, by a sinister masked killer, the tension and horror build to virtually unbearable levels before its horrific climax. The rest of the film lived up to its opening, but for

The romcom genre has a decidedly mixed record, often becoming a lazy way for stars to cash in on their popularity – with less than loveable results. Witness the career of Matthew McConaughey, which could have been described as ‘Death by romcom’ (Failure to Launch, The Wedding Planner, Fool’s Gold etc) until his 2011 comeback with Killer Joe. Gerard Butler also tried his hand with a slew of mediocre pictures (Playing for Keeps, The Bounty Hunter, The Ugly Truth etc), before reverting to action flicks. But once in a while, the chemistry is just right and everything falls into place. Here’s my pick of ten alternative romantic comedies that avoid the

After Prince Harry’s first date with the future Duchess of Sussex, he repaired to a friend’s house off the King’s Road. ‘Out came the tequila,’ he recalls in his much-discussed autobiography, Spare. ‘Out came the weed. We drank and smoked and watched… Inside Out.’ Meghan, however, interrupted his stoned reverie by Facetiming him, and immediately asked: ‘Are you watching cartoons?’ Harry replied: ‘No. I mean, yeah. It’s… Inside Out.’ It was, he recalls, ‘good weed, dude’. The quality of the Disney film, he doesn’t mention – though his pointed double use of ellipses around its title suggests it perhaps has some significance in relation to this new girlfriend. Three years