Culture

It was only Seven Days in Entebbe, but it felt like an eternity. The rescue in July 1976 by Israeli commandos of 102 Jewish and Israeli hostages from Palestinian and German terrorists at Entebbe airport in Uganda was a scriptwriter’s dream: a three-act drama of crisis, complication and resolution, in which the good guys won—good … Read more

If I needed a safe space, I would nominate California. Against most odds this seedbed of censorious liberalism has thrown up the antibodies to the lurgy it created. Here within a short space of each other are a group of leftists and conservatives, religious and non-religious, all of whom are united in deploring the ‘You … Read more

The story of the president and the porn star has been, in the last week, a fast-moving one

We were so close to getting rid of Jann Wenner. When his 51 per cent stake in Rolling Stone was put up for sale last year, it felt safe to assume that the new owners would gently ease out the man whose disastrous recent leadership brought the publication to the point where it needed to … Read more

You Were Never Really Here is a fourth feature from Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin) and the first thing to say is that it is exceptionally violent. I don’t say this disapprovingly but if your threshold for violence is as low as mine — I incurred a paper cut

Ah, this will be about empire. So I thought when I saw that the small city of Arcata, California, has voted to remove the statue on their town plaza of President William McKinley. The United States had never possessed overseas colonies before McKinley. Every territory we acquired, we eventually brought into the republic with full … Read more

The wedding of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry has no precedent in the history of the Royal family. How will a relatively ordinary person, albeit a celebrity, cope with the rigid etiquette and stifling sense of entitlement of the culture into which they are marrying? I’m referring, of course, to Harry. From the moment he … Read more

A couple of months ago, I moved to the capital of the United States. I had one year of university left and applied for a fellowship (in journalism) in my final term which parachuted me into the world of Washington D.C. The view from my bedroom window is now the distant Capitol Building and the … Read more

Films about the Winter Olympics don’t grow on conifers. Twenty-five years ago there was Cool Runnings about the Jamaican bobsleigh team. It took many years for Eddie the Eagle to reach the screen. Both were cockle-warming comedies about implausible Olympians who embody the ideal that participation is all. Only last week Elise Christie, the British

Reading the lip-smacking reports of the latest troubled celebrity relationships  (Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux definitely high and dry, Cheryl Cole and Liam Payne allegedly on the rocks) I couldn’t help musing that stars – and more specifically, the place they occupy in our mass psychological landscape – have very much changed since the first

Bruce Springsteen promised that he was ‘Born To Run’, and now, like Judy Garland and Ethel Merman before him, he is running on Broadway—and running, and running. From last October to early February, the workingman’s tribune performed five nights a week at the Walter Kerr Theatre, his tools a piano, an acoustic guitar, and a … Read more

The Oscars promise to be truly unbearable this year, with vomit-inducing levels of sanctimony followed by the usual gibberish from the commentariat. The results and speeches and even clothes will be subject to endless politicised scrutiny, and whatever the film industry does to stay Woke, the Buzzfeed headline will inevitably be ‘and people aren’t happy about … Read more

As a British woman, I love Americans’ kindness, generosity and energy but am often thrown by their exaggerated politeness and euphemistic speech. They use ‘passed’ for ‘died’ and always say ‘excuse me’ if they brush against you in a shop. They sentimentally refer to ‘your puppy’ when the dog is patently over three years old. … Read more

Lady Bird is a semi-autobiographical film written and directed by Greta Gerwig with a plot synopsis that need not detain us as it is basically only this: girl has a mum. (Or: girl has a mum, and sometimes they row and sometimes they don’t.) But thus far it has won near universal critical praise, two

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread is a lush psychosexual drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a pampered, tyrannical, pernickety 1950s couturier whose life is disrupted when he falls for a waitress who, in the most unexpected way, proves his match. It is a wonderfully fixating film in every respect, and wholly non-formulaic. And it miraculously transforms

Downsizing is a film with the most brilliant premise. What if, to save the planet, we were all made tiny? What if we only took up a tiny amount of space and flew in tiny planes and produced tiny amounts of rubbish? And what if we could live in the sort of mansions that would

Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which dramatizes the Washington Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, doesn’t exactly push at the frontiers of storytelling. It’s told straight and in a familiar way. Here are the journalists furtively working through top-secret government papers in a smoke-choked room for the public good. (There were no empty pizza

Gary Oldman has joined a long list of actors who have portrayed Winston Churchill — no fewer than 35 of them in movies and 28 on television. He is one of the best three. ‘I knew I didn’t look like him,’ Oldman has said. ‘I thought that with some work I could approximate the voice.

Brad’s Status is a midlife crisis film starring Ben Stiller as a nearly 50-year-old man whose status anxiety is through the roof, poor thing. My heart bleeds and all that. I’ll tell you what Brad’s status should be: face well and truly slapped. The film is written and directed by Mike White (Beatriz at Dinner;

Molly’s Game marks the directorial debut of Hollywood’s most celebrated screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, and is based on his adaptation of the memoir by Molly Bloom. Nope, me neither, but she’s the one-time Olympic skier who, at the age of 26, started a high-stakes poker game for ‘the richest, the most powerful men in the world’

Menashe is a drama set amid Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic community. It is performed entirely in the Yiddish language. It is peopled exclusively by Hasidic non-actors. (Real-life grocer Menashe Lustig plays the title character.) It is small and specific, admittedly, but it also tells a universal story about a father’s struggle to hold on to the

Battle of the Sexes recreates the famed, culture-changing 1973 tennis match between 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, a self-proclaimed chauvinist, and 29-year-old Billie Jean King, the world’s top female player who was out to liberate women and herself. (She was just discovering her true sexuality at that time.) Unless you happen to identify with Bobby — ‘Don’t

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is plainly wonderful, and stars Annette Bening, who is plainly wonderful, as Gloria Grahame, a one-time Hollywood movie star who in later life hits on hard times — ‘a big name in black and white. Not doing too well in colour,’ comments her landlady at one point — and

The Florida Project is a drama set in one of those cheap American motels occupied by poor people who would otherwise be homeless. It’s sad but not depressing, bleak but also joyful, and features one of the best and truest child performances you will ever likely see. Also, it is captivating without ever being condescending

Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner first came out in cinemas 35 years ago, which I was going to say probably makes it older than some readers, although this being The Spectator, perhaps not. It wasn’t successful in its day, but has since become a beloved classic (rightly), whereas this sequel, Blade Runner 2049, will likely