Benjamin Lee    There’s some low stakes pleasure to be had in the first half of the gory new film from the team behind Ready or Not and Scream but things fall apart disastrouslyLast year’s handsome gothic horror The Last Voyage of the Demeter and bombastic Nic Cage comedy Renfield allowed Universal the opportunity...

Andrew Pulver    The director is planning to return to his long delayed project with Jennifer Lawrence co starring as Ava Gardner but rights may prove a stumbling blockMartin Scorsese is reportedly reviving his dormant Frank Sinatra biopic, with regular collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role.According to...

Peter Bradshaw    Kooky kid sister, romantic lead, comic turn, cantankerous old dame ... we pick out her greatest rolesAn early Shirley in this epic Technicolor comedy adventure based on Jules Verne, overstuffed with superstar cameos and produced by the impresario Mike Todd. David Niven sauntered through the role of...

Lanre Bakare    Harry Potter star described wife, who founded dwarfism charity Little People UK, as greatest love of his life’Samantha Davis, the campaigner and wife of the Harry Potter star Warwick Davis, whom he called his soul mate, has died aged .Davis, who founded Little People UK the dwarfism...

Ryan Gilbey    Chronicler of the making of her husband’s Apocalypse Now whose footage and recordings were the basis for a documentary and bookIn March , Eleanor Coppola arrived in the Philippines, her three young children in tow, to film behind the scenes footage on the set of her husband Francis Ford Coppola...

Steph Green    A ballooning number of repertory groups dedicated to cinema in its original medium are springing up across the UK. They explain its uphill thrills As staff read out fire safety precautions and evacuation procedures before a mm nitrate print screening of Black Narcissus at the BFI, the packed...

Peter Bradshaw    Jeymes Samuel’s wacky counter gospel action adventure delivers some good turns but drifts into pietyOnce Upon a Time in Judea is the setting for this watchable new comedy at the London film festival from film maker and musician Jeymes Samuel, that talented and prolific multihyphenate who just two...

Peter Bradshaw    Louis XV’s infatuation with a sexy, smart courtesan played by Maïwenn who also writes and directs is a preposterous confection with preening Depp’s king overshadowing her storyThe rosebud lips of Johnny Depp in this film are pursed in a strange expression of irony, stupefied entitlement and...

Peter Bradshaw    Thomas Pickering blends approachable narration with well presented information in a welcome reminder of the Michael Moore methodHere is an ebullient, confident campaign documentary from Thomas Pickering, the kind of punchy and straightforward film making that we used to see all the time in the s...

Cath Clarke    Anodyne children’s picture provides some gentle entertainment once you forgive the cloying anthropomorphism Is that a butterfly fairy asks a confused seven year old who watches with me, pointing to the screen at the start of this Canadian animated tale. Nope. The purple creature with a humanish...

Leslie Felperin    When Victoria Villegas learned how her cousin had fled the Dominican Republic, and was gay like her, she was moved to chart his lifeThere have been experimental, freestyling essay films and memoiristic documentaries around for years, going back to Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil or Agnès Varda’s The...

Peter Bradshaw    Zany caper follows Jo Hartley as a big veg enthusiast defending her patch from elaborate ill doingsChaos reigns in this strange, funny and amiably anarchic mockumentary about dirty tricks in the cutthroat world of competitive marrow growing, written and co directed by film maker Brook Driver. Maybe...

Peter Bradshaw    The story of two historians unleashing evil while recording a song is a strong idea and there are good moments and performances, but it is too chaotic and unfocused to resonatePaul Duane is the film maker who in made Barbaric Genius, a gripping documentary portrait of ex convict, ex vagrant...

Peter Bradshaw    Two endurance sailors’ perilous voyage is supposed to lead them to empathy for refugees’ plight but they sure take their time discovering thatHere is a well intentioned but brief, unsatisfying and oddly structured documentary, supposedly about refugees and boat people ... although the refugees’...

Phil Hoad    This year’s edition of the festival, Best of Best, will show a collection of award winning short films across five strands offering dystopian visions and ideological biteWith the EU recently passing the world’s first artificial intelligence law, this year’s trawl of European shorts from...

Peter Bradshaw    A tented district of Ulaanbaatar is the backdrop as a gifted student with a chance to succeed and move away finds himself having to care for his siblings A valuable debut feature from year old Mongolian film maker Zoljargal Purevdash, inspired by her childhood experiences of studying for a life...

Cath Clarke    Max is looking for the universe in which his rescuer brother Leon survives in this British animation, but some clever variations aside, it’s slow goingIt’s been a two way street: there are movie spin offs of video games, and vice versa. Now comes this British animation, made at the same time as a...

Leslie Felperin    From fake news in to livestreaming a man asleep and everything in between, the big picture gets a bit lostAlthough being distributed in the UK with the title Fantastic Machine, this documentary about the camera through history originally had the much more prolix, pretentious and charming...

Sian Cain    The year old director, who says he will retire after his th film, has abandoned The Movie Critic, according to industry reportsQuentin Tarantino has reportedly abandoned his plans for The Movie Critic, the film that was to be his th and final project.Deadline reported on Thursday that an...

Andrew Pulver    Featuring stars including Riz Ahmed and Nabhaan Rizwan, the event aims to celebrate the rich tapestry of Muslim experiences via the medium of film’The UK’s first major film festival dedicated to Muslim cinema announced its inaugural lineup on Tuesday, with a slew of award winning films featuring...

Philip Oltermann European culture editor    Francis Ford Coppola’s long awaited passion project Megalopolis and Jacques Audiard’s musical set in the world of Mexican drug cartels will also be in competitionDonald Trump, impersonated by Marvel actor Sebastian Stan, will make an unlikely star attraction on the Côte d’Azur in May, as a new film...

Benjamin Lee    Barbie star and producer will return to world of films based on toys with project based on the much loved board gameMargot Robbie is set to partner with Hasbro for a new film based on the board game Monopoly.The Oscar nominated star of Barbie will help to shepherd the long gestating project to the...

Shaad D'Souza    If you really want to know about making music, fame, exploitation, addiction, egos and challenging personalities look to fiction. Here are our favourites Making a movie about an iconic musician can be perilous there are so many stakeholders with differing versions of events, and so many diehard...

Scott Tobias    The suspense thriller smartly predicted the increasing importance of technology and lack of privacy in our livesIn the years since Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation was released in theaters, the evolution of technology and the devolution of political culture have combined to make it...

Peter Bradshaw    Lovers, fighters ... and gangsters On the centenary of the actor’s birth, we pick out his greatest rolesA minor picture with curiosity value: Charlie Chaplin’s final film as a director, starring Brando and Sophia Loren, a comedy in the style of the Hollywood Golden Age, based on the tall tales of...

Interviews by Ben Gilbert    I had no interest in teen vampire films and turned it down five times. But Joel Schumacher promised I wouldn’t have to wear the makeup and teeth, or have to fly around. Of course, he lied’Joel Schumacher, the director, wanted me in the movie right from the first time we met. But the script I read...

Daisy Jones    Until recently, sapphic romances generally meant furtive nods in a corset. Today’s queer offerings are fun, unbuttoned and climate appropriateThere’s a scene towards the end of Rose Glass’s romance thriller Love Lies Bleeding in which the leads, Lou Kristen Stewart and Jackie Katy M O’Brian ,...

Andrew Pulver    Classic heist caper The Lavender Hill Mob is getting a cinema rerelease. But which of these s and s film fancies are slyly subversive, and which have dated less well Anyone wanting a look at Dublin in the late s might like this, but there’s not much else especially compelling about this...

Benjamin Lee    The dust may still be settling on this year’s race but next year’s ceremony could see stars such as Angelina Jolie and Barry Keoghan battling it outWhile there were other narratives considered during the long journey to the stage, this year’s Oscars ultimately reminded us that the most obvious is...

Charles Bramesco    Alex Garland’s speculative and apolitical action film might be a box office hit but it’s a frustratingly weightless experienceThe music video for MIA’s Born Free imagines a ginger genocide, with humvees of jackbooted, gas masked stormtroopers raiding a high rise housing complex to round up redheads...

Peter Bradshaw    Female directors are thin on the ground plus ça change but the lineup promises intriguing new films from modern day masters, as well as some unknown hot potatoes Donald Trump biopic and new films by Yorgos Lanthimos and Andrea Arnold to premiere at CannesThe new Cannes selection has been...

Stuart Heritage    For every Wall Street or Wild at Heart there are countless cringeworthy examples of Hollywood power players elbowing their own kids into the picture. Adam Sandler alone has made two dozen with hisIf the dismal reviews meted out to the new film Bleeding Love prove anything at all, it’s that parents...

Peter Bradshaw    Patricia Highsmith’s charming devil has fascinated film makers since the s, but his brand of evil seems peculiarly well suited to the Instagram ageHe’s back. But he never went away. Patricia Highsmith’s diabolically inspired postwar creation Tom Ripley has returned, to luxuriate in our st...

Peter Bradshaw    Always good as either an antagonist or malign authority figure, Walsh best known as loathsome PI Visser in Blood Simple was a singular, brilliant iconM Emmet Walsh, American actor, dies at M Emmet Walsh was the outstanding Hollywood character actor who emerged in the American new wave, a...

Lanre Bakare    This was the year that the Academy’s diversity standards were introduced yet some argue that only structural change will make the film industry truly inclusive Oscars : full list of winners Full report: Oppenheimer wins best pictureThis year’s Oscars will go down as the one where the...

Peter Bradshaw    Is Oppenheimer a lock across the board Does Barbie have any chance Our critic makes his final predictions and highlights who should have been nominatedOscars live updatesOscars : the full list of winners live updatesWith a terrible inevitability, this is set to be the Enheimer Oscars...

Mark Cousins    In the US and Europe, a combination of figurehead film makers allied with community partners really seems to workOne of LA’s loveliest cinemas the huge, sentinel Village Theater in Westwood has been bought by Jason Reitman, Steven Spielberg, Christopher Nolan, Lulu Wang, Chloé Zhao, Guillermo...

Stuart Heritage    Earlier this week, Crowe said he kept shooting Robin Hood despite two broken legs. Now, Stallone has upped the ante with a horrific litany of bodily abuses. Who will share their medical notes next One repeated theme in director Edward Zwick’s very good new autobiography Hits, Flops, and Other...

Peter Bradshaw    Nolan’s complex epic won best picture, best director, best actor and best supporting actor but awards for The Zone of Interest, Poor Things and The Holdovers show they could still cause upsets on Oscar nightOppenheimer takes top BaftasRed carpet: peek a boo corsets and a feast of salmonBaftas...

Stuart Heritage    As Hollywood makes a return to full throttle love scenes, the actor has got hot under the collar about excessive screen intimacy. But films from Oppenheimer to Poor Things show how good it can beThis has been a banner year for the sex scene. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in All of Us Strangers....

Peter Bradshaw    From an Oscar winning performance in Capote to a masterly turn in Synecdoche, New York, the unique actor proved the standard bearer for characterisationRecently, I found my thoughts irritably returning, like a toe masochistically seeking out a tiny uncomfortable pebble in a shoe, to the...

Ann Lee    How do you survive when the two most important men in your life die at a tragically young age The daughter of martial arts hero Bruce Lee describes what kept her going and how she is preserving the family legacyShannon Lee is cheerfully recounting the time she went to a darkness retreat in...

Sam Moore    Being cast as a scheming toff in the global phenomenon Bridgerton was a surprise for Claudia Jessie. Fiercely proud of her roots, the Brummie talks about etiquette lessons, getting too many tattoos and why working class actors so often get a rough dealThe actor Claudia Jessie greets everyone ...

Elissa Blake    Thirty years after Priscilla, Queen of the Desert thrust him on to the international stage, the actor discusses tiring of Hollywood villains and his most challenging role yetGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailHugo Weaving is striding down Wharf in Sydney’s Walsh Bay where the wind is...

Catherine Shoard    As his new film looks at society’s relationship with the camera, the double Palme d’Or winner talks about the power of the screen big and small and why the next generation will be Marxist I have an idea, says Ruben Östlund. What if you were only allowed to use a camera if you have a licence...

As told to Rich Pelley    The actor, musician and all round subversive talks about getting his own back on critic AA Gill, his favourite football song and why he’d really like a part that involves lying downYou’ve performed naked on stage with Max Bygraves, bared all in Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave and posed nude for the BBC...

Ann Lee    She is one of the first east Asian actors to play the lead in a big British drama, and her new show Red Eye is a nerve jangler. She discusses culture shock, sexism and the sheer joy of making Crazy Rich AsiansAs a teenager, Jing Lusi was something of a wild child. She was smoking and drinking by...

Ben Beaumont-Thomas    Her score for Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s opus helped it to Oscar glory. Now the Japanese musician has reunited with its director for a collaboration unlike any otherWhether it’s Hitchcock and Herrmann, Spielberg and Williams or latterly Villeneuve and Zimmer, film directors often get into a glorious...

Wendy Ide    The British writer director’s searing drama of reporters in the line of fire strips away political context to focus on the terrible, self perpetuating nature of warA near future US has turned its anger against itself; a new civil war is raging. As tracer fire whiplashes across the sky and the...

Guy Lodge    Tran Anh Hung’s simmering gastro romance is the latest dish in a cinematic feast ranging from The Godfather to The LunchboxThe term gastroporn got thrown around a lot when The Taste of Things was in cinemas recently, but I’m not sure it’s quite right for Tran Anh Hung’s sumptuous culinary...