Call me racist, call me a misogynist, call me homophobic, call me a scammer - I'm all those things. I don't care. This is the general population of the UK right now, scattering to make comments online about me. They don't know me. They don't know my purpose.
Gerry and Stella, played by Ciaran Hinds and Lesley Manville, are a late-middle-aged couple from Northern Ireland who left for Scotland in the 1970s, traumatised by the Troubles, and are taking a restorative midwinter break in Amsterdam. They appear perfectly happy and affectionate, but Gerry has a drinking problem and Stella feels lonely because Gerry does not share her Catholic faith.
Institutionally, we still don't understand what inclusion means. Just because you invite someone into a space, but you don't provide the necessary resources to keep them and everyone else in that room safe by them being there, that's not inclusivity. That's exploitation. That man's disability got exploited that night, and it led to multiple offenses.
I wanted to mention Kenneth Williams because he was so profound, Allen tells me. And yet, because he was also funny, that profundity hasn't been acknowledged. As a child, I connected with his outsiderness. Rather than trying to fit in, he went in the opposite direction. Not only did he not apologise for being different, but he was queer in every sense, truly at odds with the world in which he found himself.
During a junket interview with OutNow, Gyllenhaal explained that the punctuation mark was included to represent the "whole lot of energy" that comes out when the historically muted Bride of Frankenstein is finally allowed to speak. That's all well and good, but to viewers the titular exclamation point is less of a metaphor and more of a golden arrow saying, "This movie is going to be crazy."
Among the bold choices in Luca Guadagnino's feverish film of William S Burroughs' novel are the late 20th-century pop and alternative soundtrack (Nirvana, Prince, New Order) for a 1950s story, and the casting of an unrecognisable, orc-like Manville in a trumped-up cameo as the shaman Dr Cotter, who was male in the original book.
BBC Threads, directed by Mick Jackson, follows two families in Sheffield as they try to survive a direct hit from a nuclear bomb. It pulls no punches as its characters fall one by one, before ultimately only focusing on pregnant Ruth (Karen Meagher) as she tries to survive and carve out a life for her and her child. Meticulously researched, it presents a bleak picture of what civilization would look like after nuclear winter, including the ozone layer weakening, resulting in blindness and skin cancer, and the degradation of the English language itself.
The esteemed film-maker was licking his wounds: his most recent picture, Far from the Madding Crowd, which imbued its 19th-century rural characters with an anachronistic King's Road style and panache, had flopped stateside. Childers approached the date with mixed feelings. He adored Schlesinger's previous movie, the jazzy Darling, starring Julie Christie as a model on the make, and had seen it three times.
"On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb," so wrote Emily Brontë. In a story studded with untameable lust, unbreakable love, fierce tempers and shocking acts of revenge, perhaps the most faithful aspect of Emerald Fennell's latest film, "Wuthering Heights", to its 1847 novel is the tempestuous depiction of the remote English countryside. The Yorkshire moors, to be exact.
I posted a rave review of the new Sam Raimi film, Send Help, the other day and triggered a debate I didn't expect: is it OK for Christians to watch horror films? Send Help a gore-laced plane-crash survival face-off, according to the Guardian review (which was less kind than mine) is more comedy-horror than horror, or maybe horror/thriller. But there's definitely horror there you get the point.
At the narrative midpoint, pathetic protagonist Yoo Man-su ( Lee Byung-hun) - also a hobbying horticulturist with a bonsai mag subscription - arrives at the home of a man he deems a rival for one of the only paper jobs on the market. He wields a pistol concealed inside several oven gloves, intending to kill vinyl enthusiast Goo Beom-mo (Lee Sung-min) as a means of levelling the playing field.
The Castle Cinema, which opened on Chatsworth Road in 2015 after a crowdfunding campaign, has become one of the best places to catch a film in the whole of London, so there's no better team to revitalise Catford Mews. Reopening at The Castle Catford some time in 2026, the venue will boast three screens, a community space, a bar and a cafe.
It has an impeccable inner-city skyline. Croydon has the facade of being a bigger city. It's got all these huge offices that looks like residences. And filmmakers get this authentic scenery without the restrictions of space and traffic management found in central London.
At the narrative midpoint, pathetic protagonist Yoo Man-su ( Lee Byung-hun) - also a hobbying horticulturist with a bonsai mag subscription - arrives at the home of a man he deems a rival for one of the only paper jobs on the market. He wields a pistol concealed inside several oven gloves, intending to kill vinyl enthusiast Goo Beom-mo (Lee Sung-min) as a means of levelling the playing field.
In the film, a murderous cult known as the Jimmies stalk the ruins of postapocalyptic Britain. Led by Sir Jimmy Crystal, played by Jack O'Connell, the sect are instantly recognisable for their cheap tracksuits, bleached blonde wigs and particular mannerisms. For viewers in the UK, Crystal is unmistakably reminiscent of the entertainer Jimmy Savile, whose decades-long history of sexual abuse was only revealed after his death.
A quarter-century later, it's safe to say that those days have come to an end. Not only does the streaming-only Netflix of the twenty-twenties no longer transmit movies on DVD through the mail (a service its younger users have trouble even imagining), it ranks approximately nowhere as a preferred cinephile destination. That has to do with a selection much diminished since the DVD days
Labour MP Dawn Butler has since accused the BBC of "an obvious bias" and a "failure of duty of care" for airing the slur. The MP for Brent Central stated the offensive language "should never have been aired" and described its broadcast as "painful and unforgivable."