John Bleasdale
03 December 2025
Leatherface and me: the Chainsaw that won’t stop
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the most terrifying film ever made. So why did I watch it when I was 11, and why does it still have a hold on me?
Read the full article02 December 2025
Train Dreams is the year’s most beautiful film
Joel Edgerton’s career-best performance underpins a modern classic that owes s substantial debt to Terrence Malick
Read the full article26 November 2025
Will HAL kill Hollywood?
After years of scary AI movies, the tech is now portrayed as heroic – just as the industry’s humans come into its sights
Read the full article22 November 2025
Why do people hate Sydney Sweeney?
The White Lotus actress is a registered Republican, but that isn’t a reason to troll her – our idea of liberal Hollywood is a myth
Read the full article19 November 2025
The beatification of Martin Scorsese
A new documentary series turns the director into a Hollywood saint – and dulls some of his brilliance
Read the full article06 November 2025
Are the movies finally getting mental illness right?
Starting with Jennifer Lawrence’s Die My Love, a new wave of women-led films is showing what it really means to come undone
Read the full article31 October 2025
Is it time Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos got divorced?
Bugonia is their fifth film together, and for some, the magic is wearing thin
Read the full article24 October 2025
Why nuclear war movies are blowing up
Kathryn Bigelow’s excellent thriller A House of Dynamite is part of a mushrooming trend
Read the full article22 October 2025
Kill, stream, repeat: has our obsession with true crime gone too far?
The mysterious serial killer who terrorised Florence is the subject of yet another true crime Netflix show
Read the full article18 October 2025
Could you ever love a robot?
A sci-fi film from 2013 was meant to offer a utopian vision of the future – in fact it is a perfect picture of our age of techno nihilism
Read the full article14 October 2025
The festival that shows why silent films still speak loudly
The reels from Palestine and Italy might be a century old – but they feel shockingly of the moment
Read the full article01 October 2025
What the f**k will Marc Maron do next?
Just when America most needs dissenting voices, the comedian is retiring from his brilliant WTF podcast after 16 years
Read the full article01 October 2025
Claudia Cardinale, the woman who made the world stand still
Mysterious, graceful and defiant, Cardinale transcended the male gaze and wrote her own legend
Read the full article17 September 2025
Robert Redford, last of the golden gods
Robert Redford’s death reminds us of his effortless greatness - and that the age of the Hollywood giant is itself fading into history
Read the full article17 September 2025
The Gazan child who spoke to the world
The Voice of Hind Rajab, about the last hours of a five-year-old, is breaking audiences and winning awards
Read the full article08 September 2025
The Golden Lion goes to men… again
Indie director Jim Jarmusch scooped the award with Father Mother Sister Brother - but what does this say about the future of film festivals?
Read the full article03 September 2025
No Other Choice, the new Parasite
Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice is a masterfully savage comedy of murder and capitalist ruin
Read the full article30 August 2025
The new film capital of the world is… Oslo
Norway’s new wave is winning awards and acclaim. But will funding problems kill off the boom just as audiences take notice?
Read the full article27 August 2025
Crime scene cinema from Gaza
Two films about unfolding tragedy shock the Locarno Film Festival
Read the full article23 August 2025
When will Quentin Tarantino shut the f*** up?
The director has given another self-aggrandising interview. He should be making better films instead
Read the full article13 August 2025
What makes Sexy Beast so good?
Jonathan Glazer’s British gangster film hit screens 25 years ago. What is the secret to its success?
Read the full article06 August 2025
Life and death of a one-armed twin
A mad, mournful documentary about brothers on the edge stunned the Czech Republic’s biggest film festival. Then real life caught up
Read the full article26 July 2025
The Assassin: Why we love killers on screen
Keeley Hawes’s The Assassin is part of a rash of film and TV about professional killers. When and how did they become aspirational?
Read the full article23 July 2025
Licence to kill a franchise
Daniel Craig’s 007 is dead, yet James Bond will return. Can Amazon revive him without ruining everything?
Read the full article19 July 2025
The best film festival in Italy and no, it’s not Venice
No red carpets, no gaggles of reporters, no nonsense – just the chance to see all the great films you’ve missed
Read the full article16 July 2025
Mark Gatiss, the most bookish man on the box
The creator and star of a new postwar drama talks literature, the second world war and unconventional Hollywood marriages
Read the full article04 July 2025
The insanity and greatness of Apocalypse Now
Apocalypse Now was the one truly great Vietnam movie epic - but however mad was, it could have been a whole lot madder
Read the full article28 June 2025
Are these the best 10 films of the 21st century so far?
A new list from the New York Times gives an insight into what actors and directors watch. But here is a personal choice
Read the full article25 June 2025
Our obsession with sequels is ruining movies
Sequels were once considered hack work. Can cinema go back to doing what it does best?
Read the full article21 June 2025
Adam Curtis’s Conspiracy Cinematic Universe
The documentarian returns with Shifty, another gorgeous fever dream of jaw-dropping clips and head-scratching claims
Read the full article24 May 2025
Gaza at the movies
In Cannes, the story of a photographer killed by an Israeli air strike and a lo-fi thriller offer different visions of tragedy and retribution in the Middle East
Read the full article23 May 2025
Ari Aster’s Eddington is not the great Covid movie we’ve been waiting for
The Hereditary director ropes Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone into a misanthropic failure of a conspiracy thriller
Read the full article