John Bleasdale
17 July 2026
This is Christopher Nolan’s world, and we’re lucky to live in it
He’s consistently brilliant and consistently under-rated - and The Odyssey is another reminder to enjoy greatness while it lasts.
Read the full article15 July 2026
How a Liverpool fan fell in love with Cantona
A new documentary captures the conundrum of the ultimate individual in a team sport
Read the full article10 July 2026
The activists trying to save cinema, one screen at a time
Over 2,500 of Italy’s cinemas have closed since the pandemic. But a group of film enthusiasts has a plan to turn things around
Read the full article03 July 2026
The awful truth about the revolting film Elon Musk wants you to watch
Banned in Germany and made available on X, Citizen Vigilante isn’t an aberration; it’s the logical endpoint of Hollywood’s careless obsession with a violent, racist myth
Read the full article18 June 2026
The sheer hell of Hell Grind, a fully AI-generated movie
Does it point the way to the future? Yes, but only because the future is shit
Read the full article11 June 2026
Spielberg’s Disclosure Day is willfully gullible guff for Trump wingnuts
The great director should have thought twice about promoting the conspiracy theories that are now a central plank of US government policy
Read the full article10 June 2026
This is the simple secret of Obsession and Backrooms’s success
They’ve captured a moment of IP fatigue. But more than anything else, they're good
Read the full article05 June 2026
Nicole Kidman is great. But is she any good?
For every standout performance in The Hours, there’s a stinker like Scarpetta. Yet this is part of her unknowable mystique
Read the full article27 May 2026
How Na Hong-jin’s Hope brought glory to a second-best Cannes
The monster movie stood out at a festival full of three-star films
Read the full article20 May 2026
Imagine this Lennon film doesn’t exist
AI slop wrecks a compelling final interview, but Cantona, Full Phil and Paper Tiger stand out at Cannes
Read the full article13 May 2026
Soderbergh’s The Christophers underlines Hollywood’s genius problem
A film about a great painter needs great paintings to succeed
Read the full article06 May 2026
The night before Spielberg, Lucas and Coppola took over Hollywood
A new book details how three friends invented a new American cinema - then created the blockbusters that destroyed it
Read the full article22 April 2026
The new Michael Jackson biopic is worse than bad – it’s dangerous
‘Michael’ avoids the claims of child abuse by the King of Pop – and falls into the same old cliches
Read the full article08 April 2026
Exclusive: Jim Jarmusch on psilocybin, Buddhist jokes and turning Tom Waits into an asshole
In his only UK interview for Father Mother Sister Brother, the director opens up about his films, his inspirations and why he hates rehearsals
Read the full article03 April 2026
Whatever happened to the great film comedy?
Movies intended to make you scream with fright are everywhere. Ones to make you scream with laughter, not so much
Read the full article01 April 2026
Why won’t young US celebrities speak out against Trump?
The No Kings protests were heartening - but they exposed an absence of younger stars willing to stand up
Read the full article25 March 2026
George Orwell wasn’t a prophet – he was a warning
Raoul Peck, the director of Orwell: 2+2=5, on how the writer’s message is missed and misused – and what he would have thought of Trump and Gaza
Read the full article20 March 2026
More quiet, fewer boobs. Is this Paolo Sorrentino’s most subversive film?
The director on his stylistic shift in the acclaimed La Grazia - and his despair at modern politics
Read the full article16 March 2026
A night when the Oscars almost mattered
Winners like Jessie Buckley, One Battle After Another and Sinners were predictable – but the fighting spirit of cinema offered a bit of hope
Read the full article13 March 2026
Why is every big movie now so excessive and exhausting?
The Bride, Wuthering Heights, even One Battle After Another prioritise mayhem over coherence
Read the full article09 March 2026
Snubbed: The films and actors that should win these Oscars
From Imogen Poots to Orwell 2+2=5, the best actors and films that weren't even nominated
Read the full article05 March 2026
Rosebush Pruning, a film that needs ruthless pruning
Future James Bond Callum Turner can’t save a pointless family drama about unhappy rich people
Read the full article25 February 2026
Yellow Letters, the perfect winner of an imperfect Berlin film festival
A film about the cost of standing up for what you believe in is a stark contrast with the festival’s mealy-mouthed treatment of Gaza
Read the full article20 February 2026
The film for teens that hates teens
In Good Luck. Have Fun. Don’t Die, Sam Rockwell and Gore Verbinski poke fun at the young’s tech addiction - without realising that older generations are even worse
Read the full article18 February 2026
Travis Bickle, the first incel
Taxi Driver is 50 years old but its main character’s sexless white supremacy makes it more relevant than ever.
Read the full article16 February 2026
The Berlin Film Festival’s cowardly retreat over Gaza
By ducking tough questions about Gaza at its opening press conference, the Berlin Film Festival has enraged film-makers, signalled its own irrelevance… and put genocide in the headlines
Read the full article12 February 2026
A demon toilet, a time portal and a scammed goat farmer: New films you can’t miss
Chronovisor, Bowels of Hell and Variations on a Theme stand out at the Rotterdam Film Festival
Read the full article12 February 2026
The withering lows of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights
The Saltburn director ropes in Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi to give a bleak classic the Bridgerton treatment
Read the full article11 February 2026
Awards season is bad for cinema
The Baftas are coming. The Oscars are next. And yet again, they’ll reward hopelessly middlebrow films that honour the ruling ideas of the ruling class
Read the full article09 February 2026
Epstein, Eyes Wide Shut and Hollywood’s sad fantasy of elegant evil
Kubrick made elite depravity look operatic. The Epstein files show the real thing as vile and vacuous
Read the full article29 January 2026
Melania’s Leni Riefenstahl: The queasy resurrection of Brett Ratner
The director of the first lady’s troubled new film was the centre of serious accusations of sexual assault
Read the full article23 January 2026
Is Timothée Chalamet taking the piss?
The Oscar-nominated star of Marty Supreme is either unbearably self-confident — or quietly hilarious
Read the full article