John Bleasdale
18 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 article21 May 2025
Could Tom Cruise’s next mission be the White House?
Having saved the world numerous times on the big screen, could the star be tempted to sort out the world’s problems via political office?
Read the full article14 May 2025
A continent of Hans Grubers
Why does MAGA hate Europe? Maybe they’ve just watched too many movies...
Read the full article07 May 2025
The Sorrentino blues
Is Italy’s most famous director all style and no substance?
Read the full article26 April 2025
Mussolini, Trump and me
‘When did anti-fascism become controversial?’ Director Joe Wright on the future of M: Son of the Century, his streaming series about Italy's fascist dictator
Read the full article02 April 2025
The Assessment and the mother of all battles
Set in a future where the government decides who gets to have children, The Assessment is a personal triumph for film-maker Fleur Fortuné
Read the full article