Review

Nia DaCosta takes the reins in this no-holds-barred exploration of cults, superstition and what happens to humanity when reason collapses

The high finance drama used to tease and torment by making us care about scumbags. Now it’s genuinely thrilling and terrifying too

From Saturday Night Live to Star Wars, the 1970s reinvented Japan’s warrior elite – now the subject of a major exhibition – as pop mythology

There is not a shred of sentimentality in Chloé Zhao’s magnificent adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel. This is where its brilliance lies

From the Beckhams to Eddie Murphy and Charlie Sheen, they promise truth but deliver reputation-laundering dressed up as intimacy

His disappointing Netflix special Mortality jabs at straw men and suggests a comedian slipping out of touch

A sleepy Alpine mountain retreat offered shelter for surrealists, LSD prophets and weary hippies

The veteran artist’s World on Fire Timeline maps a century of crisis and resistance

Chloé Zhao’s film is deeply felt and beautifully made – but misses the essence of what made the playwright so great

Lifelong devotees of John le Carré need not worry, the saga of Jonathan Pine is in safe hands with screenwriter David Farr

Zendaya and Nolan return, Blade Runner expands and Peaky Blinders concludes. What our editor-at-large is most looking forward to in 2026

The star who began in children's theatre in a Norwegian forest is Oscar-bound with Sentimental Value

The white stuff in big movies isn’t real - sometimes it’s bleached cornflakes, sometimes fire extinguisher foam.. and it used to be asbestos

A superb revival of When We Are Married gleefully demolishes 25 years of pious respectability

Not even Minnie Driver can save a misfiring move to Rome for a series optimised for social media

Our writers on their cultural highlights of the year

The Room in the Tower is his eighth festive special for the BBC: long may he continue

Back in Berlin 24 years after their 9/11 gig, the band’s blistering paranoia is still in very much in evidence

An extraordinary Florence show brings together the friar-artist’s sacred visions and the Medici politics that shaped them

A hit job on Keir Starmer does no one any favours – but shows how the party’s old grievances have led to its failure in power

In Margate, the woman who is arguably Britain’s greatest artist takes on the elements – and wins

In Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, it is Sandler who steals the show with his best performance since Uncut Gems (2019)

The journalist who had an affair with RFK Jr while profiling him writes beautifully. But letting a vaccine-sceptic loon off the hook is inexcusable

This Polish-Mexican bistro is a mismatch that probably shouldn’t work. But it absolutely does, and there is nowhere like it in Britain, maybe even the world

At 86, the author has finally written a memoir, and it’s everything you’d want it to be

A brilliant Nigerian Modernism exhibition shows the defiant beauty born from oppression

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?

Joel Edgerton’s career-best performance underpins a modern classic that owes s substantial debt to Terrence Malick

Linklater’s film takes on thwarted love and the pain of looming obsolescence. It was easily my favourite from this year's London Film Festival

Eddy Payne is reminiscent of Ralph Richardson in a night full of fun and charm

Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Paapa Essiedu make for magnificent theatre - just ignore the tree

The German artist’s epic Paris retrospective reveals an artist who can’t be pigeonholed