Review

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

The restless historian was a victim of his own work ethic – and saw his dreams for British society smashed by Thatcher

The fictionalised version of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s torment in Iran is damning for the state, and for Boris Johnson

I love the band. But this incessant anthologising, dismantling and rebuilding is straining things

The shocking Danish show that revealed a criminal network’s white collar connections was watched by half a nation and brought change

Not all cinema has to be art. But this exhibition at the Design Museum proves Wes Anderson's most certainly is

A new documentary series turns the director into a Hollywood saint – and dulls some of his brilliance

Avant-garde writer Claire Louise Bennett’s new novel is an otherworldly hymn to minutiae

The film that’s dividing critics and the public has writer/director James Vanderbilt at the heart of its problems

It may lack the innovation of Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest, but James Vanderbilt’s compelling film still makes for essential watching today

With tired jump scares, flat CGI and a ludicrous government subplot, IT: Welcome To Derry is a giant turkey

Middleland is part elegy, part memoir – and reveals the isolation of a politician too thoughtful for his time

Nick Trend’s new book explores the places where Giotto and Leonardo constructed a country’s heritage

This film is a fine addition to Daniel Day-Lewis’s body of work, one of the greatest in cinema

Starting with Jennifer Lawrence’s Die My Love, a new wave of women-led films is showing what it really means to come undone

As Cop30 approaches, apocalyptic visions look more everyday than ever