Film

★★★★☆ Are you ready to feel the need for speed again? Top Gun: Maverick (2022), arriving 36 years after the Tony Scott original, is a fly into the danger zone you won’t forget in a hurry. While it’s had more delays than a Ryanair flight to Malaga, the wait is definitely worth it. If when Covid hit, Hollywood studios panicked, and put tentpole blockbusters out as Video On Demand releases, Cruise, as the film’s producer and a powerful industry figure,...

★★★★★ There are some places God is not wanted. That's how it feels in Hlynur Pálmason’s astonishing late 19th century odyssey, in which a naïve Danish priest and amateur photography enthusiast sets off for Iceland, at the time a dependency of Denmark, to build a church in the relatively unknown south eastern part of the land. Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), the soldier for Christ, is a bit of an odd duck. Instead of travelling directly by boat to the south...

★★★★☆ 2017’s Japanese zombie comedy, One Cut of the Dead, became a word-of-mouth sensation on the festival circuit. Boasting a clever film-within-a-film setup, it revealed itself to be anything but the same old zombie apocalypse yarn, more a charming celebration of guerrilla filmmaking, artistic creativity, thinking on your feet and the little miracles that happen on a beleaguered film set. Fast forward to 2022, and Michel Hazanavicius’ wonderful French remake has opened the 75th Cannes Film Festival. The Oscar-winning filmmaker...

Will Smith has also responded to the ban.

★★★★★ In the Iranian city of Mashhad, between 2000-2001, a serial killer murdered 16 prostitutes. Upon capture, Saeed Azimi told the authorities he was doing the work of God, cleaning his home city of vice and moral corruption. Many in the country appeared to believe him and rallied against his conviction, turning the case into a national phenomenon. Ali Abbasi’s grim drama about predatory evil dressed up as a religious cause begins as a textbook Hitchcockian homage before transforming into...

Veteran filmmaker Clint Eastwood has had one of the most enduring careers in the history of Hollywood, both behind and in front of the camera. Now on his eighth decade in the business, the 4 times Oscar-winner is still averaging a film a year even in the midst a global crisis. While his more recent output hasn’t always been met with the critical praise he's been accustomed to - who could forget the truly baffling 15:17 to Paris - his...

Villeneuve creates a work with points of access out of unwieldy source material

Perhaps Bond just isn't for me.

“Is it Thunderball or Goldfinger where basically Sean Connery’s character rapes a woman?” said Fukunaga. “She’s like ‘No, no, no,’ and he’s like, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ That wouldn’t fly today.”