Cate Blanchett

If you would like to see that rarest of endangered species — a smart, witty and original 90-minute thriller aimed at adults — then stop reading this review immediately and go and see Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag. It is a film that is probably best enjoyed by going in entirely blind, where the bare bones of the premise, revolving around a husband-and-wife pair of British spies who find themselves under suspicion of treachery, possibly by one another, is all you need to know. Yet if you need further convincing, then rest assured that this a one-of-a-kind blend of Mission: Impossible, Private Lives and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, with a little Mr. and Mrs. Smith thrown into the mix, to season.

When the Oscar-winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón announced that his next project would be a seven-part adaptation of Renée Knight’s novel Disclaimer, it was met with a mixture of excitement and surprise. Excitement, because anything that Cuarón involves himself with tends to be an event; surprise, because after a series of high-profile recent projects that have included everything from a near-experimental sci-fi blockbuster (Gravity) to a black-and-white Mexican drama he shot himself (Roma), it seemed almost mundane, rather as if Stanley Kubrick, at the peak of his success, had decided to make a movie out of a Harold Robbins potboiler.

Two of last year’s biggest commercial flops, Amsterdam and Babylon, share certain DNA. They’re both big-budget, adult-oriented, period dramas of a kind that aren’t supposed to be made any more (except the fact that there are two of them suggests they are) from edgy auteur writer-directors who had big hits a few years back and have been busily spending the credit that they acquired from their success ever since. Both mix comedy and seriousness in a fashion that ought to attract critical plaudits but has brought little public interest. And they’re both long: Amsterdam is two and a quarter hours, and Babylon is a frankly staggering 189 minutes, which is near-Avatar levels of endurance. And, finally, both star Margot Robbie.

Life imitated art to a depressingly predictable degree when a clip from Todd Field’s Tár circulated online. It’s part of a scene where the film’s title character, superstar conductor Lydia Tár (played by Cate Blanchett), leads a masterclass at Juilliard. She haughtily dismisses students’ reluctance to learn the classical canon because of their difficulty “identifying” with its composers. To some, Lydia’s monologue was a vindication: a righteous tirade against "wokeness." To others, the speech exemplifies Lydia’s abuse of power, which includes not only dressing down students and mentees but sleeping with many of them and torpedoing their careers.  But oversimplified views of Lydia as a crusader or villain flatten the film’s wrenching complexities.

Later this week, probably the world’s greatest living film director will celebrate his eightieth birthday. However he celebrates — whether in the company of friends and family in his no doubt opulent Manhattan home, or working on his eagerly awaited new film Killers of the Flower Moon — Martin Scorsese can reach his milestone age in the confidence that his position in cinematic history is assured forever. For a man so steeped in the art and practice of filmmaking — and who has made several excellent documentaries about movies — it must be intensely gratifying for Scorsese to be aware that he is that rarest of persons, a living legend, whose contributions to film will live forever.