Film

Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is a sprawling tale set in Hollywood in 1969, against the backdrop of the Manson murders, so it’s not a meditative, rural parable, just to be clear. No changing seasons, autumnal leaves, frosty mornings or any of that. Instead, he’s trying his hand at combining retro pop culture, violence and revenge fantasy… OK, it’s business as usual and, as usual, it has been hailed as ‘a masterpiece’ in some quarters and yet another ‘woman-hating’ travesty in others. The truth, as ever, lies somewhere in between. Violence-wise, you only have to brace yourself for the last 15 minutes, when all hell

Once upon a time two men sat in a New York bar lamenting the state of Broadway. So they decided to play Fantasy Musical. Several beers down they came up with a weird hybrid: a jukebox musical that injected the songs of Blondie into the plot of Desperately Seeking Susan. Somehow this botched centaur stumbled all the way to the West End, where it joined that throng of musicals that should have stayed on the drawing board. Blinded by the Light is a Bollywood-style musical comedy set in the Pakistani community of Luton that takes as its soundtrack the oeuvre of Bruce Springsteen. No drunk blokes in a bar could

Ritesh Batra had a smash hit with his gentle romance The Lunchbox (2013) and then made a couple of less impactful English language films, The Sense of an Ending and Our Souls At Night. But now he has returned to India with Photograph, which is another romance and it is slow, slow, so very slooooooow. I am a fan of non-action films, as we know, but here the longueurs have longueurs which, in turn, have longueurs, plus the characters are so internalised they are essentially inscrutable. I wanted to shake them all and implore: ‘For God’s sake, just say or do something!’ It is set in a gorgeously filmed Mumbai

Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is Nick Broomfield’s documentary chronicling the muse-artist relationship between Marianne Ihlen and Leonard Cohen. Her name comes first because Broomfield wished to tell her story but, even so, this could be titled Marianne & Leonard: And A Lot More On Him. Hard to fathom what the point is, really. As Broomfield was also her lover, I even thought: is he not just using her all over again? Still, it will appeal to Cohen fans — and who isn’t one? — plus you do get to see him shaving while off his head on acid, which is fascinating. How did he not ever cut himself?

The Lion King is Disney’s photorealistic CGI remake of the beloved, hand-drawn 1994 original that, for many children, offered a first introduction to the idea of patriarchal monarchy. (Relax. I’m not going down that road today. Just not in the mood.) And already it’s been trampled underfoot by many critics. It ‘monetises nostalgia’. It is ‘unnecessary’. It’s a ‘glorified tech demo’ from ‘a greedy conglomerate’. It is all those things, maybe, but I was mostly entranced anyhow. Also, I don’t understand why the two films can’t happily co-exist. Why have one film about patriarchal monarchy when… no, still not in the mood. Sorry. But I expect I’ll be business as

‘I live completely anonymously,’ whispers Jim Broadbent down the phone from Lincolnshire. Nonsense, I counter. You’re one of the most recognisable actors in this united luvviedom. ‘Am I?’ he asks gently. Oh come on. You’re Bridget Jones’s dad, Del Boy’s arch-enemy Roy Slater, Lord Longford campaigning for Myra Hindley’s parole, dotty antiques-shop owner Samuel Gruber in the Paddington films, Game of Thrones’s Archmaester Ebrose, testy but lovable W.S. Gilbert in Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy, and the blackmailer who unacceptably shakes down Maggie Smith’s eponymous Lady in the Van. I best know Broadbent as Prince Albert in Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (1988), trying to go incognito among the commoners by passing himself off

Midsommar is the latest horror film from Ari Aster, who made Hereditary, which starred Toni Collette and was a sensation. That was a domestic, claustrophobic scenario packed with jump scares — well, jump-ish scares; I wasn’t that scared, actually — whereas this is pastoral and relies more on building a quiet dread. It’s set in the remote countryside where a pagan community has its own superstitions and rituals and ‘elders’ and a maypole — and they are never good news, maypoles. This is clever and gripping in its own right, but it is also familiar and will certainly put you in mind of The Wicker Man. That is, the 1973

Yesterday is the latest comedy (with sad bits) from Richard Curtis, directed by Danny Boyle, about an unsuccessful singer-songwriter, Jack, who wakes up to discover that he’s the only one who remembers the Beatles so can now steal all their tunes, if he’s of that mind. Unusually for Curtis, the lead is an Asian and there is no Bill Nighy (not a sign, not a whiff), which is an advance. And there are some funny moments — when Jack first plays ‘Yesterday’ to some friends, one sniffs: ‘It’s not exactly Coldplay, is it?’ But. It’s all intertwined with a romance that is not just generic but also intolerable. Strangely, I’ve

Nearly 25 years on from its immaculate birth, Toy Story — like Wagner’s Ring, like John Updike’s Rabbit novels — has become a tetralogy. Do we need another one? Isn’t it time for Woody the toy cowboy to stuff that hat on a peg and stop hanging around kids? The short answer is no.  Though it springs fewer surprises, Toy Story 4 is still reliably fab. The animation now has such a painterly exactness it may as well be real rain/stubble/tarmac up there on screen. As for the cartoon characters, they project their own truth too, even the newest toy fashioned from a plastic fork-cum-spoon. ‘I can’t believe I’m talking

Diego Maradona, Asif Kapadia’s take on the poor boy from the slums of Buenos Aires who became a footballing god, is gripping if heartbreaking. It’s one of those scenarios where a stunning natural talent is exploited rather than protected. He even put me in mind of Judy Garland (minus the large and devoted gay following). But for all that, it is not wholly satisfying and it sent me scurrying to Wikipedia. What happened to his marriage? What were his ties with the mafia exactly? Plus, from what I read there, was he also a bit of a shit? Kapadia is an exceptional documentarian and, as with his previous films, Senna