Robert pattinson

The Drama is the latest from Norwegian writer-director Kristoffer Borgli whose films (Sick of Myself, Dream Scenario) always cause a stir, and this is no exception. It stars Hollywood big-hitters Robert Pattinson and Zendaya as a happily engaged couple whose forthcoming wedding may not go ahead after one discovers a disturbing truth about the other. What is this disturbing truth? It would be a spoiler to tell you – even though the details are splashed all over the internet and have already created a backlash. (Don’t look it up. Or do. I’m not your boss.) It is intended to shock but it may not be as shocking as it thinks it is – or even very convincing.

Big-name, all-star team-ups used to be the preserve of Hollywood blockbusters – perhaps reaching its peak in 2005 with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, when Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie met, fell in love and sold a billion copies of the National Enquirer in the process. But in our new era of superhero-driven slop, where it barely matters which actor is in what picture, such things have largely fallen into abeyance. Still, even in our jaded times, there remains an undeniable thrill from seeing Katniss Everdeen and Edward Cullen together on screen at last, as they are in Die My Love.

Mickey 17 is the latest film from the South Korean writer-director Bong Joon-ho, who won an Oscar for Parasite and made Snowpiercer and Okja. It’s a dystopian sci-fi satire starring Robert Pattinson twice over (all will be explained) but while it initially kicks some decent ideas around, it eventually descends into a cartoonish, sub-Armando Iannucci comic caper with, as far as I could ascertain, nothing fresh to say. It’s not the biggest disappointment I’ve had in my life but it’s up there. The film is set some time in the future and Pattinson plays Mickey 17, a crew member on a space-colonisation mission who, in the opening sequence, has fallen into a deep crevice on the ice planet that is Niflheim. (I’ve always had my reservations about Niflheim; ask anybody.

The latest Batman film, The Batman, may be a reboot, or even a reboot of a rebooted reboot that’s been rebooted. Hard to tell any more. Tracey Ullman once joked that her mother had served leftovers for so long that no one could recall the original dish and this feels like that. What was the original dish? Was it Tim Burton’s version from 1989 starring Michael Keaton? I don’t know. All I know is that you hope each time for something fresh and surprising and entertaining but every film since has simply attempted to out-film noir the last. We can go darker still! Bruce Wayne, more traumatised by his childhood than ever before! I should also warn you that it’s three hours long having been cut down from four. (Holy cow, Batman!

As Alan Bennett’s Prince Regent almost said in The Madness of King George, "Being Batman is not a position. It’s a predicament." Actors including Michael Keaton, Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, George Clooney, Val Kilmer and (vocally) Will Arnett have all had their turn at being the Bat-person over the past few decades, vying with one another to adopt their gruffest and manliest voice as they fly around dressed as a giant nocturnal mammal. It’s not quite Stanislavsky, but the various award-winning thespians have given it their all. Their mothers, and agents, must be proud. And now the youngest of their number, 35-year-old Robert Pattinson, has joined their Bat-ranks.

Tenet is the latest high-concept, time-bending blockbuster from Christopher Nolan and it’s the film that (unofficially) reopens cinemas in the UK. It has everything that fans of Inception or Interstellar might want. There are spectacular set pieces. There’s time going forwards and then reversing, so it’s bullets flying back into the gun as crashed cars right themselves. There is a relentlessly pounding soundtrack. There is Sir Michael Caine playing Sir Michael Caine — his character is called Sir Michael Crosby but I wasn’t fooled — and as for the plot? Incoherent. Which fans seem to like. (‘I can’t explain any of it but it’s genius,’ I heard one say on the radio the other day. ‘A masterpiece.

Every civilization needs its barbarians. Lazy, filthy, dumb and dangerous, the barbarian, real or imagined, is the eternal grindstone on which the civilized sharpen their prejudices. They are, as the Greek Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy wrote, ‘a solution of a sort’ — but to what? In Cavafy’s poem ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ (1898), an unnamed city is gripped by cultural torpor and political sloth. The gridlocked citizens, weakened by indolence and luxury, dream of a bloody release from their troubles. Disaster, a visit from the barbarians, becomes their last hope for rebirth. You don’t need to be a specialist to see the parallels between the poem and the illicit undercurrents of politics in the 2010s.