When investigative journalist Seymour “Sy” Hersh is asked what made him a suitable candidate to run his father’s store in Chicago, he shrugs, “Pizazz. Like people.” Pizazz and liking people not only equipped Sy to work front of house at Isador...
Jafar Panahi has had to navigate the most challenging set of circumstances in order to make films. Censored and persecuted by an authoritarian régime that has imprisoned him, placed him under house arrest and subjected him to filmmaking and travel...
It’s never easy to deliver a sequel to a successful whodunnit, much less a threequel. At this point, the amateur sleuths have begun to identify recurring patterns and misdirects, the characters have become archetypal, and the audience is waiting for the surprise twist...
When Robert De Niro radically transformed his body to play the boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, it meant he was serious about his craft, and reshaped our understanding of authenticity in acting. What does it mean that Sydney Sweeney transformed...
In the beginning there was nothing and then there was light. Or in the instance of The Carpenter’s Son, in the beginning there was the dogmatic Joseph, played by Nicolas Cage, awestruck by the light of God while his wife, Mary...
It is that Finnish word “that cannot be translated” again, and yet which is translated, also again, in opening text, as “a white-knuckled form of courage and unimaginable determination”, which “manifests itself when all hope is lost.” Wikipedia suggests ‘guts’. Three years ago,...
The accusation of “all style, no substance” gets thrown around often, sometimes appropriately, but what about a film that has neither style nor substance, no matter how much it tries to sell that it has both? Wicked: For Good is that picture, one...
Despite only running between 2004 and 2007, To Catch a Predator had an indelible impact on popular culture. Fronted by the journalist Chris Hansen, the 44-minute episodes became must-see TV, as law enforcement set up sting operations around the US to...
Gluttons for emotional punishment would do well to seek out Dylan Southern’s The Thing with Feathers, an ickily-stylised screen adaptation of Max Porter’s hit 2019 novel ‘Grief is a Thing with Feathers’. It’s telling that they’ve removed the marketing turn-off term “grief”...
While Kelly reckons with his own personal failings – occasionally detailed in flashbacks filling out his path to stardom – his crew have problems of their own. His manager Ron (Adam Sandler) is constantly on the phone to his incredibly...
