tue 08/07/2025

Film reviews, news & interviews

theartsdesk Q&A: actor Emma Mackey on 'Hot Milk' and life education

Pamela Jahn

Emma Mackey might have had her breakthrough role as a teenage tough cookie in Netflix's hit Series Sex Education (2019-20223), but there is also a disarming softness in her; a balanced mix of femininity and subtly fierce determination that made her the perfect choice as Emily Brontë in Frances O'Connor's 2022 biopic about the author’s journey to womanhood.

Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

Johncarvill

Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-praise, or sly, back-handed compliment?

Hot Milk review - a mother of a problem

Graham Fuller

Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Hot Milk, adapted from Deborah Levy’s 2016 Man Booker shortlistee, has been described as a "psychological drama". Strictly...

The Shrouds review - he wouldn't let it lie

James Saynor

“Dying is an act of eroticism,” suggested one of the many disposable characters in David Cronenberg’s first full-length feature, Shivers (1975), and...

Jurassic World Rebirth review - prehistoric...

Adam Sweeting

The first Jurassic Park movie now seems virtually Jurassic itself, having been released in the sepia-tinged year of 1993. Directed with pizzazz by...

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

Sudan, Remember Us review - the revolution will be memorised

Hugh Barnes

Gonzo documentary shines light on a lost opportunity in the Arab spring

theartsdesk Q&A: director Andreas Dresen on his anti-Nazi resistance drama 'From Hilde, with Love'

Pamela Jahn

The East German-born filmmaker explains why his biopic of the activist Hilde Coppi isn't bound to the 1940s

Chicken Town review - sluggish rural comedy with few laughs (and one chicken)

Helen Hawkins

A comedy great gets lost in an English backwater

F1: The Movie review - Brad Pitt rolls back the years as maverick racer Sonny Hayes

Adam Sweeting

Joseph Kosinski's motorsport spectacle delivers bang for your buck

Bleak landscapes and banjos: composer Bernard Hughes discusses his score for 'Chicken Town'

Graham Rickson

Our critic talks about his recent film project

28 Years Later review - an unsentimental, undead education

Nick Hasted

Allegorical mayhem in an eerily familiar zombie Britain

Red Path review - the dead know everything

James Saynor

A compelling story of a trail of Tunisian tears

Blu-ray: Darling

Demetrios Matheou

John Schlesinger's Sixties classic now feels problematic, but retains an icky fascination

Tornado review - samurai swordswoman takes Scotland by storm

Justine Elias

East meets West meets North of the Border in a wintry 18th-century actioner

Lollipop review - a family torn apart

Graham Fuller

Posy Sterling brilliantly conveys the torment of a homeless single mother denied her kids

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the French can do you-know-who

James Saynor

An amiable cross-Channel literary rom com

Big Star: The Nick Skelton Story review - the ways of a man with his mount

Justine Elias

Documentary about the champion showjumping duo

Ballerina review - hollow point

Nick Hasted

Ana de Armas joins the Wick-verse to frenetic but soulless effect

Goebbels and the Führer review - behind the scenes from the Nazi perpetrators' perspective

Markie Robson-Scott

Joachim Lang's docudrama focuses on Goebbels as master of fake news

Blu-ray: Eclipse

John Carvill

The BFI has unearthed an unsettling 1977 thriller starring Tom Conti and Gay Hamilton

The Ballad of Wallis Island review - the healing power of the old songs

Anthony Cecil

Estranged folk duo reunites in a classy British comedy drama

The Salt Path review - the transformative power of nature

Markie Robson-Scott

Marianne Elliott brings Raynor Winn's memoir to the big screen

Bogancloch review - every frame a work of art

Sarah Kent

Living off grid might be the meaning of happiness

When the Light Breaks review - only lovers left alive

Nick Hasted

Tender close-up on young love, grief and growing-up in Iceland

Blu-ray: Strange New Worlds - Science Fiction at DEFA

Graham Rickson

Eye-popping Cold War sci-fi epics from East Germany, superbly remastered and annotated

Mongrel review - deeply empathetic filmmaking from Taiwan

Harry Thorfinn-George

Artful direction and vivid detail of rural life from Wei Liang Chiang

The Phoenician Scheme review - further adventures in the idiosyncratic world of Wes Anderson

Adam Sweeting

Benicio del Toro's megalomaniac tycoon heads a star-studded cast

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review - can this really be the end for Ethan Hunt?

Adam Sweeting

Tom Cruise's eighth M:I film shows symptoms of battle fatigue

Magic Farm review - numpties from the Nineties

James Saynor

A comedy about youth TV putting trends above truth

Footnote: a brief history of British film

England was movie-mad long before the US. Contrary to appearances in a Hollywood-dominated world, the celluloid film process was patented in London in 1890 and by 1905 minute-long films of news and horse-racing were being made and shown widely in purpose-built cinemas, with added sound. The race to set up a film industry, though, was swiftly won by the entrepreneurial Americans, attracting eager new UK talents like Charlie Chaplin. However, it was a British film that in 1925 was the world's first in-flight movie, and soon the arrival of young suspense genius Alfred Hitchcock and a new legal requirement for a "quota" of British film in cinemas assisted a golden age for UK film. Under the leadership of Alexander Korda's London Films, Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929) is considered the first true sound movie, documentary techniques developed and the first Technicolor movies were made.

Brief_EncounterWhen war intervened, British filmmakers turned effectively to lean, effective propaganda documentaries and heroic, studio-based war-films. After Hitchcock too left for Hollywood, David Lean launched into an epic career with Brief Encounter (pictured), Powell and Pressburger took up the fantasy mantle with The Red Shoes, while Carol Reed created Anglo films noirs such as The Third Man. Fifties tastes were more domestic, with Ealing comedies succeeded by Hammer horror and Carry-Ons; and more challenging in the Sixties, with New Wave films about sex and class by Lindsay Anderson, Joseph Losey and Tony Richardson. But it was Sixties British escapism which finally went global: the Bond films, Lean's Dr Zhivago, Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music made Sean Connery, Julie Christie and Julie Andrews Hollywood's top stars.

In the 1970s, recession and the TV boom undermined cinema-going and censorship changes brought controversy: a British porn boom and scandals over The Devils, Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange. While Hollywood fielded Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese epics, Britain riposted with The Killing Fields, Chariots of Fire and Gandhi, but 1980s recession dealt a sharp blow to British cinema, and the Rank Organisation closed, after more than half a century. However more recently social comedies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and The Full Monty, and royal dramas such as The Queen and The King's Speech have enhanced British reputation for wit, social observation and character acting.

As more films are globally co-produced, the success of British individual talents has come to outweigh the modest showing of the industry itself. Every week The Arts Desk reviews latest releases as well as leading international film festivals, and features in-depth career interviews with leading stars. Its writers include Jasper Rees, Graham Fuller, Anne Billson, Nick Hasted, Alexandra Coghlan, Veronica Lee, Emma Simmonds, Adam Sweeting and Matt Wolf

Close Footnote

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £49,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

latest in Today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Live Aid at 40: When Rock'n'Roll Took on the World...

“Bob’s not the kind of guy you can say no to,” said Sting, reminiscing about the origins of 1984’s Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s...

theartsdesk Q&A: actor Emma Mackey on 'Hot Milk...

Emma Mackey might have had her breakthrough role as a teenage tough cookie in Netflix's hit Series Sex Education (2019-20223), but there...

Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-...

Sabrina Carpenter, Hyde Park BST review - a sexy, sparkly, s...

Has Sabrina Carpenter officially conquered London? A year after bestie and fellow Disney alumni Taylor Swift declared the “Summer of Sabrina”...

Album: Olafur Arnalds and Talos - A Dawning

Silken ambience is the name of the game on this set from Icelandic composer-producer Olafur Arnalds and dreampop singer Talos, aka Eoin French,...

Music Reissues Weekly: Motörhead - The Manticore Tapes

Manticore was owned by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and their manager. The organisation provided the name for the band’s label. Apart from ELP and its...

Kiefer / Van Gogh, Royal Academy review - a pairing of oppos...

When he was a callow youth of 18, German artist Anselm Keifer got a travel grant to follow in the footsteps of his idol, Vincent van Gogh. Some...

Siglo de Oro, Wigmore Hall review - electronic Lamentations...

Siglo de Oro are a vocal ensemble who specialise in older music – and especially neglected older music – but they have also...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters