The pitch for this movie might have been “Heat meets Miami Vice”, and it’s to the credit of writer/director Joe Carnahan that the finished result can stand toe to toe with those two without feeling any need to apologise. The Rip is also noteworthy for bringing back together those two grizzled old Bostonians, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who co-star and co-produce (and also negotiated a special bonus deal with Netflix for the cast and crew, depending on the film’s success).It’s a tough, tense tale of Miami cops battling against not only Colombian drug cartels but also shady goings-on within the Read more ...

Brendan Fraser’s mournful, basset-hound face finds a loving home in this affecting fable from director/writer Hikari. Fraser plays Phillip Vanderploeg, an American actor struggling to make a niche for himself in Tokyo. He’s the definitive stranger in a strange land – though at least he can speak Japanese – and parts are few and far between (a career highlight was his flying superhero who advertises toothpaste). A solitary Phillip can often be found drowning his sorrows in local bars.But all is not quite lost. Phillip gets an offer he can’t afford to refuse when he’s approached by Rental Read more ...

State of Statelessness is the brainchild of the Drung Tibetan Filmmakers’ Collective based in Dharamshala, home to the Dalai Lama and spiritual heart of the Tibetan community in exile. Four short films, each by a different director, address what it means to live in the diaspora without a homeland. And like a short story, each film offers a glimpse into lives spent in perpetual exile.The quartet begins and ends with water. An aerial shot of a ferry crossing the Mekong delta introduces Where the River Ends directed by Tsering Tashi Gyalthang. Waiting for the ferry are Tenzin and his young Read more ...

We might simply call it a dilemma, but Hollywood screenwriters call it a “crisis decision”, or maybe sometimes a “swivel”. It’s when there’s an impossible choice, in movies sublime or ridiculous, whether it’s Rick choosing between Ilsa and beating the Nazis in Casablanca, or – in the latter category – pointless superheroes choosing between a baby and the entire globe in The Fantastic Four: First Steps.Yet the crisis decision to end them all occurs a long way from Hollywood in The Voice of Hind Rajab, a brisk, unbearably fraught dramatisation of an emblematic event in the Gaza war – when a six Read more ...

When Hamlet the Dane talked about “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”, it was typical of the way that Shakespeare generalised. The writer didn’t let you infer too much about himself. So when he specified one or two of the thousand shocks in the same speech (“To be, or not to be”), they involved rather impersonal, evasive things like “the law’s delay” and “the insolence of office”. In this, his most famous soliloquy, Shakespeare remained all things to everyone – his “universal” quality that made his literary name while eternally frustrating biographers.This new Shakespeare Read more ...

“So then I go and I make another cup of coffee and two pieces of toast with raspberry jelly and now I’m going to call Allen Ginsberg at exactly noon. Because he does his meditations and they told me to call him either at 11 at night or after 12.”On 18 December 1974, Peter Hujar photographed Ginsberg for The New York Times, his first commission from the paper. The meeting with Ginsberg – it’s a tough assignment, Ginsberg never warms up and when Hujar develops the film he says there was “no contact there” – is just one part of the day that he describes in minute detail on 19 December to his Read more ...

There is joy, energy – and no little irony – about the way that Hollywood stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson play and sing the parts of a working-class couple from Milwaukee with big dreams and big hair.Song Sung Blue tells the story of a real-life couple, Mike Sardina (1951-2006) and Claire Stengl/Sardina, who formed a Neil Diamond tribute band in the early 1990s and performed in small venues, becoming local celebrities under the name Lightning and Thunder.The plot is about the pair’s desire to fulfill themselves musically. It’s an aspiration that constantly jolts them – and the viewer – Read more ...

Actors who play someone with Tourette syndrome have to take a huge step out of their comfort zone. Robert Aramayo accepted that challenge when he was cast as John Davidson in I Swear. On 30 November, Aramayo's portrayal of Davidson was named 2025's Best Lead performance at the British Independent Film Awards.Davidson is a colourful character, to say the least. Warm and caring, he's also unpredictable, outspoken, and prone to swearing wherever he is. It is one of the most marked characteristics of the condition he's been living with for decades. His Tourette's activism led to Queen Elizabeth Read more ...

It’s 1952 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, seven years after the Enola Gay dropped a bomb on the Japanese empire, but one skinny New Yorker is still waging war against it, armed with street savvy, a motormouth and a traditional table tennis paddle.This is the unlikely subject of Josh Safdie’s first solo directing release, Marty Supreme, loosely based on elements from the life of Marty Reisman (here called Mauser and played by Timothée Chalamet). Most Japanese sportspeople had to observe a post-war travel ban, but not the low-level celebrities of the table tennis world, which was barely Read more ...

What is a documentary maker supposed to do when someone as gifted and empathic as Francis Whately has already covered most of the Bowie bases with three detailed and hypnotic films about different defining periods of the man’s life and career? Five Years, Finding Fame and The Last Five Years are texturally complex films that bear repeated viewings. And there’s another Whately film due out next year that will no doubt definitively nail the Berlin years too.Maybe Jonathan Stiasny film should have been called "The Less Raked-Over Years", rather than the more grandiose The Final Act – given that Read more ...

SASKIA BARON1 One Battle After Another2. Sinners3 It was Just an Accident4  Palestine 365  Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight6  April7 Motherboard8 Holy Cow9 The Brutalist10 Pillion It was hard work finding ten films I wholly loved this year, and even then, these have flaws (particularly the last third of The Brutalist).  But I’m pleased to find that five of my favourite films were directed by women, each exploring very different genres, and that Sinners and One Battle After Another were such densely visual treats they required repeated viewings. JUSTINE Read more ...

The first time you see Renate Reinsve in Sentimental Value you want to catch her, hug her, slap her (as her character requests), or do anything to calm her down. Reinsve plays Nora, an actress suffering from horrific stage fright moments before she steps on stage in front of an audience to play the lead in a new play. Nora doesn’t fear failing; she passed that point some time ago. What freaks her out is the risk of losing control over her deepest emotions and being reminded of her vulnerability. The reason for Nora's turmoil is twofold. Her mother recently died, and she has to deal Read more ...