Sarah Manvel 
The news that Amazon are now the owners of the James Bond franchise has landed with some surprise amidst this new season of Reacher. It’s not so much the sale but the fact that the Broccoli family, who creatively controlled the series for over fifty years, relinquished those creative rights …
I will bet a hundred billion dollars the character of Dominique Kohl (Mariah Robinson) was named after the heroine of The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s smash-hit novel from 1943 that introduced the political philosophy of objectivism to the world. Objectivism has been an incredibly influential ethos in economics and politics in …
Long Day’s Journey into Night has been a core of the theatrical canon since its 1956 debut. It won the Pulitzer Prize posthumously for its author, Eugene O’Neill, and has been in worldwide repertory ever since. The role of the mother, Mary Tyrone, is one of the best in the …
Dawn breaks over the Maine countryside as Duke (Donald Sales) and Reacher (the remarkable Alan Ritchson) drive back to the compound and discuss the infuriating Angel Doll (Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz). In the kitchen, Reacher tries to glean intel from housemaid Annette (Caitlin McNerney) and sharp-tongued English chef Agnes (Helen Taylor), though …
This second episode of the new season of Reacher is a day without much sunshine. By which is meant Reacher (the magnificent Alan Ritchson) has only one physical fight in Truckin’. It is between Reacher and Paulie (Olivier Richters), the unpleasant thug who is literally double Reacher’s size. Fortunately, Reacher …
The most popular American TV show is back, and as the first three (plus!) episodes of the new season of Reacher recently dropped on Prime Video, it’s worth discussing why this show – the modern James Bond – has been such a smash hit. The similarities with James Bond do …
Just as there’s a thin line between love and hate, there’s a thin line between romance and horror. What from one perspective shows love conquering all can also be seen as a person (usually a woman) having to deny their career, their sexuality and their independence in order to be …
Content Warning: This is a review of the movie Baby John, and it includes disturbing topics, including discussion of rape, torture, and violence against women and children. No matter where you are in the world, police propaganda has the same problem: how to justify violence meted out by cops with …
There is a clear point of view in No Other Land: what is happening in the West Bank is wrong. Frankly it’s all the more powerful for its righteous commitment to this line. But just because something is an unusual, well-made and remarkable documentary doesn’t make it a crucial piece …
J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings saga struck such a colossal nerve when it was first published because it was a reaction to the loss of the first World War. The displacement of the muddy, modern conflict into a deliberately regressive story of magic and magical creatures …
The year I got divorced my job sent me to a career event for women in our line of work that purported to be a fundraiser for a domestic abuse charity. What it actually entailed was a group of wealthy women reassuring each other, with no sense of irony, that …
Nickel Boys, an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, has attempted to meet the current moment by telling a story of horrendous racism and child abuse with neither racism nor violence in it. This is worse than the biographies of Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King, Jr. …
The problem with The Problem with People is that it is so determined to be light-hearted in how it deals with an unpleasant aspect of human nature – our talent for conflict – that it is neither realistic enough nor cheerful enough. It works very hard both to provide enough …
While it is to be praised that so many dads are making movies for children these days, it does rather mean the dads are centering themselves in the movies, instead of the children for whom the movies are supposedly made. This is very frustrating, not least when it’s clear that …
It’s always wonderful to see an actor rise to the opportunity and become a great movie star, and there’s a moment late in Gladiator II where the switch visibly flips for Paul Mescal. He (and Daisy Edgar-Jones, who I have written about elsewhere) came out of nowhere in 2020’s lockdown …
A good story is about people with a problem and their attempts to solve it. Sometimes the problems are large – aliens are attacking! – and sometimes they are smaller. In Sofa, So Good, the problem is how to get a cheap sofa across town when you don’t have a …
There are few subjects more emotive than motherhood, but a story about a new way to enable motherhood/parenthood should not have taken why that is as granted. On stage before the world premiere of Joy at the London Film Festival, director Ben Taylor and star James Norton both spoke about the …
Animation is often seen as a genre for children, but that is because it is a genre for imagination. It’s a way of visually expressing stories that cannot be realistically or safely acted out. The stop-motion Memoir of a Snail, which has surprisingly won Best Film at this year’s London …
This Telugu-language movie was guaranteed major international distribution once N. T. Rama Rao Jr. agreed to star. After all, he was half of the leading duo in RRR, the Indian movie which so dramatically punched through to an international audience. Yet Devara Part 1 is not designed for an international …
It’s depressing to realize someone is coasting on their reputation instead of using their talent, and in fact making so little use of their talent that their reputation becomes suspect. This is the sorry state of affairs after seeing The Room Next Door, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, that …