Tang is the powdered drink mix marketed as enjoyed by astronauts and which purportedly had more vitamins and minerals than orange juice. One of the guests at the titular wedding, Guy (Xavier Lacaille), has recently become its regional head of sales so at one point he goes into his full …
A female Korean superfan featured in Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, speaking through tears, provides the best explanation possible for Oasis’ appeal: they are not a band that hectors you to get up when you fall down. They are a band that falls down beside you; they know themselves …
Films festivals normally only reward a movie one single prize. If your movie wins, say, best actress, then it can’t also win the main festival award. But the jury led by Maggie Gyllenhaal at this year’s Venice Film Festival broke that rule for Woman Unknown: its lead actress Mathilde Arcel …
Who knew 2026 would involve so many family movies about flocks of British sheep solving crimes? If this is a trend I hope it lasts forever because The Sheep Detectives was adorable and Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom is even more so. A stop-motion animated film with …
Critics have been enjoined not to spoil Karma’s big plot twist, which basically means we’re not supposed to mention two-thirds of the film. Normally that would be a problem, but Karma’s initial set-up is so preposterous that everything which follows just gets more and more ridiculous. This is just an …
In 1789, Ben Franklin famously wrote that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” The Uprising, set 400 years before the American statesman put ink to paper, sure has an awful lot of both. It’s a story about the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in …
Nagi is a real town in rural Japan. It is next to a ‘self-defence force’ base which uses live ammunition in its training. As compensation for the constant sounds of shooting in the background, the town was given a world-class art museum, the Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art. There is …
We must congratulate director Andrey Zvyagintsev both for winning the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and for using his thank-you speech to ask Putin to stop the carnage of the war in Ukraine. Mr Zvyagintsev now lives in exile in France thanks to his political beliefs, but …
The French title of this film, Garance, is the uncommon name of the heroine and also that of the flower which is known in English as the rose madder. The choice to use Another Day instead of something like “Rose Madder” for the English title dampens the effect of that …
Tony is a love story, but not the kind we are used to. It is about the love a young man has with his wide-open future, supported by slightly older roughneck men who understand 1) exactly how this young man is falling in love 2) and that he has no …
It’s still somewhat unusual for movies out of China to be made in one of their quote-unquote minority languages, and it’s a bit odd to refer to Teochew, which has approximately 20 million speakers, as a minority language. But within the context of the one billion people in China, that’s …
Now why might a work of art about a group of – well, not people, but cute protagonists – whose lives have been damaged by a major corporation’s terrible products strike a nerve? Coyote vs. Acme is a howl against how everything is getting worse all the time, and how …
If I make you a delicious sandwich, which you eat and think is delicious, then inform you that mixed in with 99% of bread, mustard, salami and cheese is 1% sh*t, then it was a sh*t sandwich. If you still think it was delicious after knowing that you’ve just eaten …
Back to the 90s is a story of friendship, self-discovery, and incredible music. Directed by Facundo Scalerandi and written by Marian Grönwoldt, Juliana Lima Dehne, and Joy C. Mitchell, it is the most unexpected sort of time travel story. It’s a German-language film, but because of the music, English-speaking audiences will …
The absence of any major American films from this year’s Cannes Film Festival competition allowed room for some French films to sneak in. The Birthday Party aka Histoires de la Nuit is a film which would have never otherwise been allowed to compete for the Palme d’Or. It’s the kind …
Writer-director Volker Schlöndorff probably remains best known for his 1979 film The Tin Drum, but that underestimates his career. He has been a solid and thoughtful filmmaker both in English and his native German for more than this half-century, without ever quite having a major hit that provides an easier …
The best film of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival premiered out of competition. La Bataille de Gaulle: L’Âge de Fer, which has the English title De Gaulle: Résistance, is an absolute triumph of cinema. It is a fast-paced and largely true historical epic that handles complex and layered political events …
We all know China is an industrial superpower, but we (especially in the west) don’t devote much time wondering how China has become an industrial superpower. Well, part of the answer is that it buys a lot of its raw materials in from Mongolia. China’s upstairs neighbour is a nation …
How much are you actually supposed to care about a family being hunted by dinosaurs? Normally the answer is simple: just enough to root for them, not so much that a stray death throws the whole experience off balance. David Robert Mitchell (It Follows) spends most of The End of …
I confess I went into The Last House with a strange kind of curiosity that had nothing to do with horror and everything to do with career pivots. Louis Leterrier has spent the better part of two decades making things go fast and loud — muscle cars, magic tricks, superhero …