The eponymous hero of this new TV show Murderbot, based on the first of The Murderbot Diaries series of novels by Martha Wells, is strictly speaking a cyborg. It – though sometimes its clients misgender it as a he – has a metallic structure covered with cloned human flesh, including …
What is a “feel-good” movie? Is it just an uplifting story? Or something even more? That’s a tricky question that doesn’t have a distinct answer. Something that may be heartfelt to one person may be found schmaltzy and manipulative to another. Adding that idea to 2025 films makes the prospect …
Why is a movie about the aftermath of a Parisian career woman’s mental breakdown, set in a small town in eastern France, named after an area of the west coast of Ireland? Because in 1981 a French singer, Michel Sardou, had a massive hit with a song called “Les lacs …
Well. This is the darkest episode yet of Carême and where almost all of the various plot points from earlier in the season have finally converged. Our hero Antonin (Benjamin Voisin) finally has it drilled into his skull not only that actions have consequences, but also that he is not …
This episode of Carême pays off some serious buildup, but the important thing is this is when our cutie hero finally grows up. Antonin (Benjamin Voisin) finally comes to appreciate how his skills as the best cook in France mean that he is not just a pawn on the chessboard …
You wait your whole life for two female directors to adapt books written by women about artists who are thunderstruck by the prison of motherhood, then two come along in the same year. In December 2024 Marielle Heller gave us Nightbitch, and now this year’s Cannes Film Festival has given …
On the one hand, this is the weakest episode yet of Carême, full of characterisations that are regrettable cliche. On the other, director Matias Boucard, cinematographer Julio Ramón Ribeyro and editor Jean-Baptiste Beaudoin managed to create a mood that makes palpable both the price of power and the cost of …
Everybody clearly had a wonderful time making this episode of Carême, in which they either very politely make vicious threats to each other, or create a colossal mess. Best of all, nudity! Sorry, this is France: nudité. One bottom belongs to a male extra who has evidently just participated in …
Directed by Eli Craig (Tucker and Dale vs. Evil) and written by Craig himself alongside Carter Blanchard (Good vs Evil), Clown in a Cornfield is an adaptation of Adam Cesare’s book of the same name, bringing to the big screen a well-balanced mix of horror and comedy, with a macabre …
What happens throughout this episode is, in the very best sense of the word, adult. Carême’s understanding that people’s motivations and people’s desires do not necessarily reflect their best selves is unknown in American art. But the French are perhaps more capable of acknowledging the gap between their best and …
The sumptuous Carême hits two basic needs for a high-end television series. One is for sex, but the other is rarer in fictional television: food porn. This combination is an absolutely wonderful idea, because god knows our appetite for something good to eat doesn’t always get its due from a …
Australian auteur Justin Kurzel adapts Richard Flanagan’s novel to harrowing effect in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. The adaptation blends a harrowing tale of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp with a war-bound love story and a modern tale of surviving the trauma. The series doesn’t wait to set up …
Rebecca Lenkiewicz will always be in the British history books as the first living female writer to have a play produced by The National Theatre. Her Naked Skin, staged in 2008, was about the violence involved as British women fought for the right to vote; my main memory is of …
I consider James Hawes’ feature directorial debut, One Life, one of the most memorable films of its release year. Based on the director alone, expectations for his sophomore effort were already high. Add to that The Amateur being a spy thriller starring Rami Malek – whose career-best performance remains his …
In his essay Defense of an Adaptation, French film critic and co-founder of the historical film magazine Cahiers du Cinema André Bazin states that a literary adaptation for the cinema is impure. He points out how dependence on another medium affects filmmaking and how leaning over another source material, either …
Director José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço’s I’ve Never Wanted Anyone More is the latest entry into a very, very long tradition – 250 years and counting, in fact. The film is a loose modernised adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s 1774 episolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (indeed the …
Pierce Brosnan became an action icon when he portrayed the most iconic secret agent, James Bond. Throughout his four films with the franchise, he appeared in some of the most popular films of the recent era, including Goldeneye. Lately, Brosnan has engaged in action flicks as an experienced agent who …
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. …
In 2019, author Holly Jackson released the YA fiction novel A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder to critical acclaim. It went on to win 2020’s British Book Awards Children’s Fiction Book Winner of the Year and, as with most award-winning novels, it was soon picked up for a television adaption. …
It’s all too easy to get swept up in the exaggerated hype surrounding a highly anticipated blockbuster, especially these days when initial reactions to such films often take on a clickbait tone and are packed with buzzwords studios love to plaster on posters, trailers, and more. Directed by Jon M. …