It’s hard, sometimes, to judge or appraise something by virtue of it being ‘high art’ or ‘low art’ and there is value in every type of artistic expression. A doodle can elicit as much of a smile as a painting in a museum. Sometimes, though, a piece of clear ‘high art’ arrives that lands as a marker, a milestone of the times it is born in. Something that just cannot be denied. The Brutalist is so clearly one of these pieces that is hard to be subjective about it. We are so fre

I’ve written a lot recently about biopics and also, when discussing Nosferatu, posited the difficulty of defining something iconic. Combine those two trains of thought and, with A Complete Unknown, James Mangold and Timothee Chalamet have the unenviable task of defining the undefinable Bob Dylan, whilst also choosing how to frame his story. What ensues is a generally traditional biopic but with a slightly meandering and dreamlike intangibility which, like its subject, keeps u

It must be daunting trying to create the definitive version of something so well known. Make that doubly difficult when there have been countless adaptations and the resurgent genre you’re releasing into is awash with new ideas that could make yours look stale and old-fashioned. Robert Eggers’ take on Nosferatu is, therefore, something to be hugely appreciated and admired. It may not sit at the very top of the vampire tree but is certainly a contender and its wide reach, box

Pablo Larraín releases his third stately and eloquent biopic and may have topped his previous two efforts with Maria. This, the story of opera singer Maria Callas, follows his depictions of Jackie Kennedy (Jackie) and Diana Spencer (Spencer) and lovingly fits in almost as a semi-sequel to the former. This is an equally brave, elegant and beautiful film as those other two and uses a slightly altered biopic format to tell a more filmic and visually arresting story. As the final

Saturday Night is a different kind of biopic, telling the story of the moments before the very first broadcast of SNL. It’s an absolutely chaotic, almost real-time rollercoaster of a film which takes the Birdman approach of a roving backstage camera checking in on a series of escalating events. It won’t be to all tastes but has a wonderful sense of place and immaculate production values. It’s a searingly impressive feat of choreography and production and there are some wonder

A Real Pain is such a perfect, double-meaning title for Jesse Eisenberg’s thought-provoking, charming, funny and brilliant new film. It's a sweet and sour buddy comedy following two Jewish cousins who go on a tour of Poland after the death of their grandmother to honour her legacy. There they find kinship, ponder their differences and try to find meaning in their feelings of modern pain when cast against that felt in history. It’s such a simple idea layered and imbued with de

Much like we learn about his career itself, against all the odds Robbie Williams’ story Better Man joins the top table of music biopics. Unremittingly bleak, defiantly anti-crowd-pleasing at points and, most brazenly, cast as a CGI monkey, Better Man perfectly picks the parts of biopic convention to honour and those to upend as it smashes all before it. It’s hard to overstate the sheer bravery of the thing. For the director of The Greatest Showman and a huge pop artist ostens

Arguably without clear frontrunners, 2025’s Oscars race, in all the major categories, appears to be wide open. Nicole Kidman will certainly be hoping to stake a claim to become a multiple winner with her performance in Babygirl. Another entrant into the revitalised ‘erotic thriller’ genre alongside last year’s Challengers, this A24 production is an interesting and thought-provoking look into desire, power, relationships and our own wishes and what we would put at stake for th

Another year where the number of albums in the below list has had to be bumped up and still doesn't do justice to what's been released. I present to you, after the customary squabbles and more shuffles than a Vegas casino, The Brighton Film Club’s Albums of the Year 2024: 35. Charly Bliss - Forever 34. Sabrina Carpenter - Short n' Sweet 33. Mannequin Pussy - I Got Heaven 32. Everything Everything - Mountainhead 31. IDLES - TANGK 30. illuminati hotties - POWER 29. skaiwater -

The Brighton Film Club presents the Films of the Year 2024 after another stacked year for our screens. We've opted to only include films released into UK cinemas this year in the main list to highlight the range and quality we've enjoyed. Many of these are now on streaming sites and streamers had plenty of their own excellent releases too though. After the customary squabbles and more shuffles than a Vegas casino, here then are The Brighton Film Club’s Films of the Year 2024:

Going down the ‘feature-length and theatrically-released anime’ path to continue the Lord of the Rings story is something I’m sure many didn’t see coming. After the, relative, underperformance (at least critically) of The Hobbit films, which clearly didn’t need to be a full-fledged trilogy, and Amazon’s multi-million investment in The Rings of Power which, again, perhaps is starting to already feel longer than it should, a plus-two-hour anime telling of one of Tolkien’s appen

What’s more surprising? That the superhero boom has led to a solo film for Spider-Man antagonist Kraven the Hunter? That Sony’s non-Spidey featuring ‘universe’ has made it to a sixth film? That this film hasn’t really succeeded in terms of box office and critical opinion? Certainly not the latter, but someone somewhere at Sony clearly had the expectation that this would score. It’s all too easy to continue to kick the ‘SPUMC’ whilst it’s down and, by all accounts, this film i