Despite it being advertised as a culture-clash comedy, The Persian Version is, first and foremost, a truly moving and nuanced mother/daughter family drama that just happens to be lightened at opportune moments with some hilarious comedy. It’s a striking and original film, happy to move quickly through fourth-wall breaks, random dance sequences, stylised montages and entire swathes of generational flashbacks. It doesn’t stop moving but always keeps things entertaining and watc

Dune: Part Two is sci-fi/fantasy filmmaking on such a ridiculously epic scale, it might be better to make a comparison with some kind of theme park ride rather than a film. As we wrap the story of book one (with a mooted Part Three set to adapt the next book in the series) we could be on for another all-timer movie trilogy. The collective power of Christopher Nolan’s ‘hard science’ films and Game of Thrones' ‘accessible hard fantasy’ have paved the way for Denis Villeneuve to

You can tell just by the title of new biopic Bob Marley: One Love what kind of film you’re going to get. By and large, the music biopic falls into one of two categories: the arthouse, ‘true’ depiction of events (Control, Walk the Line, Rocketman) and the slightly too commercialised, play to the back of the audience, mass appeal (and, therefore, a little sanitised) option like Bohemian Rhapsody and, sadly, this one (expecting the forthcoming Back to Black to fall here too.) Th

How do you go about making a film, ostensibly a leisure activity and source of entertainment, with nigh-on zero redeemable characters? In fact, a film where the majority are completely irredeemable to the point of representing true evil? Jonathan Glazer’s remarkable The Zone of Interest achieves this and not just by presenting ‘film as message’ or ‘film as experience,’ although it certainly is both of these things. It’s a horror film without being a horror film but enough to

Matthew Vaughn dives back into the espionage field but, somewhat surprisingly, comes off of the Kingsman franchise in favour of Argylle. A film that was ostensibly advertised as being an adaptation but is actually not. Instead, the ‘book’ on which the spy Agent Argylle is based becomes a bit of a MacGuffin in a film that delivers a more mainstream, more family friendly take on Kingsman and, potentially, sets up another franchise for Vaughn. Confused? Don’t be. Argylle is basi

It’s not often you can describe something as achingly romantic but simultaneously nightmarish. Same goes for incredibly grounded but also strangely sci-fi-esque. All of Us Strangers is not like most films and contains multitudes. This is a film about everything and nothing, loneliness and companionship, love and loss. Beautiful and haunting, this is quite the trip into the psyche of painfully lonely Adam. In writing about his long-gone parents, he suddenly finds himself able

Quite obviously, film is an awesome workout for our sight and sound. What we don’t often see is the cinema give us a test of our tastebuds. There’s been an uptick of food-based TV recently, headlined by The Bear and Boiling Point, and Tran Anh Hung’s new film The Taste of Things takes that into the cinema with something to get you salivating. This is an exercise in mouth-watering. Rather than the drama of the professional kitchen that the former focus on this film follows a f

Whilst the ‘sports film’ genre as a whole is rather scattershot in terms of hits and misses, the world of combat sports is usually very reliable for a knockout. The Iron Claw is the latest masterpiece and might just be in the conversation for the best of them all. The absolutely devasting true story of the Von Erich brothers, a wrestling dynasty and something so wildly and unbelievably sad it can only be based on fact (you’d never buy into it if it wasn’t) this tale is so tra

Of all of the delayed UK releases, The Holdovers may be the most affected in terms of box-office take, down to the fact that it is, ostensibly, a Christmas movie. Hopefully, this is not the case and its stack of Oscar nominations may just give it the shot in the arm it thoroughly deserves. Because, rest assured, this is so much more than ‘just’ a ‘Christmas film.' The quote marks are important there because I don’t want to devalue the ‘holiday film’ as a genre and, also, beca

The new musical moment continues with another 'theatrical version of the stage-show musical version of the original, non-musical, theatrical film based on a novel (also non-musical).' Got that? The Color Purple follows hot on the heels of Mean Girls and is another glorious endeavour that, strangely, hasn’t really been advertised as sitting within the musical genre. Not sure why this is, surely musicals still appeal to a wide audience base? And, surely, it’s important to make

I think it was when espousing the values of In the Heights a few years back that I commented on the relative lack of theatrically released musicals compared to the genre’s heyday. Well, maybe we’ll come to declare the current moment as the 'second age' with a slate of them upcoming and starting with the 2024 update of Mean Girls. Remaking the original should have had as much chance of success as making 'fetch' happen but, with the stage show’s popularity and Tina Fey back onb

How much you enjoy Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom might come down to how appealing you find the idea of Jason Momoa punching an oversized bug in the face or your proclivity for watching Nicole Kidman riding some sort of armoured/roboticised shark (and guessing quite why she made the decision to come back for this sequel.) That, or watching the DCEU go out with something worse than a whimper. In some ways, it’s actually just sad that this film was even made and released in the f