Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2025-12-12T07:01:07.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Scarlett Johansson on becoming more comfortable with herself and why it would be "reductive" to politicise her directorial debut
items: Blue Moon review: Ethan Hawke and Andrew Scott shine in tender portrait of an artist
items: Jay Kelly review: George Clooney's comedy drama is glossy and navel-gazing – but Adam Sandler excels
items: 10 Questions with George Clooney and Adam Sandler
items: Jay Kelly stars George Clooney and Adam Sandler reveal how age has changed ambitions and talk correcting past mistakes
items: Wicked: For Good review – Oz saga conclusion will satisfy its extensive army of devotees
items: Wicked: For Good review – A conclusion of the Oz saga to surely satisfy its extensive army of devotees
items: Dragonfly review: Brenda Blethyn is at her very best in frequently heartbreaking film
items: Kenny Dalglish reflects on his glory years, the tragedy of Hillsborough and the joy of still attending Anfield
items: 'I identify with the creature'
items: Guillermo del Toro reveals his favourite horror films
items: Emotive reason Jacob Elordi was cast as Frankenstein’s Monster revealed by Guillermo del Toro as director also shares his family trauma
items: Meet my parents
items: The Mastermind review: Josh O'Connor leads an art-theft film that will stay with you
items: Ben Stiller says new Apple TV film allowed him to ‘process the grief’ of losing his parents
items: 10 Questions with Josh O'Connor
items: Josh O’Connor on "awful" audition for movie blockbuster – and why he was afraid of being similar to Prince Charles
items: Tron: Ares review – A beautifully designed but slightly hollow sci-fi blockbuster
items: After the Hunt review: This Julia Roberts academia drama doesn't make the grade
items: Frankenstein review: A gory and glorious triumph from Guillermo del Toro
items: Tron: Ares review – A beautifully designed but slightly hollow blockbuster
items: 10 Questions with Matthew McConaughey
items: Matthew McConaughey says true story The Lost Bus shows our relationship with nature is “out of whack in dangerous ways”
items: The Smashing Machine review: Dwayne Johnson steps out of his comfort zone and wrestles with greatness
items: Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review – Julian Fellowes's final chapter is a pleasant stroll with characters you know and love
items: Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review – A pleasant stroll with characters you know and love
items: Spike Lee on Denzel Washington, whether he'd do Marvel and the Viagra musical he still wants to make
items: Denzel Washington on ageing, AI panic and the final act of his career: "Time marches on"
items: Spike Lee on Denzel Washington, if he would ever direct a Marvel film – and the Viagra musical he still wants to make
items: A House of Dynamite review: Kathryn Bigelow's terrifying nuclear thriller is among her very best

Scarlett Johansson on becoming more comfortable with herself and why it would be "reductive" to politicise her directorial debut
type: item
date: 2025-12-12T07:00:29.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
description: The A-list actor has stepped behind the camera for new film Eleanor the Great which stars June Squibb as a 94-year-old Jewish widow who does something terrible.
encoded: At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, in the Un Certain Regard strand, three major actors made their directorial debuts. While Kristen Stewart and Britain’s Harris Dickinson went full arthouse with their films – respectively, addiction drama The Chronology of Water and homeless study Urchin – Scarlett Johansson took another path. Eleanor the Great is a comedy-drama about a 94-year-old Jewish widow who does something terrible. It’s funny, poignant and stars the wonderful June Squibb, whose late-career blossoming since films like Nebraska and Thelma has been a sheer delight. “This film appeared to me to have a commerciality to it, which is important,” says Johansson, and she should know. Since she started acting three decades ago, her films have accumulated more than $15 billion at the box office. While this is chiefly down to her role as Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in multiple films from Iron Man 2 to Avengers: Infinity War, this year saw her help relaunch Universal’s prestige dinosaur franchise with Jurassic World: Rebirth, grossing $868 million at the box office. Johansson knows a hit when she sees one. Curiously, she’s been wanting to direct almost as long as she’s been acting. “When I was a teenager, I thought that I would direct and probably not act,” she tells me. “I mean, because I think I didn’t have an insane passion for acting when I was a teenager.” It’s an interesting answer to the question ‘How long have you wanted to direct?’ Most actors build their way gradually towards going behind the camera. But the precocious Johansson has always harboured those dreams, even as an adolescent growing up in New York. It’s also intriguing to hear that acting was not her cultural North Star back then, despite making her debut opposite Bruce Willis in the 1994 comedy North and rising to prominence alongside Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer four years later, when she was 13. “I did [have a passion to act] when I was really young,” she cont…

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Blue Moon review: Ethan Hawke and Andrew Scott shine in tender portrait of an artist
type: item
date: 2025-11-28T12:00:21.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: The new film from Richard Linklater focuses on American lyricist Lorenz Hart after his split from songwriting partner Richard Rodgers.
encoded: "He was the saddest man I ever knew." This quote from Mabel Mercer begins Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s snapshot of Lorenz Hart. The American lyricist spent 25 years partnered with the younger Richard Rodgers, in which time they wrote such standards as My Funny Valentine and Blue Moon (a song that Manchester City fans have adopted as they own). But it was Rodgers’s next partnership, with Oscar Hammerstein, that is the one still remembered to this day. Set chiefly across one night, Blue Moon takes place on the cusp of this changing of the guard. It’s March 1943, and Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and Hammerstein (Simon Delaney) have just unveiled their first collaboration, Oklahoma!, to 1600 enthusiastic audience members in New York. With the critics ecstatic, Hart (Ethan Hawke) leaves early to head to the after-party at famed midtown restaurant Sardi’s. Drinking heavily, he props himself up at the bar (run by Bobby Cannnavale), awaiting the arrival of Rodgers. "Am I bitter?" he announces. Of course he is. He knows that the "inoffensive" Oklahoma! will run and run. But he hates this "cornball" take on an Americana that never even existed. "Who wants inoffensive art?" he splutters. Speaking with all the grace and incision of Oscar Wilde, Hart has talent to burn; but it’s his struggles with alcohol that will be his undoing. Sponsored by Vue Save up to 30% on the latest releases at Vue in 2025 Are you a movie lover who always wants to be up to date with the latest releases? Then you're in luck, as RadioTimes.com readers can enjoy new films at Vue for less. Customers will receive up to 30% off films with Vue Pass, as long as they have a RadioTimes.com account. It's a great time for new releases, with films such as Wicked, Nosferatu, The Brutalist and Moana 2 taking UK cinemas by storm. Head to your nearest Vue to catch these movies and more for up to 30% less if you're signed up as a RadioTimes.com member. Save up to 30% with Vue Pass The film comes scripted by Robert Kaplow, w…

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Jay Kelly review: George Clooney's comedy drama is glossy and navel-gazing – but Adam Sandler excels
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Noah Baumbach’s new Netflix film plays like a loving tribute to its lead star.
encoded: ★★★☆☆ Jay Kelly is in cinemas now and on Netflix from December 2025. Add it to your watchlist George Clooney skates close to his own life – or at least tries to make us think he is – in Noah Baumbach’s new film Jay Kelly. The story of a famous actor undergoing a late-career crisis, it’s an inward-looking navel-gaze that starts well but veers dangerously close to indulgence. Clooney pays the titular star, just wrapping up his latest movie, a corny-looking thriller called 'Eight Men from Now'. A multiple divorcee, he’s got two weeks before his next opus rolls, and he wants to spend it with younger daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards), only to discover she’s heading to Europe for the summer. Then two things happen to give him pause for thought. Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), the director who gave him his big break as a young actor, dies. And, at the funeral, he meets Tim (Billy Crudup), an old acting class buddy. As they catch up over a beer, it becomes clear Tim holds a grudge that Jay ‘stole’ his role at an audition way back when and they fight in the car park. The next day, and now sporting a black eye, Jay decides to ditch the new movie and fly to Paris to intercept Daisy. And so he takes a private plane with his entourage, including long-time manager Ron (Adam Sandler) and publicist Liz (Laura Dern), as well as his hair stylist (Emily Mortimer) and other assorted hangers-on. His excuse? That he’s going to attend a career tribute in Tuscany, one he previously rejected. The film’s central sequence, and its most amusing, sees Jay and his team on board a public train to Italy. With no first class, he has to sit with the “plebs”, as Stath Lets Flats’ Jamie Demetriou – one of the passengers – puts it. Amazed to see such a mega-star in the wild, they flock around him. “When I see you, I see my whole life,” cries one man, delighted, like something out of Fellini’s 8½. Behind the scenes, Ron and Liz are trying to firefight an escalating situation, as Tim looks to sue Jay for t…

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10 Questions with George Clooney and Adam Sandler
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The real-life Hollywood pals bring their bromance to the screen in new movie Jay Kelly
encoded: Add Jay Kelly to your watchlist Both fixtures on the Hollywood A-list, George Clooney and Adam Sandler have careers going back to the late 1980s. With that wealth of experience, it’s no wonder Clooney, 64, was cast as the titular movie star in Noah Baumbach’s sparkling new comedy-drama Jay Kelly, while Sandler, 59, plays his long-suffering manager, Ron, for ever trailing after him. They’re an unlikely pair, but they make quite the double act… George, your character Jay Kelly is a famous movie star. In your own life, did you ever consider if fame was really for you? GEORGE I don’t think you have the luxury of saying, “Well, I don’t know if I’m really up for fame” when you’re a young actor just trying to get a job. You’re not really thinking about fame. Have your careers and ambition changed over the years? George I have eight-year-old kids, so I had to change my career choices. Directing means 10 months on the road, so it’s not something I can do any more, because I want to be home. ADAM You’ll be back in 10 years! GEORGE It’s a lot easier to make those decisions later in life when you’ve succeeded. It’s a lot harder for people who have to make those decisions when they’re trying to make their mark. There’s certainly decisions that are made easier when you’re 64 and too old to be having young children. Adam, how have you juggled the work/life balance? ADAM I was raised in a family-comes-first home. I have an enormous amount of guilt if I’m not with my family. If I’m away too long, I’m feeling it the whole time. So, prioritising family came easy. You’re familiar faces — how do you cope with being recognised? ADAM I jump in there. I live my life and don’t really change much. It’s a different energy when you walk into a restaurant, everybody knows you and says hello. But then that calms down, and life feels good. Which of each other’s performances have you admired? GEORGE I was so blown away by The Meyerowitz Stories. There’s a gentleness and a vulnerability that’s very…

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Jay Kelly stars George Clooney and Adam Sandler reveal how age has changed ambitions and talk correcting past mistakes
type: item
date: 2025-11-24T17:01:02.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: The real-life Hollywood pals bring their bromance to the screen in new movie Jay Kelly.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Both fixtures on the Hollywood A-list, George Clooney and Adam Sandler have careers going back to the late 1980s. With that wealth of experience, it’s no wonder Clooney, 64, was cast as the titular movie star in Noah Baumbach’s sparkling new comedy-drama Jay Kelly, while Sandler, 59, plays his long-suffering manager, Ron, for ever trailing after him. They’re an unlikely pair, but they make quite the double act… George, your character Jay Kelly is a famous movie star. In your own life, did you ever consider if fame was really for you? GEORGE CLOONEY: I don’t think you have the luxury of saying, “Well, I don’t know if I’m really up for fame” when you’re a young actor just trying to get a job. You’re not really thinking about fame. Have your careers and ambition changed over the years? GEORGE: I have eight-year-old kids, so I had to change my career choices. Directing means 10 months on the road, so it’s not something I can do any more, because I want to be home. ADAM SANDLER: You’ll be back in 10 years! GEORGE: It’s a lot easier to make those decisions later in life when you’ve succeeded. It’s a lot harder for people who have to make those decisions when they’re trying to make their mark. There’s certainly decisions that are made easier when you’re 64 and too old to be having young children. Adam, how have you juggled the work/life balance? ADAM: I was raised in a family-comes-first home. I have an enormous amount of guilt if I’m not with my family. If I’m away too long, I’m feeling it the whole time. So, prioritising family came easy. You’re familiar faces – how do you cope with being recognised? ADAM: I jump in there. I live my life and don’t really change much. It’s a different energy when you walk into a restaurant, everybody knows you and says hello. But then that calms down, and life feels good. Which of each other’s performances have you admired? GEORGE: I was so blown away by The Meyerowitz Stories. There’s …

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Wicked: For Good review – Oz saga conclusion will satisfy its extensive army of devotees
type: item
date: 2025-11-18T17:00:32.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are back in top, lung-busting form in another wondrous, multi-colour extravaganza.
encoded: After last year’s Wicked: Part I, we’re back for some more Ozploitation. Jon M Chu’s two-part adaptation has already been a wild ride, tapping into the perennial enthusiasm for the long-running stage show by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, which itself came inspired both by Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel and, of course, Hollywood Golden Age musical The Wizard of Oz. Part I conjured a healthy $756 million global box office, followed by ten Oscar nominations and two wins. There’s no reason to think Wicked: For Good won’t perform the same trick, or better it, with Chu bringing events to a rousing close. While he infuses enthusiasm into every frame, the same can be said for his leading ladies. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are back in top, lung-busting form as, respectively, the pink-hued Glinda the Good and Elphaba, the green-skinned witch who has been cast out of Oz, thanks to the machinations of the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum, wickedly charming as ever), the ultimately carney-man. Now in exile, the demonised Elphaba’s name has been stained by the Wizard, in league with her one-time tutor, the former Dean of Sorcery at Shiz University, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh, still wearing that delicious Mr Whippy ice-cream hair-do). The slightly vapid Glinda, meanwhile, thinks they need to be trademarking the word "good", while she’s also caught up in preparations for her impending wedding to Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who has been charged with capturing Elphaba. Early on, we see her deftly flying her broomstick and causing disruption as workers build the famed Yellow Brick Road – and that won’t be the only reference to The Wizard of Oz. Wicked: For Good weaves around events of the 1939 movie, as a certain house from Kansas comes tumbling from the sky. Chu, wisely, never makes this about Dorothy, Toto and the others, but rather places them in the backdrop – a move that respectfully doesn’t trample on the memory of the iconic star of the original, Judy Garland. There are…

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Wicked: For Good review – A conclusion of the Oz saga to surely satisfy its extensive army of devotees
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo return in top, lung-busting form for another wondrous, multi-colour extravaganza.
encoded: ★★★★☆ Wicked: For Good is in cinemas from 21 November. Add it to your watchlist After last year’s Wicked: Part I, we’re back for some more Ozploitation. Jon M Chu’s two-part adaptation has already been a wild ride, tapping into the perennial enthusiasm for the long-running stage show by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, which itself came inspired both by Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel and, of course, Hollywood Golden Age musical The Wizard of Oz. Part I conjured a healthy $756 million global box office, followed by ten Oscar nominations and two wins. There’s no reason to think Wicked: For Good won’t perform the same trick, or better it, with Chu bringing events to a rousing close. While he infuses enthusiasm into every frame, the same can be said for his leading ladies. Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo are back in top, lung-busting form as, respectively, the pink-hued Glinda the Good and Elphaba, the green-skinned witch who has been cast out of Oz, thanks to the machinations of the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum, wickedly charming as ever), the ultimately carney-man. Now in exile, the demonised Elphaba’s name has been stained by the Wizard, in league with her one-time tutor, the former Dean of Sorcery at Shiz University, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh, still wearing that delicious Mr. Whippy ice-cream hair-do). The slightly vapid Glinda, meanwhile, thinks they need to be trademarking the word "good", while she’s also caught up in preparations for her impending wedding to Prince Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), who has been charged with capturing Elphaba. Early on, we see her deftly flying her broomstick and causing disruption as workers build the famed Yellow Brick Road – and that won’t be the only reference to The Wizard of Oz. Wicked: For Good weaves around events of the 1939 movie, as a certain house from Kansas comes tumbling from the sky. Chu, wisely, never makes this about Dorothy, Toto and the others, but rather places them in the backdrop – a move that respectfully doesn’t …

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Dragonfly review: Brenda Blethyn is at her very best in frequently heartbreaking film
type: item
date: 2025-11-05T14:25:47.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: This new film from writer/director Paul Andrew Williams is a bleak but captivating study of loneliness and social care set in contemporary Britain.
encoded: Two actors, among the very best of their respective generations, come together for Dragonfly, a bleak but captivating study of loneliness and social care set in contemporary Britain. Brenda Blethyn plays Elsie, an ageing pensioner who lives in a semi-detached bungalow. Elsie has been a widow for 13 years and has one son, John (Jason Watkins), who rarely visits. The only people she regularly sees are the carousel of care workers who bustle in to wash her and fix her tea before scooting off to their next appointment. Next door is Coleen (Andrea Riseborough). She lives alone with her bullish-looking dog, an animal she loves dearly but barely has control over. Her hair scraped back, her skin is pale and, despite her protests to the contrary, she looks far older than her 35 years. Living on benefits, she slouches on the sofa all day watching TV, sinking into a malaise. But gradually, she finds company when she offers to buy provisions for Elsie from the corner shop. From this little acorn, an oak tree of friendship grows, as these two lost souls find solace together. Writing and directing is British filmmaker Paul Andrew Williams, who adds yet another intriguing addition to his body-of-work, one that kickstarted with the visceral London to Brighton almost two decades ago. Williams errs on the darker side in his films, as his last movie, the 2021 hallucinatory revenge tale Bull shows, and Dragonfly is no different. The companionship that Elsie and Coleen conjure is destined to take a disturbing twist, although it’s likely you won’t see it coming until it’s too late. The film toys with social realism, albeit on Williams’s terms. The low-key electronic score by Raffertie, who previously scored Oscar-nominated horror The Substance, occasionally punctuates unsettling shots of Elsie’s home, empty hallways and so on that suggest how little she has left in her life. Shooting in natural light, there’s a gloom that envelops this film, made more poignant when Elsie suddenly cries o…

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Kenny Dalglish reflects on his glory years, the tragedy of Hillsborough and the joy of still attending Anfield
type: item
date: 2025-11-05T10:02:53.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Exclusive
description: The Liverpool and Celtic legend is the subject of a new documentary from Amy and Senna director Asif Kapadia.
encoded: When Kenny Dalglish took to the stage at London’s Picturehouse Central cinema recently, accompanied by his daughter and Match of the Day presenter Kelly Cates, the Liverpool footballing legend was in wonderfully jovial form. In front of friends and admirers, including ex-player Jamie Carragher and actor Damian Lewis, he was there to present Kenny Dalglish – the new documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Asif Kapadia. The 74-year-old Glaswegian joked that he was the first of Kapadia’s subjects to be alive – a nod to the director’s multi award-winning docs Senna, Amy and Maradona, which took on, respectively, the tragic tales of Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna, singer Amy Winehouse and football icon Diego Maradona. The man they call ‘King Kenny’ is a very different prospect – at once a man of the people and one of the greatest footballers of his generation. Kapadia’s film steers us through Dalglish’s early years and his time at Celtic before, in 1977, Liverpool manager Bob Paisley paid a British transfer record of £440,000 to bring the striker south of the border as a replacement for the departing Kevin Keegan. As he always does with his documentaries, Kapadia doesn’t feature talking heads, but rather mixes candid audio recordings of his interviewees and compelling archive clips. “There wasn’t a camera, there wasn’t a crew, there wasn’t lots of people, it was quite relaxed,” says Kapadia, who did most of the recordings in Liverpool, sitting Dalglish down with a cup of tea and some Dairy Milk chocolate. Their exchanges were often humorous, Dalglish even telling Kapadia to get a haircut before one recording session. One day, Kapadia couldn’t make it to Liverpool, and Dalglish came down on the train (arriving suited and booted, “for an audio interview!” the director laughs). “Most people don't do that. You have to go to them.“ It’s just one example of how down-to-earth Dalglish is. Can you imagine David Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldo jumping on British Rail without an entourage?…

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'I identify with the creature'
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: As Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein lurches into life, the director reveals how true horror has seen him tackle ‘the real monsters’ – inside and out
encoded: Frankenstein is in cinemas now and on Netflix from 7 Nov. Add it to your watchlist. A director who has given us some of the most indelible monsters in screen history, Guillermo del Toro has had a fascination with the macabre from an early age. Very early. He was no more than two when he saw an episode of TV series The Outer Limits. “I got scared so bad that I started dreaming of monsters in a lucid way,” he recalls. “I would wake up in my room and there would be creatures that were not real… I offered to become their friend if they let me climb out of the crib to go to the bathroom.” Across his childhood in Mexico and a three-decade career in Hollywood, Del Toro has made peace with those monsters. Think of the Pale Man, the humanoid with eyeballs in his palms, in 2006 fascism allegory Pan’s Labyrinth. Or the amphibious captive in 2017’s The Shape of Water, the film that won Del Toro two of his three Oscars (the third was for his beautifully animated Pinocchio in 2022). Now the director is taking on the greatest monster of them all: the Creature at the heart of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, in a mesmerising adaptation starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi. Del Toro was 11 when he first read the gothic classic, a Spanish-language copy he picked up in a supermarket that he still has to this day. But his obsession was fired four years earlier, when he saw Boris Karloff’s unsettling monster in James Whale’s seminal 1931 Frankenstein. He calls it his St Paul on the road to Damascus moment. “I went into some sort of seizure of joy,” he says, when we meet at the Venice Film Festival, where his impeccably crafted Frankenstein received its world premiere. Now 61, he’s dreamed of making this film his entire career – longer, even. “I wanted to make this movie before I had a camera, before I knew what a camera was,” he explains. “There are a few seminal figures in my childhood that loom large. Creature from the Black Lagoon, Phantom of the Opera, Dr Frankenstein, the H…

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Guillermo del Toro reveals his favourite horror films
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The director of Frankenstein says choosing just a few of his favourite horror films is an impossible task, but he's happy to have a go…
encoded: Add Frankenstein to your watchlist What are your favourite horror films? It’s difficult. It’s like, what are your favourite dishes? You want a burger and a pizza? I can show you great burgers and pizzas. Or if you want a five-star deconstructive molecular cuisine, I’ll give you another list. If I was looking for scary horrors, then I would say the original Ring, Jaws, Alien, Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And I would say Weapons too. Those are very scary to me. If you wanted to think "moving", I would say Creature From The Black Lagoon, Charles Laughton’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, and [the 1931 film] Frankenstein.

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Emotive reason Jacob Elordi was cast as Frankenstein’s Monster revealed by Guillermo del Toro as director also shares his family trauma
type: item
date: 2025-10-28T00:01:30.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Magazine
subject: Netflix
description: “When I saw them, I said, ‘This is the Creature. No doubt about it.’”
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. A director who has given us some of the most indelible monsters in screen history, Guillermo del Toro has had a fascination with the macabre from an early age. Very early. He was no more than two when he saw an episode of TV series The Outer Limits. “I got scared so bad that I started dreaming of monsters in a lucid way,” he recalls. “I would wake up in my room and there would be creatures that were not real… I offered to become their friend if they let me climb out of the crib to go to the bathroom.” Across his childhood in Mexico and a three-decade career in Hollywood, Del Toro has made peace with those monsters. Think of the Pale Man, the humanoid with eyeballs in his palms, in 2006 fascism allegory Pan’s Labyrinth. Or the amphibious captive in 2017’s The Shape of Water, the film that won Del Toro two of his three Oscars (the third was for his beautifully animated Pinocchio in 2022). Now the director is taking on the greatest monster of them all: the Creature at the heart of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, in a mesmerising adaptation starring Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi. Del Toro was 11 when he first read the gothic classic, a Spanish-language copy he picked up in a supermarket that he still has to this day. But his obsession was fired four years earlier, when he saw Boris Karloff’s unsettling monster in James Whale’s seminal 1931 Frankenstein. He calls it his St Paul on the road to Damascus moment. “I went into some sort of seizure of joy,” he says, when we meet at the Venice Film Festival, where his impeccably crafted Frankenstein received its world premiere. Now 61, he’s dreamed of making this film his entire career – longer, even. “I wanted to make this movie before I had a camera, before I knew what a camera was,” he explains. “There are a few seminal figures in my childhood that loom large. Creature from the Black Lagoon, Phantom of the Opera, Dr Frankenstein, the Hunchback, Pinocchio. And those …

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Meet my parents
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Ben Stiller has made a film about his parents, who were comedy stars in 1960s USA. But does the film actually say more about him?
encoded: Add Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost to your watchlist Comic double act Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara were huge in the 60s. They regularly appeared on the American variety programme The Ed Sullivan Show, while Jerry went on to play the short-tempered Frank Costanza, George’s father, in Seinfeld, and Anne – who died in 2015 – appeared in movies like The Boys from Brazil and Fame. Now, in his documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, actor-director Ben Stiller paints a tender portrait of his famous folks. When Jerry died in 2020, Stiller began filming the New York apartment his parents shared. A way to remember the place he grew up in before it was sold, it was the start of something highly personal. “I thought, ‘I want to do something that is going to be some sort of tribute to my parents,’ ” he explains, over Zoom. “This was at the beginning of Covid, and there was no chance to do a memorial for my dad. I just felt like this was a way to connect with him after losing him.” From Jerry’s home movies to cassette recordings, photos and newspaper clippings, the archive was plentiful. Stiller and his sister Amy (also an actor) even found love letters. The silver-haired Stiller, 59, was particularly taken by this intimate insight into his mother and father’s inner life. “When you think of your parents, you don’t think of them in that first blush of young love. And it was amazing to see how much passion they had for each other. I knew my dad was so devoted to my mom his whole life. But to read this frisky back and forth… it was pretty surreal, I have to say.” Stiller has always been close to his parents, lines between family and work blurring. His mother appeared in his 1994 directorial debut Gen X romance Reality Bites and hit comedy Night at the Museum, while his father played the shell-suit-wearing manager Maury Ballstein in Zoolander, Stiller’s cult 2001 comedy about a dumb-bell fashion model. “I wasn’t stupid – they were funny… I was completely using them,” he admit…

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The Mastermind review: Josh O'Connor leads an art-theft film that will stay with you
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Director Kelly Reichardt offers a crime tale tale starring Josh O'Connor and Alana Haim.
encoded: ★★★☆☆ The Mastermind is in cinemas from Friday 24 October. Add it to your watchlist “Honestly, I don’t think you’ve thought things through enough.” So James Mooney (Josh O’Connor) is told in Kelly Reichardt’s art-theft tale. Unveiled in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, The Mastermind might yet be Reichardt’s most commercial vehicle, although up against her earlier films like Wendy and Lucy, First Cow and Certain Women, all delicate, nuanced and often slow-moving works, that’s hardly saying much. Set in the early 1970s, O’Connor’s James is an unemployed carpenter in Framingham, Massachusetts, married to Terri (Alana Haim) and father to their two boys, Tommy and Carl. In need of money, early on, we see him requesting funds from his mother (Hope Davis). She suggests that his father, a Circuit County Judge (Bill Camp), can’t know. But it’s clear that life hasn’t quite worked out the way James, an art school dropout-out, has wanted. When the film opens, he’s casing Framingham’s art museum, even lifting a small figurine from a glass display case while his kids lark around. However, the real plan he hatches is to steal four Arthur Dove paintings from the building, along with his cohorts. The heist itself is both comical and shocking. Two of the gang, wearing stockings to disguise their features, sneak the paintings past a security guard, who seems to be forever dozing. Things go awry when one, Ronnie (Javion Allen), pulls a gun on a teenage girl who encounters them. Thankfully, no bullets are fired, but suddenly this art theft takes on a deadly slant. Worse is to come as James’ plans to sell the paintings go disastrously wrong, while Gibson is caught for a bank robbery, immediately pointing the finger at James as the mastermind of the museum theft. James has little choice but to go on the run, leaving Terri and the kids at his parents’ house. View oEmbed on the source website Scored with a jazzy, double-bass and percussion-heavy sound, Reichardt’s film is certainly…

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Ben Stiller says new Apple TV film allowed him to ‘process the grief’ of losing his parents
type: item
date: 2025-10-20T23:01:15.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Documentaries
subject: TV
subject: Apple TV
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: Ben Stiller has made a film about his parents, who were comedy stars in 1960s USA. But does the film actually say more about him?
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Comic double act Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara were huge in the 60s. They regularly appeared on the American variety programme The Ed Sullivan Show, while Jerry went on to play the short-tempered Frank Costanza, George’s father, in Seinfeld, and Anne – who died in 2015 – appeared in movies like The Boys from Brazil and Fame. Now, in his documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, actor-director Ben Stiller paints a tender portrait of his famous folks. When Jerry died in 2020, Stiller began filming the New York apartment his parents shared. A way to remember the place he grew up in before it was sold, it was the start of something highly personal. “I thought, ‘I want to do something that is going to be some sort of tribute to my parents,’ ” he explains, over Zoom. “This was at the beginning of Covid, and there was no chance to do a memorial for my dad. I just felt like this was a way to connect with him after losing him.” From Jerry’s home movies to cassette recordings, photos and newspaper clippings, the archive was plentiful. Stiller and his sister Amy (also an actor) even found love letters. The silver-haired Stiller, 59, was particularly taken by this intimate insight into his mother and father’s inner life. “When you think of your parents, you don’t think of them in that first blush of young love. And it was amazing to see how much passion they had for each other. I knew my dad was so devoted to my mom his whole life. But to read this frisky back and forth… it was pretty surreal, I have to say.” Stiller has always been close to his parents, lines between family and work blurring. His mother appeared in his 1994 directorial debut Gen X romance Reality Bites and hit comedy Night at the Museum, while his father played the shell-suit-wearing manager Maury Ballstein in Zoolander, Stiller’s cult 2001 comedy about a dumb-bell fashion model. “I wasn’t stupid – they were funny… I was completely using them,” he admits …

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10 Questions with Josh O'Connor
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: From fears to ears and stealing art, the actor discusses his new film — and his toe-curling audition for Les Misérables
encoded: Add The Mastermind to your watchlist Southampton-born actor Josh O’Connor, 35, has gone from Lawrence Durrell in the ITV drama The Durrells to repressed farm-hand in God’s Own Country and Prince Charles in The Crown. This month, before starring in the forthcoming Knives Out movie and taking on a lead role in Steven Spielberg’s new top secret sci-fi film, he’s back on the big screen in The Mastermind, playing a failed carpenter who turns to robbing art… unsuccessfully. Over the years, you’ve played characters different to you, like Prince Charles in The Crown and a washed-up tennis pro in the film Challengers. Is it hard taking on new personalities? Actors are all deeply insecure. That’s why we do what we do. If you break down what an actor is being asked to do, to become someone else and step into the shoes of a character that oftentimes barely resembles them, the skill is bringing elements of yourself to that character. With Prince Charles, there was a fear of admitting that there’s a part of me that’s anything like him. Initially, I was like, “No, I can’t, it’s just the ears, it’s the ears!” But then with Challengers, it was different. I knew Luca [Guadagnino, the director] wanted this very confident, chest-out, cocksure guy, and I didn’t recognise that in myself, necessarily. Most of the time, you’re answering out of fear. Work fears aside, what are you most scared of in life? Honestly, I’m scared of everything! What’s the hardest part of acting? The reality is it’s not easy and it is quite difficult and there are times when you feel quite isolated and lonely and you’re not around your friends an awful lot. How were your early years when you started out? I had years of auditioning and not getting roles, and sometimes getting really close to roles, but then not getting them. Are there any experiences that still haunt you? My first ever audition was for the Russell Crowe Les Misérables [2012]. They were auditioning everyone! But I didn’t know that. I don’t have any…

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Josh O’Connor on "awful" audition for movie blockbuster – and why he was afraid of being similar to Prince Charles
type: item
date: 2025-10-13T23:01:00.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
description: From fears to ears and stealing art, the actor discusses his new film — and his toe-curling audition for Les Misérables.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Southampton-born actor Josh O’Connor, 35, has gone from Lawrence Durrell in the ITV drama The Durrells to repressed farm-hand in God’s Own Country and Prince Charles in The Crown. This month, before starring in the forthcoming Knives Out movie and taking on a lead role in Steven Spielberg’s new top secret sci-fi film, he’s back on the big screen in The Mastermind, playing a failed carpenter who turns to robbing art... unsuccessfully. Over the years, you’ve played characters different to you, like Prince Charles in The Crown and a washed-up tennis pro in the film Challengers. Is it hard taking on new personalities? Actors are all deeply insecure. That’s why we do what we do. If you break down what an actor is being asked to do, to become someone else and step into the shoes of a character that oftentimes barely resembles them, the skill is bringing elements of yourself to that character. With Prince Charles, there was a fear of admitting that there’s a part of me that’s anything like him. Initially, I was like, “No, I can’t, it’s just the ears, it’s the ears!” But then with Challengers, it was different. I knew Luca [Guadagnino, the director] wanted this very confident, chest-out, cocksure guy, and I didn’t recognise that in myself, necessarily. Most of the time, you’re answering out of fear. Work fears aside, what are you most scared of in life? Honestly, I’m scared of everything! What’s the hardest part of acting? The reality is it’s not easy and it is quite difficult and there are times when you feel quite isolated and lonely and you’re not around your friends an awful lot. How were your early years when you started out? I had years of auditioning and not getting roles, and sometimes getting really close to roles, but then not getting them. Are there any experiences that still haunt you? My first ever audition was for the Russell Crowe Les Misérables [2012]. They were auditioning everyone! But I didn’t know that…

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Tron: Ares review – A beautifully designed but slightly hollow sci-fi blockbuster
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: At times watching this sequel feels like stepping into the future – but it requires a much-needed humour injection.
encoded: ★★★☆☆ Tron: Ares is in cinemas from Friday 10 October. Add it to your watchlist "We are a hundred per cent expendable." So says Jared Leto’s Ares, the military-grade AI soldier at the heart of this third film in Disney’s Tron franchise. No doubt Leto and the acting community at large are probably feeling that this week following the unveiling of AI actress Tilly Norwood, which has left Hollywood up in arms. Still, that development is an unexpected, if weird, publicity boost for Tron: Ares, a beautifully designed, if slightly hollow, blockbuster. With its landmark visual effects, the first Tron (1982) sucked Jeff Bridges’ programmer Kevin Flynn into the mainframe ‘grid’ of the company he once worked for, a world where computer programs appear as living human entities. The franchise went back online with 2010’s Tron: Legacy, a disappointing sequel distinguished by Daft Punk’s thunderous score. Fifteen years on from that, Tron is back – with a twist. This time, the computer programs come into our world. View oEmbed on the source website Evan Peters plays Julian Dillinger, grandson of David Warner’s character from the original. Drunk with power, he’s recently taken over the Dillinger company from his mother Elizabeth (Gillian Anderson, in a thankless role), as he looks to create the ultimate security software. Ares, along with several other cohorts, live inside the ‘grid’, but can materialise in our world. “Military AI is the future,” Dillinger beams to his investors, who aren’t aware of one fatal flaw in his plan. After 29 minutes, these AI beings evaporate. Dillinger is seeking what’s called "the permanence code" to change all that, but he’s not alone. Over at ENCOM – the company that Flynn once worked for and Dillinger’s grandfather unscrupulously ran – rival tech genius Eve Kim (Greta Lee) is doing the same. Whoever finds it first will have quite the breakthrough on their hands. Peters, who famously played real-life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the Netflix show D…

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After the Hunt review: This Julia Roberts academia drama doesn't make the grade
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: A starry cast including Andrew Garfield and Ayo Edebiri can't save a script that too frequently gets bogged down in philosophical debates.
encoded: ★★☆☆☆ After the Hunt is in cinemas from 17 October. Add it to your watchlist Julia Roberts has never been afraid of heavyweight subject matter, on the rare occasions Hollywood has given her the chance. Take Erin Brockovich, a film about a class action suit brought against a water company that was perfectly tailored to her skillset. And so it goes with After the Hunt, a campus-set story of abuse, privilege and the generational divide all set in the world of academia. She plays Alma Imhoff, a philosophy professor at Yale, who lives in one of those luxurious houses you only ever see in movies. Aiming to become tenured, she spends her days debating the finer points of Kierkegaard and Hegel, with her acolytes, including flirty fellow academic Hank (Andrew Garfield) and earnest PhD student Maggie (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri). At the outset, she and her husband Fredrik (Michael Stuhlbarg) are hosting drinks. Maggie, who is gay and in a relationship, is escorted home by Hank. But before long, she is back on Alma’s doorstep, sobbing. She explains: Hank came up for a drink, while Maggie’s partner was absent. They kissed, but it went further than she wanted. “He assaulted me,” she says. But did he? View oEmbed on the source website When Alma confronts Hank, he claims it all stems from a discovery he made about Maggie, that she plagiarised her dissertation. With her parents billionaire donors to the university, Maggie comes from a background of wealth and entitlement. That she is also Black adds to the complex dynamic, with Maggie operating in a world largely dominated by straight white cis men. As tempers flare, Maggie decides to press charges against Hank, while Alma tries to steer clear, fearful of her own position. Scripted by actress Nora Garrett, making her debut as a screenwriter here, what follows is a battle of wills. Suffering from an illness that’s causing her to vomit, Alma starts to unravel as relations between her and Maggie morphs into something more pernicious. Dire…

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Frankenstein review: A gory and glorious triumph from Guillermo del Toro
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: Saltburn's Jacob Elordi delivers a standout performance in this beautiful adaptation of the classic novel.
encoded: Frankenstein is in cinemas from 17 October and on Netflix from 7 November. Add it to your watchlist ★★★★★ A work of Gothic fiction that has fascinated filmmakers for almost as long as cinema has existed, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus finally gets what might be considered its definitive movie version. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, and set to be released by Netflix, this two-and-a-half-hour love letter to Shelley’s work comes from Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican monster-loving maestro who has already brought us such delicious creature features as Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and the Oscar-winning The Shape of Water (2017). A film del Toro has been tinkering with for years, his Frankenstein is far removed from the 1931 James Whale version, perhaps something closer to Kenneth Branagh’s gleaming 1994 film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which featured Robert De Niro as the creature brought to life by the egotistical, god-playing scientist, Victor Frankenstein. Here, he casts the younger, physically-imposing Jacob Elordi, an actor who truly shows his dexterity in a performance of few words but grand and sometimes heartbreaking gestures. Opposite him is a compelling Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, a character first glimpsed prostrate in the icy wastes of the Arctic. It’s 1857 and an expedition to the North Pole, led by Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen), has seen its ship run aground, frozen in the ice. When the injured Frankenstein is discovered, he’s brought aboard just as Elordi’s creature – his face almost entirely concealed – goes on the rampage. “It cannot die,” cries Frankenstein, as his creation throws men around like rag-dolls and survives countless bullets. View oEmbed on the source website As Frankenstein recounts his story to the Captain, we are taken back to his youth, when his mother (Mia Goth) dies, leaving the distraught boy to vow to his strict father (Charles Dance) that he will overcome mortality. “No one can conqu…

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Tron: Ares review – A beautifully designed but slightly hollow blockbuster
type: item
date: 2025-10-07T16:00:29.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: At times watching this sequel feels like stepping into the future – but it requires a much-needed humour injection.
encoded: "We are a hundred per cent expendable." So says Jared Leto’s Ares, the military-grade AI soldier at the heart of this third film in Disney’s Tron franchise. No doubt Leto and the acting community at large are probably feeling that this week following the unveiling of AI actress Tilly Norwood, which has left Hollywood up in arms. Still, that development is an unexpected, if weird, publicity boost for Tron: Ares, a beautifully designed, if slightly hollow, blockbuster. With its landmark visual effects, the first Tron (1982) sucked Jeff Bridges’ programmer Kevin Flynn into the mainframe ‘grid’ of the company he once worked for, a world where computer programs appear as living human entities. The franchise went back online with 2010’s Tron: Legacy, a disappointing sequel distinguished by Daft Punk’s thunderous score. Fifteen years on from that, Tron is back – with a twist. This time, the computer programs come into our world. Evan Peters plays Julian Dillinger, grandson of David Warner’s character from the original. Drunk with power, he’s recently taken over the Dillinger company from his mother Elizabeth (Gillian Anderson, in a thankless role), as he looks to create the ultimate security software. Ares, along with several other cohorts, live inside the ‘grid’, but can materialise in our world. “Military AI is the future,” Dillinger beams to his investors, who aren’t aware of one fatal flaw in his plan. After 29 minutes, these AI beings evaporate. Dillinger is seeking what’s called "the permanence code" to change all that, but he’s not alone. Over at ENCOM – the company that Flynn once worked for and Dillinger’s grandfather unscrupulously ran – rival tech genius Eve Kim (Greta Lee) is doing the same. Whoever finds it first will have quite the breakthrough on their hands. Peters, who famously played real-life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in the Netflix show, is of course the unhinged villain of the piece, only interested in profit and gain. The film comes directed by Joa…

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10 Questions with Matthew McConaughey
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The actor on working with family, mankind versus Mother Nature and what makes a real-life hero. Just don’t mention his political aspirations…
encoded: Add The Lost Bus to your watchlist Heroes come in all shapes and sizes — even if they’re all played by the same man. Over the course of his career, Matthew McConaughey has played action roles (Sahara, Fool’s Gold), legal crusaders (A Time to Kill, The Lincoln Lawyer), selfless astronauts (Interstellar) and Aids-medicating cowboys (Dallas Buyers Club, which won him an Oscar). Now the 55-year-old Texan is behind the wheel in The Lost Bus, the true story of a school bus driver who saved 22 children during the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California — a wildfire that claimed 85 lives. Kevin, your character in The Lost Bus, is an unlikely saviour. What’s your definition of a hero? There were a lot of heroic people and heroic acts at the time of this fire. Whatever that crisis is, heroes will run to it instead of away. What’s the biggest difference between playing a real person and a fictional one? With a fictional character, you can go to your imagination quicker. When you’re doing something that’s based on, or inspired by, actual events, I always want to go to reality, what really happened, and see what inspiration there is before I let my imagination go. You are acting alongside your son Levi and your mother Kay, playing your on-screen son and mother. How was it blurring those lines between fact and fiction? Because my relationship [with Levi] is a healthy one in real life, it made it easier to play a relationship that’s not healthy. And Mama didn’t find anything challenging about acting with her grandson and her son. She just wanted more camera time! As a parent, what’s your number-one rule? Being delighted in who your kids are – just what they are, nothing else. Not how good they are at something. A pastor friend of mine said in church, if a child knows they’re loved at home they’ll be less afraid to fail outside. It’s a very good rule. And I’d be remiss to not admit that ability, comfort, significance in my own home has something to do with the work I’m doing, the wa…

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Matthew McConaughey says true story The Lost Bus shows our relationship with nature is “out of whack in dangerous ways”
type: item
date: 2025-09-29T20:00:50.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Apple TV
subject: Climate - Sustainable contributions within wider content
subject: Interview
subject: Magazine
subject: On demand
description: The Oscar-winner has the lead role in the new film from Paul Greengrass.
encoded: This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes — even if they’re all played by the same man. Over the course of his career, Matthew McConaughey has played action roles (Sahara, Fool’s Gold), legal crusaders (A Time to Kill, The Lincoln Lawyer), selfless astronauts (Interstellar) and Aids-medicating cowboys (Dallas Buyers Club, which won him an Oscar). Now the 55-year-old Texan is behind the wheel in The Lost Bus, the true story of a school bus driver who saved 22 children during the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California — a wildfire that claimed 85 lives. Kevin, your character in The Lost Bus, is an unlikely saviour. What’s your definition of a hero? There were a lot of heroic people and heroic acts at the time of this fire. Whatever that crisis is, heroes will run to it instead of away. What’s the biggest difference between playing a real person and a fictional one? With a fictional character, you can go to your imagination quicker. When you’re doing something that’s based on, or inspired by, actual events, I always want to go to reality, what really happened, and see what inspiration there is before I let my imagination go. You are acting alongside your son Levi and your mother Kay, playing your on-screen son and mother. How was it blurring those lines between fact and fiction? Because my relationship [with Levi] is a healthy one in real life, it made it easier to play a relationship that’s not healthy. And Mama didn’t find anything challenging about acting with her grandson and her son. She just wanted more camera time! As a parent, what’s your number-one rule? Being delighted in who your kids are – just what they are, nothing else. Not how good they are at something. A pastor friend of mine said in church, if a child knows they’re loved at home they’ll be less afraid to fail outside. It’s a very good rule. And I’d be remiss to not admit that ability, comfort, significance in my own home has something to do with the work…

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The Smashing Machine review: Dwayne Johnson steps out of his comfort zone and wrestles with greatness
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The WWE star shines as a UFC fighter who goes from the heights of glory to rock bottom.
encoded: The Smashing Machine is in cinemas from 3 October. Add it to your watchlist ★★★☆☆ Dwayne Johnson takes on a role not a million miles from his former life in The Smashing Machine. The WWE star here plays real-life UFC competitor Mark Kerr, in a film that is less sport biopic and more a portrait of a wrestler as a young man. Premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival, it’s a fine showcase for an actor who is better known for family films and action blockbusters than hard-hitting dramas. Set between 1997 and 2000, when the mixed-martial arts sport of UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) was just taking off, the undefeated Kerr is at the top of his game. He’s a freestyle wrestler, but UFC pits him against those with other backgrounds, whether it’s boxing, Jiu-jitsu or karate. It’s brutal, bloody and arguably one of the most punishing sports out there. View oEmbed on the source website It’s also big in Japan, with a fair chunk of the movie set in Tokyo, as Kerr plies his trade in a competition dubbed ‘Pride’. With controversy surrounding the sport, the organisers are planning to tone it down: no eye-gouging, head-butting, biting or kneeing an opponent’s head when he’s on the ground. But that doesn’t stop Kerr’s rival in the ring, causing Kerr to lose his first fight, despite it being what he believes is a blatant foul. While this loss is ultimately called “no contest”, Kerr is scarred by the experience. Worse still, his addiction to opioids, used to medicate the constant pain he’s in, is gripping him. And then there’s his tumultuous relationship with girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt), who flies out to Japan to see him, only to find him spaced out and barely able to communicate. Tempers flare, as the once impregnable Kerr starts to crumble. Written, directed, produced and edited by Benny Safdie, who is making his first movie without brother Josh, following their acclaimed efforts Good Time (2017) and Uncut Gems (2019), The Smashing Machine won’t get you off your se…

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Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review – Julian Fellowes's final chapter is a pleasant stroll with characters you know and love
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The closing chapter is a slightly muted but still warm-feeling film that should please long-term fans.
encoded: ★★★☆☆ Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is in cinemas from 12 September – add it to your watchlist. All seasons of Downton Abbey are available to stream on ITVX. With its aim to wrap up one of British popular culture’s most endearing franchises, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale runs the risk of being a bit of a – if you excuse the pun – downer. For starters, the passing of Lady Violet Crawley at the end of the preceding film was always likely to remove one of creator Julian Fellowes’ greatest weapons, her withering put downs no more. Of course, her painting still hangs in the grand hallway of Downton, and this film finishes with a touching dedication to the legendary actress who played her, Dame Maggie Smith, following her death last year. This slightly muted but still warm-feeling third movie, which, like the two previous films, succeeds the long-running TV show, has its work cut out as a result. Times are a changing, with Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and her divorce causing scandal in polite society. “Families like ours must keep moving to survive,” she says. Meanwhile, Lady and Lord Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville) give thought to selling the glorious Downton estate. “We’ve done our duty,” surmises Lord Grantham. “I’ve given half my life to Downton.” You imagine Fellowes probably feels the same. Thankfully, the film holds back on the gushing sentimentality, instead introducing some fun new characters, including Alessandro Nivola’s suave American, Gus Sambrook, an acquaintance of Lady Grantham’s brother, Harold (Paul Giamatti), and the ultra-pompous local Sir Hector Moreland (theatre maestro Simon Russell Beale, having a ball here). There’s also an encounter with real-life playwright Noël Coward (Arty Froushan), who becomes the toast of Downton after a visit (even if the suggestion of how he came up with the title for one of his most famous plays is a little silly). While Lady Violet is left to merely glower from her artfully framed painting, there’s st…

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Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale review – A pleasant stroll with characters you know and love
type: item
date: 2025-09-09T12:04:23.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: The closing chapter is a slightly muted but still warm-feeling film that should please long-term fans.
encoded: With its aim to wrap up one of British popular culture’s most endearing franchises, Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale runs the risk of being a bit of a – if you excuse the pun – downer. For starters, the passing of Lady Violet Crawley at the end of the preceding film was always likely to remove one of creator Julian Fellowes’ greatest weapons, her withering put downs no more. Of course, her painting still hangs in the grand hallway of Downton, and this film finishes with a touching dedication to the legendary actress who played her, Dame Maggie Smith, following her death last year. This slightly muted but still warm-feeling third movie, which, like the two previous films, succeeds the long-running TV show, has its work cut out as a result. Times are a changing, with Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and her divorce causing scandal in polite society. “Families like ours must keep moving to survive,” she says. Meanwhile, Lady and Lord Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern, Hugh Bonneville) give thought to selling the glorious Downton estate. “We’ve done our duty,” surmises Lord Grantham. “I’ve given half my life to Downton.” You imagine Fellowes probably feels the same. Thankfully, the film holds back on the gushing sentimentality, instead introducing some fun new characters, including Alessandro Nivola’s suave American, Gus Sambrook, an acquaintance of Lady Grantham’s brother, Harold (Paul Giamatti), and the ultra-pompous local Sir Hector Moreland (theatre maestro Simon Russell Beale, having a ball here). There’s also an encounter with real-life playwright Noël Coward (Arty Froushan), who becomes the toast of Downton after a visit (even if the suggestion of how he came up with the title for one of his most famous plays is a little silly). While Lady Violet is left to merely glower from her artfully framed painting, there’s still some neat humour to be had, including a priceless scene where Lord Grantham visits a potential new residence, a flat seemingly around the corner from the Ro…

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Spike Lee on Denzel Washington, whether he'd do Marvel and the Viagra musical he still wants to make
type: item
date: 2025-09-05T06:00:34.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Apple TV
subject: Exclusive
subject: On demand
description: The legendary director speaks exclusively to RadioTimes.com about his new film Highest 2 Lowest and much more.
encoded: Spike Lee wasn’t built for Zoom. The famed director of Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X and BlacKkKlansman is sitting in a plush, cream-furnished room, wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap and bespoke, white-rimmed glasses. That’s about all that can be glimpsed, given the angle of the laptop camera that’s been plonked in front of the 5ft 7in filmmaker. You sense if he was directing this interview, it’d look a lot more polished. The 68-year-old director is back with his latest film, , a “re-interpretation” of Ed McBain’s 1959 pulp novel King’s Ransom, which was later adapted by the Japanese master Akira Kurosawa into 1963’s influential crime procedural High and Low. That film starred Toshiro Mifune as a business tycoon running a shoe company who faces a terrible quandary when a kidnapper accidentally nabs his chauffeur’s son rather than his own. Lee is no stranger to re-working Asian cinema. He previously took on 2003’s bloodthirsty Oldboy, the South Korean-made revenge thriller directed by Park Chan-wook. His remake, a decade on, starred Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen. Now he’s back with his long-term collaborator Denzel Washington, who plays David King, a New York music mogul and the owner of the label Stackin’ Hits. “He’s considered, in the music business, to have the best ears,” says Lee. When King’s son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) is seemingly taken, King’s world appears to be crumbling. A ransom of 17.5 million Swiss francs is set. But as with Kurosawa’s yarn, the wrong boy is snatched – the son to King’s best friend and driver, Paul (Jeffrey Wright). “For me, I think the foundation of the film is morality,” says Lee, alluding to the dilemma King faces. Pay the ransom or risk being lambasted on social media. With King and Paul’s sons both teenagers, it’s one of several differences to the Kurosawa version, in which the kidnap victim is a child. “With his son being older, it emphasises, for me, more the father-son relationship, because he’s at the age of a young man, a…

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Denzel Washington on ageing, AI panic and the final act of his career: "Time marches on"
type: item
date: 2025-09-05T06:00:32.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Apple TV
subject: Interview
subject: On demand
description: Washington stars in Spike Lee's new film Highest 2 Lowest.
encoded: Very few actors get to curate the final act of their careers. But then again, very few actors are Denzel Wasington. The 10-time Oscar nominee – yes, 10! – who won the gold statue twice, for 1989’s Glory and 2002’s Training Day, remains one of Hollywood’s most supremely talented leading men. Still in demand – he turned 70 last December – there’s renewed vigour in his work too. Perhaps because he knows there’s only a limited number of films left in the tank. “I will say that as I approached my 70th birthday, between the 65th and 70th birthdays, and understanding and starting to feel like there is some end to this, [I asked myself] ‘Who would I like to work with before I finish?’” he says, when we meet over Zoom in the very week his latest movie Highest 2 Lowest has just received its New York premiere. “It’s just where I was at in life, where I am in life, where I was then in life…who do I want to work with?” It’s wise thinking from Washington, an actor who has played so many great men in his career – from Steve Biko to Malcolm X to the (semi) fictional lawyer in Philadelphia who fights the corner for Tom Hanks's AIDS victim. No wonder he’s lining up some of the best directors in the world for his curtain call. “I’m about to work with Fernando Meirelles and I’m about to work with Ryan Coogler,” he reveals. “And we haven’t found the right thing yet, but I’ve been talking with Steve McQueen.” That’s quite a line up right there. Just the thought of Washington teaming up with Britain’s McQueen, the director of Shame and 12 Years a Slave, is mouthwatering. Before that possibility, Washington is readying for Here Come the Flood, a heist thriller by Brazilian City of God director Meirelles. And then there’s the prospect of him joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Coogler directing him in an as-yet unspecified role in Black Panther 3 (Washington recently revealed that he had to call Coogler and apologise for blurting this secret out). For the moment, though, he’s revell…

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Spike Lee on Denzel Washington, if he would ever direct a Marvel film – and the Viagra musical he still wants to make
type: item
creator: James Mottram
subject: App
subject: App features
description: The legendary director speaks exclusively to RT about his new film Highest 2 Lowest and much more.
encoded: Highest 2 Lowest is in cinemas and on Apple TV+ from 5 September. Add it to your watchlist Spike Lee wasn’t built for Zoom. The famed director of Do The Right Thing, Malcolm X and BlacKkKlansman is sitting in a plush, cream-furnished room, wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap and bespoke, white-rimmed glasses. That’s about all that can be glimpsed, given the angle of the laptop camera that’s been plonked in front of the 5ft 7in filmmaker. You sense if he was directing this interview, it’d look a lot more polished. The 68-year-old director is back with his latest film, a “re-interpretation” of Ed McBain’s 1959 pulp novel King’s Ransom, which was later adapted by the Japanese master Akira Kurosawa into 1963’s influential crime procedural High and Low. That film starred Toshiro Mifune as a business tycoon running a shoe company who faces a terrible quandary when a kidnapper accidentally nabs his chauffeur’s son rather than his own. Lee is no stranger to re-working Asian cinema. He previously took on 2003’s bloodthirsty Oldboy, the South Korean-made revenge thriller directed by Park Chan-wook. His remake, a decade on, starred Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen. Now he’s back with his long-term collaborator Denzel Washington, who plays David King, a New York music mogul and the owner of the label Stackin’ Hits. “He’s considered, in the music business, to have the best ears,” says Lee. When King’s son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) is seemingly taken, King’s world appears to be crumbling. A ransom of 17.5 million Swiss francs is set. But as with Kurosawa’s yarn, the wrong boy is snatched – the son to King’s best friend and driver, Paul (Jeffrey Wright). “For me, I think the foundation of the film is morality,” says Lee, alluding to the dilemma King faces. Pay the ransom or risk being lambasted on social media. With King and Paul’s sons both teenagers, it’s one of several differences to the Kurosawa version, in which the kidnap victim is a child. “With his son being older, it emphas…

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A House of Dynamite review: Kathryn Bigelow's terrifying nuclear thriller is among her very best
type: item
date: 2025-09-02T17:03:55.000Z
creator: James Mottram
subject: Movies
subject: Review
description: Rebecca Ferguson and Idris Elba face a living nightmare in this nerve-shredding drama.
encoded: Kathryn Bigelow returns with A House of Dynamite, her first film in eight years, since the incendiary urban tale Detroit. This latest work, premiering in competition at the Venice Film Festival before a Netflix-backed release in the autumn, is up there with her very best. A tense, taut drama for the nuclear age, it’s a multi-perspective look at the precious few minutes that tick by when a launched missile, or “object” to use the jargon, enters United States airspace. As the opening caption reminds us, after the Cold War, political agreements looked to dismantle the nuclear arms race, but “that era is now over”. As we all know, countries including the US, Russia, China, North Korea and India all have nuclear arsenals. The question is, is anyone ready to push the button? In Bigelow’s film, scripted by Noah Oppenheim, an unidentified enemy launches an unprovoked single missile strike against America. “Is this real?” asks one character, as the realisation dawns that this is not a drill. Events are initially played out largely in the White House Situation Room, as Rebecca Ferguson’s Captain Olivia Walker attempts to handle the situation, whilst also coping with the fact her husband and young son are at home, and, like millions of others, in grave danger. GBIs – Ground Based Interceptors – are launched, but as one character notes, knocking a nuclear missile from the sky is like “hitting a bullet with a bullet”. Keeping it tight, the storyline covers about a third of the film’s running time, before Bigelow then switches locations, repeating events from other perspectives, including the Secretary of Defence (Jared Harris) and the President of the United States (Idris Elba), who is making a visit to a sporting arena, greeting young basketball players (he enters to rapturous cheers and the sound of Phil Collins’s drum-heavy anthem In the Air Tonight). Bigelow has been here before, more or less. Her rather ponderous 2002 film K-19: The Widowmaker dealt with an impending nuclea…

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