Category Archives: Film

Uncharmed: why Chinese film fans are shunning Hollywood

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Even the worldwide smash Encanto failed to satisfy millions of cinemagoers who now demand homemade fare

Matt William Knowles, a 36-year-old Hollywood actor, has been packing for a forthcoming trip to China in the past week. He’s looking forward to his first China visit since the pandemic. “The last time I was in China was late 2019 when I served as the honorary mayor for a village in southern China.”

While his career in Hollywood continues to blossom, finding work in China hasn’t been easy these past few years for Knowles. The pandemic changed the film industry, and the deteriorating diplomatic relations between America and China sandwiched individuals like him who straddle both nations. For a period of time in 2019, amid a souring trade war between the two countries, Chinese studios put an informal ban on American actors.

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Clio Barnard on her Bradford love story Ali & Ava: ‘Joy is an act of resistance’

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The director of The Arbor and The Selfish Giant returns to her favourite city for her new film. She talks about celebrating lives on the margins and how an ice-rink kiss changed her life

Would you like coffee?” Clio Barnard asks. “Is goat’s milk OK?” Ooh, that sounds exciting, I say. “There’s oat milk, too.” Barnard is scouring the fridge. “We’ve even got regular cow milk.” It’s early morning when I arrive at her house. Though, as she explains repeatedly, it’s not her house – she’s just renting it while working in London and Essex. It reminds me of Ali & Ava, her lovely new film. Every time Ali tells his friends that Ava is a teacher, she corrects him with “teaching assistant”. Details are important to Barnard.

“Right, would you like some breakfast?” She couldn’t be a warmer host. Then we sit down to talk, and suddenly she’s a bag of nerves. She loses her words, apologises for going blank, and looks to her producer Tracy O’Riordan for support. She eyes my recorder enviously. “I’d much rather be the person with the tape machine on the table asking you questions.” She pauses. “I’m quite a shy person, Simon.”

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Peter Sarsgaard: ‘Have we reached superhero saturation? Probably’

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He may star in The Batman, but his taste is more arthouse thrillers and experimental theatre. He discusses overacting, bad accents – and being cast as a charmer by his wife

Peter Sarsgaard peers into the webcam, half-man, half-beard. “I’m in the Kenny Rogers camp right now,” says the 50-year-old actor. “I look like a dropout. Whenever I’m not working, I feel like I’m growing hair in case I need it for the next movie.”

His sleepy grin matches the rest of him: bed head, bed eyes, bed voice. It is this apparent languor that makes his glinting wit and flashes of cruelty stand out sharply on screen. He can be creep, charmer or both. “I don’t tell myself I’m the antagonist or the protagonist,” he says. “They can figure that out later.”

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The Spider-Man pointing meme perfectly encapsulates why fans adored No Way Home

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Bringing Spideys old and new together was a masterclass in giving audiences what they want, and points to what Batman v Superman got so wrong

Fan service has come a long way since 2006, when studio New Line allowed its audience to basically crowd-think the entirety of Samuel L Jackson action epic Snakes on a Plane. Back then, somebody high up thought it would be a really good idea to start borrowing lines for Jackson to say (while fighting off those airborne reptiles) from a hyped-up geek community who had been spending most of their spare time discussing the unreleased movie on fan forums and blogs. The best/worst of them ended up being the legendary (for all the wrong reasons) line: “Enough is enough! I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” Up there with Jackson’s famous Ezekiel 25:17 speech about the path of the righteous man it really wasn’t.

This week Marvel and Sony have shown how to do fan service properly. And all it took was a staged meme featuring all three webslingers from global megasmash Spider-Man: No Way Home pointing at each other. The image recalls a famous still from episode 19 of the 1967-1970 animated Spider-Man show, in which a Spidey-impostor – clue, he’s really a criminal – tries to impersonate the masked wallcrawler. It’s since been used millions of times in social media posts, often to illustrate moments when celebrities meet each other (according to the Know Your Meme website).

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Armando Iannucci: ‘Everything since 2016 has been a wind-up’

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The film and TV writer answers your questions on advising Boris Johnson, dining with Alan Partridge characters and whether he still has OJ’s confession

How bored are you with people asking how bored you are with people asking if reality has become impossible to satirise? ritasueandbob

I’m extremely bored. But I don’t think it has. A lot of people have forgotten that life is real. It’s not something you can invent and occasionally rewrite. Life is something you’re stuck with, to deal with head on and not hide from.

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‘Oh my God, I’m having sex again!’: Yellowjackets’ Melanie Lynskey on raunch, rage and the rise of Kate Winslet

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After 30 years of critical acclaim, the actor has finally found mainstream success at 44. She talks about Hollywood’s dangerous beauty standards, turning down misogynistic scripts – and why her TV show about possible teenage cannibals is so much fun

It would not surprise me if Melanie Lynskey had deliberately matched her pale blouse to the pale curtains behind her, and her pale complexion, the better to blend into the background. After 30 years of critical acclaim, but not mainstream fame, Lynskey is getting noticed and it feels very, very strange to her. Her show, Yellowjackets, has steadily become a hit. Lynskey is not quite the lead in this ensemble piece, but near enough, as one of four fortysomething women who survived a plane crash as teenagers, and went through some savage stuff, involving murder and almost certainly cannibalism.

Likened to a mix of Lord of the Flies, Lost and Mean Girls, with a pleasing amount of 90s nostalgia, it has become one of the most talked-about shows of the moment. “It’s funny to be on something that people are watching,” Lynskey says with a laugh. “It’s a different experience.”

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Charlize Theron ‘felt so threatened’ by Tom Hardy making Mad Max she required on-set protection

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New book details allegations of unprofessional behaviour and aggression during making of George Miller’s 2015 blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road

Further details of the animosity between Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy have been detailed in a new book about the making of George Miller’s 2015 action blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road.

The co-stars were known to have a frosty relationship through the lengthy shoot in the Namibian desert, but Kyle Buchanan’s new book Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road suggests Theron felt sufficiently threatened to require on-set protection from the “aggressive” Hardy.

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The Duke review – Jim Broadbent steals show in warm-hearted 60s-set crime caper

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Roger Michell’s final feature retells story of the cussed Newcastle pensioner who stole a Goya portrait in protest at government spending priorities

For what has become his final feature film, director Roger Michell made this sweet-natured and genial comedy in the spirit of Ealing, which bobs up like a ping pong ball on a water-fountain. It is based on the true story of Kempton Bunton, the Newcastle bus driver who in 1965 was had up at the Old Bailey for stealing Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery. The mystery of its disappearance had so electrified the media that there was even a gag about it in the James Bond film Dr No, using a copy personally painted by the legendary production designer Ken Adam, which was itself stolen. Maybe there should be a film about that as well.

The court heard this was Bunton’s protest at government misuse of taxpayers’ money (the painting had been saved for the nation at some cost) and to publicise his demand for pensioners to be given free TV licences. (This film features the usual “historical coda” sentences over the closing credits, and one sentimentally records that free TV licences for the over-75s were finally introduced in 2000. But no mention of these being taken away again in 2020.)

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‘All those agencies failed us’: inside the terrifying downfall of Boeing

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In the damning new Netflix documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, the errors and oversights that led to two crashes are examined

For the vast majority of travelers, stepping foot on an airplane entails a tremendous act of near-blind faith. We control our own cars, trains operate on set tracks at ground level, but flying requires us to put total trust in the expertise of a complete stranger to operate a machine too complex for us to understand. Every time these gargantuan hunks of metal don’t plummet screaming from the sky towards a certain fiery doom, it feels like a miracle, even if that’s how the majority of flights play out. Rory Kennedy’s damning new documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing takes a close look at two incidents included within the small number of flights when things go wrong, and shows us the tragedy that strikes when that sacred compact between passenger and airline is violated.

“I fly a good deal, and the truth is I’ve got a bit of a fear of flying,” Kennedy tells the Guardian from behind the wheel of her car, talking transit in transit. “I like to think that when I walk down that jetway, the manufacturer of that plane is invested in keeping it up in the air, that the regulatory agencies focused on safety are doing in their job, and that at least in our country, the government is making sure the regulatory agencies enforce those safety measures. In this case, it seems that all of those agencies failed us.”

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‘All that Hollywood glamour doesn’t feel like me at all’: Joanna Scanlan on self-doubt, sexism and being the red-hot favourite at the Baftas

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After years of great roles in comedies such as The Thick of It and Moving On, the actor is now being feted for her devastating dramatic performance in After Love. She talks about ‘serious’ acting, a breakdown in her 20s and learning to fight for herself

When Joanna Scanlan arrives, she is hidden beneath a yellow raincoat, glasses steamed up, blown through the door as if the gathering storm outside has washed her ashore. “I am so sorry for dragging you out here,” she says, laughing slightly hysterically, as she sheds the layers. Scanlan is filming in rural Wales – she, her husband and their dog are renting a cottage nearby – and this cafe, also in the middle of nowhere, was her suggestion. Even the women who work in the cafe were surprised to be called in. We are the only customers, but there are pots of tea and welsh cakes, and Scanlan is great company, so all is well.

She grew up in Wales, so this job – filming The Light in the Hall, a psychological thriller, for which she has had to learn some Welsh – is something of a homecoming. Being here is also a detachment from London, and everything that goes with her job outside of being on set or stage – the bit, you sense, she could take or leave. And so she’s a bit distanced from the buzz around her Bafta nomination for best actress for her role in the extraordinary film After Love. “When you sit here in Tywi Valley, just learning your lines for tomorrow, it’s hard to take that in,” she says. “I feel very long in the tooth to be coming to this sort of prominence.”

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‘It’s the end of a big adventure’: Cillian Murphy bids farewell to Peaky Blinders

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Cillian Murphy’s icy stare has transfixed viewers around the world as Brummie gang boss Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders. As the stellar series reaches its finale, he talks about music, empathy and trying not to overthink things

Cillian Murphy pops up on screen with the discomfited gaiety of a man about to submit to dentistry. He is courteous and friendly, but without ever quite shaking off the impression he would rather be almost anywhere else. It’s just before Christmas, and the rampant Omicron variant of Covid-19 has put paid to in-person meetings. You don’t get the impression Murphy minds too much. At a Zoom’s remove, he sits back in his chair, hair restored to luxuriant cruising length after the savage chop required for Peaky Blinders. His storied peepers – organs that have inspired countless column inches and exhaustive maritime imagery – are, for once, hard to discern.

I recognise the spare white wall behind him, which is decorated with a poster for the band Grizzly Bear and a painting. This must be his famous basement. In the Dublin home he shares with his wife, Yvonne McGuinness, an artist, and their teenage sons Malachy and Aran, the basement is Murphy’s fortress of solitude. He has spent a lot of time here over lockdown, noodling around on guitars, scrolling the news about the pandemic and recording impressively eclectic radio programmes for BBC 6 Music.

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Andrew Garfield reveals ‘precise agony’ of losing his mother to cancer

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Oscar-nominated actor speaks of his grief and how it left him struggling to make sense of world

Andrew Garfield has opened up about the grief of losing his mother to pancreatic cancer, saying it left him in “precise agony” and struggling to make sense of the world around him.

The actor, 38, who was recently nominated for an Oscar for his role in Netflix biography Tick, Tick… Boom!, started filming just after Lynn Garfield, a teacher from Essex, died in 2019.

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Brad Pitt sues ex-wife Angelina Jolie for selling stake in French winery

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Pitt says Jolie broke their agreement not to sell their interests in Château Miraval without the other’s consent

Brad Pitt has sued his ex-wife Angelina Jolie for selling her stake in a French winery they had bought together – and where they got married – to a Russian businessman.

In a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Thursday, Pitt said Jolie had broken their agreement not to sell their interests in Château Miraval without the other’s consent by selling her stake to a unit of Stoli Group, a spirits maker controlled by oligarch Yuri Shefler.

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Benedict Cumberbatch swans about on the baffling cover of Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue

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Scowling, sodden and surrounded by waterfowl, the actor adorns the new Hollywood issue as an icon of … what exactly?

The customary brouhaha erupted yesterday after the release of Vanity Fair’s annual Hollywood Issue cover photos, the most striking of which depicts an angry Benedict Cumberbatch emerging fully clothed from a hot bubblebath sesh with a bevy of swans.

The Hollywood Issue increasingly feels like it belongs to a different era, when fashion magazines and actors’ star power were at their respective heights. These days, the printed press is clinging on for dear life (Entertainment Weekly announced just last week that it will be ceasing its print edition), and in Hollywood no one performer is bigger than a franchise. So the Hollywood Issue, which trades in the nose-to-the-window glamour of movie stars, has a more forlorn quality than it used to.

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Robert Pattinson was told to change his ‘absolutely atrocious’ Batman voice

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The star of Matt Reeves’ upcoming film says he spent two weeks experimenting with vocal delivery. It did not go well

Robert Pattinson says he originally tried doing a different voice when playing Batman, but was told to stop because it was “absolutely atrocious”.

Speaking to American talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel, Pattinson – who stars in the new Batman film directed by Matt Reeves – said there was something about putting the suit on that meant “you have to speak in a certain way”.

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Audrey Hepburn’s 20 greatest films – ranked!

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On the 65th anniversary of Funny Face, we run down the Givenchy girl’s best moments – from upstaging her (usually much older) leading men to literally representing heaven in a dazzling white cable-knit

This exotic MGM romance directed by Hepburn’s then husband, Mel Ferrer, was in fact her first big flop. Anthony Perkins plays a Venezuelan refugee whose life is saved by Rima the jungle girl: Hepburn in a suede pixie tunic, accessorised with a pet fawn and backed by a supporting cast in brownface.

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The Chaperone review – dishing dirt in well-turned hats and hair

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Semi-true story from Julian Fellowes sets churchgoing Kansas lady the challenge of keeping the girl about to become Louise Brooks in line in 1920s New York

Written by Julian Fellowes, who brought us Downton Abbey and recent series The Gilded Age, and directed by Michael Engler, who worked on both the aforementioned, this based-extremely-loosely-on-fact costume drama adapted from a novel by Laura Moriarty should hit the sweet spot for fans of Fellowes’ particular variety of saucy-soapy period pieces. Like so much of Fellowes’ work, it effectively flatters the viewer by assuming he or she must be familiar with certain historical figures (in this case, early cinema star Louise Brooks) and then appears to dish the dirt on them through the eyes of a character from another class or at least different social sphere.

Here, that parallax view is from the perspective of Norma – played by Lady Grantham herself, Elizabeth McGovern, taking a lead role for a change. When first met in 1922 in Wichita, Kansas, Norma seems like a nice, churchgoing lady of a certain age, respectably married to a lawyer (Campbell Scott) and mother of two practically grownup sons. When she hears that local pianist Myra Brooks (Victoria Hill) is in search of a chaperone to accompany her precocious but exceedingly talented teenage daughter Louise (Haley Lu Richardson) to New York to attend a prestigious dance school, Norma mysteriously jumps at the chance. Turns out she has a good reason: she was actually raised in an orphanage there for a short while before being adopted by kindly midwestern farmers, and now wants to find her birth parents.

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Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes to host the Oscars

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The comedic trio are expected to be formally announced as hosts, the show’s first since 2018, on Good Morning America on Tuesday

Amy Schumer, Regina Hall and Wanda Sykes will host the 94th Academy Awards this year, Variety reported on Monday. The trio of female comedic actors, who are expected to be formally announced on Good Morning America on Tuesday, will be the struggling show’s first hosts since 2018.

Schumer, Hall and Sykes are tasked with providing some zest for a program whose ratings have flagged in recent years. Viewership for last year’s scaled-backed ceremony, held in Los Angeles’s Union Station, fell by more than half from the previous year, which itself was a record-breaking low.

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Super Bowl: the ads, the music and everything but the football – live

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While the game rages on, there are several major ads and movie trailers and a much-anticipated half-time show from some hip-hop and R&B legends

After the success of last month’s Scream, the legacy sequel – aka the one that brings back the old to mingle with the new – continues with force this year with our first real look at the inevitable greatest hits sequel Jurassic World: Dominion. The last film brought back BD Wong and a cameo-ing Jeff Goldblum to join Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard but this time they return with both Sam Neill and Laura Dern, an exciting prospect for hardcore fans. The trailer has some promising moments but there’s an awful lot here to be juggled – despite the familiar faces, it’ll be the lesser-known DeWanda Wise who leads – so whether all balls can be kept up in the air remains to be seen.

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