Movies

• The Guardian‘He made something every single day’: David Lynch’s inscrutable photography celebrated in LA show

  The director’s surrealist films defined Los Angeles. Now the city is celebrating his other passion: photographyNo one can bring Los Angeles together like David Lynch.The first posthumous exhibition of the director and artist’s photographs went on display at LA’s Pace Gallery this weekend, drawing a massive crowd of goths, weirdos and art world observers to celebrate a creative mind that has few equals in American pop culture history. Continue reading...

  09/23/2026
• The GuardianManhunter review – Michael Mann serves up a bold and queasy starter to the serial killer spectacle

  Before Anthony Hopkins’ Dr Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Brian Cox played a cannibalistic killer in Mann’s pioneering Red Dragon adaptationFive years before The Silence of the Lambs, there was writer-director Michael Mann’s pioneering Thomas Harris adaptation Manhunter, now on re-release in a director’s “final cut” for its 40th anniversary. It was his version of Harris’s 1981 novel Red Dragon, a movie which features Dr Hannibal Lecter (here spelt Lecktor) in a relatively minor part, and played in a much more coolly matter-of-fact and downbeat way by Brian Cox, who is first discovered in his cell lying down with his back to the camera.It has long been a haughty, hipster film-bro affectation to claim that Cox is better in the role than Anthony Hopkins. (Lecktor’s early acoustic stuff was great, you see, before he went electric as Lecter.) I think that’s a bit obtuse, for all that Cox is of course very good. Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs is the definitive version: face it. But I will concede that Cox is more interesting than Hopkins by the time the latter came to make the 2002 adaptation of Red Dragon, at which stage the franchise had become a bit tired. Manhunter itself is a very interesting and watchable movie, but feels a little unevolved compared to Jonathan Demme’s masterly guignol spectacle, although Demme clearly inhaled Mann’s excitement at jets, ’copters and military hardware deployed at speed to bring down just one man. Continue reading...

  09/23/2026
• The GuardianBoorman and the Devil review – enjoyable re-evaluation of the disaster that was Exorcist II: The Heretic

  John Boorman generously details the mortifying experience of making a sequel to 1973 hit horror The Exorcist, which was widely and unfairly pannedDavid Kittredge gives us a thoroughly enjoyable, detailed account of the catastrophe that was John Boorman’s 1977 film Exorcist II: The Heretic, the deeply ill-conceived and widely derided follow-up to The Exorcist, a bizarre but ambitious fantasy supernatural rhapsody, brimming with unintentional comedy. Yet it was visually bold and even brilliant, pioneering in its use of Steadicam; Linda Blair and Max von Sydow were persuaded to return; Richard Burton was cast as a troubled priest, and Louise Fletcher as a psychiatrist whose weird “mind-reader” contraption was entirely ridiculous. At the first film, people screamed. Now they screamed with laughter.According to an apocryphal tale gleefully repeated by William Friedkin, director of the first film, the sequel resulted in an enraged audience one night turning round and booing Warner Brothers executives in the back row of the cinema, and then chasing them out of the building and down the street. Boorman desperately recut the film with the sillier bits removed. But the damage was done. Continue reading...

  09/23/2026
• The GuardianNorth Sea, Nature Untamed review – stunning footage finds the beauty and splendour under the water

  Diver Peter van Rodijnen’s footage of basking whales, plankton blooms and fatherly fish disputes the idea that the North Sea is a bleak wildernessThe North Sea, with its cold grey waters, is the world’s drabbest. Or so you might have thought, but this documentary featuring the Dutch diver and underwater cinematographer Peter van Rodijnen sets out to tackle the misconceptions. His stunning footage puts all the splendours of this stormy stretch of water on show, and his voiceover gives it an endearing eccentric charm.First, the greyness. Van Rodijnen films the North Sea’s waves sparkling with the cosmic blue light of bioluminescent algae, and lit up with the disco colours of coral and plankton blooms. He also brings us cute, coo-worthy stories from the depths; take the male shorthorn sculpin fish (no looker, it must be said) who spends the winter looking after his eggs, cleaning and blowing fresh water over them. Van Rodijnen’s camera is there for the baby fish hatching – pop, pop, pop out of their pearly plump pink eggs. There are some quirky stories, too, including a barnacle with a superlong penis. Continue reading...

  09/23/2026
• The GuardianThe Love Hypothesis review – hit BookTok romcom lacks spark on screen

  Riverdale’s Lili Reinhart does some heavy lifting in adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s hit book, but it’s not quite enoughFans of the dearly departed Riverdale – or, moreover, admirers of all the batshit things the CW comic soap could make its bright young actors say with straining sincerity – have long rooted for Lili Reinhart. The Betty Cooper of yore was the best of that talented crop (Charles Melton and Camila Mendes among them) at rising above her subpar surroundings, her impressively expressive eyes able to sell the unsellable with complete conviction. She is the type of helplessly endearing performer suited to roles of naivety who masks surprise steeliness, as in her notable turn in 2019’s Hustlers or, better yet, romcoms, though there remains a dearth of worthy material. (A dual role in 2022’s Look Both Ways, a Netflix homage to Sliding Doors, didn’t cut it.)At least on paper, The Love Hypothesis, a new romcom from Amazon Prime Video, should be that material. The BookTok sensation by neuroscientist turned author Ali Hazelwood presents an ideal Reinhart protagonist: extremely nerdy, in a periodic table way, yet conventionally beautiful, awkward and self-deprecating yet cutting when it counts, the type of sweet-presenting young woman who will shout “fuck” repeatedly in private. Which Reinhart’s Olive Smith, a young biology PhD student at Stanford, winsomely does in the film’s unsettlingly cold open, as a bleary-eyed Olive, blind from expired contacts, freaking out before her grad school interview and then boldly stating her cancer-solving intentions to a brusque, handsome professor in a lab bathroom. Continue reading...

  09/23/2026
• The GuardianRemake review – Ross McElwee’s magnificent and moving tribute to a tragic loss and the art it inspired

  Sherman’s March director McElwee revisits footage of his late son for this magnificently affecting film and meditation on making artThis new film from revered documentary-maker Ross McElwee is an extraordinary work, arguably his most audacious use yet of autobiographical material while at the same time being a coruscating self-criticism of that same technique. Think of it as an artistic ouroboros (a snake eating its own tail). Remake is all at once about creativity, shame, love and loss, revelling in the way film can capture a moment of truth and honesty, but tempered by the knowledge that once a subject knows they’re being filmed everything becomes a kind of performance. It’s a film that works on so many levels and at the same time is so simple and direct.On that very simplest level, Remake starts out as a documentation of how Hollywood got in touch with McElwee and told him they wanted to make a fictionalised remake of his best-known film, Sherman’s March. Made in 1985 with a one-man crew (McElwee himself), Sherman’s March recorded the McElwee’s trip back to South Carolina where he grew up; there he films his family, old friends, and himself as he continually fails to establish romantic relationships with various women, all of it lavishly slathered with his own warm, softly southern-accented voiceover. Continue reading...

  09/23/2026
• The GuardianPost your questions for Miranda Richardson

  She has lit up screens large and small playing Ruth Ellis, Rita Skeeter, Barbara Castle and the hilarious Queenie in Blackadder. Alternatively, you could ask about birds of prey, orangutans or playing the celloJudging by the size of her awards cupboard, Miranda Richardson has had quite the career. She won a Bafta for the 1992 psychological drama Damage, opposite Jeremy Irons, and Golden Globes for the 1991 historical drama Enchanted April and the 1994 Nazi thriller Fatherland, and was Oscar-nominated for both Damage and the 1994 historical drama Tom & Viv. Her other notable performances include IRA member Jude in The Crying Game, Ruth Ellis in Dance With a Stranger and Lady Van Tassel in Sleepy Hollow.She’s pretty handy at comedy, too – and probably just as familiar for playing acid-tongued Daily Prophet journalist Rita Skeeter in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the murderous chicken-farm owner Mrs Tweedy in Chicken Run and, of course, the gloriously unhinged Queenie in Blackadder II: “I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant.” Continue reading...

  09/22/2026
• The GuardianBrigitte Bardot’s personal items sell for nearly €1m at auction in Paris

  Dog collars, guitars and self-portraits among 285 objects, with money going to her animal welfare foundation and sonAn auction of the French film star turned animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot’s personal items has fetched nearly €1m (£858,000, US$1.15m, A$1.61m) in Paris, almost 20 times the estimate, according to the auction house Millon.A total of 285 objects were auctioned, ranging from straw hats, sunglasses and nightgowns to tableware and furniture from Bardot’s homes in Paris and Saint-Tropez, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. Continue reading...

  09/22/2026
• The GuardianLa Bola Negra wins Toronto film festival people’s choice award

  The queer period drama wins Oscar-predicting award, being named the most popular audience film at the festivalThe Spanish queer drama La Bola Negra has won this year’s people’s choice award at the Toronto film festival.The film, which takes place in 1932, 1937 and 2017, focuses on the lives of interconnected gay men. It premiered at this year’s Cannes film festival with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw calling it “handsomely produced, lovingly detailed and confidently constructed” in a four-star review. Continue reading...

  09/20/2026
• The Guardian‘Resident Evil movies? I’ve never seen one’: Weapons director Zach Cregger on resurrecting the beloved zombie franchise

  Raised on punk, alt-comedy and the church, Cregger’s Lynchian approach to horror is anything but typical. After two wildly original hits, his pivot to a 30-year-old video game has caused a storm among protective fansWhen Barbarian, Zach Cregger’s debut film as a solo writer-director, came out in 2022, it was a big success, creating a buzz among horror connoisseurs, garnering good reviews, and grossing $46m. Then his second film, Weapons, came out in 2025 and did even better. Mounting industry buzz around the project crystallised into a fierce bidding war; Jordan Peele was reportedly desperate to produce and, incensed by his failure to secure the rights, allegedly fired his managers. The rumours went viral, resulting in a wave of incredible PR that saw the film wildly outperform box office expectations and win an Academy Award (for Amy Madigan’s blunt-fringed, bonsai-pruning best supporting actress turn as instantly classic villain Aunt Gladys).Even if Cregger had not had a box-office smash that crossed over into awards contention, there would still be an atmosphere of hushed expectation around his next move. Both Barbarian and Weapons addressed hot-button issues – sexual assault and school shootings, respectively – while resisting easy interpretation. Both, too, started out seemingly heading in one narrative direction, before thrillingly careening off elsewhere. Thus, with just two features, Cregger had established a reputation for totally terrifying, utterly unpredictable and – most importantly – genuinely original movies. Continue reading...

  09/20/2026
• The GuardianAmanda Redman: ‘My most embarrassing moment? Getting caught doing a pretend Bafta thank you speech’

  The actor on a terrible accident as a toddler, her bossy nature, and feeling too old to play a Shakespearean heroineBorn in Brighton, Amanda Redman, 69, studied at Bristol Old Vic theatre school. She starred in the TV comedy drama El C.I.D. in the 1990s, and in At Home With the Braithwaites from 2000 to 2003, a role that earned her a Bafta nomination. She played the lead in the BBC series New Tricks for a decade until 2013, and her later work includes The Trials of Jimmy Rose and The Good Karma Hospital. On 28 September, her 2000 film Sexy Beast will be rereleased in a limited-edition box set. She has a daughter and lives in London with her second husband.When were you happiest? I am happiest when I have my daughter and granddaughter with me. Continue reading...

  09/19/2026
• The GuardianJohn Wilson on his unlikely concrete movie: ‘There might be a kind of sickness in shooting things this way’

  The creator of How To with John Wilson has returned with his first film, a documentary about how to sell a documentary about concreteAs mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has frequently demonstrated impressive media savvy, but arguably nothing has proved his genius for in-the-know promo more than a video, released in April, with the documentarian John Wilson.The spot, in support of the mayor’s plan to reduce the presence of the city’s ubiquitous sidewalk sheds, suggested that either he or someone on his team was a fan of How To With John Wilson, the film-maker’s cult-beloved HBO series that remains a taste signifier for alt-humorous New Yorkers. And for good reason: over three near-perfect seasons, Wilson, armed with his ever-present camera and diffident, memoiristic narration, explored the city’s disintegrating streets with a singular eye for the weird and unintentionally hilarious, turning the most mundane of NYC preoccupations – public restrooms, parking spots, scaffolding – into profound meditations on the glories, indignities and absurdities of modern life. Continue reading...

  09/19/2026

Headlines aggregated from major international newsrooms (BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, NPR, France 24, Fox News) and linked back to the publishers.