Operation Mincemeat review - Colin Firth and co practise the fine art of deception

★★★ OPERATION MINCEMEAT Colin Firth and co practise the fine art of deception

Lots of great performances in John Madden's World War Two subterfuge saga

The story of the fictitious Major William Martin, whose waterlogged corpse washed up on the Spanish coast in 1943 bearing bogus documents designed to fool the Germans, was previously filmed in 1956 as The Man Who Never Was.

Parallel Mothers review - letting the dead speak

★★★★ PARALLEL MOTHERS Almodóvar digs up the past in restrained exploration of Franco's legacy

Pedro Almodóvar digs up the past in a restrained exploration of Franco's legacy

Almodóvar has rarely returned to the petrified Spain of his youth, flinging off Franco’s oppression by ignoring it in his early films of freewheeling provocation, where anarchic, hot freedom was all of the law. In this sober tale of secrets and lies, though, his nation’s past is literally dug up.

Off the Rails review - go for the scenery, not the script

★★ OFF THE RAILS Go for the scenery, not the script

'Mamma Mia!' wannabe features lots of Blondie but very little sense

Mamma Mia! hovers unhelpfully over every frame of Off the Rails, a road movie of sorts in which three women make a music-fueled pilgrimage to Mallorca to honour the wishes of a fourth friend, who has died before time of cancer.

Memories of My Father review - the richness of childhood, the cruelty of history

★★★★ MEMORIES OF MY FATHER Resonant adaptation of Colombian family memoir

A moving father-son bond resonates in adaptation of Colombian family memoir

Spanish director Fernando Trueba’s Memories of My Father adapts the Colombian writer Héctor Abad Faciolince’s 2006 family memoir, which was published in English as Oblivion: the Spanish-language title of both book and film, El Olvido Que Seremos (“Forgotten We’ll Be”), more liter

Agustín Fernández Mallo: The Things We've Seen review - degrees of separation

★★★ AUGUSTÍN FERNÁNDEZ MALLO: THE THINGS WE'VE SEEN Degrees of separation

The B-side of reality comes to the fore in this roving exploration of connection and isolation

Trilogies (it is noted, in the term’s Wikipedia entry) “are common in speculative fiction”. They are found in those works with elements “non-existent in reality”, which cover various themes “in the context of the supernatural, futuristic, and many other imaginative topics”. All of these apply in some sense to The Things We’ve Seen, the latest novel from Spanish writer Agustín Fernández Mallo.

Stile Antico, The Cardinall's Musick, Wigmore Hall online review – lightening our darkness

★★★★★ STILE ANTICO, THE CARDINALL'S MUSICK, WIGMORE HALL Lightening our darkness

The rapt beauty of a Renaissance Christmas pierces the gloom

Suitably enough, this year’s musical Christmas arrived at the Wigmore not in a dazzle of joyful light and bedecked with winter greenery, but with a lonely band of singers facing the gloom of an unlit, empty hall as fear and confusion multiplied outside. In both of yesterday’s concerts, the closing events of the venue’s defiant and courageous autumn season, a cappella choral music from the Renaissance ushered in a festival more austere than ecstatic. It proved deeply beautiful in its sombre way, but quite free of tinsel jollity.

Dalí Theatre-Museum, Figueres, virtual tour review - tantalising but unsatisfactory

★★★ DALÍ THEATRE-MUSEUM, FIGUERES Virtual tour loses the magic of Dalí's private world

The magic of Dalí's private world is lost in its virtual form

Salvador Dalí’s house at Portlligat on the Costa Brava is straight out of the pages of a lifestyle magazine, its sunbaked white walls dazzling in the sunshine, and light pouring in from every angle. It was a fisherman’s hut when Dalí moved there in 1930, extending it over 40 years like “a true biological structure” to make a home and a place to work for himself and his wife Gala, with every window letting in a view of the sea.

Camino Skies review - NZ documentary brings no surprises

★★★ CAMINO SKIES NZ documentary brings no surprises

Plodding along a well-worn path: the Camino de Santiago and six Antipodean pilgrims

A documentary about six middle-aged Antipodeans, four women and two men, walking the 500 mile pilgrims’ path through France and Spain to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela sounds uplifting, inspiring, even fun. Just the ticket, perhaps, when one's travel horizons are limited. But this soft-focus film fails to dig deeply enough into the lives and motivations of strangers thrown together with nothing much in common apart from grief, and sometimes not even that.

The Platform review - timely, violent and effective

★★★★ THE PLATFORM Netflix's new high-concept horror skewers capitalism

New Netflix high-concept horror skewers capitalism

Horror has always been a good vehicle for satire, from John Carpenter’s They Live to Jordan Peele’s Get Out. Some metaphors opt for the subtle precision of a surgical knife, and others the hit you over the head. The Platform on Netflix is the latter, a brutal, blunt and effective sledgehammer.