Poor Things review - other-worldly adaptation of Alasdair Gray's novel

★★★★★ POOR THINGS Other-worldly adaptation of Alasdair Gray's novel

A triumphant reunion for Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos

Following their award-scooping collaboration on 2018’s The Favourite, Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos return with this mind-bending adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s eponymous novel. Also on board is screenwriter Tony McNamara, who wrote (with Deborah Davis) The Favourite’s screenplay. You might say lightning has struck twice, with Stone collecting the Best Female Actor award at the recent Golden Globes and the film winning for Best Musical or Comedy.

Scala!!! interview with documentary co-directors Jane Giles and Ali Catterall

SCALA!!! Co-directors Jane Giles and Ali Catterall on London's infamous repertory cinema

How the Scala became London's most infamous repertory cinema

There’s no shortage of documentaries about movie stars, film directors and production studios in their heydays, but very little attention has been paid to the cinemas that showed the movies they made or the diverse audiences they attracted.

Priscilla review - Bluebeard suede shoes

★★★ PRISCILLA Sofia Coppola on whatever happened to the teenage dream

Sofia Coppola on whatever happened to the teenage dream

Sofia Coppola knows a thing or two about teenage girldom. Like many of her other characters – in The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Somewhere and Marie Antoinette – the subject of her latest film, Priscilla Presley, is an ingenue living in a gilded cage and surrounded by lavish boredom. It hardly matters whether the setting is actually the Park Hyatt Tokyo, Chateau Marmont, the Palace of Versailles – or Graceland, in this case.

Tchaikovsky's Wife review - husband material

★★ TCHAIKOVSKY'S WIFE Discord drowns out gay composer's marriage in Serebrennikov's biopic

Discord drowns out gay composer's marriage in Kirill Serebrennikov's biopic

The movies haven’t been kind to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The Nutcracker Suite was a highlight of Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940) perhaps, but the 1969 Soviet biopic directed by Igor Talankin was tedious and Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers, released two years later, worse than that.

DVD/Blu-Ray: Passages

★★★★ DVD/BLU-RAY: PASSAGES Clothes play a starring role in Ira Sachs's painful love triangle

Clothes play a starring role in Ira Sachs's exploration of a painful love triangle

“I had sex with a woman. Can I tell you about it, please?” says film director Tomas (Franz Rogowski) to his husband Martin (Ben Whishaw), a printmaker. Tomas is full of excitement about his night with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos); Martin is resigned, pale, doesn’t want the details. This always happens when you finish a film, he says. Take a nap, relax. But Tomas has thrown their relationship into crisis.

Ferrari review - a steady, slow-lane biopic

★★★ FERRARI A steady, slow-lane biopic

Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz duel in Michael Mann's low-wattage look at a racing potentate

Just as Napoleon may be Ridley Scott’s most autobiographical subject, so motor-racing potentate Enzo Ferrari’s mastery of streamlined speed seems made for Michael Mann. But where his best films’ cool control accelerates into calibrated mayhem, Ferrari mostly stays underpowered.

Best of 2023: Film

BEST OF 2023: FILM Theartsdesk's film critics cast their net wide

Kicking off the top choices of the year, theartsdesk's film critics cast their net wide

Numbers indicate if entries are listed in order of preference


Saskia Baron

Anatomy of a Fall

Broker

Fallen Leaves

Joyland

Killers of the Flower Moon

Otto Baxter: Not a F**ing Horror Story

Return to Seoul

St Omer

Scrapper

A Thousand and One