Possessor review - death by virtual reality

★★★★ POSSESSOR Startling vision of corporate assassination from director Brandon Cronenberg

Startling vision of corporate assassination from director Brandon Cronenberg

Many have struggled to bring a new slant to the horror genre, but writer-director Brandon Cronenberg has managed it with Possessor, his second full-length feature.

Brave New World, Sky 1 review - Aldous Huxley's novel doesn't look very happy on TV

★★ BRAVE NEW WORLD, SKY 1 - Aldous Huxley's novel doesn't look very happy on TV

Lame adaptation enlivened by gratuitous slaughter

Famous dystopian novels are reliably popular with TV adapters, so it’s strange that this is the first time Aldous Huxley’s treatise on a society controlled by technology and psychological manipulation has been turned into a TV series. Of course, these days you need a pretty good fictional dystopia to surpass the one already running amok outside your window.

The Best Films Out Now

THE BEST FILMS OUT NOW theartsdesk recommends the top movies of the moment

theartsdesk recommends the top movies of the moment

There are films to meet every taste in theartsdesk's guide to the best movies currently on release. In our considered opinion, any of the titles below is well worth your attention.

Enola Holmes ★★★★ Millie Bobby Brown gives the patriarchy what-for in a new Sherlock-related franchise

Bill & Ted Face the Music review - modestly delightful

★★★ BILL & TED FACE THE MUSIC Slacker time-travel double-act's return is modestly delightful

The slacker time-travel double-act's cheerfully cheap return

Beavis and Butthead’s vicious grunge-era gormlessness remains interred, Wayne and Garth (and their stars’ careers) are too superannuated to revive. But here are the slightest of Gen X’s idiot double-acts, back again to save the universe in a time-travelling phone-box.

New Mutants review - superheroes and the supernatural collide

★★ NEW MUTANTS Superheroes and the supernatural collide in delayed X-Men spin-off

The much delayed X-Men spin-off from Josh Boone finally hits cinemas with lacklustre results

It hasn’t been an easy ride for Josh Boone’s New Mutants. Delayed production, reshoots, the acquisition of 20th Century Fox by Disney, Covid-19, and accusations of whitewashing, have all contributed to it being dubbed a ‘cursed’ film.

Tenet review - a heady delight

★★★★ TENET A heady delight

Nolan's ambitious high concept head-spinner will have you going back for more

Go back over Christopher Nolan’s films and count the clocks. He has an obsession that would give a horologist a run for his money. Time is a continual motif of his body of work and it finds its zenith in his latest work Tenet. Beneath the highly polished spy-thriller aesthetic lies a head-spinning, temporally warped plot, laced with concepts and conceits that will delight and baffle in equal measures. 

DVD/Blu-ray: Flash Gordon

★★★★ FLASH GORDON Cinematic worlds collide in a gorgeous camp classic

Cinematic worlds collide in a gorgeous camp classic

Queen, performances and production design drive this campest, funniest and sexiest of the post-Star Wars space boom. Flash Gordon is a film about a classic American comic-strip hero made by a cynical English director, Mike Hodges, and dreamy Italian producer, Dino De Laurentiis.

Roswell, New Mexico, ITV2 review - they've landed!

★★★ ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO, ITV2 Schlock meets sci-fi in soapy desert drama

Schlock meets sci-fi in soapy desert drama

It fell out of the sky in the summer of 1947, and crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. UFO-logists and conspiracy fanatics insist it was an alien spacecraft, but the US Air Force says it was a meteorological balloon.

Joseph Mazur: The Clock Mirage review – brief histories of time

JOSEPH MAZUR: THE CLOCK MIRAGE A 'curious tour of time'

How planets, people and proteins count the days and years

The Greek philosopher Zeno’s paradoxes, which have plagued thinkers for around 2500 years, tell us that super-speedy Achilles can never outrun the tortoise and that an arrow in flight must always occupy a fixed position at intervals of time – and so can never hit its target. My introduction to these favourite brain-tanglers came when, as an easily overawed teenager, I went to see Tom Stoppard’s play Jumpers and learned that, thanks to that arrested arrow, “Saint Sebastian died of fright”.