Author Jack Blackwell

Though Martin Scorsese’s mooted upcoming films sound exciting, it’s hard to believe that they’re ever coming out at all. The Irishman has such an air of emphatic finality about it, and serves as such a...

Few films commit to their titles like Ordinary Love. This is a movie of calm, contemplative realism that never falsely raises its stakes as it studies the effect of a cancer diagnosis on a retired couple in...

No two Pablo Larraín films are quite the same but, even so, Ema marks a departure. An opaque story told mainly through dance and music, it has his stylistic flair but, sadly, lacks his usual ability to find...

If you’re going to make a movie about modern youth, you have to consult with modern youth. Too many films in this genre feel embarrassingly dated the instant they come out, and it’s to Sarah Gavron,...

It isn’t easy to imagine oneself feeling much sympathy for the characters of a film about the Apartheid-era South African army, upholding their violently racist laws. Perhaps Oliver Hermanus’s greatest...

As much as American cinema is based in LA, it’s New York that has always been the country’s most iconic on-screen destination. How well they use this manic city can be a real test for a filmmaker. For a...

With a rollout soured by director Michael Winterbottom being pressured by Sony to make its end credits less political, Greed arrives with little question when it comes to its anti-corporatist credentials....

A film like The Painted Bird does not want to be ‘liked’. It wants to shock, to disgust, to viscerally move, to make you reconsider just how civilised mankind really is. Seeking such reactions is a gamble...

If, at the start of the year, you were asked which Steven Soderbergh project sounded more exciting between ‘the one shot entirely on an iPhone’ and ‘the one starring Meryl Streep’, then it would have...

Anthony McCarten has, in recent years, made his name as one of the premier screenwriters of mass appeal but mediocre historical films like Darkest Hour and Bohemian Rhapsody. His latest, The Two Popes, teams...

‘Gravity, but Victorian’, is an intriguing pitch and, visually, The Aeronauts delivers on this strange, exciting promise. As Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne journey through the skies in a giant hot air...

It is hard to explain exactly what Luce is. Initially a serious look at the pressure put on high-achieving black students in US schools, it shifts so many times – even into trashy thriller territory – that...

Every year, you get at least one film clearly designed purely for the purpose of nabbing an Oscar for its star. In 2025, Judy is that film. Renée Zellweger’s heartfelt take on Judy Garland immediately...

It’s impossible to go into Joker without the heavy fog of its insufferable, endless online discourse clouding your view. The ridiculous moral panics and equally silly impassioned defences have already made...

At its best, cinema can approach being indescribable. ‘FW Murnau directs an episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ doesn’t make any kind of coherent sense on paper, nor is it something you can...