Movies
-
Gal Gadot does battle with supervillains and everyday sexism in DC’s cliche-clobbering sequel. Is it a sign of the genre’s future?
-
In films such as Perfect 10, Lynn + Lucy and County Lines, working-class lives are once again making it on to the big screen. But in an industry dominated by the privately educated, can they avoid being tainted with middle-class misapprehensions?
-
The polymath star of Pixar’s Soul, the Guardian’s No 2 film of the year – who also has an album in our top 50 – on his busy 2020, the necessity of representation, and why horror is especially adept at conveying the black experience
-
4 out of 5 stars.Pro-democracy activists and police clash on the streets, captured vividly in this daring, dynamic and visually stunning documentary
-
3 out of 5 stars.
The Craft: Legacy – woke witchcraft sequel is smart but messy
3 out of 5 stars.A long-awaited follow-up to the much-loved 1996 teen horror offers some interesting ideas but, with a brisk runtime, feels overstuffed -
2 out of 5 stars.
Spell – hokey hoodoo horror missing a bit of magic
2 out of 5 stars.A man is kept captive by a sinister elderly couple in a slick piece of schlock that recalls far better and scarier movies -
4 out of 5 stars.
His House – effective haunted house horror with timely spin
4 out of 5 stars.A Sudanese couple seek asylum in the UK but find something evil lurking in an accomplished debut from writer-director Remi Weekes
Video & audio
-
Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks back over the history of Vodou and its portrayal in popular culture to find out how it came to be so vilified
-
When Grace Shutti was growing up, black culture was synonymous with African Americans. Now, Africans have become a leading voice in black culture, but how did this come about?
-
Historians estimate that one in four cowboys were African American, though you’d never guess because the conventional Hollywood image of a cowboy is a white man
-
Josh Toussaint-Strauss discusses why audiences expect bad things to happen to black characters and explores how a new generation of black creators are using horror to subvert the negative tropes
-
The pro-wrestler turned Hollywood actor said in a message posted on Instagram that he, his wife and their two young children had 'a rough go' after testing positive for Covid-19 in recent weeks
-
From the archives: Skip Lievsay has created audioscapes for Martin Scorsese and is the only sound man the Coen brothers go to
-
The star’s spectacularly misjudged performance as a gay Broadway actor in Ryan Murphy’s equally tone-deaf Netflix musical is a new low for Hollywood
-
The actor reflects on the diverse casting of the Netflix period drama, facing up to British history and how the pandemic has made him find new ways to ‘make my skills useful to other people’
-
The actor is tired of talking about race, but the trolling of his latest film shows why he still has to. He talks religion, the secret of his happy marriage – and why he worried he had failed the legacy of Martin Luther King
-
The US activist on Covid’s impact and her starring role in Crip Camp, the documentary charting the birth of the disability rights movement
-
Charles Sobhraj brutally murdered at least 10 backpackers in south-east Asia. Did Tahar Rahim worry about glamorising the murderer in slick new TV drama The Serpent?
-
Her $60m annual Las Vegas residency was off the cards this year, but the singer still has lots to say about animal rights, Trump’s ‘toxic’ politics, cosmetic surgery and the men in her life
-
The former Talking Heads frontman on the importance of performance, covering Janelle Monáe, and his hope for the American experiment
Regulars
-
3 out of 5 stars.
Mark Kermode's film of the week Ma Rainey's Black Bottom review – Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis share the spotlight
3 out of 5 stars.A formidable Viola Davis as Chicago’s ‘Mother of the Blues’ and whip-sharp Chadwick Boseman in his final screen role shine in this often stagey drama
You may have missed
-
Analysis: A leaked recording of the movie star yelling at crew on his latest blockbuster is not evidence of tyranny, but the extraordinary strain of keeping the huge undertaking afloat
-
The South Korean director, who has died of Covid, was at the forefront of a new wave of uncompromising cinema
-
Initially conceived as a creature-feature, coronavirus gave Songbird, the first film shot in LA since March, a terrifyingly real monster. Its British director explains how he wrangled Michael Bay, Demi Moore – and vacuum-packed props
The 50 best films of 2020 in the UK, No 1: Parasite