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From Danny Boyle to Michael Haneke, from Francois Truffaut to Ingmar Bergman, from Soviet Montage to French New Wave to Romanian New Wave, and from Berlin film festival to Cannes to Venice, this is the place to go for features, interviews and reviews about movies both classic and new from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and every other country in Europe.
Christopher Nolan’s biopic of the father of the atomic bomb dominates the Oscars, winning the top prize, plus best director for Nolan, best actor and four technical awards. Hayao Miyazaki also wins.
Scattered demonstrations were held near the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles and protesters disrupted traffic for some making their way to the awards ceremony on Sunday.
Anne Hathaway took on an intense exercise regimen to become Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, and lost 25 pounds for her role as Fantine in Les Misérables – 15 of which was thanks to an extreme diet.
Our 2024 Academy Awards predictions, from why Oppenheimer should and will win best picture, to how Ryan Gosling may be pipped at the post for best supporting actor.
Kristen Stewart in lesbian crime flick Love Lies Bleeding, trans tale I Saw the TV Glow, and Min Bahadur Bham’s Himalayan film Shambhala all feature in our picks of the best movies at Berlin 2024.
Depardieu, 75, has been charged with rape in another case and has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by more than a dozen women. He denies the allegations.
Shambala, the first Nepalese film selected for the Berlin Film Festival’s main competition, is an unhurried masterpiece about a Nepalese woman searching for her husband in the Himalayas.
Starring Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan and Paul Dano, Netflix sci-fi Spaceman – which premiered at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival – has its moments, but director Johan Renck struggles to sustain interest.
Debuting at Berlin 2024, Black Tea, the first film about Africans in China made by an African filmmaker, exhibits a tone-deaf understanding of what the diaspora’s experience is like in the country.
Jonathan Glazer’s historical drama The Zone of Interest is a profound, deeply unsettling masterpiece that highlights the horror of the Holocaust through the eyes of a camp commandant and his family.
Korean director Hong Sang-soo returns to the Berlin International Film Festival with another typically opaque drama – in A Traveler’s Needs, Isabelle Huppert plays a mystery woman teaching French in Korea.
Gael Garcia Bernal plays a widower whose wife is reanimated in the body of another woman (Renate Reinsve). Piero Messina’s film is hackneyed and gets bogged down in jargon, but is visually appealing.
Atomic bomb epic won seven prizes, including best picture, director and actor for Cillian Murphy, who portrays the American theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Jet Li received praise for his role as Danny the dog in Luc Besson’s gritty 2005 action movie. While he shone among co-stars such as Morgan Freeman, it didn’t help the martial arts actor crack Hollywood.
Expats was shot in Hong Kong but is not being shown there. This has happened before with films, such as The Kite Runner, set in and partly filmed in Afghanistan, and A Clockwork Orange, shot in the UK.
Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell star in Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle, a slick-looking espionage thriller that is full of often predictable twists.
Migration comes from the makers of the Minions and Despicable Me films and The Super Mario Bros Movie, but this story about a family of ducks who fly south for the winter can’t match them for laughs.
Sustainable fashion advocate Christina Dean, founder of Hong Kong-based Redress and The R Collective, shares her favourite films, from a Robin Williams classic to one that ‘inspires us to dig deep’.
Perfect Days director Wim Wenders talks about the film’s Oscar entry, Japan’s ‘common good’, envying his lead character, and why he knew Koji Yakusho would win the best actor prize at Cannes.
British playwright and actor Mark Farrelly reveals how ‘brave and unique’ avant-garde artist and LGBTQ activist Derek Jarman inspired him, ahead of the Hong Kong debut of his solo play about the man.
The star of two Cannes 2023 winners, one of them also garlanded at the Golden Globes, Sandra Hüller is about to be immortalised in the pantheon of cinematic greats. We look at her best films to date.
For three of the past four years, the winner of the Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding performance by a cast has gone on to win the best film Oscar. Oppenheimer and Barbie are both nominated.
South Korean actress Bae Doona talks about playing the mysterious swordswoman Nemesis in Zak Snyder’s Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, from the training to the make-up.
Starring Sofia Boutella, Bae Doona and Ed Skrein, Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire is a blend of Star Wars and Seven Samurai from director Zack Snyder that will be released on Netflix in December.
The story of how survivors of a Uruguayan plane crash stayed alive by eating the corpses of fellow passengers has been told before, but J.A. Bayona finds both thrills and profundity in this retelling.
There’s shades of Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins in Paddington director Paul King’s delightful musical fantasy Wonka, the story of Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory wacky chocolatier.
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon has stunning battle scenes, cinematography that looks like oil painting, and a brilliant Joaquin Phoenix in the title role, while Vanessa Kirby is resolute as Empress Josephine.
After the double whammy of Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon, we’re getting a bit sick of posterior testing cinema marathons – but these epics are all hailed as classics
Rowan Atkinson plays British spy Johnny English, who travels to Hong Kong to prevent an attack on a Chinese premier, in a film meant to court Chinese audiences but which was packed with stereotypes.