Trying to claim Arcade Fire are masters of thematic subtlety would be as futile as trying to define the exact type of music they make (most categorisations would claim “Alternative Rock”). Their big religion album had a bible on the cover, their suburb album had a garage door, they included…

Well, I haven’t done this in quite a while. It was 2017 when I last published an annotated list of my favourite movies — that one had 500 on it! — and my taste has changed a lot since then. Many of the films at the top remain the same…

It’s that time of year again! Sunday marks the most unexciting Oscars in a generation as a group of really, really unremarkable films compete for gold. After an above-average 2021 awards that rewarded excellent films like Nomadland and The Father, we’re back on the mediocrity buzz with CODA, The Power…

My parents lived in London in the 1980s and 90s and were frequently terrorised by their upstairs neighbour blaring the comedy cassettes of Brendan O’Carroll as his popular Agnes Brown character, something that led to my inherited — although not unique — hatred of this particular brand of farts-and-swearing humour…

As the annual obligatory year-end lists are drawn up, many a great leading role will be the focus of praise and acclamation. It’s important, too, to recognise those who show up and totally dominate the screen for a few minutes apiece in smaller parts, in both film and TV, so…

While the crisis of 2020 provided something of a break in the mainstream movie calendar, with no blockbusters crowding streamers and screens and smaller efforts allowed dominate people’s viewing schedules, 2021 has seen personal cinema once again compete with the Spider-Men and James Bonds of the world for space in…

After a brief, desperate dalliance with merging film and TV into one end-of-year list in 2020, this year I’m happy to once again distinguish the two as the parade of content delivered into our laps ramped up once more. There needs to be two separate lists: it would be an…