Nicole Kidman’s star turn as Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos is an acting masterclass. She gives an awe-inspiring, nuanced performance (an Oscar nomination awaits) alongside another seriously good showing from Javier Bardem; and impressive turns from JK Simmons and Nina Arianda. The action takes place during a single production week for an episode of…
German author Dirk Kurbjuweit’s first novel to be translated into English was Fear, based on his own experience of being stalked. His most recent book in translation (translated by Imogen Taylor) is a very different beast. Based on the shocking true story of Fritz Haarmann, the Butcher of Hannover, The Missing is more a thinly…
Emma Stonex’s debut novel The Lamplighters is based loosely on the true story of the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from a remote lighthouse in 1900. Stonex relocates the event to a more recent time and a slightly different location but maintains the mystery and the mythology that surrounds those who spent their lives to…
Director Shaka King breaks out of TV and onto the big screen with Judas and the Black Messiah. This (literally) incendiary film tells the somewhat overlooked story of Fred Hampton, the charismatic leader of a Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers. Unlike others involve in the civil rights movement – like Dr Martin Luther King…
Marcel Marceau was regarded as the world’s foremost mime artist. But I dare say many would be unaware of intriguing his back story, as covered in Resistance. From his earliest, Marceau (Jesse Eisenberg) was driven to “perform”; something his religious Jewish father, Charles Mangel (Karl Markovics), railed against. There was a reason for that, which…
The Current War concerns the development of the electric light. But that prosaic premise belies a voyage of discovery, filled with intrigue and subterfuge. The race against time begins in 1880. On the one side is Thomas Alva Edison (Benedict Cumberbatch); and on the other is George Westinghouse (Michael Shannon). Both are men of principle…
What do you do when you’ve got two great stories, but only one movie? Mash them together of course. And while this can be fraught, director Tom Harper (Wild Rose) masters the technique in The Aeronauts. Working from a script by Jack Thorne, he deftly melds two real-life stories into one cohesive narrative. The first…
There is something so satisfyingly retro about shows featuring kids doing their own thing, and doing it masterfully, without the grownups being entirely savvy as to what their clever and resourceful progeny are up to. Home Before Dark is especially intriguing as it is based on the true story of Hilde Lysiak, a talented American…
True crime fans have found a home in Netflix, which is firmly the go-to streaming platform for documentaries and movies based on real life cases of the missing and murdered. Lost Girls focuses on American sex worker Shannan Gilbert, who went missing late one night in 2010 in Long Island after fleeing from a client’s…
A harrowing dramatic story about a troubled relationship between a son and his alcoholic father, Honey Boy features a series of stellar performances. From a screenplay by Shia LaBeouf, director Alma Har’el brings to life a young actor’s stormy childhood and early adult years, as he struggles to reconcile with his father through cinema and…
