Rogue One: helpfully titled man on mission movie; also Star Wars

Ever so slightly longer ago in a galaxy pretty well-known to us at this point…

After forty years of galactic-scale family squabbles among the Skywalker clan, Disney’s latest addition to the franchise seeks to remind us that there are other families in the Star Wars universe… to a point.…

LFF Day 2: A Monster Calls & The Handmaiden

Fantastical trauma counseling and opulent Gothic fetishism on London Film Festival Day 2.

 

The Orphanage‘s J.A. Bayona began his career as an acolyte of Guillermo Del Toro and in A Monster Calls he finds his own Pan’s Labyrinth but one where the monsters make house calls.

True Story is a pallid case study that seems likely to fade away before too long

The truth is a funny thing. While facts may be unyielding — a child’s body submerged in a suitcase with a teddy bear; a flood of brackish water — our relationship to them is often more elastic.

Case in point: reporter Michael Finkel (Jonah Hill), dismissed from his job at the New York Times for fabrication, and Christian Longo (James Franco), a man accused of murdering his wife and children.…

The Theory of Everything forgets about the numbers so ends up playing by them

 

James Marsh’s new film, a biopic of legendary astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and his first wife Jane Wilde, is firstly a very traditionally British film; which is to say, a very reserved one.

In the face of tragedy – the gradual debilitation of a vibrant person – there’s nary a tear shed.…