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Art Documentary Exhibitions Features Live Action Movies

Exhibition on Screen
Turner & Constable

Director – David Bickerstaff – 2026 – UK – Cert. U – 93m

****

A journey through the current Tate Britain show and art history about the two rival landscape painters – out in UK cinemas from Tuesday, March 10th

This latest Exhibition on Screen entry kicks off in uncharacteristic fashion with photographic shots of landscape (typical of views that used by painters Turner and Constable) accompanied by an excerpt from the poem Richmond by James Thomson (1834-1882), a favourite of both painters whose work will be similarly deployed (voiced by Robert Lindsay) at appropriate intervals throughout this documentary.

Amy Concannon © David Bickerstaff

However, the film soon moves into more familiar territory with shots of present day London and of the Tate Britain’s current Turner & Constable exhibition, with visitors admiring some of the paintings on display. Amy Concannon, Manton Senior Curator, Historic British Art, Tate Britain, notes that this show represents the first time the two painters have been displays side by side on such a vast scale. Turner & Constable were born within a year of one another, which became a catalyst for the current show’s displaying them together.

Lachlan Goudie © David Bickerstaff

Artist, writer and broadcaster Lachlan Goudie talks about the “dazzling” influence of both artists on the likes of Delacroix.… Read the rest

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Art Exhibitions Music

Miseris Succurrere Disco
(I Learn to Help
Those in Need)

© Paul Heartfield

Curators – Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard – 2026 – UK

****

A chapel interior is repurposed as a reflection on how personal tragedy can awaken empathy, mercy and collective care – exhibition / installation at Fitzrovia Chapel from Friday, March 6th to Wednesday, March 25th

It’s a strange phenomenon when you attend an exhibition / installation and the unfamiliar venue is, to you, as exciting as the event itself. Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s new outing isn’t a film, but an exhibition, the second of three they’ve created in this particular space as it turns out. And the space they’ve deployed is fabulous, a new one on me. 

The Byzantine-inspired Fitzrovia Chapel, as the name implies, is situated in the heart of Fitzrovia, the area of London North of Oxford Street between Regent Street and Tottenham Court Road. It’s the chapel of the former Middlesex Hospital, one of London’s flagship NHS teaching hospitals, which was closed in 2006. You may be familiar with the chapel from King Charles’ 2024 Christmas broadcast.

The venue is open on particular days, often Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, but not every week, and opening times can vary if the space is hosting an exhibition.

What can present challenges is if, as this writer did, you attend a show without being familiar with the space as it normally appears to visitors outside of exhibitions / installations. … Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Bride!

Director – Maggie Gyllenhaal – 2026 – US – Cert. 15 – 126m

**

In 1930s Chicago, Frankenstein’s monster seeks love and companionship, so a dead girl, possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley, is reanimated as his Bride – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 6th

Stuck for eons in a black and white limbo, having died of brain cancer after writing the novel Frankenstein – perhaps the novel was part of a brain tumour – and feeling that she’d not managed to say within it what she needed to say, the departed spirit of Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley from Hamnet, Chloe Zhao, 2025; The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal, 2021; Misbehaviour, Phillippa Lowthorpe, 2020) observes the world of the living, in colour, and enters it to take possession of a living woman in 1930s Chicago through whom she intends to say what still needs to be said. She picks the fearless and vivacious Ida (Buckley again) in the orbit of ruthless gangster Lupino (Zlatko Burić from Superman, James Gunn, 2025; Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Östlund, 2022; Pusher, Nicolas Winding Refn, 1996).

Being fed one oyster too many in a nightclub, Ida wilfully throws up over one of Lupino’s men.… Read the rest

Categories
Dance Features Live Action Movies Music

The Testament
of Ann Lee

Directed by Mona Fastvold
Certificate 15
130 minutes
Released 27 February and on Disney+ from 13 May

Few films accurately chronicle a specific, historical Christian sect, fewer still do so as a musical. I knew virtually nothing about the Shakers, before seeing The Testament of Ann Lee, which is based on a true story. | found much to admire in their religion, yet I was appalled by two aspects.

Read the rest of my Reformed magazine review here.

Read my later review for this website here.

The Testament of Ann Lee is on Disney+ from Wednesday, March 13th following its release in cinemas in the UK on Friday, February 27th 2026

Teaser Trailer (Cert. 12a, which really gives no indication of some of the more extreme elements in the film):

Trailer

Categories
Dance Features Live Action Movies Music

Sirāt
(Sirāt)

Director – Óliver Laxe – 2025 – Spain, France – Cert. 15 – 115m

*****

Young son in tow, a man goes in search of his daughter who has gone missing at raves in the North African desert – 2025 Cannes Jury Prize Winner is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 27th

Luis (Sergi López from Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro, 2006; Dirty Pretty Things, Stephen Frears, 2002; Harry, He’s Here to Help, Dominik Moll, 2000) and his son Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona) are searching for his son’s elder sister who vanished five months ago. Believing she is headed to a rave in the Moroccan desert, they turn up there to hand out Missing fliers and ask people there if they have seen her.

No-one has seen her.

They start off asking among dancing revellers, but soon move on to try people resting or on the fringes of the event. One group of three people halfway up a hillside, seem more sympathetic than most, but they’ve not seen the daughter so there isn’t a lot they can do to help. 

The rave is an illicit event not sanctioned in any way by the authorities, so it’s perhaps not surprising that on maybe the second day… time can be hard to keep track of at these events… soldiers turn up to close the event down. … Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Scream 7

Ghostface in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group's "Scream 7." © 2025 Paramount Pictures. Ghost Face is a Registered Trademark of Fun World Div., Easter Unlimited, Inc. ©1999. All Rights Reserved.”.

Director – Kevin Williamson – 2026 – US – Cert. 18 – 114m

****

A survivor from the original murder spree tries to protect her 17-year-old daughter from the recently reappeared killer – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 27th

This cleverly plays to both anyone who has followed the Scream franchise since its inception and anyone coming to it for the first time. It grabs you straight from the start with a clever little sequence, featured in the first quarter of the trailer, in which a young couple (Michelle Randolph and Jimmy Tatro) arrive for their stay at a Woodsboro house where the Stu Macher murders took place decades earlier, now done up as a short stay holiday home for crime thrill seekers. Since the trailer gives it away, it seems reasonable to point out that these two are about to become the latest victims of the so-called Ghostface killer, clad in his familiar mask that to this writer has always conjured Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream (1893).

Jimmy Tatro stars in Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group’s “Scream 7.”

An additional conceit of the franchise is that the Ghostface killer’s trademark mask and cape can be worn by anyone, meaning that if you can disarm or kill them, you can then remove the mask and discover the identity of this particular Ghostface.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Features Movies

All You Need is Kill
(Oru Yu Nido izu Kiru)

Directors – Kenichiro Akimoto, Yukinori Yakamura – 2025 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 86m

***1/2

A woman trapped in a repeating time loop dies fighting alien plant monsters, joins forces with a man in a similar time loop – animated science fiction tale is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 27th

This began as a science fiction novel first published in Japan in 2004. Ten years later, as is the way of things in Japan, it appeared as a manga. It also formed the basis of the Tom Cruise / Emily Blunt vehicle Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014). The novel is about a cowardly military man killed in a skirmish with unexpected invading aliens who wakes up and realises he’s reliving that first day of the alien invasion. He gets killed over and over again, and wakes up and relives the same day over and over again. Similarly trapped in a time loop is a brave military woman fighting the aliens. It’s a military hardware alien action movie using the looped repeating day structure of Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993).

While I recommend the 2014 movie, and have no issue mentioning it in terms of contextualising the new film, I also recommend you put it firmly to one side and don’t try and base whatever expectations you might have about the new film on it.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies Music

Sinners

Director – Ryan Coogler – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 138m

*****

In 1932, a young blues guitarist finds himself out of his depth when two brothers open a juke joint which comes unexpectedly under siege from supernatural forces – plays one night only, Sunday, March 1st, 6.30pm, as part of Film Tottenham following its release in UK cinemas on Friday, April 18th 2025

It’s a strange thing, but Warner Bros., which has a reputation for tough guy movies from its hard-edged gangster movies of the 1930s, has never made a movie about the blues. If that seems something of a stretch as an assumption, humour me here. The blues came out of the hardships of the Afro-American experience – white racism and the slave trade, poverty and hardship, and there was something raw about it, much as with those early gangster movies that shaped the Studio’s identity.

The idea of Warner Bros. making a movie about the black experience and the blues (or, indeed, building an entire genre around that idea) seems so obvious that it’s a wonder the Studio never did it before. Perhaps it’s significant that Warner Bros. were the Studio that made Elvis (Baz Luhrmann, 2023), which touches on such material.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Wasteman

Director – Cal McMau – 2025 – UK – Cert. 18 – 90m

*****

A prisoner’s chances of achieving parole are threatened by the arrival of a ruthless and manipulative new cellmate – out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 20th

Taylor (David Jonsson from The Long Walk, Francis Lawrence , 2025; Alien: Romulus, Fede Alvarez, 2024; Rye Lane, Raine Allen-Miller, 2023), a young inmate in prison, is due for parole provided he behaves as required. However, his new cellmate Dee (Tom Blyth from The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Francis Lawrence, 2023; Benediction, Terence Davies, 2021; Robin Hood, Ridley Scott, 2010) has other ideas, including making money by dealing all manner of illicit goods from the outside.

This opens with a row between inmates, one of whom is determined to mete out punishment to whoever it was took his mobile phone. Very quickly, the situation descends into his suspected thief being assaulted with a television set that happens to be nearby. As another prisoner says to the one who carries out the assault, part in awe, part in jest, and part in newly-found respect, “Fucking TV, mate.”

Welcome to the world of Wasteman, the term used to designate central character Taylor who has been written off by British society.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Scare Out
(Jing Zhe wu Sheng,
惊蛰无声)

Director – Zhang Yimou – 2026 – China – Cert. 15 – 104m

***1/2

A mole in a small National Security department is narrowed down to one of two operatives… But which one of the two is it?– high tech surveillance thriller is out in UK cinemas on Friday, February 20th

A National Security operation involving numerous operatives and frankly overwhelming high tech surveillance technology is tracking Nathan (Nathaniel Boyd) who is receiving a package from a contact on the street. A fast and furious attempt to catch him involving numerous officers, notably Yan Di (Jackson Yee from Resurrection, Bi Gan, 2025; The Battle at Lake Changjin, Chen Kaige, Dante Lam, Tsui Hark, 2021; Better Days, Derek Tsang, 2019) and Hwang Du (Zhu Yilong from Dongji Rescue, Fei Zhenxiang, Guan Hu, 2025; Only the River Flows, Wei Shujun, 2023; Lost in the Stars, Cui Rui, Liu Xiang, 2022), goes badly wrong when drone operator Chen Yi (Lin Bo Yang) accidentally steers her drone into an operative causing him to fall from a great height. After much frantic running, Nathan is apprehended hiding high up in the scaffolding behind an advertising hoarding.… Read the rest