Darling

Now that Barbie is making a big pink splash on theater screens this week, some moviegoers are remembering another Warner Bros. movie with a strikingly similar plot and message that came out just last year. The Olivia Wilde-directed Don’t Worry Darling wasn’t necessarily a box office failure, per se, but it did have a much more lukewarm critical reception than Barbie now has. Barbie boasts an impressive “Certified Fresh” 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes while Don’t Worry Darling is “Rotten” at 38 percent. What is remarkable…

Derek Malcolm was a brilliantly funny, convivial, professional film critic and memoirist, the last survivor of that great Guardian generation of arts journalism titans that also included Neville Cardus and WL Webb. Derek was simply a legend and an international treasure on the film festival circuit. He was the indefatigably globetrotting president of Fipresci, the international film critics’ circle, and a passionate champion of Indian and south Asian cinema.Well into his 80s, Derek wrote and broadcast about film – and…

When Asia's biggest computing and electronics show kicked off this week, one name was conspicuously absent: Intel Corp. The US chipmaker does not have an official presence at this year's Computex exhibition, an event it once dominated through keynote speeches and an outsized footprint on the show floor. The 2023 edition opened instead with a marathon two-hour showcase by Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang, a day before it became the first $1 trillion chipmaker in anticipation of a wave of demand for its…

The AI hype cycle has birthed innumerable boosters. An unlikely member of this group is Silicon Valley billionaire Tom Siebel.Since selling his first company to Oracle Corp. in 2006, Siebel started C3.ai Inc., an ostensibly cutting-edge software firm that helps customers crunch and analyze huge amounts of data. The 70-year-old founder has become a regular on the business press circuit and posited that C3's new generative artificial intelligence product will “change the nature of the human-computer interface” and its…

Image via Gloria Sanchez Productions Slowly but surely, Netflix‘s crackdown on password sharing is reaching households one by one, like a menacing mudslide. Of course, as is to be expected from whatever stage of capitalism we’re currently living through, the streamer’s competitors wasted no time playing their hand via funny internet memes. As for the land of television and film, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s true-to-form jump into the world of scripted television self-feeds the action hero’s legend, while an…

In Mary Nighy's delicately observed feature debut Alice, Darling, Anna Kendrick's titular character pulls strands of her own hair so tightly around her fingers that it breaks into little shreds. She's slowly spiralling. On the outside, it shows like Alice has got it all. A steady career, some friends and a caring boyfriend. Look a little closer and her Alice pulls you in an unshakable rhythm of erosion of her well-being. (Also read: The Little Mermaid review: Disney’s most soulless, pointless live-action remake yet)…

On a girls’ holiday with two of her oldest friends, Alice (Anna Kendrick) has little to say. And when she does speak, it’s in the voice of someone else – her emotionally abusive boyfriend, Simon (Charlie Carrick), is so controlling that he’s in her thoughts and pulling her strings even when they’re apart. But gradually, with the support of Tess (Kaniehtiio Horn) and Sophie (Wunmi Mosaku), Alice comes to realise that her relationship is not a healthy one.What’s impressive about this psychological thriller, the debut…

If not guided by an ominous score and a remarkable lead performance of brittle, jittery anxiety, it might take you a third of Alice, Darling, a new film starring Anna Kendrick as a woman in an emotionally abusive relationship, to realize something is wrong. Alice’s relationship with Simon (Charlie Carrick), a thirtysomething Toronto-based artist with a suave British accent, could seem innocuous on a clue-by-clue basis. In isolation, a “thinking of me?” text with a kissing face emoji, or the way he drapes his arm over her…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeAlice (Anna Kendrick) doesn’t see herself as a victim of abuse. In fact, she insists she isn’t. Why then when Alice and her friends (played by Kaniehtiio Horn and Wunmi Mosaku) come across a poster for a missing girl presumed to have been killed by someone close to her, can she not shake off the spectral feeling of connection to this total stranger’s tragedy? After all, she says to her…

Anna Kendrick gives a vehement, self-aware lead performance in this Gaslight-style suspense drama about a young woman trapped in a coercive, abusive relationship from screenwriter Alanna Francis and debut feature director Mary Nighy. There are some edge-of-the-seat moments and interestingly subtle tonal inflexions, though the story spends time on a contrived subplot about a missing girl, time that might have been better devoted to developing the central thriller storyline.Alice (Kendrick) is in a toxic relationship with…