delirious

Expectant parents, look away now. Deliver Us takes a leaf out of the books of the likes of Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen by giving us a nun in Russia who is apparently pregnant with twins – one the antichrist, one the son of God. The Vatican sends in Father Fox (Lee Roy Kunz, who also co-directs) to investigate, and all sorts of visions and dreams and shenanigans ensue. If you’ve ever wanted to see a naked bride of Christ plunge deliriously into a cross-shaped hole in the surface of a frozen lake in the dead of night,…

Photo via Marvel Studios Disney is busy getting a whole lot done this week. What is the biggest agenda on the plate, you ask? Evidently, the focus is on inadvertently making its fans have a change of heart, whether it is about the much-derided Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Little Mermaid — which was finally getting its time in the sun — or Anthony Mackie’s proper debut as the official Chris Evans successor in Captain America: New World Order. On the surface, Quantumania is finally on Disney Plus, The…

Photo via Warner Bros. With all the changes being made at DC, the proverbial door of fan speculation has been left wide open. James Gunn — now very much in charge of the DCU’s narrative future — certainly has a lot of work to do. With his surprise slate announcement earlier this year, Gunn detailed DC’s cinematic future while also introducing a handful of incredible new properties. One of these new reimaginings was none other than the Caped Crusader himself, Batman. There’s only one problem — DC already has a…

A second viewing has swept away – with hurricane force – the obtuse worries I had at the Venice film festival about Todd Field’s entirely outrageous, delirious and sensual psychodrama starring Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, the orchestra conductor starting to unravel and unhinge. I had misgivings then about the climactic element of melodrama – which I now see as a deliberate and brilliant stab of dissonance, brilliantly cueing up the film’s deeply mysterious and surreal final section.No one but Blanchett could have…

Today has delivered yet another rollercoaster of emotions for DC diehards, following some crazy rumors about the future of Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader flaring up long enough to rile up the internet, only to burn up quicker than Harvey Dent’s face (too soon?). Elsewhere, sci-fi aficionados are declaring that Taika Waititi needs to stay away from an iconic IP while Star Wars has so many movies in the works that even its directors are getting cynical about whether they will actually happen. Anime lovers don’t want…

It sounds like a handsomely prestigious assignment. The year is 2005 and the unnamed narrator of Amit Chaudhuri’s latest novel has moved to Berlin for four months to occupy the role of Böll professor at an unnamed university. Awarded a generous stipend, he is put up in a spacious flat that once housed the Nobel prizewinning author Kenzaburō Ōe. He has a minder who handles his admin, frets over his cultural intake and introduces him to luminaries in the department.But the narrator is under no great illusions. At his…