Drama

A taciturn man who has created a new life and identity is unable to fully escape the consequences of his former life. He keeps his head down. But his attempts to impose order on a disordered world are doomed to fail; past secrets work their way to the surface like a splinter.It’s a summary that could apply to many of Paul Schrader’s most recent films – certainly First Reformed and The Card Counter. But Schrader’s latest, Master Gardener, starring Joel Edgerton as Narvel, a former white supremacist turned horticulturist,…

Each night, Julie (Call My Agent!’s Laure Calamy) dreams that she’s drowning. Water fills her ears and presses down on her chest. But when she wakes – jolted out of a bone-tired slumber by her alarm – the reality is not so different. A single mum of two children, with debts mounting and her ex-husband missing along with his alimony, she is barely keeping afloat. Her childcare options are running out; her job, as the head chambermaid at a five-star hotel, is stressful; her commute, from a Paris suburb to the centre of the…

In Todd Haynes' tonally shape-shifting “May December,” the first announcement of the movie's playful intentions comes with a theatrical zoom in, a few lushly melodramatic piano notes and the frightful announcement that there no more hot dogs in the fridge. Director Todd Haynes, left, and Natalie Portman pose for portrait photographs for the film 'May December' at the 76th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Sunday, May 21, 2023. (Photo by Scott Garfitt/Invision/AP)(Scott Garfitt/Invision/AP)…

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Friday, May 26. There’s no crying in baseball, as the saying goes. But there’s been plenty of emotions swirling over the Dodgers’ upcoming Pride Night game in the last week.By now you’ve probably seen the many headlines, but just to recap:The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence — an LGBTQ+ charity group whose members don habits and other nun attire as part of their drag outfits — were set to be honored with the Community Heroes Award at the Dodgers’ 10th…

Television critics got an exclusive preview of HBO's highly anticipated drama series, "The Idol," at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and the reviews are pouring in. Unfortunately for the show's creators and stars, the response has been far from idolizing. The series, which features musician The Weeknd in a starring role, has received a barrage of negative criticism, earning a dismal 9 percent Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes. With the controversy surrounding its explicit content and regressive narrative, "The…

Anyone who has ever broken into a sweaty panicked run to make it in time for school pick-up will instantly get why the French Canadian director Eric Gravel has chosen to shoot this film about motherhood frazzle as a gripping thriller. I was on the edge of my seat in one scene, watching to see if a woman running to catch her commuter train home makes it. Her name is Julie, and she’s a divorced mum of two who’s feeling the grind: work, kids, mortgage arrears, crappy ex. It’s such an authentic and relatable film – so…

Cannes is this year becoming a counterblast to ageism. Italian director Marco Bellocchio, at the age of 83 – and almost 60 years after he first came to prominence with his 1965 movie Fists in the Pocket – has created a gripping, heartbreaking true-political crime story from the pages of history. It is a full-tilt melodrama with the passionate vehemence of Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens, which lays bare an ugly formative episode of Europe’s Catholic church: an affair of antisemitism and child abuse.It is based on the true…

Like her partner Kantemir Balagov’s 2019 film Beanpole, there’s an uncanny claustrophobic charge to Kira Kovalenko’s family drama, though it finally exhales an equally powerful sigh of self-redemption. Milana Aguzarova stars as Ada, a young woman in a North Ossetian mining town trapped by her ailing and possessive father Zaur (Alik Karaev). He guards the only front door key, letting her and her siblings out when he chooses, and refuses to let her have an operation to correct injuries sustained during a school…

Jude Law outrageously steals every scene as a horrendously unwell and cross Henry VIII in this Tudor court intrigue drama that also serves as an amusing noir counterfactual, adapted by the screenwriters Jessica and Henrietta Ashworth from the novel by Elizabeth Fremantle and directed by the Brazilian film-maker Karim Aïnouz, making his English-language feature debut.It’s all about the king’s tense relationship with his sixth and final queen, Catherine Parr, played with creamy, inscrutable placidity by Alicia Vikander.The…

In a photographer’s studio in Derby, Michael Socha is wondering what he should wear. He’s got a good jumper on, but he doesn’t like his jeans. He’s brought a couple of shirts from his mum’s, but they need a bit of an iron. No stylist for Socha; he has the busy air of a man who’s popped in between shifts, which he has, sort of. He lives close by, and is always on the go, “here, there and everywhere”. Aside from acting, and family, he practises muay thai and kickboxing. He’s doing his belts. “I’m on brown two for kickboxing…