The goofy star of Mary Poppins becomes a centenarian on Saturday. And what a precocious performer he has proved, sustaining scrappy mischief through seven decades of mainstream entertainment

All Hollywood stars grow old and die except perhaps one - Dick Van Dyke - who turns 100 today. The real world Peter Pan who used to trip over the ottoman on The Dick Van Dyke Show is still standing. The man who impersonated a wind-up toy in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang hasn’t wound down just yet. He has outlived mentors, co-stars, romantic partners and several studios. He’s even outlived the jokes about his performance in Mary Poppins. These days his mangled cockney accent is regarded with more fondness than contempt. It’s seen as one of the great charms of the 1964 classic, along with the carousel chase or the cartoon dancing penguins.

Charm is the magic ingredient of every popular entertainer and few have possessed it in such abundance as Van Dyke, the impoverished son of a travelling cookie salesman who dropped out of high school and educated himself at the movies. “His job in this life is to make a happier world,” his Broadway co-star Chita Rivera once said - and this may explain his stubborn refusal to quit, not while times are tough and he feels that audiences still need cheering up.

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© Photograph: Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock

Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut stars the 96-year-old June Squibb, while Netflix’s lovable tweefest sees its heroine move to Rome

Eleanor the Great
Out now
June Squibb stars in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, which premiered at Cannes and tells the tale of the eponymous Eleanor, a senior citizen recently relocated to New York, who strikes up a friendship with a 19-year old – and then stumbles her way into pretending to be a Holocaust survivor.

Lurker
Out now
A hit at Sundance, this is the story of a lowly retail employee who happens to strike up a friendship with a rising pop star, becoming the Boswell to his Johnson, if Boswell was part of a pop star’s entourage. But the path of friendship with a famous person never did run smooth, and the uneven power dynamic soon prompts some desperate manoeuvring in this psychological thriller.

Ella McCay
Out now
Emma Mackey stars in the latest from James L Brooks (his first since 2010), a political comedy about an idealistic thirtysomething working in government and preparing to step into the shoes of her mentor, Governor Bill (Albert Brooks). Jamie Lee Curtis co-stars as Ella’s aunt.

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© Composite: pr

© Composite: pr

© Composite: pr

A buzzy thriller about a Hollywood hanger-on and a moving documentary following the parents bereaved in last summer’s Southport attack. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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© Composite: MUBI

© Composite: MUBI

© Composite: MUBI

As played by Milly Alcock, the Supergirl trailer shows Kara Zor-El looking burdened and traumatised. Does this mean that the DC universe is getting darker?

Since James Gunn’s Superman became the biggest superhero movie at this summer’s box office, the world has been waiting to find out what the rest of the DCU sandpit will look like. Now, with the debut trailer for Supergirl, we have our first proper glimpse. On this evidence, the new Kara Zor-El lives in a brave new universe of gods and monsters that reflects her loneliness and fury right back at her.

Milly Alcock’s “woman of tomorrow” may not be like anyone we’ve seen on big or small screens before – which is impressive given how often Supergirl has been wheeled out over the decades. Helen Slater’s 1984 version is now widely regarded as a kind of sun-bleached Reagan-era artefact – a well-meaning but terminally camp experiment. Sasha Calle’s Supergirl in the recent The Flash looked soulful, angry and potentially gamechanging. And Melissa Benoist spent six seasons headlining a Supergirl series that was warmly received by its audience but rarely intruded into the consciousnesses of people who actually buy comic books.

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© Photograph: DC Studios

© Photograph: DC Studios

© Photograph: DC Studios

Women are trailblazing efforts in the UK and US to improve sustainability on film and TV sets, from donating catering and rehoming props to reducing emissions

It’s two days before Thanksgiving and Hillary Cohen and Samantha Luu are trying to figure out how they’re going to cook 120 turkeys with limited oven space in their food warehouse in downtown LA. “We’re going to have to do a bit of spatchcocking. It’s not very showbiz,” Cohen says.

It’s the busiest time of year for Cohen and Luu, assistant directors who founded not-for-profit organisation Every Day Action during the Covid pandemic. Designed to help unhoused people and those facing food insecurity across the city, the idea was born when Cohen noticed the amount of food waste on film and TV sets, and looked into redistributing it to those in need. “I remember asking, ‘Why can’t we donate this food?’ I kept being told it was illegal and that people could sue us if they got sick.” It didn’t take Luu, who grew up working in a soup kitchen her father founded, long to establish this was not the case. “In the US, there’s the Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Act that’s been around since 1996,” she says. “It protects food donors from liability issues.”

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© Photograph: Kathy Schuh Photography

© Photograph: Kathy Schuh Photography

© Photograph: Kathy Schuh Photography

Colour-coordinating couples are nothing new, but Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner still caught the eye

When the Hollywood star Timothée Chalamet and the media personality and businesswoman Kylie Jenner appeared at the LA premiere of his new film, Marty Supreme, this week, they appeared to have been Tangoed.

Dressed head to toe in matching bright orange outfits made by the LA-based brand Chrome Hearts, they drew strong reactions online. “I have now confirmed there is such a thing as too much orange,” said one on Reddit.

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© Photograph: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

© Photograph: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

© Photograph: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

The Scottish star used his exceptional gift for impersonations to create genre-mashing specials that were as epic as the Hollywood films they parodied. He was a perfectionist performer with huge talent

• Actor and comedian Stanley Baxter dies aged 99

The description “special” is overused in television schedules; Stanley Baxter’s programmes justify it. The comedian is one of the few stars whose reputation rests on a handful of astonishing one-offs – standalone comic extravaganzas screened in the 1970s and 1980s, first by ITV’s London Weekend Television and then the BBC.

In both cases, the networks ended their associations with Baxter not because of lack of audience interest – at their peak, the shows reached more than 20 million viewers – but due to the colossal costs demanded by the performer’s vast and perfectionist visual ambition. One of Baxter’s favourite conceits was to re-create, in witty pastiche, scenes from big-budget Hollywood movies that made it look as if his versions had also spent millions of dollars.

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© Photograph: William Lovelace/Getty Images

© Photograph: William Lovelace/Getty Images

© Photograph: William Lovelace/Getty Images

Here are all the best movies to watch over the holidays – from favourites like Elf and Paddington to the latest from Mission: Impossible and Knives Out. Plus, two of the sexiest films ever made

***

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© Photograph: Maximum Film/Alamy

© Photograph: Maximum Film/Alamy

© Photograph: Maximum Film/Alamy

Baxter enjoyed a decades-spanning career on radio, TV and film, and was famous for impersonating famous people including Queen Elizabeth II

• Stanley Baxter obituary

• ‘Astonishing’: how his TV extravaganzas reached 20m

The actor and comedian Stanley Baxter has died at the age of 99.

Born in Glasgow in 1926, Baxter was best known for helming TV sketch series including The Stanley Baxter Show and The Stanley Baxter Picture Show.

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© Photograph: Jane Bown/The Observer

© Photograph: Jane Bown/The Observer

© Photograph: Jane Bown/The Observer

Inspired by the scary film franchise, playwright Levi Holloway and Punchdrunk maestro Felix Barrett are bringing the ‘bizarrely joyous’ world of terror to the stage

Malevolent spirits be damned – theatres can be haunted simply by the memory of bad plays and perhaps unscary horror in particular. The last time London’s Ambassadors theatre aimed to give audiences the shivers, with The Enfield Haunting, it led to some frightfully poor reviews. But a couple of years later, this intimate West End playhouse is hosting Paranormal Activity, a new instalment in the franchise that was kickstarted by a low-budget supernatural movie about a couple plagued by inexplicable nocturnal noises. “Hold your nerve” runs the play’s tagline – a directive you suspect applies not just to the audience.

Arriving at the theatre on the day of the first preview, it’s not creepy bumps and thuds that echo through the building but whizzing drills, sound checks and the last-minute discussions of a crew with a deadline. Perched in the dress circle bar, US playwright Levi Holloway and director Felix Barrett (best known as the founder of immersive theatre specialists Punchdrunk) are discussing how rarely they have been frightened in the theatre.

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© Photograph: Kyle Flubacker

© Photograph: Kyle Flubacker

© Photograph: Kyle Flubacker

Author whose Shopaholic series of romcom novels were global bestsellers and adapted into a Hollywood film

Sophie Kinsella, who has died of a brain tumour aged 55, was one of Britain’s most successful novelists, selling more than 50 million copies of her books, including the globally successful Shopaholic series. Through three decades she retained a loyal and passionate readership with her deceptively light and intricately plotted comic novels.

Like her best-known heroine, Becky Bloomwood, Kinsella began her writing career in financial journalism, but, realising she was uninspired (and probably not very good at it), she wrote a book, The Tennis Party, that was published in 1995, when she was 25, under her given name, Madeleine Wickham (“Maddy”). This was followed by five subsequent standalone “Aga sagas”, which all achieved moderate chart success and critical acclaim.

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© Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

© Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

© Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

For her directorial debut, Winslet assembled a cast including Toni Collette, Timothy Spall, Johnny Flynn and Andrea Riseborough to tell a story inspired by her own family’s bereavement. The actors talk mourning, immortality and hospital vending machines

In 2017, Sally Bridges-Winslet died of cancer. She was 71. It was, her youngest daughter said, “like the north star just dropped out of the sky”.

It would have been even worse, says Kate Winslet today, had the family not pulled together. “I do have tremendous amounts of peace and acceptance around what happened because of how we were able to make it for her.”

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© Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Guardian

© Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Guardian

© Photograph: Suki Dhanda/The Guardian

Taken star lends his voice to a film that questions the legitimacy of vaccines and includes interview with RFK Jr

Liam Neeson has lent his voice to a new documentary that questions the legitimacy of vaccines and praises Donald Trump’s health and human services secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The film, called Plague of Corruption, is narrated by the Taken actor and based on a bestselling book co-authored by Judy Mikovits, a disgraced former scientist who gained notoriety during the Covid pandemic. She claimed Covid was caused by a bad strain of the flu vaccine and urged people not to get vaccinated.

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© Photograph: Tristar Media/WireImage

© Photograph: Tristar Media/WireImage

© Photograph: Tristar Media/WireImage

The Housemaid actor received backlash in September when she left a comment on Instagram after the rightwing activist was killed

The Housemaid star Amanda Seyfried has said she is “not fucking apologising” for describing Charlie Kirk as “hateful” after the latter was shot dead in September.

Seyfried was speaking to Who What Wear when she was asked about her social media activity, including the backlash around her Kirk comment. “I’m not fucking apologising for that. I mean, for fuck’s sake, I commented on one thing. I said something that was based on actual reality and actual footage and actual quotes. What I said was pretty damn factual, and I’m free to have an opinion, of course.”

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© Photograph: Dominik Bindl/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dominik Bindl/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dominik Bindl/Getty Images

There are too many competing and overfamiliar ideas in this busy slasher reboot that’s sorely lacking in style

There was a bizarre moral outrage back in November 1984 when seasonal slasher Silent Night, Deadly Night dared to put an axe in the hands of Santa. Despite being, you know, not a real person he was once treated with enough reverence to cause parent-led protests, a ban of all advertising and then of the film itself. It provided a sharp edge to an otherwise blunt and unremarkable post-Halloween knockoff and might help to explain why it managed to eke out four junky sequels and a 2012 remake.

We’re now at the inevitable second remake stage but the 2025 redo arrives after the gimmick of Killer Santa has now become a subgenre in itself. He’s cropped up in Christmas Bloody Christmas, Christmas Evil, Santa’s Slay, Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, Deadly Games and last year’s Terrifier 3 and the makers of this December’s take are more than aware that seeing Santa with a weapon isn’t enough to shock today’s horror fans.

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© Photograph: Heather Beckstead

© Photograph: Heather Beckstead

© Photograph: Heather Beckstead

Star turns from Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough and Toni Colette can’t stop cartoony sentimentality smothering this film directed by Winslet and written by her son Joe Anders

Kate Winslet’s feature directing debut is a family movie, scripted by her son Joe Anders; it’s a well-intentioned and starrily cast yuletide heartwarmer, like a two-hour John Lewis Christmas TV ad without the logo at the end. There are one or two nice lines and sharp moments but they are submerged in a treacly soup of sentimentality; in the end, I couldn’t get past the cartoony quasi-Richard Curtis characterisation and the weird not-quite-earthlingness of the people involved. Having said this, I am aware of having been first in the queue to denigrate Winslet’s Christmas film The Holiday, that is regarded by many as one of the most successful films of all time.

Helen Mirren is the June of the title, an affectionate but sharp-tongued matriarch who is diagnosed with terminal cancer in the run-up to Christmas, and her entire quarrelling clan will have to assemble in her hospital room. June, with a kind of benign cunning, realises that she can use her last days as a cathartic crisis that will cure her adult children’s unspoken hurt. They are a stressed careerist (Winslet), a stay-at-home mum (Andrea Riseborough), a hippy-dippy natural birth counsellor (Toni Collette) and a troubled soul (Johnny Flynn), plus all their various kids. There is also June’s daft old husband Bernie, played by Timothy Spall, who likes a drink and can’t talk about his feelings, and whose scatterbrained goofiness has a sad origin. Stephen Merchant plays Riseborough’s lovably useless husband and a gentle hospital nurse, played by Fisayo Akinade, is the ensemble’s self-effacing guide to a wiser future.

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© Photograph: Kimberley French/Netflix

© Photograph: Kimberley French/Netflix

© Photograph: Kimberley French/Netflix

Success doesn’t mean you can speak your mind – and criticizing Paul Dano is like kicking a bunny at a birthday party

There are many things Hollywood is known for: lavish parties, subtle (or not so subtle) plastic surgery, the concept of juice as a meal. What it is not traditionally known for is honesty. I live in Los Angeles, work in the entertainment industry when I’m not moonlighting as a semi-reputable journalist and have done my fair share of lying … or, more accurately, omitting the truth. One of the least pleasant experiences in town is being asked to give honest feedback to someone who is at best an acquaintance. It’s worse yet if that person is a friend, lover or family member who actually takes your opinion seriously. Overall, the notion of offering honesty to a peer is akin to rubbing poison oak on your privates.

And yet, despite knowing how gruesome this can be, I still solicit feedback on scripts, films and even nascent ideas I’m toying with. Naturally, I feel guilty doing it. I blubber about how gracious the person is for taking the time to engage with my creative output, how generous they are and how crucial this step is to any sort of actual success in the industry. I’m even lying when I say that to someone. I should tell them: “I’m sorry I just asked you to do the equivalent of punching several of your own teeth out for free. Please don’t destroy my self-esteem completely. Let my mother finish the job.”

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

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© Photograph: Evandro Inetti/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Evandro Inetti/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Evandro Inetti/ZUMA Press Wire/REX/Shutterstock

Agreement comes amid anxiety in Hollywood over impact of AI on the industry, expression and rights of creators

Walt Disney has announced a $1bn equity investment in OpenAI, enabling the AI startup’s Sora video generation tool to use its characters.

Users of Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that draw on more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters as part of a three-year licensing agreement between OpenAI and the entertainment giant.

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© Photograph: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

© Photograph: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

© Photograph: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

After Quentin Tarantino’s unfavourable comments about the actor’s performance in films including There Will Be Blood, we run through the roles that show just how potent he really is

This disquieting narrative debut from the British director James Marsh (The Theory of Everything) is a kind of minor Cape Fear. Gael García Bernal plays a sociopathic outsider threatening the apparently perfect life of his long-lost preacher father (William Hurt). In what now looks like a dry run for There Will Be Blood, Dano is the earnest son campaigning for creationism to be taught at school, and sideswiped by the emergence of his sinister half-brother. Variety labelled the film “noxious”. It’s undoubtedly nasty, but Dano helps to lend it a pulse.

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© Photograph: Blackbird Films/Allstar

© Photograph: Blackbird Films/Allstar

© Photograph: Blackbird Films/Allstar

Currently in production the second prequel in the series, Sunrise on the Reaping, will likely feature the married couple ‘in a flash-forward’

Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson are to appear in the new Hunger Games movie, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, which is in production.

The Hollywood Reporter said it confirmed the pair’s return to the Hunger Games series, in what is the sixth film in the franchise. Both will play the same characters as in the original set of films – Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen and Hutcherson as Peeta Mellark – with the Hollywood Reporter suggesting they will “likely appear in a flash-forward”. At the close of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (released in 2015), Everdeen and Mellark are married with children.

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© Photograph: Murray Close/AP

© Photograph: Murray Close/AP

© Photograph: Murray Close/AP

Director of After the Rain, set in animal therapy retreat, says she aimed to portray ‘children as children, not as a statistic’

Sasha Mezhevoy was five years old when she, her older brother and sister were sent to an orphanage in Moscow. They were told they were going to be adopted by a Russian family. But they were not orphans. They were Ukrainian children who had been forcibly removed from their father.

Sasha grew up in Mariupol, the port city that endured more than 80 days of bombardment in one of the bloodiest and most destructive chapters of the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

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© Photograph: Denis Sinyakov

© Photograph: Denis Sinyakov

© Photograph: Denis Sinyakov

The platform’s esoteric watchlists and rating system appeal to cinephiles craving a different mode of discovery

I never thought I would use Letterboxd. The app’s premise of logging reviews of every film you watch felt like counting steps, and I generally prefer to exercise my pretension the old fashioned way – such as getting a BFA or frequenting art house cinema screenings where I am usually the only person under 50 in the theater.

But after I wrote about my feelgood movie for the Guardian – that would be Sullivan’s Travels, Preston Sturges’s perfect 1941 satire – I was swayed by two newsroom colleagues. “Hey Alaina, we heard you like movies,” one of them said. “What’s your Letterboxd?” I wanted to be part of the club, and signed up later that night. Now, I write thoughts on every movie I see, usually before I’ve even left the theater or closed out the streamer.

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© Photograph: letterboxd

© Photograph: letterboxd

© Photograph: letterboxd

Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Albert Brooks, Rebecca Hall and Woody Harrelson are among the stars lost in the writer-director’s baffling misfire

Ella McCay, a new comedy drama written and directed by James L Brooks, feels like a relic, and not just because it’s set, seemingly arbitrarily, in 2008. Broadly appealing, well cast, neither strictly comic nor melodramatic, concerning ordinary people in non-IP circumstances, it’s the type of mid-budget adult film that used to appear regularly in cinemas in the 90s and aughts, before the streaming wars devoured the market. Even its lead promotional image, turned into a life-size cardboard cut-out at the theater – Emma Mackey’s titular Ella in a sensible trench coat, balancing on one foot as she fixes a broken block heel – recalls a bygone era of films like Confessions of a Shopaholic, Miss Congeniality or Little Miss Sunshine, that would now go straight to streaming.

To be clear, I miss these types of movies, and want to see more of them. I want to see a lighthearted but realistic portrait of a 34-year-old woman serving as lieutenant governor of an unnamed state that is, judging by the college football paraphernalia and the vibe, probably Michigan. I want to still believe in the possibility of smart and sentimental popcorn fare whose low-stakes drama insists on the inherent inconsistencies and decency of people. I especially would like to say that Ella McCay is an admirable final salvo (or so) for Brooks, the 85-year-old writer/director/producer whose prolific career includes both iconic sitcoms (The Mary Tyler Moore show, Taxi and the Simpsons), and now-classic films (Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News and As Good As It Gets).

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© Photograph: Claire Folger/20th Century Studios

© Photograph: Claire Folger/20th Century Studios

© Photograph: Claire Folger/20th Century Studios

Baby Ruth Villarama’s documentary Food Delivery depicts those struggling with the superpower to retain their trade. The director describes capturing their boats getting rammed by the Chinese coast guard

During a televised debate in 2016, populist presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte made a typically belligerent statement that he himself would jetski to Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea and plant a Philippine flag there. Duterte claimed that he was ready to die a hero to keep the Chinese out of the bitterly contested maritime territory.

“That made millions of Filipino workers and fishers vote for him because of that one promise,” says film-maker Baby Ruth Villarama. As her new Oscar and Bafta-contending documentary Food Delivery: Fresh from the West Philippine Sea reveals, it wasn’t a promise Duterte kept. “He would make excuses that the jetski has broken down. Eventually there was an official pronouncement that it had just been a campaign joke. From then on, the fisherfolk were really enraged.”

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© Photograph: Voyage Studios

© Photograph: Voyage Studios

© Photograph: Voyage Studios

Trolling wokesters, disparaging Paul Thomas Anderson, insulting Paul Dano … the controversial director plays to type with his list of the top 20 best films of the 21st century

Did Quentin Tarantino just put Paul Dano into the alpha league of the world’s most loved and admired movie actors?

His recent insults aimed at Dano counterprovoked a flood of defensive praise, with Daniel Day-Lewis, Dano’s costar in There Will Be Blood, publicly endorsing it. But was Tarantino’s pronouncement just bluster and flex? Will he end up casting Dano in his next film – a turnaround like Donald Trump making nice with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un after pretty much threatening him with nuclear war? Or are we witnessing a kind of midlife emotional crisis in the heart of one of the most brilliant directors of his generation? I speak as a superfan with reservations.

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© Photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Epic Games

© Photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Epic Games

© Photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Epic Games

Veteran set decorator Lauri Gaffin has spent a career dressing up films from indie classics to blockbusters. Her new photographic memoir takes us behind the scenes of this ever-changing job – and on the hunt for wolves’ penis bones

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© Photograph: Lauri Gaffin

© Photograph: Lauri Gaffin

© Photograph: Lauri Gaffin

From stealing a photo for the King of Bohemia to battling the Napoleon of crime on a clifftop, Holmes is witty and watchable in these early Conan Doyle-approved dramas

The British Film Institute has restored three of the short two-reel silent films in the Stoll Pictures Sherlock Holmes series from the early 1920s – and very witty, watchable and spirited entertainments they are too. The star is the English stage actor Eille Norwood, whose handsome, troubled, sensitive face looms out of the screen in extreme closeup in the first of these, A Scandal in Bohemia, from 1921. Dr Watson is played in all of the films by Hubert Willis.

In this first film, our hero demonstrates his talents as a master of disguise; Holmes is approached by the King of Bohemia at his rooms in Baker Street, wearing a mask (so concerned is he about being recognised), although Holmes’s powers of deduction (and of course his own superior mastery of this kind of imposture) allow him to rumble the king at once. He wants Holmes to purloin an incriminating photograph taken of him with a young woman – an “adventuress” is how he quaintly puts it – which could be embarrassing. This is the fashionable stage actor Irene Adler, played by Joan Beverley, and Holmes manages to get on stage with Adler mid-performance to carry out a daring stratagem. But very startlingly, Adler appears to be the one person who can outwit Holmes.

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© Photograph: BFI National Archive

© Photograph: BFI National Archive

© Photograph: BFI National Archive

As Wuthering Heights gets a raunchy Hollywood remake, our writer takes a pilgrimage through Haworth, the village where its author lived – and finds her spirit still electrifying the cobbled streets and windswept moors

It’s a crisp afternoon in Haworth, West Yorkshire, and I’m drinking a pint of Emily Brontë beer in The Kings Arms. Other Brontës are on tap – Anne is a traditional ale, Charlotte an IPA, Branwell a porter – but the barman says Emily, an amber ale with a “malty biscuit flavour”, is the most popular. It’s the obvious choice today, anyway: in a few hours, Oscar-winning film-maker Emerald Fennell will be at the Brontë women’s writing festival in a church just up the road, discussing her adaptation of Emily’s 19th-century gothic masterpiece Wuthering Heights.

The film, to be released just before Valentine’s Day next year, is already scandal-ridden. It all started with Fennell’s casting of Hollywood stars Jacob Elordi and Margot (“Heathcliff, it’s me, it’s Barbie”) Robbie causing uproar. An erotic teaser trailer full of tight bodices, cracking whips and sweaty bodies had the same effect. But heads were really sent spinning by reports of a scene with a public hanging and a nun who “fondles the corpse’s visible erection”.

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© Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

© Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau are the latest A-listers to announce their relationship status online. But there are many ways to do it - from fancy dress to panicked deletions

As a mark of pure intent, going Instagram official has become a firmly entrenched dating marker. To post a picture of you and your new partner on Instagram – on the grid, mind you, not hiding behind the cowardice of a story – is to not only declare that you are in love, but also that you are confident enough in your future to share it with the world.

As such, Katy Perry’s decision to go Instagram official with Justin Trudeau is a classic of the genre. Long dogged by rumours that they might be together, Perry this week debuted a sanctioned image of them both. They are cheek to cheek. They are smiling, albeit in that slightly strained hurry-up-and-take-it way you do when someone decides to shoot a whole reel of photos. Katy Perry is pulling the exact same face she did when she stared into the camera that time she sort of went into space, which is how you know that it is really serious. Good luck to the pair of them.

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© Photograph: Instagram/katyperry

© Photograph: Instagram/katyperry

© Photograph: Instagram/katyperry

Charlie Cox and Zooey Deschanel co-parent a depressed dog in a serviceable attempt to appeal to animal lovers during the festive period

It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least in my social circles, that co-parenting a dog is a bad idea. Most will tell you: shared canine custody arrangements prevent exes from moving on. It’s a logistical headache. It causes fights. It’s annoying for all involved (and then some). And apparently, in a revelation worthy of a straight-to-streaming movie, it makes dogs depressed.

Not to minimize the mental health of dogs – I’ve listened to my mother boast about our family chihuahua’s “EQ” enough to know that man’s best friend has the capacity for great emotional sensitivity. (And the ability to convey it on command – for a truly outstanding performance of doggie depression, please see Bing the bereft great dane in 2024’s The Friend.) I have no doubt that a dog like Merv, a wired-hair terrier sort played by Gus the Dog in Merv’s eponymous Amazon movie, would struggle to adjust from life in a single family unit to split homes. Whether or not the ill-advised dog-sharing arrangement can sustain a whole Christmas romcom, however, is a dubious proposition.

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© Photograph: Wilson Webb/Prime

© Photograph: Wilson Webb/Prime

© Photograph: Wilson Webb/Prime

Charles Poekel’s directorial debut has taken a decade to reach the UK, but its indie take on seasonal cinema brings low-key warmth

This is a New York drama so laidback that it has taken a decade to reach the UK’s cinema screens. First released in the US in 2015, it’s an ultra-low-budget debut from first-time director Charles Poekel, set almost entirely on a 24-hour pop-up Christmas tree stall. Poekel’s style is far too authentic-indie and unaffected to get slushy or sentimental about Christmas; through his lens Christmas tree lights blink like police lights. But in its own low-key way, he pitches his film just right for a little squeeze of festive warmth.

Kentucker Audley stars as Noel (it took someone in the film to joke about his name before I twigged). Noel is back for his fifth year selling Christmas trees in Brooklyn, standing outside in the freezing cold and sleeping in a not-much-warmer caravan parked next to the trees. A few customers ask about the girl working with him last year. But this year Noel is alone, broken-hearted and working the night shift. There’s a documentary feel to a lot of the scenes, customers asking pointless random questions. One woman wants the same Christmas tree as the Obamas (this is 2014). Noel looks frozen to the bone physically and emotionally; he’s weary and disillusioned, though Audley’s subtle performance makes it clear that he wasn’t always like this.

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© Photograph: Bulldog Film Distribution

© Photograph: Bulldog Film Distribution

© Photograph: Bulldog Film Distribution

The second year of London’s Armenian film festival reflects a country in flux as the legacy of recent conflict with Azerbaijan hangs over attempts to strengthen ties with the west

There is a point during Tamara Stepanyan’s My Armenian Phantoms when the documentary cuts to the final scene of the 1980 Soviet film, A Piece of Sky, in which the orphaned lead character, joyfully rides a horse and cart through the town that had long shunned him and the sex worker he married as social outcasts.

A flock of birds are then framed gliding through the pristine blue sky above. It’s a sequence depicting the desire to overcome the forces that seek to limit and constrain which lay at the heart of the director Henrik Malyan’s new wave critique.

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© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

Day-Lewis, who suggested Dano for his part in There Will Be Blood, has endorsed praise of the actor following disparaging remarks by Quentin Tarantino

Paul Dano’s There Will Be Blood co-star Daniel Day-Lewis has defended the actor after he was criticised by Quentin Tarantino.

The director took issue with Dano’s talents while discussing his list of the best films of the century on Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast. Tarantino said he would have moved Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 drama higher than No 5 had a different actor played preacher Eli Sunday.

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© Photograph: Ghoulardi Film Company/Allstar

© Photograph: Ghoulardi Film Company/Allstar

© Photograph: Ghoulardi Film Company/Allstar

Yesterday’s Golden Globes announcement was a masterclass in mispronunciation that threatens to undo every effort to internationalise awards. Why can’t producers just make their presenters practise?

The day after an awards show announces its nominations, the focus typically falls on the nominees. However, yesterday’s Golden Globe nominations were a little different, because all anyone can talk about is how badly the actor Marlon Wayans mangled everyone’s name.

If you didn’t see it, it was a masterclass in getting it wrong. Watching Wayans announce the Golden Globe nominations was like living through one of those anxiety dreams where you’re asked to fly a jumbo jet and realise that you don’t know what any of the controls do. If you did see it, then I’m sure your toes will uncurl eventually.

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© Photograph: Jim Ruymen/UPI/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Jim Ruymen/UPI/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Jim Ruymen/UPI/Shutterstock

Brilliant biopics, daring documentaries and a host of chillers and thrillers – our critics pick the best from another sensational year of cinema
• Read the US version of this list
• More on the best culture of 2025

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© Composite: Guardian Design/Universal Pictures

© Composite: Guardian Design/Universal Pictures

© Composite: Guardian Design/Universal Pictures

Peruse a list of films released in 1985 and you’ll notice a surprisingly high number of movies that have become classics in the ensuing 40 years. Sure, there were blockbusters like Back to the Future, The Goonies, Pale Rider, The Breakfast Club and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, but there were also critical arthouse favorites like Kiss of the Spider Woman and Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Ran. Since we’re going into a long Thanksgiving weekend, I’ve made a list, in alphabetical order, of some of the quirkier gems from 1985 that have stood the test of time. (Some of the films first premiered at film festivals or in smaller international markets in 1984, but they were released in the US in 1985.)

(Some spoilers below but no major reveals.)

After Hours

Credit: Warner Bros.

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© Warner Bros.

Director Gore Verbinski has racked up an impressive filmography over the years, from The Ring and the first three installments of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise to the 2011 Oscar-nominated animated Western Rango. Granted, he’s had his share of failures (*cough* The Lone Ranger *cough*), but if this trailer is any indication, Verbinski has another winner on his hands with the absurdist sci-fi dark comedy Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die.

Sam Rockwell stars as the otherwise unnamed “Man from the Future,” who shows up at a Los Angeles diner looking like a homeless person but claiming to be a time traveler from an apocalyptic future. He’s there to recruit the locals into his war against a rogue AI, although the diner patrons are understandably dubious about his sanity. (“I come from a nightmare apocalypse,” he assures the crowd about his grubby appearance. “This is the height of f*@ing fashion!”) Somehow, he convinces a handful of Angelenos to join his crusade, and judging by the remaining footage, all kinds of chaos breaks out.

In addition to the eminently watchable Rockwell, the cast includes Haley Lu Richardson as Ingrid, Michael Pena as Mark, Zazie Beetz as Janet, and Juno Temple as Susan. Dino Fetscher, Anna Acton, Asim Chaudhury, Daniel Barnett, and Dominique Maher also appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles. Matthew Robinson (The Invention of Lying, Love and Monsters) penned the script. This is Verbinski’s first indie film, and Tom Ortenberg, CEO of distributor Briarcliff Entertainment, praised it as “wildly original, endlessly entertaining, and unlike anything audiences have seen before.” Color us intrigued.

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© Briarcliff Entertainment

50 years and 29 days ago, The Movie 'Nashville' had its 50th. anniversary. .
"when you pay more for an automobile then it cost Columbus to make his first voyage to america, that's politics."
Henry Gibson as Haven Hamilton. (slyt)

This is our way to fight back against the forces of evil—the forces that are pushing back against LGBT equality, all of these horrible anti-trans laws, the banning of trans kids from sports and all of that stuff. For us as artists and writers, this is our only weapon. from "Wow, This Is So Gay": An Oral History of But I'm a Cheerleader [Vanity Fair; ungated]