They had $2m and six weeks. Everyone hated the name. Test audiences hated the film. Here’s the oral history of how Jennifer Kent’s debut got made – despite the oddsGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailHis eyes are depthless pools, his mouth a taut rictus. His fingers taper to blade-like claws and he looms like a scarecrow. In the dark you might...

A strictly bodyguarded Santa is hijacked in this oddly pitched, CGI-heavy action-adventureAs synthetically festive as an eggnog-flavoured plug-in air freshener, Red One is a cynical, soulless action-adventure that imagines Santa (JK Simmons), codenamed Red One, as a quasi-militaristic elite operative with his own security detail, headed by stony-faced...

Morgan Neville’s novel animated documentary, featuring interviews with the US musician, captures his artistic process, if not the whole story…A documentary portrait of the American music producer and fashion impresario Pharrell Williams, told through the medium of Lego block animation. What at first seems like a quirky gimmick actually works rather...

Danielle Deadwyler and Samuel L Jackson shine in Malcolm Washington’s debut feature, based on Wilson’s haunting family drama set in 1930s PittsburghThe third Denzel Washington-produced movie adaptation of an August Wilson play (after 2016’s Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in 2020), The Piano Lesson shares strengths and weaknesses with its predecessors....

Olivia Williams has long balanced her talent with a desire to tell it how it is – and she’s now feeling more frank than ever. The Dune star gets more than a few things off her chest, from the Hollywood patriarchy to AI and living with cancerSince 2018, Olivia Williams has grown more blunt than she used to be. “I’m a bit less scared of the consequences...

The actor on making a ‘cracker’ of a film with Cillian Murphy, the new female-led Dune TV series, and knowing when to give people the shark eyesThe British actor Emily Watson made one of the outstanding film debuts when she starred in Lars Von Trier’s Breaking the Waves in 1996, aged 29. She was Oscar-nominated for that role, then again two years later...