I'm very much looking forward to Dandelions and Poppy, a queer coming-of-age comedy about two girls and a horny gay dog called Dandelion by @artsemergency.bsky.social graduate Hosanna Johnson. Catch it at @thehopetheatre.bsky.social on 1-3 September: www.thehopetheatre.com/dandelionsan...

Five living writers I’ve read five books by (and look forward to many more) … Jennifer Egan Zadie Smith Emily St John Mandel Scarlett Thomas Sarah Waters

I'm the grim reaper of television: any show that I love is immediately cancelled (RIP to LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, I LOVE DICK, THE CHAIR). So farewell, PONIES: Haley Lu Richardson & Emilia Clarke were an absolute joy as unlikely spies in 70s Moscow, with terrific scripts by David Iserson & Susanna Fogel.

What Is the Definitive Movie About America? www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/m...

I hugely enjoyed Curry Barker's OBSESSION, despite being a horror film coward. Inde Navarrette is sensational: her storytelling scene matches Naomi Watts' audition in MULHOLLAND DR. as a sequence that transforms both performance & character. Also the most unsettling phone call since LOST HIGHWAY.

Spielberg's DISCLOSURE DAY is less like ET & CLOSE ENCOUNTERS than a fusion of TINTIN & THE POST. It's also as much of a personal portrait of his parents as THE FABELMANS, and his most 70s movie since — well — the 70s. So as a lover of Pakula & Pollack's conspiracy thrillers I had a wonderful time.

Sophy Romvari's BLUE HERON has haunted me for a week now. It's a powerful, intimate story of childhood, memory and a quest for closure that takes dazzling leaps in focus and form. As her troubled brother Jeremy, Edik Beddoes barely speaks but gives one of the strongest performances of the year.

My brilliant @artsemergency.bsky.social graduate Hosanna is bringing her funny, romantic queer coming-of-age story about two girls and a horny gay dog to The Hope Theatre in September. She's running a @gofundme.com to support it: please help out if you can ❤️🌼🐶 www.gofundme.com/f/dandelions...

"If you’re making movies at the same time as Steven Spielberg, it’s hard not to feel like Salieri." Terrific interview with Steven Soderbergh about Spielberg, his own most challenging productions and his new app detailing the making of JAWS. deadline.com/2026/06/stev...

Really looking forward to seeing this for the first time at BFI Southbank, my spiritual home. Booking is now open for Kazuo Ishiguro's season of great films set on trains: whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/defau...

One of my favourite novels last year, interweaving the lives of a documentary film-maker, whom we meet smuggling a wolf cub out of the Chernobyl forest, and a young activist whose work inspires constitutional change. A climate story, a nature story and a love story that offers hope in fearful times.

Wes Anderson's Archive at the Design Museum is an enchanting tribute to human imagination, packed with exquisite work by hundreds of artists. As well as iconic costumes & models there's huge joy in finding book covers, menus etc. that you may have missed on screen: designmuseum.org/exhibitions/...

Quote with a fictional band that isn't Spinal Tap.

I'm not sure if Frankie Thompson is the universal cure for human suffering or its primary cause, but her new show HORRIBLE THINGS is one of the funniest hours I've ever spent in a theatre. She's a genius. Don't miss it. WIP at @camdenpt.bsky.social tonight & tomorrow: cptheatre.co.uk/whatson/Fran...

Welcome back to the brilliant @theyardtheatre.bsky.social, returning at twice the size & twice the attitude with a breathtaking new season including In Bed With My Brother's Philosophy Of The World, Malmö Stadsteater’s The World Is Full Of Married Men & Ian McKellen's Lear: www.theyardtheatre.co.uk

Anya Reiss is one of our best playwrights: funny, fierce & ruthless, propelled by love & rage. Her new version of A Doll's House at the Almeida is scalpel sharp & pindrop tense, wrenching the play into the present, almost to the hour, with Romola Garai as a glorious, dangerous Nora.

François Ozon's haunting, timely adaptation of L'ETRANGER is a masterclass in directing. The first half is almost silent, told in striking, sensual imagery, the second driven by two dramatic set pieces. Benjamin Voisin is a charismatic, unsettling Meursault and Rebecca Marder a heartbreaking Marie.

If you can't get to the real seaside this Easter, Seurat and the Sea at the Courtauld Gallery is a holiday in 26 paintings. I found it very moving: Seurat sold only 3 pictures in his lifetime before dying at just 31, making these shimmering summertime seascapes feel as fragile as they are beautiful.

Tim Crouch's The Tempest at the Globe is spellbinding, combining his characteristic playfulness and thoughtfulness to create an original, beautiful version that confronts the play's problems while enhancing its magic. Sophie Steer is, of course, a marvel as Miranda, and the whole cast is a delight.

I hugely enjoyed Georgi M. Unkovski's DJ AHMET (Диџеј Ахмет) a coming-of-age tale with teeth about a young Macedonian shepherd who loves dance music and his beautiful neighbour Aya, but whose conservative community seeks to deny him both. Wonderfully acted & beautifully shot, it's in UK cinemas now.

I think Gore Vidal got it wrong: there are few greater pleasures than celebrating a friend's success. So I'm thrilled for Daniel Pemberton, whose magnificent music is a huge contribution to PROJECT HAIL MARY's impact. Here he is on creating the score: www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

RIP Calvin Tomkins, the @newyorker.com's great profiler of contemporary artists, and a terrific biographer of Rauschenberg, Duchamp and more. Here's his funny, tender, touching memoir of his 100th year, from December: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

THE DEVIL'S HAND (Maurice Tourneur, 1943) is a Faustian tale about a struggling artist who sells his soul for wealth & renown. Made under German occupation, it's also a powerful & enduring warning about the perils of collaboration, with a truly unsettling performance by Pierre Palau as the devil.

Julien Duvivier’s PANIQUE (1946), adapted from Simenon's Les Fiançailles de M. Hire, really shook me. It's Duvivier's first French film after WW2 & its portrayal of mob justice in a paranoid society is timely & chilling today. Stunningly shot, with a heartbreaking lead performance by Michel Simon.

Beautiful speech by Harrison Ford, accepting his SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award last night with warmth, grace and love of his craft and colleagues: www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV_2...

RIP the great Bud Cort, b. 1948 and one of cinema's most distinctive and original actors. We commissioned this poster for a LOCO screening of Hal Ashby's HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971) co-starring Ruth Gordon, one of the most magical, mischievous, melancholic movies ever made.

Peter Lorre’s THE LOST ONE (1951), his only film as director, is the darkest of noirs. A Nazi doctor kills his lover for her treachery, has his crime covered up by the state and, crazed with guilt, kills again. A powerful portrait of how authoritarianism corrupts, from @filmsradiance.bsky.social.

Peter Weir's WITNESS (1985) is not just a great thriller but a great love story: Ford and McGillis's wit, warmth & chemistry burn through the screen. And watching it this week the title felt like an exhortation: that we must all, for the good of all, bear witness and keep our eyes open to the truth.

Wonderful to see David Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN at BFI. It's a masterclass in cinematic empathy, gliding between the POVs of John Merrick's exploiters, spectators and doctors, and of Merrick himself. It dares us to look away, and asks us to keep looking, not just at John but into our own hearts.

I've never felt such silence & stillness in a cinema as I did last night at BFI's FIRE WALK WITH ME. Denounced & dismissed by many critics in 1992, it's clear now that they hated & feared it because David Lynch dared tell the truth. A powerful, beautiful, achingly sad masterpiece of domestic horror.

Peter Weir's FEARLESS (1993) is a magnificent, daringly spiritual movie, from Rafael Yglesias's script. Jeff Bridges & Rosie Perez are electric as two plane crash survivors who connect as they struggle, in opposite ways, to find new meaning in life, while Isabella Rossellini shines as Bridges' wife.

Wonderful to see MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) again in BFI's David Lynch season. I keep thinking of Naomi Watts reading the script for the first time and discovering what an astonishing, multifaceted, mould-breaking role it would be: a role that darkened and deepened as Lynch expanded it from TV to film.

Lucile Hadžihalilović's THE ICE TOWER is my favourite film from last year. You can watch it now on BFI Player alongside this really warm, generous and insightful interview with Hadžihalilović by @leighsinger.bsky.social about the film and her creative collaborators: player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/wa...

It's the last week of Kerry James Marshall's marvellous, monumental THE HISTORIES at the Royal Academy of Arts. Do go if you can: it's a thrilling, challenging, beautiful show and the perfect antidote to the bleakness of both the weather and the times.

Wonderful to see Éric Rohmer's MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S (1969) at BFI last night. Maud (Françoise Fabian) is one of cinema's greatest characters and performances: funny, flirtatious, worldly and wise, giving Rohmer's philosophical dialogue insouciance and swing. A rich, funny, melancholic masterpiece.

In 1998 Peter Weir's dazzling THE TRUMAN SHOW (1998) felt like a satire of TV. Rewatching it last night it felt more like a prediction of today's rabbit hole radicalisation: the plausible, paranoid worlds that people can build around themselves, almost wilfully ignoring the clues to the contrary.

I'm having a Peter Weir rewatch before hosting a screening of WITNESS (1985). I first saw DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989) as a teenager and thought it was a film to inspire young people. Watching it now, it feels like a prayer to parents, to help their kids to follow their own path, not the expected one.

What a marvel Renate Reinsve is! A reminder that the true subject of cinema is human faces and feelings, which no AI will ever replace. SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Joachim Trier, 2025) is wonderful: such a rich, kind, complex story, rooted in the world of film but with dynamics that are universal & timeless.

I am very much on board for Zazie Beetz killing bad guys in a posh apartment building. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqNF...

George Martin would have been 100 today. I love this clip of him visiting Brian Wilson and remixing God Only Knows. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRb_...

I'm on a Sondheim deep dive after seeing the terrific new INTO THE WOODS at the Bridge. His annotated lyric books, Finishing The Hat & Look I Made A Hat, are characteristically witty & generous & this is a really insightful conversation with songwriter Adam Guettel. www.youtube.com/watch?v=TofC...

The delightful Oscar-shortlisted short film A FRIEND OF DOROTHY, written and directed by Lee Knight and starring Alistair Nwachukwu and Miriam Margolyes, is now streaming on Disney+. My brilliant friend James Dean produced it so I am entirely biased, but I do recommend it.

Halfway through the decade! What are your favourite films each year so far? 2020: First Cow (Kelly Reichardt) 2021: Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve) 2022: TÁR (Todd Field) 2023: La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher) 2024: Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass) 2025: The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović)

The new films that I've loved the most this year: The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović), Good One (Lily Donaldson), The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt) and Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs).

RIP Ena Collymore-Woodstock, the first woman of colour to study law at Gray's Inn and the oldest British veteran of WW2. Posted to the ATS, she wrote to the War Office to say that she had not come all that way to type and asked to be moved closer to the fighting. www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2...

Every Christmas show needs spectacular songs, sensational jokes, unforgettable characters & your husband's late wife embalmed in the dining room. So don't miss @shittheatre.bsky.social EVITA TOO at Southbank Centre, the misteremembered story of Isabel Perón. www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/sht...

The new SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) restoration is dazzling: sharper, darker & more unsettling than ever. I was struck by DeMille & von Stroheim's performances: they both have such empathy for Norma's trauma, while struggling to help her. And Betty's realisation of Joe's corruption is heartbreaking.

PETER HUJAR'S DAY is enchanting: a wonderfully warm, wry and intimate look at the art life in 1970s New York. Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall are spellbinding company in Ira Sachs' film, which hums with truth and glows with sadness: part portrait, part premonition, lit by the autumnal Manhattan sun.