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.

“Having been in Silicon Valley for 50 years, I’m an expert in assholes. 99.9 percent of assholes are egocentric assholes. But Steve was one of the very rare mission-driven assholes." Guy Kawasaki, quoted in David Pogue's quest to understand Steve Jobs, for @nymag.com: nymag.com/intelligence...

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.

Celebrate 30 glorious, groundbreaking years of @camdenpt.bsky.social this Christmas with two smash hit Edinburgh shows, House of Life and The Green Knight (But It's Gay) cptheatre.co.uk. Or you can support them for the Big Give, which will double your donation: donate.biggive.org/campaign/a05...

Patrick Marber's beautiful, intimate tribute to Stoppard is so vivid that you feel he's there in the room with you. www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/d...

“If there is to be hope we must all betray our country. We have to save each other because all victims are equal, and none is more equal than others. It's everyone's duty to start the avalanche.” Tom Stoppard’s screenplay for The Russia House (Fred Schepisi, 1990) from the novel by John le Carré.

@ArtsEmergency.bsky.social helps young people without connections into arts education & careers. Our programme graduates are already making their industries more open, representative and accessible, but there’s so much more still to do: can you help? Thank you ❤️🚨

Ambika Mod is phenomenal in Sophia Chetin-Leuner's Porn Play at the Royal Court: funny, smart, tough & achingly vulnerable across its multiple scenes. Josie Rourke's direction brings a confident swing & a lovely transparency to the acting, particularly in a sleepover scene. A bold, beautiful play.

Louise Hémon's THE GIRL IN THE SNOW stars Galatéa Bellugi as a young teacher sent to a remote Alpine village in 1899. Modernity meets superstition with dangerous consequences in a spellbinding, sensual fable shot on location with a largely nonprofessional cast. At @frenchinstituteuk.bsky.social.

Valéry Carnoy's WILD FOXES is a remarkable debut: a taut, tender teen boxing movie that's also a deep reflection on male friendship, sexuality and vulnerability, set at an elite sports academy. Playing at the @frenchinstituteuk.bsky.social French Film Festival. www.institut-francais.org.uk/cinema/#/

“I think those of us who live with great fame have to say that it is a trick of survival, and that a lot of us don’t like it.” A powerful, poignant obituary for Maria Riva, Marlene Dietrich's daughter, whose childhood reads like a Hollywood horror story: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/02/a...

Sydney Sweeney is terrific in David Michôd's CHRISTY, which kept me on the edge of my seat for 2 hours. It's a powerful, visceral, sometimes harrowing film that's as much about gender, class & relationships as it is about boxing, with fearless support from Ben Foster & an incandescent Katy O’Brian.

Congratulations @mrdavebyrne.bsky.social & his team at the Royal Court for a barnstorming 70th Anniversary season. I'm particularly excited to see The Shitheads, The Afronauts & John Proctor Is The Villain; do check out the brilliant new playwriting opportunities too: royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/

Lucile Hadžihalilović is one of the great directors of coming-of age stories. Her new film THE ICE TOWER is a sparkling, sinister fairy tale about the power of film, the seduction of stardom & the deceptions of desire, starring Marion Cotillard & Clara Pacini. Coming to BFI & UK cinemas next month.

Kelly Reichardt is my favourite director so it's no surprise that I loved THE MASTERMIND, a tragicomic 1970s heist movie with Josh O'Connor as (perhaps) the US cousin of his British tomb raider in LA CHIMERA. In our era of triumphant male mediocrity it's a timely story told with style, wit & warmth.