Films
All action, no abstraction
On the hunks and lunks who dominated two decades of Hollywood
Let children’s stories be children’s stories
We need more respect for the childhood imagination
Liar, crook and Hollywood great
For all Cimino’s flaws, there was still “the vision thing”
Criticising the critics
Ideology has triumphed over art
Sob stories
Real men have grit in their eye
What do the BAFTAs really stand for?
The awards used to be entertainingly eccentric
Belfast boy
Christopher Silvester reviews two semi-autobiographical movies: Oscar-contender Belfast and arthouse The Souvenir
Drop your weapons
Knives Out deserves a reprieve from the dread of bad sequels
All mouth, no trousers?
Kenneth Branagh does seem to like taking his clothes off
Women directors screened out
Christopher Silvester on Mark Cousins’s latest documentary
No joke
Scotland’s Hate Crime Act is absurd, but nobody’s laughing
Saltburn and the significance of sound
Why has Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor” caught the world’s attention again?
Where is so much gender confusion coming from?
The scope of inquiry into gender and young people should be expanded to schools
A cut above
Above all is the quietude, broken only by the snipping chatter of several scissors
Plagiarism: a racist weapon
It has been genuinely disturbing to see Claudine Gay ousted simply for being an empowered black woman
Vanishing act
Jeremy Hunt did not, in fact, pull a rabbit out of his hat
Musical no man’s lands
Two violin concertos fail to inspire
Man of letters: reading between the lines
Byron: A Life in Ten Letters by Andrew Stauffer
Regency romance
Small human moments cut across the centuries
The Irish should reject the new hate speech bill
It threatens free speech while offering dubious benefits for society
Poor old Carmen
This update of a classic from the Royal Opera House is a reminder of why messing with great pieces is so risky
