Zhang Yimou, director of visually spectacular films such as Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Raise the Red Lantern and Curse of the Golden Flower, was recently honoured at Venice with the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award, which acknowledged his contribution in expanding the horizons of contemporary Chinese film.

As a director well known for his use of colour, Zhang’s latest film, Shadow, is rather a surprise, as he has chosen to set his story in an almost exclusively bi-chrome…

Movies about American politicians embroiled in controversy have sort of lost their power in the last couple of years, knowing that, these days, in reality, the chances of a controversial candidate attaining victory is absurdly high. We can make our mind up about a Gary Hart biopic before we've even seen it, chastising the man and any attempt to humanise him. Or we can watch The Front Runner for Jason Reitman's very nuanced portrait of the disgraced politician, which doesn't…

As early as its customary opening crawl, I began to have a bad feeling about Star Wars: The Last Jedi. In what plays like a dig at the current leader of the free world (who was pictured earlier this year watching Rogue One on Air Force One), the word 'RESISTANCE' appears in upper-case letters, an early worrying sign that real world, outside forces may be intruding on this most endearingly innocent of escapist worlds.

This is nothing new of course…