Gazettely | Movie, TV & Game Reviews, News, and Rankings

Elsinore Review: Hamlet Becomes a Matter of Life and Death

Ian Charleson’s greatest professional opportunity arrives precisely when his body begins issuing its final warnings. Simon Stone’s Elsinore, written by Stephen Beresford, finds its drama in that cruel convergence. In 1989, Charleson is HIV-positive, his screen career has stalled, and the fame earned through Chariots of Fire has become a mildly absurd burden. A cab driver humming Vangelis’s famous theme captures the problem neatly: people recognize the cultural object while barely remembering the actor inside it. Then Daniel Day-Lewis leaves Richard Eyre’s National Theatre production of Hamlet, creating an opening Charleson never expected to receive. Eyre, played with measured warmth...

The Idiot(s) Review: Dostoevsky Loses the Pedestal

Fyodor Dostoevsky has already written Crime and Punishment, yet the achievement has left him behaving less like a literary titan than a man who has misplaced both his money and the instruction manual for adulthood. Johnny Flynn’s Fyodor arrives in 1860s Germany with his new wife Anna, played by Aimee Lou Wood, theoretically prepared to begin The Idiot. The notebook remains empty. The roulette table does not. Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert build The Idiot(s) around that imbalance. Drawing from Andrew D. Kaufman’s The Gambler Wife and material connected to Anna Dostoevskaya’s own writings, the film relocates creative mythology into...

Gallipoli Review: Every Bullet Changes the Battlefield

Suppression in Gallipoli changes the value of a missed shot. A burst tearing into the dirt beside a soldier can blur their vision, shake their aim, and interrupt the simple act of cycling a rifle. That turns covering fire from battlefield decoration into a system with measurable consequences. BlackMill Games has spent three previous World War I shooters refining this kind of deliberate combat, and its fourth entry feels like the point where those systems finally start supporting one another rather than merely sharing a battlefield. Set around the 1915 Gallipoli campaign, the game moves the series away from Verdun's...

Tender Loving Care Review: Kate O’Flynn Shines in Mike Leigh’s Intimate Drama

Mike Leigh has spent decades proving that a kitchen table can carry as much dramatic weight as a battlefield, and Tender Loving Care finds him working at perhaps his most stripped-back scale. Amy (Kate O’Flynn) and Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson), two social workers nearing 40, share a London flat after Amy’s relationship collapses. Nearby, Amy’s parents Birdie (Marion Bailey) and Geoff (Paul Jesson) remain deeply affectionate after decades together, while Geoff begins showing troubling signs of cognitive decline. Very little here behaves like conventional plot. Amy and Rosie work, drink wine, trade stories and stumble through romantic disappointments. Birdie worries...

My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile Review: Six Hours Inside Political Displacement

Leaving Russia does not make Julia Loktev’s journalists safe. It simply changes the shape of the danger. My Undesirable Friends: Part II - Exile picks up after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with the independent reporters followed in Last Air in Moscow scattered across Istanbul, Tbilisi, Tel Aviv, Latvia, Vienna, New York and elsewhere. TV Rain has shut down in Moscow. Colleagues who once shared offices now communicate across borders, temporary apartments and unstable visa arrangements, while Russia increasingly treats their work as criminal. That change gives this second installment a very different emotional rhythm. The first film had the...

Queer Edward II Review: Derek Jarman Refuses to Become a Museum Piece

Seamus McGarvey’s camera catches Derek Jarman before history has finished deciding what to do with him. He jokes about the BBC’s appetite for nudity, discusses the prospect of Edward II looking suspiciously mainstream, directs actors without ceremony, and moves through Bray Studios with the relaxed authority of somebody who has no interest in performing importance for the lens. Theo Rollason’s Queer Edward II gains much of its force from leaving that informality intact. McGarvey, decades away from becoming the cinematographer behind films such as Atonement, had been given remarkable freedom to record Jarman’s 1991 adaptation of Christopher Marlowe’s play. Steven...

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In the Headlines

Lilly Wachowski Steps Back From ‘Matrix’ Franchise: “I’m Kinda Done”

September 7, 2026

Lilly Wachowski said Friday she has stepped back from "The Matrix" franchise she and her sister Lana created more than 27 years ago, telling KCRW's "The Business" that she no longer wants involvement in future installments. "Personally, I don't wanna play in that sandbox anymore," she said. "I'm kinda done."...

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Latest Articles

Lilly Wachowski Steps Back From ‘Matrix’ Franchise: “I’m Kinda Done”

5 seconds ago

Lilly Wachowski said Friday she has stepped back from "The Matrix" franchise she and her sister Lana created more than 27 years ago, telling KCRW's "The Business" that she no...

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3 minutes ago

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8 minutes ago

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11 minutes ago

Nicolas Cage broke his silence Sunday on Prime Video's decision to cancel "Spider-Noir" after a single season, framing the ending as a deliberate stopping point rather than a disappointment. "For...

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13 minutes ago

The Tokyo International Film Festival unveiled three new initiatives for its 39th edition Sunday, adding a competitive strand for undiscovered Japanese talent, a new award honoring women in cinema and...

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26 minutes ago

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