Ryan Gilbey
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Articles by Ryan Gilbey
Jeremy Thomas obituary
The Last Emperor was produced by Jeremy Thomas and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. It was based on the autobiography of Puyi, who was made emperor of China in 1908 at the age of three. Photograph: Hemdale/Allstar Asked whether he had ever cautioned restraint from a director, the film producer Jeremy Thomas replied: “My nature would be to go further and see what we can get away with.” Thomas, who has died aged 77, was an expert in getting away with it.
Jeremy Thomas obituary
Asked whether he had ever cautioned restraint from a director, the film producer Jeremy Thomas replied: “My nature would be to go further and see what we can get away with.” Thomas, who has died aged 77, was an expert in getting away with it. A taste for irreverence ran in his family: he was the son of Ralph Thomas, director of the Doctor … comedies that began in 1954 with Doctor in the House, and the nephew of Gerald Thomas, who made all 31 Carry On titles.
John Irvin obituary
Bouncing from war zone reportage to cold war espionage, Hollywood horror to Sherwood Forest swashbuckler, Harold Pinter to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the director John Irvin, who has died aged 86, was nothing if not eclectic. “I'm a bit split,” he said. “I like playing with expensive toys, yet I also like the miniatures.
Pedro Almodóvar on being the villain in his own movie
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‘It is the riskiest film I’ve ever made’: Pedro Almodóvar on being the villain in his own movie
Black sunglasses indoors and a tufty cloud of cotton-wool hair: it can only be Pedro Almodóvar, bourgeois arthouse darling nonpareil and master of everything from screwball romps (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) to clammy thrillers (Live Flesh, The Skin I Live In) – and sumptuous melodramas such as his 24th film, Bitter Christmas, a cautionary tale about the perils of autofiction.
‘I love provocative stories’: producer Christine Vachon on fighting for her ‘offensive’ movies
‘A real point of view’ … Pretty Babies, written and directed by Tyler-Marie Evans and produced by Vachon Photograph: Courtesy EIFF Trailblazing producer Christine Vachon bestrides the world of US independent film-making like a colossus.
‘I love provocative stories’: producer Christine Vachon on fighting for her ‘offensive’ movies
Trailblazing producer Christine Vachon bestrides the world of US independent film-making like a colossus. She has championed idiosyncratic American cinema for more than 35 years, scoring hits such as the romcom Materialists, which starred three superhero actors (Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans) and grossed $108m, alongside curiosities such as Zola, a strippers’ road-trip comedy based on a string of viral tweets. Vachon got her start in the early 1990s.
Mark Rydell obituary
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Mark Rydell obituary
Stars flocked to work with the director Mark Rydell, who has died aged 97, and no wonder: he had trained as a performer alongside James Dean and Steve McQueen, later becoming west coast artistic co-director of the prestigious Actors Studio, while his movies notched up more than 20 Academy Award nominations between them.
Andrew Rannells on ‘razzle dazzle’, kissing co-stars and being a better friend to Lena Dunham
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‘It was fun to get pushed around’: Andrew Rannells on ‘razzle dazzle’, kissing co-stars and being a better friend to Lena Dunham
Imagine a cute, young, gay Jim Carrey with a withering line in put-downs: that is Andrew Rannells. Or rather, it was, back when he starred in Lena Dunham’s HBO series Girls as Elijah, the formerly closeted ex of her character, Hannah. Dunham had seen Rannells playing Elder Price, the zealous missionary spreading the good word in the original 2011 Broadway production of the bad-taste musical The Book of Mormon, for which he received a Tony nomination. Girls, in turn, spread the good word about him.
‘These cooks ripped each other apart': Dominic Sessa on playing Anthony Bourdain, kitchen bullies and the joys of being a 70s barfly
Despite being just 23, Dominic Sessa is perhaps as intimately acquainted with the 1970s as those who grew up then. Although the New Jersey-born actor has only starred in five films, two of them are marinated in the fashions, sounds and mores of the decade. In his new movie, Tony , he plays the 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain, future bad-boy celebrity chef, bestselling author of Kitchen Confidential and host of its hit TV spin-off.
‘James Dean has got nothing on that kid’: River Phoenix films – ranked!
Issue-of-the-week TV movie about elder abuse, with Tuesday Weld as a harried mum taking out her frustrations on her own ageing mother. Phoenix slaps on the hair gel as the essentially decent son who blasts his music too loud, lets his rowdy if unusually spiffy pals put their feet on the furniture and resents the new house guest: “Grandma is really getting on my nerves!” Sam Shepard’s turgid western premiered at Sundance in early 1993, then sat on the shelf for a year.
Chuck Russell obituary
The film-maker Chuck Russell, who has died aged 74, described himself as “a thrill junkie with a sense of humour”. The proof was in the pudding: his madcap comedy The Mask (1994) resembled a cinematic knickerbocker glory overflowing with colour, vitality and fun. Its star Jim Carrey called it “one of the jewels of my creative life”. Before Russell was attached to the project, The Mask had been doing the rounds in Hollywood for several years as a horror script.
‘The minute I had success, I stopped taking drugs’: John Waters on 60 years of screen carnage
Updated Thu, 16 July 2026 at 9:13 am UTC ‘He still lives today in so many ways’ … Divine and John Waters in New York in 1975.Photograph: Lewton Cole/Alamy John Waters still remembers the day his 1988 comedy Hairspray was awarded a PG certificate. “It was horrible,” he says. Until then, Waters, christened the “Pope of Trash” by the novelist William S Burroughs, was notorious for filming the unfilmable.
Sam Neill obituary
Born in Northern Ireland, raised in New Zealand, adopted by the Australian film industry as one of its own and elevated to Hollywood stardom before he was 50, the actor Sam Neill, who has died aged 78, conveyed a seen-it-all worldliness without ever seeming jaded. With his floppy fringe and amused, rueful eyes, he was a man of decency, humility and wit. “I'm just Mr Triviality, as shallow as my washbasin,” he said.
Louise Lasser obituary
The zesty, ebullient actor Louise Lasser, who has died aged 87, played a harried Ohio housewife dealing with extreme events (drug addiction, mass murder, drowning-by-soup) in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, an innovative satirical sitcom that doubled as a spoof of daytime soap operas. Like the target of its mockery, the show aired five times a week in the US, so that its modest two-season run, between 1976 and 1977, produced a staggering 325 episodes.
Ann Blyth obituary
Joan Crawford was never likely to be voted mother of the year once her daughter Christina wrote Mommie Dearest, a memoir alleging physical and psychological abuse. Among the friends and former colleagues who sprang to her defence after the book's publication in 1978 was Ann Blyth, who at the age of 17 played Crawford's headstrong and resentful screen daughter Veda in the noir melodrama Mildred Pierce (1945).
‘Our characters like to be naughty’: the makers of the Nirvanna mockumentary on illegal skydiving, taboo-breaking and time travel
If there is ever a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for fictional bands, the likes of Spın̈al Tap and the Rutles will be guaranteed a place. Less certain is the fate of the duo created by Toronto college friends Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol in Nirvana the Band the Show, a 2007-08 mockumentary web series that was later picked up for two seasons by Vice TV.
‘Ordinary people are being erased’: one director’s audacious fightback against AI – featuring Frinton
In Marc Isaacs' latest film, the subversive documentary maker reveals that an AI research laboratory recently licensed his entire body of work.
‘I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way’: Kathleen Turner’s best films – ranked!
Thu, 11 June 2026 at 2:47 pm UTC Cruelly funny … Kathleen Turner in The Man With Two Brains.Photograph: AJ Pics/Alamy Turner goes full-on drill sergeant for one scene as a dog-trainer, her forearmscovered with scratches. Marley the irrepressible yellow labrador retriever knocks her to the ground and gives her a more vigorous humping than any co-star since William Hurt in Body Heat.
‘Audiences no longer laugh if you call their town crap’: can Phil Wang heal divided Britain?
Born in Stoke-on-Trent to a British mother and Chinese-Malaysian father then raised in Borneo and educated in Brunei, Bath and Cambridge, Phil Wang – or "Old Wang", as he refers to himself mock-imperiously on stage – has certainly been around. Today, the 36-year-old standup with the pleasantly befuddled air is in a cafe near his home in London, wearing high-waisted baggy black trousers, a blue shirt, salmon-coloured New Balances and a baseball cap bearing the word "Chump".
Under the Shadow review – Leila Farzad is fantastic in this nerve-shredding tale of 80s Tehran
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Under the Shadow review – Leila Farzad is fantastic in this nerve-shredding tale of 80s Tehran
Reprimanded for wearing her headscarf too loosely, Shideh, a former medical student in Tehran, is warned: "A woman should be more scared of exposing herself than anything else." Shideh has other concerns. It is 1988, the height of the Iran-Iraq war, and her husband is on the frontline, leaving her to raise their seven-year-old daughter. Shideh's ambitions to become a doctor have been torpedoed by accusations of political activity during the Iranian revolution.
‘Screaming girls chased me down the street’: how we made Strictly Ballroom
‘Fran and Scott are the centre of their own world’ … Paul Mercurio and Tara Morice in Strictly Ballroom. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy Tara Morice, played Fran Baz Luhrmann was this cool guy two years ahead of me at NIDA, the drama school in Sydney. When I graduated, I joined his theatre company Six Years Old and the play of Strictly Ballroom came out of that. It was inspired by Keith Bain, who taught movement at the school.
The best Steven Spielberg films, chosen by directors, critics and super-fans: ‘pure popcorn perfection’
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Steven Spielberg is often described as the inventor of the “event movie” – or as the creator of our new age of IP supremacy, in which the genre property is more important than any above-the-title film star. But that isn’t quite it. He came of age in the American new wave era but in spirit belonged neither to that nor fully to Hollywood’s golden age studio system that preceded it. In fact, he synthesised both into a directing style that was audacious and fluent.
By Anne Billson, Peter Bradshaw Verified, Catherine Bray, Ryan Gilbey Verified, Simran Hans Verified, Stuart Heritage Verified, Ann Lee, Joseph McBride Verified, Sasha Mistlin, Gwilym Mumford Verified, Andrew Pulver Verified, Scott Tobias Verified, Edgar Wright
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Yahoo Movies Canada
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The best Steven Spielberg films, chosen by directors, critics and super-fans: ‘pure popcorn perfection’
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Spielberg’s early achievement was to bring about an evolutionary sea change, reinvigorating pulp-popular themes and ideas and giving them a new maturity and mainstream box office credibility. The idea of a giant shark crazed with a vindictive taste for human flesh or dinosaurs busting out of an amusement park is something that Roger Corman or Ed Wood Jr might have made in two weeks with risible rubber creatures. In Jaws and Jurassic Park, Spielberg’s production values were state of the art.
By Anne Billson, Peter Bradshaw Verified, Catherine Bray, Ryan Gilbey Verified, Simran Hans Verified, Stuart Heritage Verified, Ann Lee, Joseph McBride Verified, Sasha Mistlin, Gwilym Mumford Verified, Andrew Pulver Verified, Scott Tobias Verified, Edgar Wright
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Inkl
Marcia Lucas obituary
Marcia Lucas said she ‘would have cut films for free because I enjoyed it so much’. Photograph: Julian Wasser/Liaison Agency/Getty Images In February 1977, George Lucas screened a rough cut of his science-fiction fantasy Star Wars, devoid of any music or special effects, to a select audience at his home in northern California.
‘Not many kids had gay dads who died of Aids’: Andrew Durham and Sofia Coppola on movie memoir Fairyland
‘She blows out the candles while the adults blow their minds on acid’ … Scoot McNairy, in feather boa, with Nessa Dougherty as his daughter. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc/Alamy When Sofia Coppola logs on to our video call, her friend and fellow film-maker Andrew Durham – whose directorial debut, Fairyland, she has produced – is telling me about being nine or 10 years old, and accidentally outing his father as gay. “Have you heard this story, Sofia?” he asks breezily from Los Angeles.
Churchill’s Urinal review – Rosie Holt’s pisstake chancellor turns it up to No 11
Almost a one-person Thick of It … Rosie Holt in Churchill’s Urinal. Photograph: Steve Ullathorne When Rachel Reeves became chancellor in 2024, she said it felt like “smashing one of the last glass ceilings in politics”. But the presence in her office toilet at the Treasury of a urinal, thought to have been used by Winston Churchill, proved that there are some obstacles that can’t be overturned. Reeves would just have to tolerate this symbol that puts the “pee” in patriarchy.
Kultur : Wie man das Böse spielt: James Vanderbilt, Rami Malek und Michael Shannon über „Nürnberg“
Russell Crowe als Hermann Göring im Film „Nürnberg“ ist finster wie charismatisch. Seine Co-Stars und der Regisseur erklären, wie sie sich dem Bösen genähert haben Russel Crowe mimt als Herrmann Göring in „Nürnberg“ einen finsteren und charismatischen Nationalsozialisten Unter den Nazis, die während der Nürnberger Prozesse in den Jahren 1945 und 1946 vor Gericht standen, war auch Adolf Hitlers Stellvertreter Hermann Göring.
Say hello to my little compendium! Al Pacino films – ranked
Shouty Al in The Devil’s Advocate. Photograph: Alamy 20. Manglehorn (2014) With greased-back hair, dainty spectacles and bristly chops, Pacino is a former Little League baseball coach turned locksmith. But – symbolism alert! – who holds the key to his clenched heart? One scene gives good cringe: over a would-be romantic dinner with a bank teller (Holly Hunter), he starts reminiscing about his great lost love, oblivious to his date’s escalating indignation. 19.
‘I hope it got disinfected!’ Matthew Rhys on bravery, banter and wearing a prosthetic penis
‘What an absolute twat!” cries Matthew Rhys, clutching his face in both hands. He has just been reminded of a remark he made in 2000, when he was playing the Dustin Hoffman role in the West End stage version of The Graduate. He was 25, not long out of Rada, and was asked if he could imagine being middle-aged like his Mrs Robinson, Kathleen Turner, who was 45 at the time. His response? “Yes – and it’s frightening. I wonder – will I still be acting?” Perhaps the “frightening” part merits derision.
The power of the Dunst: Kirsten’s best film performances – ranked!
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The power of the Dunst: Kirsten’s best film performances – ranked!
Dunst in The Two Faces of January. Photograph: Studio Canal/Sportsphoto/Allstar 20. The Two Faces of January (2014) An elegant, sun-soaked Patricia Highsmith adaptation with fine work from Viggo Mortensen as a con man and Dunst as his wife, holidaying in early 1960s Athens when they meet an American tour guide (Oscar Isaac). It seems tantalisingly unclear at first whether his designs are on the chirpy young bride or her shady older husband. 19.
Angela Pleasence obituary
On 1 January 1968, viewers of the TV soap opera Coronation Street experienced a mild culture shock as a clump of hippies decked out in floral shirts, Afghan coats and John Lennon spectacles temporarily took over the house at No 11, former home to Elsie Tanner. Among the somnambulant invaders was Monica Sutton, who plucked the black wig dreamily from her head as she entered, and handed it to the bemused tenant.
‘It’s the year of gay Brazilian cruising!’ The makers of Night Stage on public sex and their ‘deranged erotic thriller’
Henrique Barreira as Fabio and Gabriel Faryas as Matias in Night Stage. Photograph: Peccadillo Pictures You wait for ever for a visually electrifying Brazilian film featuring scenes in a gay cruising ground, then two come along at once. First, the Oscar-nominated The Secret Agent showed nocturnal trysts in Recife being violently interrupted by a rampaging disembodied leg.
Valerie Perrine obituary
Valerie Perrine as Eve Teschmacher, moll to Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor, in Superman II, 1981. Photograph: American Pictorial/THA/Shutterstock Asked in 1975 whether it bothered her that she was frequently called upon to be “sexy”, the actor Valerie Perrine said: “It’s not something I mind like being bitten by a mosquito.” On the contrary, she often revelled in it, considering herself “the 1970s version of Mae West”.
‘I’m a big bear. I lumber’: showbiz superstar Richard Kind on delivering performances you can see from space
‘I’m parsley. Really good parsley’ … Kind at the Garrick theatre, where he will be playing Max in The Producers. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian Richard Kind has played everything from a child’s imaginary friend in the Pixar fantasy Inside Out to a neighbour with antibiotic-resistant pinkeye in Only Murders in the Building.
Chuck Norris obituary
Action cinema of the 1980s was a podium where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone fought over gold and silver position. Bronze belonged indisputably to Chuck Norris, who has died aged 86. The premature death of Bruce Lee in 1973 had left a vacancy for a martial arts movie superstar that was eventually filled to some extent by Norris, Lee's friend and colleague.
‘My taste is superb. My eyes are exquisite’: Dianne Wiest’s 20 best film performances – ranked!
Your friendly neighbourhood witch … Dianne Wiest in Practical Magic. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy 20. Merci Docteur Rey (2002) Every great performer should have at least one baffling movie on their CV, and this curio, produced by Ismail Merchant, is Dianne Wiest’s. The plot is bananas: she plays an opera singer leading her gay teenage son to believe that his father (Simon Callow) is dead, by taking the boy to visit a fake grave each year. Guess what?
Gus Van Sant: 'My assistant wanted to erect a statue of Luigi Mangione. My generation thought: this is murder'
In February 1977, a middle-aged Indianapolis businessman named Tony Kiritsis took hostage an employee at his local mortgage brokers, who he was convinced had cheated him out of the profits of a piece of real estate. The system was weighted against the little guy, Kiritsis decided, and he was going to be the one to make it pay. He attached one end of a wire to the trigger of a shotgun, the other to the hostage's head, and demanded $5m and an admission of guilt from the brokers' boss.
Chic couture, bio-terror and a whole load of Mike Leigh: Lesley Manville’s finest films – ranked!
All emotions covered … Lesley Manville in Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn’s Ordinary Love. Photograph: Album/Alamy 10. Queer (2024) Among the bold choices in Luca Guadagnino’s feverish film of William S Burroughs’ novel are the late 20th-century pop and alternative soundtrack (Nirvana, Prince, New Order) for a 1950s story, and the casting of an unrecognisable, orc-like Manville in a trumped-up cameo as the shaman Dr Cotter, who was male in the original book. 9.
Robert Carradine obituary
Carradine in The Big Red One, 1980. He had a run-in on-set with the film’s lead, Lee Marvin. Photograph: Moviestore/Shutterstock Of the four sons who followed their father, John Carradine, into acting, Keith had the most prestigious career, David netted the largest audience thanks to his early-1970s TV series Kung Fu, and the little-known Bruce amassed a meagre handful of minor credits. The youngest, Robert Carradine, acted continuously without ever becoming a star.
Tom Noonan obituary
The writer and director Michael Mann's stylish thriller Manhunter (1986), adapted from Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon, was the first screen outing for the fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter, played in this instance by Brian Cox and in three further films by Anthony Hopkins. By far the most haunting figure in Manhunter, though, is the psychopath Francis Dollarhyde, nicknamed “the Tooth Fairy”.
‘He loved showing his bum. Loved it’: the subversive genius of Kenneth Williams
‘He was queer in every sense’ … Kenneth Williams in 1969. Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty Images When standup comic Tom Allen received Attitude magazine’s comedy award last year, he used his acceptance speech to salute the subversive wits who paved the way for freedoms now enjoyed by queer people in Britain.
Lesley Walker obituary
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Lesley Walker obituary
Denzel Washington as Steve Biko in Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom, 1987, edited by Lesley Walker.
‘We thought Midnight Cowboy might end everybody’s career’: the diverse, disruptive, Oscar-winning cinema of John Schlesinger
‘How did he deal with his flops? Manic depression’ … British director John Schlesinger. Photograph: Michael Childers/Corbis/Getty Images Michael Childers was a 22-year-old Los Angeles student when a friend set him up on a date with John Schlesinger, a visiting British director nearly two decades his senior.
Catherine O'Hara obituary
Ryan Gilbey “Kevin!” With that panicked exclamation , delivered in wide-eyed, straight-to-camera close-up in the festive comedy Home Alone (1990), the actor Catherine O'Hara , who has died aged 71 after a short illness, cemented her place as one of cinema's most neglectful screen parents.
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