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Xan Brooks

Xan Brooks is a freelance writer and broadcaster specialising in cinema

March 2025

  • Tilda Swinton in a red gown standing in front of a mirror, with Joshua Oppenheimer reflected in it

    ‘Musicals can be quite sinister’: Tilda Swinton and Joshua Oppenheimer on bonkers bunker singalong The End

    Inspired by a Russian tycoon’s survival bunker, the pair’s post-apocalyptic tale takes in environmental collapse, our facades and delusions – and big ol’ show tunes
  • Rachel Seiffert.

    Once the Deed Is Done by Rachel Seiffert review – mystery in the aftermath of the Third Reich

    This fine novel investigates the fate of displaced people in the hazardous, dirty backwash of the second world war
    • Halt Disney! Flow’s director, and fellow upstart animators, on a new era for the artform

    • Fires, frocks and the president who must not be named: my very weird night in the Oscars cheap seats

    • Oscars 2025 highlights: Anora sweeps awards with best picture, best director and best actress – as it happened

February 2025

  • ‘Some people have different values – that’s disturbing to me’ … Robert De Niro.

    ‘It’s like doing three movies at once’: Robert De Niro on his thrilling TV debut – as America’s saviour

    The film legend’s Netflix political conspiracy drama Zero Day is his first major TV gig, and it’s extremely well timed. He talks about his greatest roles – and playing a leader people can actually trust

January 2025

  • FILE - Filmmaker David Lynch poses at his Los Angeles home March 14, 2002. (AP Photo/Chris Weeks, File)

    ‘A one-way trip to heaven’: cigarettes were David Lynch’s magic wand – and his undoing

    He quit in 2022, but smoking was previously an integral part of the film-maker’s life and art

December 2024

  • Brady Corbet photographed in NYC. December 2024

    The Brutalist director Brady Corbet: ‘If you’re not daring to suck, you’re not doing much’

    The film-maker’s latest is a three and-a-half-hour epic about the building of a modernist masterpiece, and the toll its creation takes on its architect. The film’s making was almost as gruelling. ‘People told me I’d never make another movie’, Corbet says
  • film still of a woman smiling as she looks at a man

    Best movies US 2024
    Best movies of 2024 in the US: No 4 – Anora

    The Hollywood romcom is turned on it head in this tale of an exotic dancer and an oligarch’s son who get hitched before the honeymoon turns sour
  • To have and to hold … Mark Eidelstein (left) and Mikey Madison in Anora.

    Best films UK 2024
    Best films of 2024 in the UK: No 5 – Anora

    The Hollywood romcom is turned on its head in this tale of an exotic dancer and an oligarch’s son who get hitched before the honeymoon turns sour
  • ‘My dad was always kind of a loner guy’ … Stephen with his parents Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in 1951.

    ‘Kids were second to their drinking and partying’: Stephen Bogart, son of Bogie and Bacall, on his screen icon parents

    What’s it like to grow up the son of Hollywood legends? Stephen Bogart, whose parents left him for six months even after his nanny dropped dead, reveals how he finally shook off the past
  • A woman and a boy on a London Underground platform in 1940.

    Blitz review – Saoirse Ronan stars in Steve McQueen’s sturdy wartime London drama

    A boy and his mother search for each other as German bombs rain down in the Oscar-winning director’s straightforward period drama
  • Christopher Reeve as Superman in 1978, one arm raised, the new york skyline behind him

    Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story review – respectful documentary gives the full picture

    From his breakthrough roles to his life-changing accident, this rounded film portrays the courage and resilience of the late film star
    • Juror #2 review – you want far-fetched? Try Clint Eastwood’s 12 Angry Men remake

    • Heretic review – Hugh Grant’s move to the dark side is a triumph

    • Anora review – Sean Baker’s screwball Cinderella tale vaults him towards greatness

  • Undated film still from Small Things Like These. Pictured: Zara Devin as Sarah Raymond and Cillian Murphy as Bill Furlong . See PA Feature SHOWBIZ Film Reviews. WARNING: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature SHOWBIZ Film Reviews. PA Photo. Picture credit should read: Lionsgate/Enda Bowe. All Rights Reserved. NOTE TO EDITORS: This picture must only be used to accompany PA Feature SHOWBIZ Film Reviews.

    Small Things Like These review – Cillian Murphy shines as quiet hero in powerful 80s Ireland morality tale

    Claire Keegan’s acclaimed Magdalene laundries novella reaches the big screen in director Tim Mielant’s atmospheric adaptation

October 2024

  • Mark Rylance in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.

    ‘It’s going to be much darker’: inside the deadly return of TV masterpiece Wolf Hall

    The Tudor epic about a tyrant king and his vengeful, backstabbing entourage is back for its final instalment – and it’s more brutal than ever. We go on set to talk to the Mirror and the Light team about death, dictatorship … and ostriches
  • Robbie Ryan and Andrea Arnold at the Cannes film festival in May.

    ‘Chaos is great. This time it went over the top’: Andrea Arnold and Robbie Ryan on 21 years of film and friendship

    The director and cinematographer talk collaboration, health and safety on their new film, Bird – and the perils of DJing at your daughter’s birthday party
  • Sony Music Archive for Saturday Magazine Culture

    ‘Every recording carries the air of a seance’: remembering my father the music archivist

    Researching a novel about forgotten blues musicians led me to revisit the life’s work of my late dad: disinterring decades of dusty recordings that will outlive us all
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