Features and reviews
Discover the latest from the BFI, the UK’s lead organisation for film, television and the moving image.
Ham on Rye: a haunting, dreamlike portrait of American adolescence
Tyler Taormina’s beguiling debut centres on a ritualistic prom-like ceremony whose effects reverberate through the protagonists’ lives.
By Ryan Gilbey
MLK/FBI narrows America’s race struggles to fit its spotlight
By Chrystel Oloukoi
Death to 2020 puts our torments in the rear-view mirror
By Leigh Singer
Enormous makes ill-conceived comedy from nonconsensual pregnancy
By Ginette Vincendeau
Wonder Woman 1984 shrinks history, stretches patience
By Adam Nayman
Dear Comrades! uncovers a Khrushchev-era Soviet state massacre
By Michael Brooke
Blithe Spirit unbuttons Noël Coward’s marital farce
By Philip Kemp
The Basilisks perfectly evokes the languor of the Italian South
By Elizabeth Sussex
The Serpent is a heady 1970s-set portrait of a globetrotting playboy killer
By Trevor Johnston
Mayor carefully undercuts received notions about contemporary Palestine
By Trevor Johnston
Black Narcissus successfully rethinks a classic novel and film
By Hannah McGill
Soul’s afterlife body-swap comedy shows Pixar still has it
By Lou Thomas
One Night in Miami… imagines four legendary Black lives intersecting in 1964
By Alex Ramon
The Mandalorian Season 2 seeks hope in a bruised and battered galaxy
By Rebecca Harrison
Let Him Go showcases a battle royale of two matriarch titans
By Philip Kemp
The Midnight Sky is a disappointing addition to the survivor sci-fi canon
By Kate Stables
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is an intoxicating immersion in a bar’s last stand
By Sophie Brown
Farewell Amor follows an immigrant family’s wanderings in their new land
By Pamela Hutchinson
The Woman Who Ran turns circles telling stories
By Ela Bittencourt
Education shows how Britain taught Black boys to fail
By Nikki Baughan
Cocoon unfurls a butterfly in Kreuzberg
By Nadine Deller
Il Mio Corpo sculpts a portrait of two outsiders in Sicily
By Jonathan Romney
Funny Boy watches Sri Lanka’s battle lines from the social uplands
By Naman Ramachandran
David Byrne’s American Utopia doesn’t burn down the house
By Nick Pinkerton
The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone can’t rejig its way to distinction
By Michael Atkinson
County Lines is fresh British drama that crosses new cinematic borders
By Trevor Johnston
Falling contemplates the pains of growing old gracelessly
By Leigh Singer
Crock of Gold – A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan celebrates the legend of the profane drinker
By Jessica Kiang