Christopher Connor

Is This Thing On?, 2025
Directed by Bradley Cooper.
Starring Will Arnett, Laura Dern, Sean Hayes, Bradley Cooper, Andra Day, Amy Sedaris, Christine Ebersole, Ciarán Hinds, and Scott Icenogle.
SYNOPSIS:
As their marriage unravels, Alex faces middle age and divorce, seeking new purpose in the New York comedy scene. Meanwhile, his wife Tess confronts sacrifices made for their family, forcing them to navigate co-parenting and identities.
Bradley Cooper’s first two feature films as a director, A S...

Jeremy Allen White shines in surprisingly intimate biopic…
Music biopics are coming thick and fast with the well-received and novel Better Man and multiple Oscar nominee A Complete Unknown both dropping in the past year, focusing on Robbie Williams and Bob Dylan, respectively. We are now brought a dramatisation of the making of one of Bruce Springsteen’s most acclaimed albums, ’ Nebraska with Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.
Biopics tend to take two forms: either covering an artist or fi...

The Secret Agent (2025) London Film Festival Review: Kleber Mendonça Filho’s tale of a man on the run amidst a 70s Brazil rife with corruption – reviewed by Chris Connor
While there are all the hallmarks of espionage films like phone tapping, codenames and surveillance, this is a unique film that is never quite what audiences would expect.
Chris Connor
Kleber Mendonça Filho is one of Brazil’s most celebrated directors, with films like Bacurau and Aquarius earning rave reviews and a string of ...

Released: 26 December 2025
Director: Joachim Trier
Starring: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skargsard, Elle Fanning
Joachim Trier has become one of the pioneering figures in Nordic cinema with his Oslo trilogy comprising Reprise, Oslo, August 31st and The Worst Person in the World. The latter of these proved an international smash, earning a string of accolades and rave reviews. Trier now re-teams with the lead of The Worst Person, Renate Reinsve, in the hotly anticipated Sentimental Value.
It follo...

Hamnet, 2025.
Directed by Chloe Zhao.
Starring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal. Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe, and Noah Jupe.
SYNOPSIS:
A powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare’s timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.
Shakespeare’s works are known the world over, and his personal life has been examined before on screen, notably in Shakespeare in Love. Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet told a story not commonly known, that William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway (Ag...

Saipan, 2025.
Directed by Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa.
Starring Steve Coogan, Éanna Hardwicke, Jack Hickey, Harriet Cains, Alice Lowe, Jamie Beamish, Alex Murphy, and Peter McDonald.
SYNOPSIS:
On the eve of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the Irish captain Roy Keane forfeits his place in the squad at the team’s preparation base in Saipan, following a heated disagreement with the Irish manager Mick McCarthy.
The fallout between Mick McCarthy and then Republic of Ireland captain Roy Keane is th...

The Mastermind, 2025.
Directed by Kelly Reichardt.
Starring Josh O’Connor, Alana Haim, Hope Davis, John Magaro, Gaby Hoffmann, and Bill Camp.
SYNOPSIS:
An unemployed carpenter turned amateur art thief plans his first big heist, and when things go haywire, his life unravels.
Kelly Reichardt is a hard director to pin down; she has built a reputation on eclectic, distinct arthouse films, working with a pool of talented actors like Kristen Stewart, Lily Gladstone and a recurring collaboration wit...

Father Mother Sister Brother, 2025.
Directed by Jim Jarmusch.
Starring Adam Driver, Tom Waits, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat.
SYNOPSIS:
Estranged siblings reunite after years apart, forced to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.
Jim Jarmusch has been a key figure in independent cinema since the 1980s, responsible for cult films like Ghost Dog:...

Bad Apples, 2025.
Directed by Jonatan Etzler.
Starring Saoirse Ronan, Eddie Waller, Jacob Anderson, Rakie Ayola, Robert Emms, Sean Gilder.
SYNOPSIS:
A struggling primary school teacher begins to make some questionable decisions after one of her students is injured.
There has been something of an education crisis in the UK for some time now with a shortage of teachers and prominent news stories about the stress caused by Ofsted inspections. This is all packaged together into the black comedy t...

Ballad of a Small Player, 2025.
Directed by Edward Berger.
Starring Colin Farrell, Fala Chen, Tilda Swinton, and Alex Jennings.
SYNOPSIS:
When his past and his debts start to catch up with him, a high-stakes gambler laying low in Macau encounters a kindred spirit who might just hold the key to his salvation.
Edward Berger has been on an incredible hot streak the past few years with his Oscar winning films All Quiet on The Western Front and Conclave. He tries his hand at another adaptation now...

Following a strong response to both Knives Out and Glass Onion, Rian Johnson has once again shown his love for murder mysteries with Wake Up Dead Man, his own spin on a locked room mystery. Fans of both whodunnits and the previous Benoit Blanc films won’t be disappointed in this entry that keeps audiences guessing throughout.
When Benoit Blanc burst onto screens in 2019 in Netflix’s Knives Out, it was clear he was a welcome addition to the canon of great sleuths.
He joins such illustrious com...

A Private Life, 2025.
Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski.
Starring Jodie Foster, Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, and Mathieu Amalric.
SYNOPSIS:
The renowned psychiatrist Lilian Steiner mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.
Jodie Foster has already achieved so much in her career, from child actress to double Oscar winner and a well-regarded director, and now she tries something new with a role entirely in French in Rebecca Zlo...

Chris Connor reviews the third episode of Slow Horses season 5…
After an explosive second episode, Slow Horses’ fifth season takes time to breathe as the tension escalates and the antagonists strike several blows. Ho is taken to The Park in some memorable exchanges with The Dogs and Diana Taverner, with Chris Chung once again a standout as the untameable Rodster and bringing humour to what is a spiralling situation with several car bombs detonated across London in an eerie opening.
Slough Hou...

Mick Herron has been writing about the Slow Horses, a group of MI5 miscasts, since 2010; however, the launch of the Apple TV+ show in 2022, led by Gary Oldman, has brought the brand to a wider readership. The show has become one of Apple’s best-loved titles and introduced a whole new audience to Herron and his work. There is even now a second Herron series arriving on the platform, Down Cemetery Road, based on an earlier series of Oxford-set novels.
There’s never been a shortage of great spy ...

Chris Connor chats with The Mastermind composer Rob Mazurek…
Rob Mazurek is a celebrated musician on the jazz circuit as part of Chicago Underground. He has now made his film scoring debut with Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind. We sat down with him to discuss making his first film score, collaborating with Reichardt and how he found scoring the 70s set art heist film.
What is the first thing you do when preparing a film score?
Full immersion in each scene to get a feel for the general atmosph...