To celebrate Helen Mirren’s 80th birthday, Kate Stables hails her extraordinary 2006 metamorphosis into Queen Elizabeth II – “a human submarine with her emotions and personality largely submerged”.

More hidden gems, chosen by critics and filmmakers including Steven Soderbergh, Jane Schoenbrun and Asif Kapadia. Inside: B. Ruby Rich on Sorry, Baby, Peter Sellers at 100, Stephanie Rothman’s ...

The Congolese director blends a bit of Speed (1994) and Saw (2004) for a lightweight but exciting story of two unlucky Americans who wake up in Dakar with bombs strapped to their chests.

The magic of Charles Laughton's Southern gothic one-off may be in Mitchum's willing flamboyance, argued David Thomson in our April 1999 issue ...

Tragedy draws successful German orchestra conductor Tom back to his complicated family in a bleak three-hour saga from Matthias Glasner that finds hope in the darkest of places.

It’s a pleasure to watch the super-charged dynamics of the Fantastic Four, but attempts to fit this retrofuturistic family unit into the wider ‘Marvel cinematic universe’ feel clumsy.

Here are 10 great films from directors who – whether voluntarily or not – were one and done.

Censors quibbled some of the adult language in the script, but otherwise passed this boundary-pushing drama starring Julie London and Anthony Steel as a married couple seeking out a fertility clinic.

From the dystopian visions of Brazil and Twelve Monkeys to the surreal odyssey of The Fisher King, Terry Gilliam has spent half a century defying cinematic convention. In this wide-ranging interview, ...

Mohammad Bakri is one of the founding fathers of Palestinian cinema, with four of his sons now actors too. He tells us about growing up with a cinema but no electricity, the burden of playing ...

Thirty years on, Clueless director Amy Heckerling looks back at remodelling Jane Austen in modern Beverly Hills, her struggles to get a foothold in the film industry, and why she’s nothing like the ...

Capturing late-90s Cardiff as a city of clubbing and hedonism, Human Traffic is a cult classic of the Cool Cymru era. Twenty-six years later, how have its locations changed?