PAPER TIGER***** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 5

Writer-director James Gray’s PAPER TIGER is a handsomely-made, well-considered and strangely old-fashioned character drama set in early 80s New York. TOP GUN: MAVERICK’s Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson star as husband and wife Irwin and Hester, raising two teenage boys in a family home in Queens. They both work and are doing well enough but are acutely aware that they’re about to have to pay college tuition. 

At the start of the film, Irwin’s charismatic larger-than-life brother Gary (Adam Driver) arrives armed with a van of Peter Luger steaks and wearing a flashy suit and watch. He’s clearly done well with his security business since leaving the police, but he envies Irwin’s loving home life. His big idea is that they should go into business together advising the new Russian migrants taking over the docks on environmental matters. Of course, the new Russians turn out to be incredibly dangerous and Irwin’s family is at risk. But this raises the question of who really is family. Should Irwin care about Gary as much as he cares about Hester and the kids? And what will Hester do knowing her kids are at risk? 

What I love about this film is how I never really knew which way Gary would go right up until the final scene. I believed in the family dynamics completely. And all three leads give characteristically strong, layered performances. The film works as a play about institutionalised corruption and what happens to the small guy caught in its vice. It’s never obvious and always allows its plot moves to feel organic.  

But what elevates PAPER TIGER beyond another worthy drama is the visual and audio style of James Gray. Every scene, every frame, every audio cue is intentional and considered. It’s carefully constructed and you feel the emotional and psychological insight and weight that comes with that. The result is a grown-up film for grown-ups. One that rewards patient and careful viewing. 

PAPER TIGER is rated R and has a running time of 1hr 55m. It opens in the UK on November 13th.

BUNKER*** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 6

Writer-director Florian Zeller’s BUNKER is a handsomely-made, beautifully-cast, social drama fatally undone by an obvious and ham-fisted script. Zeller’s social observations are so obvious and banal and told in a style that is so on the nose as to be patronising. Real-life husband and wife Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz play husband and wife Miguel and Sophia. They live in London and are the embodiment of complacent success - stunning house, beautiful kids, fashionable friends. But all is not well under the surface. Sophia resents the fact that while Miguel’s career as an architect has thrived in London, hers as an editor has been constrained. 

The action begins when their poor neighbour Tony (Adolescence’s Stephen Graham) punches a hole through the dividing wall between his garage and their garden. He wants to put in a window so that he can make the space liveable but in doing so violates their privacy. Miguel threatens legal action and of course Tony cannot afford to go to court. All of this is embedded in a wider discussion of security alarms. Miguel wants to protect his property and that may or may not include his wife. 

The acquisitive possessiveness of the striving couple is thrown into relief by a new commission. A tech billionaire wants Miguel to build him a bunker in Hawaii. Sophia hates the idea but as the commission’s fees go up and up Miguel is clearly tempted. Cue a zoom meeting between Miguel and the billionaire. He’s played by Paul Dano in a chilling cameo, all the more chilling because Dano has such a babyish face and underplays the role. When asked by Miguel why he would want to build a bunker he’s genuinely flummoxed why anyone who had the means would not. And when he drops a line about maintaining the chain of command in a situation where money had lost all value you could hear the audience audibly gasp. It says a lot that in a couple of weeks where we’ve seen films skewering Zuckerberg, Musk and Altman that it was Zeller who managed to say something that finally shocked an audience already predisposed to thinking that all billionaire techbros are evil. 

So this ends up being a three-star film. You know from the opening scene that you’re gonna get a slow build over 90 minutes to a big blow-out argument between the couple and some kind of violent confrontation with the neighbour. And you can definitely guess the composition of the final shot. But the Paul Dano scene and the production design make the film worth watching nonetheless.

BUNKER has a running time of 2hrs 6m. It played Venice and Toronto 2026.

ARTIFICIAL***** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 5

ARTIFICIAL is basically THE SOCIAL NETWORK but for OpenAI: it's the origin story of the company that launched ChatGPT and so literally changed the world.  What it is NOT is the story of Sam Altman. Because whatever Mark Zuckerberg's infinite failings, he at least wrote the code for Facebook. By contrats, Sam Altman is just an emotionally manipulative liar who excels at sales.  The real story of OpenAI, as penned by screenwriter Simon Rich (INSIDE OUT), is the story of Ilya Sutskever (ANORA's Yura Borisov).  

Ilya is the super smart mathmo who teams up with Nobel Prize-winning academic Geoff Hinton and basically invents AI, sells the idea to Google, only to part ways with Geoff and join OpenAI when Geoff keeps preaching patience. Of course Ilya thinks Sam Altman is his friend and believes in their mission of creating an open AI away from the control of any single corporation, only to have Sam sell that dream from under him for Microsoft's cash and compute. So Ilya famously pushes Sam off the board only to have Microsoft's CEO and half the OpenAI employees go against him and reinstall their messiah. 

ARTIFICIAL worked for me as a film because it’s really about Ilya with Sam Altman as a side character.  The actor playing Ilya is so good and his character arc is so compelling that I was captivated for the two hour plus running time. As for Andrew Garfield he just reprises his role as Jonathan Larsen in TICK, TICK...BOOM! but with the camp turned up to a thousand and some weird de-ageing shit going on that makes him look like Spock I think he mistook weird physical ticks for an actual performance. And he probably needs to stop playing gay characters like some kind of SNL skit camp kabuki that’s borderline homophobic. It's a totally weird choice but something that's not surprising given director Luca Guadagnino's fondness for excess.  If Yura Borisov is in a serious biopic, Garfield is in COYOTE VS ACME. And Ike Barinholtz's portrayal of Elon Musk is straight out of SNL.  It's just a super-weird choice.

By contrast, I really loved Simon Rich's screenplay. He tells a complicated story well and keeps a lot of the intricacies of the boardroom drama. I think he gets Altman's basic psychopathy right, but this goes against the broad performance from Garfield. Garfield got a lot of laughs from the Festival audience, but if Sam Altman were so laughable in real life, he wouldn't have been able to manipulate so may people.  I also really loved Damon Albarn’s score.

ARTIFICIAL is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 2hrs 20m. It will be released in the USA on December 25th and in the UK on January 22nd 2027/

PRIMETIME***** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 5

Lance Oppenheim’s PRIMETIME is a lurid fever dream set in the early days of the internet and the dawn of reality TV. Ajon Singh’s slippery and skewering screenplay takes us inside the dark ambition of real-life TV presenter Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) and his fictionalised show producer Andie (Merritt Wever). Their hit TV show consisted of entrapping predators on camera and as the film opens they have just been given a coveted primetime slot going up against Damon Lindelof’s Lost. Suddenly Hansen has a shot at the prestige and acclaim that he craves but only if he can keep the gotcha moments coming. And if this means emotionally endangering the “teen”-looking actors he uses as bait or entrapping the predators in cahoots with law enforcement, so be it. 

All of this foreshadows the clickbait social media rage-bait algorithms that no longer just rule our TVs but also rule our politics. The very concept of “primetime” now seems quaint and anachronistic: an entire nation sitting down together to watch linear network TV. But the concept of intrusive, privacy-busting, legally-ambiguous bread and circuses is sadly all-encompassing now. The enshittification started with Chris Hansen and went via Mark Burnett and Andy Cohen to Donald Trump. 

PRIMETIME feels like a horror movie of our worst nightmares projected back in time to their origin point. The visual style, audio design and soundtrack all contribute to a feeling of nausea and corruption. And it’s anchored in co-lead performances of incredible power from Pattinson and Wever. But special mention has to go to SUPERMAN’s Skyler Gisondo as Decoy Dan - the vulnerable young actor sucked into Hansen’s world in desperation for his SAG card. I can see why this film has been hyped. It is so well considered in front of and behind the lens. I wouldn’t change a frame. And my goodness Robert Pattinson may well be the best cineaste of us all. His ability to ferret out interesting new directors and scripts is unparalleled. 

PRIMETIME is rated R and has a running time of 1hr 50m.  It played Venice and opened in the USA last month. It opens in the UK on October 30th.

WILDWOOD*** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 5

If your dad is a billionaire willing to fund your media dreams you can turn Dark Spidey like David Ellison or use the Force for good like Travis Knight. There’s something to be said for being so insulated from commercial pressure that you can create ludicrously expensive, visually ravishing, stop-motion films that are too long and violent for kids but charm adults. His latest project, WILDWOOD, is a mash-up of elements from LABYRINTH, STAR WARS and LOTR, with a script by ParaNorman writer Chris Butler, based on the book by Carson Ellis and Colin Meloy. A teenage girl called Pru goes into a magical forest to rescue her baby brother, assisted by a nerdy gamer boy called Curtis (Jacob Tremblay). She encounters a world of magical animals, forest outlaws and Yoda-ish hippies. Together they must defeat the evil Dowager Governor (Carey Mulligan) who is so grief-stricken that she wants to use black magic to resurrect her son. 

I loved everything about the film that was to do with its look and feel. The animation is wonderful and kinetic, the soundtrack is propulsive and beautiful, and the imagination behind the worlds it creates is awe-inspiring. An early scene of the siblings cycling through Portland, Oregon is just beyond charming and the visualisation of their parents is simply adorable. It all felt organic and tactile and beautifully, lovingly hand-made. 

What I didn’t like was the script. Two hours twenty is just too long for a kids film, and as I was taken on my third, fourth and fifth chase scene even I started to tire. This film is also way way too scary for your typical kid and I am utterly surprised it’s been given a 12 rating. More than that I didn’t like that we only found out the backstory and plot motivation 45 mins in. In LABYRINTH and other great kids’ adventures you know the stakes immediately. 

It’s a measure of how far out of the movie I was that by the time we got to the big climactic battle scene I was like a) no way evil queen is losing if she has the high ground and guns b) why is her bombardment in the midst of battle when it kills her own troops rather than before the battle. So yeah. Not an immersive compelling story.

WILDWOOD is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 2hrs 13m. 

THE LIBERATION**** aka HARMONIA - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 4

In the early 80s director Guy Nattiv’s real-life grandmother Rita abandoned her family and joined a cult led by a charismatic woman. In this fictional version of that tale, Rita is a mother of two teenage girls, a wife to a loving husband of 21 years, and a long-time bank manager. She’s smart and capable but is deeply emotional vulnerable, troubled by memories of the mother and three sisters that she lost in the Holocaust. The cult leader sees both this and Rita’s healthy savings account and lures her to a rural compound. It is to this compound that her two daughters follow her to try to bring her home. 

The resulting film is a rightly painful and sometimes horrifying watch anchored by a searing performance from The Gilded Age’s Carrie Coon. We get a full range of emotions from her - joy, panic, depression, concern, love - sometimes all at the same time. It’s the kind of performance that should garner awards although I am not sure if this is the kind of environment in which a film from an Israeli director is going to get a fair shake. The Last of Us’ Bella Ramsay is also incredibly strong as Rita’s sceptical daughter. By contrast, I was never entirely convinced by Downton Abbey’s Lily James as the cult-leader Ricky and couldn’t help wondering what the originally cast Vicky Krieps might have made of the role.

THE LIBERATION has a running time of 2hrs 4 mins.  It played Telluride and Toronto 2026 and will be released in the US on January 8th. 

MAKING MARIE ANTOINETTE*** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 4

This is the twentieth anniversary of the release of Sofia Coppola’s desperately beautiful and radical retelling of the story of MARIE-ANTOINETTE. We have already been gifted with a lavish and delightful book of on-set stills photos from Andrew Durham. And now we have an equally delightful documentary made by Sofia’s mother - herself the acclaimed film-maker - Eleanor Coppola. 

Of course, this is not going to be anything like HEART OF DARKNESS, Eleanor’s iconic on-set doc of her husband’s film APOCALYPSE NOW. Because as tiring and awesome as filming at Versailles was, MARIE-ANTOINETTE was not the drug-induced folie de grandeur that APOCALYPSE NOW was. No. This film comes in on time and on budget and while Sofia clearly has a firm vision of what she wants to achieve - occasionally in opposition to her DP Lance Accord - her manner is quieter, and more delicate. 

As Eleanor comments, in journals read by the actress Diane Lane, Sofia is herself a young woman thrust into a high-pressure situation with all of the eyes upon her. No wonder she and her young lead actor Kristen Dunst can both relate. It’s almost shocking how young both of them look and how slight - Sofia particularly - swallowed up in the lavish set and amidst the huge crew. With Eleanor filming between takes there’s no downtime. Kristen is polite but often looks exhausted. Meanwhile Jason Schwartzman plays up to the gallery and Asia Argento reads everybody’s fortune. 

The real revelations are not so much about the making of MARIE-ANTOINETTE but about Eleanor. She passed away a couple of years ago and her children finished her film. What I found most touching was hearing and seeing Eleanor’s evident pride and delight in being part of her daughter’s world. But also - and perhaps more importantly - in seeing the evident love snd trust between her children, as Roman arrives to direct the second unit. I also found it bracingly honest but rather melancholy to hear Eleanor compare her own struggle to balance being a young mother with her artistic ambitions. She comments wistfully that the next generation of artists, including her daughter and Kristen, are more boldly following their dreams. It made me wonder how much has really changed. Sofia was one of the few successful female directors twenty years ago and remains so today.

MAKING MARIE ANTOINETTE has a running time of 1hr 26m.  It played New York and Telluride and will be released on Mubi on November 6th.

WILD HORSE NINE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 4

WILD HORSE NINE is exactly what I expected and wanted from a Martin McDonagh film: a brutally darkly funny script; career-best multifaceted performances; beautiful landscape cinematography; an acute sense of moral and political corruption; but a deep and moving emotional core centred on male friendship.  

Those friends are Chris and Lee - two CIA assassins in Chile ahead of the 1973 coup that replaced the democratically-elected Marxist President Allende with the fascist General Pinochet. Chris is old and sick and indiscreet but as played by John Malkovich reveals layers of conscience and melancholy and genuine good. Lee is a series of mostly reaction shots, with Sam Rockwell both open-mouthed aghast at Chris’ inappropriate behaviour but also caring and loving. 

The bulk of the action takes place amidst the “Big Heads” on Easter Island as the friends enjoy a last hurrah, befriending a couple of idealistic young feminists on the way. Of the two, Mariana di Girolamo Arteaga as Monica really holds her own in the more demanding role. The action occasionally cuts to Lee’s wife Marge (Parker Posey) or to their boss MJ (Steve Buscemi) - both superb. To say more would be to reveal a pleasingly twisty plot full of surprises. 

There’s much to be said in praise of Carter Burwell’s beautiful score and incredibly well-chosen needle drops; of Ben Davis’ stunning cinematography; and of Mikkel E. G. Nielsen’s precise and subtle editing that makes so much of the humour and suspense land. But really this, as all of his films, is a Martin McDonagh joint. And he is at his most supremely McDonagh-y here. You will laugh consistently but more importantly you will neither forget these men nor their friendship.

WILD HORSE NINE and has a running time of 1hr 58m and is rated R. It played Venice, Telluride and Toronto 2026. It will be released in the USA and UK on November 6th.

MUSK** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 3

Alex Gibney’s four-hour Elon Musk doc is - as one would expect from an Academy Award-winning documentarian - a handsomely produced and well-constructed survey of the tech giant and political menace. 

The problem is that the only people likely to want to see a doc like this are people like me - people who are already hyper-aware of all of the dangers that Musk poses - the kind of people who read long-form exposes in The Atlantic and The New Yorker and who listen to podcasts by Kara Swisher - the kind of people who already suspect Musk is a misogynistic racist psychopath but want to know the truth behind his drug use and the extent of his paternity. 

And for these people there’s literally not one new revelation in this entire documentary. We don’t actually get to the bottom of his drug use. We don’t actually find out how many kids Musk has. We don’t know what he meant when he said he knew the election result hours before anyone else with a high degree of confidence. Because while Alex Gibney has brilliantly marshalled all the “known knowns” and put them in one handy place, he hasn’t actually contributed any new knows. 

So we are left in the uncomfortable position that the people who probably need to be brought up to speed on this topic are going to be put off by the film’s running time. And those that will be drawn to it, and are willing to commit the time, will be disappointed.

MUSK has a running time of 3 hrs 52 mins. It played Venice and Toronto and opens in the USA on October 16th.

THE BELOVED***** aka EL SER QUERIDO - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Day 2

THE BELOVED is an absolutely majestic character drama that focusses on a brutal father-daughter relationship. Script, performances, cinematography, editing, sound, cinema-history meta-text - I wouldn't change a single-frame of this masterpiece.  It's like the already brilliant SENTIMENTAL VALUE's more accomplished, more searing, more brutal big brother.

Javier Bardem gives a complex performance as a celebrated film director called Esteban, who has recovered from his wild and reckless youth and seeks to reconnect with his estranged adult daughter Emilia.  In a brutal central scene the audience is taken from farcical laughter to one of the most painful, sadistic, nasty scenes of attempted control and psychological brutalisation I have seen in quite some time.  Esteban is a man who thinks he has reckoned with his past, but has not. He may be sober, but he is still the guy whose behaviour can hurt and damage.  The only difference is that now he is faced with women - whether his daughter or his cinematographer - who won't put up with his bullshit.

As good as Bardem is, this film is the vehicle for Victoria Luengo as Emilia. The part was written for her, and she occupies nearly every frame of this film with a powerful and desperately moving performance as Esteban's long-abandoned child.  They dance a dance of seeing but not seeing - of trying to connect and rebuffing that connection.  You sense that Emilia, closely observed by Esteban whether in real life or through his camera lens, wants to REALLY be seen by him.  But he spends most of the film just creating his own narrative, and directing his own back story, and refusing to centre her pain.  It's a remarkable double act and one gets the feeling that this is one of those performances - like Vicky Krieps in THE PHANTOM THREAD or Sandra Hueller in TONI ERDMANN - that makes an international star out of a European, hitherto domestically known, talent. 

So kudos to writer-director Rodrigo Sorogoyen and longtime writing partner Isabel Pena for creating such a brave and complex script and to Sorogoyen for setting them within some of the most intentional and clever cinematography I have seen in a while.  There are so many nods to Hitchcock, Bergman and Almodovar and a feeling of complete mastery of the form. 

THE BELOVED has a running time of 2hr 15 mins. It played Cannes and Toronto.

ELSINORE***** - BFI London Film Festival 2026 - Opening Night Gala

I had expected ELSINORE to contain a great performance from Andrew Scott. I had NOT expected it to be part of a great film. Maybe that’s just years of underwhelming London Film Festival opening night films. They tend to be British, “heritage”, earnest and po-faced. And the plot summary - CHARIOTS OF FIRE actor Ian Charleson achieves his dream of playing Hamlet at the National Theatre despite dying of AIDS - suggested that this film might also fall into mawkish mediocrity. 

But ELSINORE is just a superb film! Brilliantly, darkly funny from start to finish. Scabrously British in its biting wit and affectionate use of mockery. And yet also genuinely affecting while never being emotionally manipulative. Screenwriter Stephen Beresford (PRIDE) knows just how to show us courage and joy and love and grief without ever bowing to trite clichés. And my goodness does he have a cast to deliver that range of emotions. Andrew Scott - who has himself delivered a widely acclaimed Hamlet on the London stage - gives the performance of his life as Charleson and one that is rightly being spoken of as an Oscar-contender. He is ably supported by a large cast. The standouts for me are Peter Mullen as Charleson’s father and Monica Dolan as the hilarious stage door manager at the National. And my goodness how delightful to see Juliet Stevenson on our screens again. 

But this isn’t simply a movie that works as a talky script to showcase performances. For a movie basically set in a flat, an NHS clinic and the National Theatre, director Simon Stone really gives us a visually arresting film. He shoots the National to make it a kind of self-contained protective city or community within itself. I really felt I had a sense of its internal layout and architecture - as if I had been taken into the Company. Further, cinematographer Mike Eley shoots many of the major emotional beats with almost claustrophobic close-ups that give us the full power of Scott’s performance.  

Most of all this is a film that while - yes - about death and the cruelty of a generation of young men taken from us - is also about a life lived with purpose and even joy - and the community who rallied round and made that happen. It’s a film about found family and actual family - the power of art - and human decency. And yet - to its great credit - it is never pompous. What a beautiful delicate balance to have achieved. 

ELSINORE has a running time of 104 minutes. It played Toronto and London 2026 and will be released in the USA on November 20th.

THE SOCIAL RECKONING****

I think most people would agree that Mark Zuckerberg is a deeply creepy profit-seeker whose social media empire has inflamed political division; spread misinformation through rage-bait; and harmed the mental health of our children. So what can writer-director Aaron Sorkin's film, THE SOCIAL RECKONING, give us?  First off, an appreciation for the old school hard yards of investigative journalism, without which none of the documents that underpin the current wave of class-action lawsuits and governmental limitations on social media for kids would have come to light. Second, an appreciation of the bravery of those who choose to whistle-blow.  Third, an appreciation of just how toxic and WEIRD the corporate environment at Meta is - or any company, or any country for that matter - held in thrall to a single owner-manipulator.  Fourth, a reminder that there is a deep-seated and visceral respect for titles in all of us. We may hate it, but when Jeremy Strong's Zuck is being asked to de-platform Trump, he quietly whispers, "but he's the sitting president".  There but for the grace of god go we all.

Sorkin's exceptionally brilliant screenplay runs on two tracks and timelines.  First off, we have the heroes and protagonists who are trying to bring Meta's malfeasance to light.  The Bear's Jeremy Allen White plays the Wall Street Journal's investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz as a quiet, humourless, earnest nerd.  And ANORA's Mikey Madison plays the Facebook whistle-blower Frances Haugen as a quiet, humourless, earnest nerd. And yet, and yet, it's just fascinating to see old and new media - tech naif and tech literate - clash in a common goal - and to see the relationship between the two of them pay off. There's a final moment - a glance between the two of them at the Capitol - that is really affecting because of the slow build of their mutual respect and friendship.  Both performances are strong.  This is their film

Sorkin is wise to withhold the second strand of the film, and our Big Bad, Mark Zuckerberg, until half an hour into the film.  Like the shark in JAWS, he lets the tension build, and Jeremy Strong's uncanny impression of the older, even more menacing Zuck, is truly breath-taking. His scenes are all centred around the preparation for his testimony to Congress on the day that the Capitol Riot breaks out.  Bill Burr is superb as the Voice of Sorkin and Righteousness, trying to appeal to Zuck's morality, such as it is.  But I also really liked SINNERS' Wunmi Mosaku as the PR advisor hired to drill Zuck for his testimony.  Both are with Zuck in the situation room as the riot unfolds and it's from them that we get the human reaction - pull the plug on the President (who remains unnamed).

Sorkin reminds us what broke that day.  And he shows us how citizens around the world have been deliberately enraged and radicalised for profit.  We already knew all of this, but seeing it play out to its logical conclusion of trampled policeman and death is visceral and brilliant. The resulting film is superbly written and acted. The direction is fine.  One cannot help but wonder what Fincher might have made of it though - especially those final scenes in the Capitol.

THE SOCIAL RECKONING has a running time of 1hr 52 minutes and is rated 15. It goes on global release on October 8th.

THE LAST FIRST: WINTER K2****

High mountain fanatics know that there has long been controversy surrounding the commercialisation of the sport AND how far the Nepalese sherpas who assist in Westerners summiting get proper credit and pay. Both of those issues coalesce in this provocative and incredible new film from documentarian Amir Bar-Lev (THE TILLMAN STORY). It tells the tragic story of the 2021 attempt to summit the world's second highest and most dangerous mountain, K2, in the most punishing of weather conditions, during winter. And because these days high mountaineering is obsessively filmed and instagrammed, there is a wealth of footage through which to unpack what really happened.

We begin in the joyful camp of Icelander John Snorri and his friend, the Pakistani guide Ali Sadpara and his son Sajid. They are attempting to be the first to summit in winter. But a crucial flaw in this doc is that it does not make clear that they are adding an extra challenge - they want to summit without using supplemental oxygen. This means that their trek is going to be far slower and involve far longer periods of acclimatisation so that they can survive in the Death Zone.  

Snorri and the Sadparas have literally spent a month setting up the fixed ropes up to Camp 2 when their first climbing window is gazzumped by the mountaineering world's self-proclaimed superstar, the British-Napelese climber Nims Purja and his team.  They are attempting to summit all 8000-ers in record time, with helicopter assists to the various base camps. But as they are climbing with oxygen they can do so fast.  

They decide to use Snorri's fixed ropes but will lay them further up, and will let Snorri and the Sadparas climb with them. Or will they?  Nope!  Instead we get a racially-motivated double-cross where the Nepalese decide to make the first summit alone.  Now, I know that there's a lot of resentment that Sherpa achievements have been under-played for decades, but this is still a nasty and morally shocking move, made all the worse from the fact their racist motivation is captured on film.

Then, to add insult to injury, Snorri and the Sadparas lose their second window to a commercial mountaineering expedition organised by Seven Summits Trekking.  This seems to exemplify everything wrong with modern mountaineering.  Pay to play mountaineers with scant experience and respect for the mountain coupled with a (perhaps literally) criminally poor logistical operation.  One of the many haunting moments in this doc is when mountaineers reach Camp 3 expecting to find tents and radio back to base camp when there are none, only to have the Dutch SST representative tell them that he thought tents would have been left behind by Nims' team.  Right. Like they would still be on the mountain after weeks of 150 mph gales. 

So Snorri and the Sadparas finally use a very tight window to make their attempt. It ends in tragedy with Snorri and Ali Sadpara dead on the mountain, alongside two other victims in that season.  The final 20 minutes of this film, where we hear the son coolly describe why there is no hope for his dad, and then go on to recover and bury his body, and when we see the two widows forgive their husbands, is just the most devastating thing.

This is a tremendous doc for clearly laying all the things that went wrong and will go wrong when you combine vengeful ambition, avarice and incompetence in the high mountains. But it's also a testament to genuine friendship and familial love.  Do watch it.

THE LAST FIRST: WINTER K2 is rated 15 and has a running time of 1hr 38m. It played Sundance 2026 and is now on release on Apple TV.

TENZING****

Director Jennifer Peedom (SHERPA) brings all of her love and knowledge of the Himalaya to her first fiction feature, a biopic of the legendary mountain climber Tenzing Norgay.  He was the first man, alongside New Zealander Edmund Hillary, to both successfully summit Everest AND descend safely*.  

Norgay lived an extraordinary and contested life. Screenwriter Luke Davies (LION) chooses to frame it as an outsider story in a beautifully constructed if sometimes rather exposition-heavy script. The film is made up of three timelines.  The successful summit is the framing story, but we flash back to Tenzing as a young Tibetan boy and also as a young Nepalese man. 

Why the change in geographic descriptor?  Because Tenzing's family were poor Tibetan farmers whose herd was laid to waste by disease. They were thus forced to become refugees in Nepal seeking work, and left a young sick Tenzing (Samdrup Dorje Lama) in the care of some Buddhist monks, never to be seen again.  And so, Tenzing grows up as an outsider in Nepal. He is manifestly NOT a Sherpa, but of a different caste, and he has no prospects or family. All he has is his desire, growing up in the shadow of the sacred mountain, to climb it in awe and reverence.  

At this point we switch to the middle Tenzing (Tenzin Dalha), a charming but rather hapless young man whose main assets are his self-belief and the love of his childhood sweetheart.  She has run away with him to Darjeeling, India, where the European summit attempts are staged from.  He has to cut his hair and learn English and even then struggles to get a spot as a "sherpa" because, well, he is not a sherpa.  But how can you not hire Mr Amazing?!

And so we move back to the framing story, where Genden Phuntsok is now the mature Tenzing, the man who has come as close as any (bar maybe Mallory) to ascent and is trying again with a new British-led expedition.  Once again he is an outsider, because he is neither accepted by the Sherpa that he commands nor is he accepted by the rest of the full members of the climbing team that he has lobbied to join.  Despite showing incredible mountaineering skill, it becomes increasingly clear that the British, led by Willem Defoe's Colonel John Hunt, would rather have two of their own make the summit attempt, rather than a Tibetan man and a Kiwi.

Still, in the end, the mountain demands meritocracy. And so it is Tenzing and Edmund Hillary (a wonderfully restrained and generous screen partner in Tom Hiddleston) who make the ascent. Although we mountain fanatics know every step of that journey, I must confess that I was absolutely enthralled by its re-enactment. It got a little dusty in the theatre when Col Hunt wished Tenzing well on the final push, and when Ed Hillary fixed his mask just before the peak.  It was a thing of true beauty, made all the better by both men giving such restrained performances.  We are meant to be in awe of the mountain, and they really do portray that all-consuming fascination and reverence beautifully.

And what of the mountain?  Director Jennifer Peedom and cinematographer Stefan Duscio must be praised for their awe-inspiring photography of the real Himalaya and the New Zealand high mountain stand-in.  It is beautiful and awe-inspiring and immersive.  So while this will be an Apple TV release I would really encourage you to see it on as big a screen as possible. The added bonus is that you will then truly enjoy Rebekka Karijord's score.

TENZING has a running time of 2hrs 8 mins. It played Telluride and Toronto and opens in the USA on October 9th and will stream on Apple TV from October 16th.

*To this day it is debated whether Mallory ascended three decades earlier - I believe he did, but if you don't make it back it is not deemed a successful summit for obvious reasons.

THE UPRISING (2026)**

What a frustrating film THE UPRISING is! It's rather handsomely made, and there's nothing wrong with any of the performances per se. It's just so interminably dour and dull and earnest and ploddingly predictable.  For this is an England immiserated by the plague and weighed down by taxation, where the peasants are marching on London to demand relief and justice from a weak young King.  Everything is mud and dun-coloured woollens and unwashed hair.  There is no subtlety here. It's the world of Wat Tyler and savage pre-democratic injustice.  All of which is fine and may indeed be worth a feature film.  But then the writer-director Paul Greengrass, of BOURNE fame, shoehorns in a weirdly anachronistic Robin Hood prequel.  It's just so odd and clearly no-one knew what to do with it, not least the marketing team.  Is this a Robin Hood film? Not really. It is it a straightforward historical drama? I guess? I found the whole thing desperately uninvolving.  Which is a shame because a lot of time and care has gone into recreating atmospheric night-time riot scenes with extras punching each other galore. But at a moment of high climax to hear our Robin avatar shout out "We need Bedfordshire!" and "Keep the script even!" is enough to signal that this film really has just jumped the shark.

THE UPRISING is rated 15 and has an interminable running time of 2hrs 8m. It was released in the USA last month and will be released in the UK on Friday.