“Always try to see the best in people.” It may be the mantra that The Great Gatsby’s narrator tries to live by, but it is a luxury that not all of the novel’s fans will have granted Baz Luhrmann when this latest adaptation was announced. Known for his highly stylised visuals and a penchant for aligning period specific plotlines with present day flourish overt enough to rival Quentin Tarantino’s, some feared that in Luhrmann’s hands the story would lose not only its context, but also its subtlety. Thankfully, they were wrong. Well, at least about the first part.

Rush is a solid, acid-coloured and tense feud flick that ticks the entertainment box with enough substance for film aficionados who will walk in saying things like “I adore Hans Zimmer’s work” (he provides original songs for the movie). While it doesn’t make any leaps and bounds in the biopic stakes – it’s no Ray,…

Sofia Coppola makes perfume ads. Exclusively. Which would be fine if she made perfume ads exclusively, but she doesn’t. Some of her perfume ads are perfume ads and some of them are perfume ads stretched out to ninety minutes and released theatrically as feature films. Sometimes her perfume ads are anchored by competent scripts, top-level…

Summer in February had all the potential to be lovely — admittedly a rainy day, winter warmer, hot chocolate of a film, but lovely. It also had all the correct ingredients: a dash of good looks from Browning, (and, if you are into the military-cum-fisherman aesthetic, from Downton’s Stevens) a pinch of convivial fireside singing…