Coronation chicken
Is the Coronation Concert an opportunity to celebrate new British music?
Creative Sensemaker
Our weekly guide to all that’s best in culture and the arts – movies, streaming, books, music, galleries and much else – exclusively for Tortoise members.
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Cocaine Bear: A beast of a B-movie
Elizabeth Banks’s new film does exactly what it says on the tin
Post-truth pop
There’s an increasing trend of musicians embracing extreme opinions – where does that leave the fans?
The himbo’s last dance
Magic Mike’s Last Dance brings the trilogy that saw Channing Tatum take to the stage as a male stripper to a close. But it could also be the last hurrah for a particular kind of leading man: the broad, muscly, good-looking hero known as the “himbo”
The triumph of the storyteller
Victory City is Salman Rushdie’s first novel since the horrific attempt on his life in August – a virtuoso work of fiction that shows why the right to free expression must be defended much more robustly
The weight of grief
Brendan Fraser’s Oscar-nominated performance in The Whale as a morbidly obese shut-in online teacher is a master-class in the quest for hope amid the despair of bereavement
Home movies
Steven Spielberg’s epic autobiographical film, The Fabelmans, is rooted in trauma and the director’s lifelong response to it
Galleries of pain
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed – Laura Poitras’s award-winning new documentary – tells the story of photographer and activist Nan Goldin and her relentless quest to sever the link between the Sacklers and the art world
Projection of the soul
Set in the early 1980s, Empire of Light is a love letter by Sam Mendes to the cultural power of cinema. It is also a nuanced account of mental illness, and its human cost
The duty to see
The horrific murder in 1955 of Black teenager Emmett Till and its aftermath are harrowingly portrayed in Chinonye Chukwu’s powerful new film – telling a story that remains full of contemporary resonance
‘Tis the season to be streaming
What to watch during the festive break
Emotional intelligence
ITVX’s fine adaptation of Ben Macintyre’s book on Kim Philby’s interrogation by his greatest friend, Nicholas Elliott, is powered by the performances of Guy Pearce and Damian Lewis – and a richly imaginative sense of what the Cambridge spy scandal truly signified
Just in time
Emma Corrin’s performance as Orlando in Michael Grandage’s production of Virginia Woolf’s great experimental novel brings fresh life to a story that feels more contemporary than ever
The unfinished revolution
Five years ago, New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey revealed the terrible truth about Harvey Weinstein. She Said is a gripping movie adaptation of the story that launched a worldwide movement
All you can eat
Timothée Chalamet and director Luca Guadagnino are reunited in a genre-blending movie that confronts taboos, juxtaposes romance and horror, and fires the imagination
Plastic – not so fantastic
Erica Wagner heads to the V&A Dundee for Plastic: Remaking Our World, a brand new exhibition on the material that’s transformed the planet – and is now choking it
Life actually
Bill Nighy gives an Oscar-worthy performance as a 1950s bureaucrat facing death, in a brilliant remake of Kurosawa’s classic Ikiru
Purple prose
Nick Hornby’s dual study of his cultural heroes, Charles Dickens and Prince, is a fine parallel portrait of creative genius – and its mysterious origins
Peripheral vision
William Gibson, the master of cyberpunk and high-tech speculative fiction, at last gets a screen adaptation worthy of his work, in a spectacular new series starring Chloë Grace Moretz.
Messages from the secret world
John le Carré’s collected letters offer a riveting insight into one of the great authors of the postwar era – and reveal, tantalisingly, that there are more tales of George Smiley to come
Escape to reality
In its ambitious new science fiction exhibition, the Science Museum shows that creativity can be an engine of scientific discovery, and that art and science are more closely enmeshed than we might suppose
You must remember this
Kenneth Branagh gives a remarkable performance as Boris Johnson during the pandemic in This England – dramatising the intimate relationship between collective memory, plague and creativity
Marilyn for the #MeToo era
Ana de Armas gives an astonishing performance in Blonde: a harrowing account of Monroe’s life that is full of contemporary resonance
Hooked to the silver screen
Moonage Daydream is an extraordinary, kaleidoscopic voyage through the mind and art of David Bowie
The history man
Ian McEwan’s new novel is a remarkable tour d’horizon of the postwar era – and has a claim to be the celebrated author’s masterpiece
Our precious
The Rings of Power prequel series is worthy of its roots in Tolkien’s great saga – and speaks to the dreams and anxieties of the modern world
Portrait of a marriage
A fine new documentary series on Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward pays homage to a lost era of Hollywood giants – and shows that she was the more talented half of their 50-year partnership
The taste of success
A heartwarming new documentary tells the story of four Zimbabwean refugees who compete in the Olympics of wine-tasting
Publish and be damned
Alex Jones has been ordered by a judge to pay $49.3 million for his false claims about Sandy Hook. His book is still set to be published in the autumn
The art of looking up
A new BBC documentary series gives a damning account of how big oil made us doubt man-made climate change – but the fight for climate justice still needs a more effective way of reaching viewers
The ghosts of justice
Charlotte Colbert’s debut feature, She Will, is a masterly horror film – and a profoundly imaginative exploration of the #MeToo movement
The laughing time traveller
Robert B. Weide’s documentary on Kurt Vonnegut reclaims the writer for an age that needs his comic genius more than ever
The price of perfection
Barney Douglas’s new documentary McEnroe is a subtle and enthralling exploration of a complex, cerebral tennis genius
The other Boris
Peter Morgan’s new play explores the complex, lethal relationship between the oligarch Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Putin – and the battle for the soul of Russia that led, ultimately, to the war in Ukraine
Just the facts, ma’am
Ed Perkins’ fine documentary The Princess rescues Diana’s story from the hyper-reality of myth and drama
Elvis is back in the building
Baz Luhrmann brings the extraordinary saga of the King’s Faustian pact with Colonel Tom Parker to the big screen – in typical maximalist style
The Georgian age
A new documentary movie about George Michael shows how great has been his cultural impact
Birgitte to the rescue
The return of Borgen and of Sidse Babett Knudsen as Foreign Minister Nyborg could not be more timely
Is it a bird? Is it a plane?… No, it’s Kite!
Only days to go until our inaugural festival of music and ideas. Reasons to be cheerful? We have so many
Help us, Obi-Wan. You’re our only hope
The return of the exiled Jedi Knight – and of his nemesis, Darth Vader – is a much-needed escapist treat
In-flight entertainment
Tom Cruise returns as Maverick in a sequel to Top Gun that is even better than the original
Multiple choice
Everything Everywhere All At Once turns the quantum science of the “multiverse” into a wondrous metaphor for the human condition
Trump treads the boards
The 47th, Mike Bartlett’s new play about the 2024 US election, raises important questions about the future of American democracy
Follow the funny
In the new comic drama series, Gaslit, Julia Roberts excels as Martha Mitchell, the forgotten whistleblower of the Watergate scandal
Believe her
Having said goodbye to Villanelle, Jodie Comer takes to the stage – and addresses the grave injustice of women’s treatment in rape cases
Coming home to roost
The return of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem – and Mark Rylance’s Rooster Byron – to London’s West End could not be more timely
Keep on Rowling
The third film in the Fantastic Beasts series is the first movie inspired by the author’s work since her brave stand on women’s rights
Loser spooks
Gary Oldman excels as Jackson Lamb, chief of MI5’s team of outcasts, as Mick Herron’s spy thrillers are at last brought to the screen
And the winner is…
For all their flaws, the Oscars remain a riveting spectacle. Can any movie stop The Power of the Dog this weekend?
Atticus on trial
Aaron Sorkin’s stage play of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird updates a classic American text – and offers an alternative to Gregory Peck’s iconic performance
Kite gains altitude
The weekend of 10-12 June – and Kite, our new festival of ideas and music – is getting closer. Now, with even more names added to the lineup, it’s the perfect time to book your tickets
Darkness visible
Robert Pattinson is the perfect Batman for our times, in a movie that owes more to classic film noir than blockbuster superhero franchises
The agony of choice
Cat Burglar, Charlie Brooker’s new animated heist, requires the viewer to make choices to progress the storyline. Is it a winning format?
Blinded by love
Netflix’s Love Is Blind, the reality TV show in which contestants aren’t allowed to see each other until they’re engaged, is back for a second season. It plunges into some of the genre’s classic pitfalls, but the series is still a cut above its superficial counterparts
The making of a jeen-yuhs
In its two-decade exploration of Kanye West’s life, Netflix’s new documentary jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy perfectly showcases what makes the rapper so captivating
The art of memory
Joanna Hogg’s masterly sequel to The Souvenir – a meditation on grief, creativity and class – strengthens her claim to be one of the great directors of our time
Animal spirits
The Royal Academy’s remarkable new Francis Bacon exhibition reframes the great modern artist in a fresh, sharply contemporary light
Bright side of the road
Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast succeeds precisely because it juxtaposes the violence of the Troubles with the warm normality of everyday family life
Laughter in the dark
The final season of After Life seals the reputation of Ricky Gervais as a master of comic observation and a valiant defender of irony
It’s about time
Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is a comic masterpiece – and much more than an exercise in cinematic nostalgia