Michael Wood

How could Marlene Dietrich ever be innocent? Even when she is playing the child part she asks: ‘When I grow up, can I become a hangman?’

Julia Kristeva’s​ book on Dostoevsky appears in a series from Buchet/Chastel called ‘Les Auteurs de ma vie’. Earlier titles included works by Stefan Zweig on Tolstoy, Thomas Mann on Schopenhauer, Paul Valéry on Descartes, and contributions from living writers such as Marie-Hélène Lafon (on Flaubert) and Michel Schneider (on Pascal). The series was started...

It’s​ an old narrative device and a very effective one: to provide the day or month without mentioning the year. Garrett Bradley’s new feature-length documentary, Time (on Amazon Prime), begins with a woman telling the camera that it is 23 July and that she has been out of prison for a week and one day. On 24 May she says she is pregnant with twins and has been for 22 weeks. A...

It’s​ not the main function of great fictional characters to provide platforms for the careers of others, but they do the job very well. In a new film, Sherlock Holmes walks into Inspector Lestrade’s office and announces that he has solved a particular case. Lestrade is pleased, and says he has two questions. The first is how did Holmes do it? Holmes offers a detailed answer....

The meanings​ of its title sit a little heavily on I’m Thinking of Ending Things, originally a novel by Iain Reid, which Charlie Kaufman has now adapted as a movie (on Netflix). Out of context, I’m Thinking of Ending Things strongly suggests the possibility of suicide. In context too, as it happens. However, in both Reid and Kaufman’s versions it also evokes time, ageing,...