“... You’re fastened in a heavy collar of ice. The water slakes its thirst on your blood-warmth. That may not be weed brushing your thigh. Under this green lid, a lost topography of caves and thickets, tenanted by ancients. The drowned swimmer the locals speak of, still clutching his letters of introduction. Perfect sky: low and smoky with rain. The lake bruised ...”

“... showing white teeth – the faces of mummies shrink into similar smiles and grimaces. Her eyelids may droop heavily or be closed. She, and her less explicitly characterised sisters, are mostly skinny, but wide-hipped. When they are naked they are often standing in frontal poses in which pubic hair is strongly accented. In some portraits – those of Rose von ...”

“... poor but this time the claim was accompanied by some genuine rhetoric about inequality which they may come to regret. The party, to judge by what was said in the hall, has changed; and for the better. But it hasn’t changed enough, and the danger is that where there used to be nastiness there will now be confusion. The effect of three successive electoral ...”

“... when we first see him, and obviously likes the media attention far more than he likes his job. He may think this is his job. There is a good deal of faux film-footage dotted about the movie, as if we were watching a documentary based on dozens of scraps of other people’s documentaries. Historians and sociologists, entirely reasonable people, speak directly ...”

“... it was Winifred whose paintings sold. In the exhibition at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge (until 11 May, after which it moves to Dulwich Picture Gallery), Winifred and Ben’s paintings from the ten years in which they lived together are hung side by side. Ben’s still lifes are of empty vessels: jugs, bowls and pots standing together, in formal, Morandi-like ...”

“... the possibility that people simply match their tone and word choice to that of their peers.’ It may not control for it, but the researchers argue that their results aren’t ‘a simple case of mimicry’ because of the ‘cross-emotional encouragement effect’: i.e. ‘reducing negative posts led to an increase in positive posts’ and vice ...”

“... but also make us wonder whether guessing is what we should be engaged in. The questions the plots may or may not answer are not the same as the ones that keep bobbing up in the narrative gaps or on the margins. The act of lying or withholding the truth, for example, is almost always part of the story, but what sort of act ...”

“... and elsewhere, today and for ever.’ The film cuts to Mitterrand, who has risen to respond. If he may be permitted to speak from the heights of his experience, he says, Sankara talks with the fine bravery of youth, but his tongue is too sharp and he goes too far. François places an avuncular hand on Thomas’s shoulder. Sankara laughs but doesn’t look ...”

“... are not thought of as criminals but as resourceful men taking a wild stand against the system. It may not be right, but the tendency to admire old men for still having a go is stronger, at least in Britain, than the wish to lock them up and throw away the key. In this age of tabloid Draculas, a band of pensioners who want to steal £60 million are treated ...”

“... the Home Office of any suspicious proposed marriages, where one party is a non-EU national who may be marrying for immigration purposes. Unlike colleges and marriage registrars, landlords and health professionals are legally obliged merely to deny jobs and services to the undocumented, not to denounce them. Many, however, ...”

“... Mannix and his fixing of whatever looks as if it might get out of hand, although this possibility may get us close to an answer. Perhaps the target is the memory of a fixable world – fixable on film in hyperbolic Technicolor ways, and fixable off-screen by money and cunning. The film’s finest sequence may complicate ...”

“... The​ BBC’s Royal Charter is up for renewal. On 12 May the government published a White Paper, A BBC for the Future: A Broadcaster of Distinction, setting out its proposals. A draft of the new charter will be published and debated in Parliament and the final version will come into effect at the beginning of next year ...”

“... a young man they accidentally killed in a preceding film). Both are reasonable positions, and we may, according to our own politics, think either is confirmed or denied by the bomb explosion that hits the UN session in Vienna where the accords are being signed. But nobody looks for another solution, and the film just rides out the deadlock. Things get ...”

“... We may​ think all biopics are biofantasies, in which case the opening title card of Adam McKay’s new film Vice will have us laughing already. After all, he is the former Saturday Night Live writer who made The Big Short, a very funny movie about the 2008 financial crisis. The card says: ‘The following is a true story ...”

“... black police officer. The pictured times move from the 19th century to the 1950s to the 1970s. We may not have recognised the first shot as coming from Gone with the Wind, but we’ll certainly have picked up the presentation of the American South and the Civil War. As for the connections among the three scenes, we’re still waiting for the film to start and ...”