“... gap that had opened up by 1951 was back to four. Since 2011, under David Cameron and Theresa May, life expectancy has flatlined. The latest figures, published by the Office for National Statistics in September, are for the period 2014-16. Women can now expect to live for 83.06 years and men for 79.40 years. For the first time in well over a century the ...”

“... to kill us?’ The answer to the follow-up question – why this lull? – lies in the coffin. We may have arrived at a possible response to the question about how to describe this oddly lyrical western. The boys go home to their mother, as if The Sisters Brothers was a tale about a family that went weirdly wrong and finally found its way back to ...”

“... also about wanting or not wanting to leave. Cléo (Corinne Marchand) is a singer who is told she may have cancer, and we spend two hours of her life with her as she tries to deal with the thought. At one point we hear about Edith Piaf’s actual illness, but a lot of what matters, as always for Varda and her camera, has to do not with what happens but with ...”

“... have provided his clothes with some fine-art company in Yves Saint Laurent aux musées (until 15 May). At the Pompidou, by the entrance to the floor devoted to the 20th-century avant-garde, Matisse’s La Blouse roumaine (1940) hangs next to a mannequin dressed in an embroidered woollen blouse from the Autumn/Winter 1981 collection and a knee-length velvet ...”

“... The publicity for the Chinati Foundation warns against open-toed shoes and points out that from May to September, temperatures can reach 100°F. ‘Hats, sunglasses and sun block are always ...”

“... letters of Zidane’s name: the effect of his total presence is to obscure him completely. This may be the idea the film starts out with; it is not what makes it compelling. Watching Zidane at work in this way is an extraordinary experience. He is in possession of the ball for only a tiny fraction of the game, a total of perhaps two minutes or less. Much of ...”

“... to a provincial university, or studied chemistry: it’s because he doesn’t turn forty until May. Speaking for myself, I find the homogeneity grotesque – and I say that as a white man in his forties with an Oxford degree in the humanities. God only knows what the rest of the electorate thinks. The battle of competing narratives will largely come down ...”

“... There is nothing quite as directly world-historical as this in The Shop around the Corner, but we may wonder how many directors could make a failed suicide part of a romantic comedy and still be famous for a light touch. For all its lightness and charm, the film really is about the entrapments and aspirations of what Siegfried Kracauer called the ...”

“... a candidate in such a campaign; not of a struggle between parties but of a vote to decide who may become a party’s choice, centred on a Democratic primary in the state of Ohio. One of the candidates in this primary scarcely appears, and the other, played by George Clooney, who also directs the film, is mainly an object of dream and desire rather than a ...”

“... of the US and Israel clearly on a collision course over the settlements, this racist fever may infect the whole coalition. If one goes to sleep with a dog, one should not be surprised to wake up with fleas: those who elected such a government, and even more so those who joined it, should not be surprised by the course of ...”

“... class and power, or rather class and power are full of such opportunities and yearnings, but we may lose the strangeness of the film if we use the names of things we think we know about. Fox hires Bogarde, and their relationship goes through a series of seasons rather than adding up to a plot. At first, things are quite proper, ideal from Fox’s ...”

“... in nationalist-held territory, last November’. In the same letter: ‘I would mention, if I may, that since 1967 I have made four visits to nationalist-controlled areas in Angola, Guinea and Mozambique … and have walked a total of some 600 miles there.’ In Davidson’s career, ground covered on foot signifies the slow assertion of the will, as real ...”

“... and other traditions on his art was great, and ignorance of its meaning in a tribal context may have enhanced the freedom it brought. Yet it is the sense one has when faced with ancient or exotic things that there is something beyond what can be grasped by mere inspection, if only some priest or shaman could give the correct interpretations, that makes ...”

“... involving falling and doors and eating and drinking and shrinking and growing, and for a while we may think this is a film of Alice in Wonderland after all. But only until she gets through one of the doors. Once through the door we are in Burtonland, all giant plants and tendrils, sometimes proliferating, sometimes scorched and skeletal, a jungle that ...”

“... an entirely different movie. The resemblances, as they say, are entirely coincidental, although we may believe that in the collective imagination as in Freud’s unconscious there are no accidents, only genres. This second film is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, based on the first novel in the late Stieg Larsson’s bestselling trilogy (the others are The ...”