Amandaland to Olof Dreijer: the week in rave reviews

He launched a guitar band just as the world was moving on. But they still went stratospheric. Fray talks about uniting Manchester after the attacks – and wri...

An interest in spiritualism drew the escapologist and the Sherlock Holmes author together but, as actor-playwright Haig’s drama Magic shows, also threw them...

Antony and Cleopatra? Exhausting. Lear? Magnificent but flawed. Hamlet? Limitless. For Shakespeare’s birthday, the Guardian’s former theatre critic ranks all...

Churchill theatre, Bromley James M Cain’s hard-bitten novella gained bleak power on screen but this version, giving Mischa Barton her UK stage debut, loses i...

The parents of a school shooter meet those of a victim in the film Mass, which is now a play. It explores the bitter proposition – and extraordinary sacrific...

The former Casualty actor wrote Driftwood – a family drama set against the backdrop of Trinidadian independence – as a private act after reconnecting with he...

Time Hoppers: The Silk Road is a time-travel adventure whose child heroes must save the legacy of Islamic scholars who shaped modern science. Its makers reve...

A theatrically released movie about glossy magazines, released at a time when there are minimal audiences for either, has ordered up a no foam, extra shot, v...

Male incels have been plentifully depicted on screen, while few film-makers have explored the varied controversies of toxic female radicalisation and the ‘wo...

Thea Gaji?’s debut is an assured, intelligent drama of a father’s endless quest for contentment outside his heroin dependencyThe addiction-recovery mantra of...

Rammed with every music-movie cliche, an almost mute supporting cast and a Michael who only produces endless smiley blandness, this is a frustratingly shallo...

Three sportswomen undergo the various ordeals of competition in a spare, sometimes harrowing drama suffused with a chilly vérité detachednessHere is a fascin...