Wicked director Jon Chu: ‘Everyone’s whispering behind your back at what a terrible decision this is or that was’
Turning the $1bn stage musical into a Hollywood blockbuster brought high expectations for the maker of the Oscar-winning Crazy Rich Asians
Housewife of the Year: A wistful celebration of a generation of Irish women who competed for £300 and a gas stove
Ciaran Cassidy’s fine documentary is filled with much sadness but also allows a fair degree of celebration
Wicked review: Yes, it’s a nightmare in digital wax, but you’ll leave the cinema in buoyant mood
Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande are well paired. It’s easy to shake off the outside world and soar along beside them
The Borrowers review: Gate’s Irish-set adaptation is solid good fun for the whole family
Mary Norton’s story will entertain children while adults can convince themselves of its literary status
Four new films to see this week
Mescal and Washington are solid in otherwise second-hand Gladiator II. Plus charmingly festive Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point, vibrant doc Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, and rigorous if cold drama In Camera
Are celebrities preparing Donald Trump takedown speeches ahead of awards season? Don’t bet on it
Ignore the right-wing blowhards: awards ceremonies are rarely as politically partisan as they like to pretend
Steve McQueen: ‘It was always Saoirse Ronan and her mother. So there was this bond. There’s this kinship’
Director’s film Blitz, starring the Irish actor, focuses on a tight family of three trying to keep heads aloft as the bombs fall in London in 1940
In Camera: Debut feature unnerves, provokes and intrigues
A film that steers away from didacticism, this is a deliberately puzzling, oblique affair that never runs when it can sneak
The Movie Quiz: Skellig Michael made its first appearance in which Star Wars film?
Plus: Connie Nielsen is back in Gladiator II. Who else returns from the first film?
Gladiator II: What the critics say about Paul Mescal’s performance
The word on the Irish actor’s performance was consistently positive, not so much for the film itself
Gladiator II review: Don’t blame Paul Mescal but there’s no good reason for this jumbled sequel to exist
Ridley Scott’s sequel to his own historical epic fails to rise above second-hand status, despite valiant efforts from a fine cast
Sonny Boy: A Memoir by Al Pacino – A meandering but not unengaging memoir from Hollywood’s enduring oddball
The star reflects on his ‘difficult’ reputation, his baffling and hilarious money troubles, and how drinking ‘saved his life’
Show Clint Eastwood some respect. His new film Juror #2 is no dud
The way Warner Bros has handled the veteran star’s 40th film as director is in keeping with Hollywood studios’ new approach to the movie economy
Four new films to see this week
Saoirse Ronan in in elaborate but conventional WWII drama Blitz, plus superior family film Paddington in Peru, static adaptation of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, and peculiar ‘Legoised’ Pharrell Williams doc Piece by Piece
Bird director Andrea Arnold on Barry Keoghan: ‘I thought he had the most incredible face. Wow. What a man’
The English film-maker talks about tough shoots, her working-class background and working with Irishmen Keoghan and Robbie Ryan