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GuardianSep 27Preview

Godzilla Minus Zero review – spectacular Japanese action continues franchise’s winning streak

New York film festival: The follow-up to 2023’s Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One dazzles with smart social commentary and jaw-dropping effectsEven by the standards of older movie stars catching a major second wind later in their careers, Godzilla pulled off an impressive reclamation of the spotlight three years ago. Godzilla Minus One, the most recent reboot featuring the 70-year-old kaiju – the version(s) from his native Japan, mind, not the Americanized one concurrently starring in a series of Warner Bros blockbusters opposite King Kong – wasn’t just another monster-movie success. It fully crossed over, becoming the highest-grossing Japanese-language movie ever released in North America, and won an Academy Award to boot for its terrific visual effects. Now. Japanese Godzilla characters are mainstream enough to pop up in Happy Meals, and the Toho-made sequel Godzilla Minus Zero is world

Jesse HassengerNew York film festival 2026Godzilla

BBCSep 26Preview

Security lapses at Utah campus where Charlie Kirk was killed, review says

The independent report also says Kirk's aides insisted he speak outdoors, overriding concerns from campus officials.

GuardianSep 25Preview

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve review – brilliant aerial combat game fulfils the Top Gun fantasy

PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC (version played); Bandai NamcoThe game generates blood-pumping moments as you twist, turn and weave through the skies, while your locked-on missiles speed away to obliterate an enemy planeThe core appeal of any Ace Combat game lies in the moment when the beautiful clouds part, the sunlight glints off your perfectly rendered state-of-the-art fighter jet, and guitar-shredding music kicks into overdrive as your locked-on missiles speed away to obliterate an enemy plane. All of that is 100% present in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. What’s new is the way it delivers its unexpectedly compelling story.Set in the Earth-like alternative world of Strangereal, where every country is absolutely obsessed with fighter planes and giant superweapons, Ace Combat drafts you into the role of a fake ace pilot called the Wings of Theve – a propaganda invention to raise the morale of a

Patrick LumGamesAction games

GuardianSep 25Preview

Taylor Swift: The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore review – flashes of humanity and bafflingly vindictive love songs

(Republic)This four-track addition to a critically maligned album works hard to remind fans what they love about Swift, with some sweet highs and galling lowsOne downside of turning your release strategies into scavenger hunts and layering clues within your work is that it invites enormous amounts of scrutiny about your potential motive. When Taylor Swift announced an expanded edition of last year’s critically maligned The Life of a Showgirl this week, subtitled The Encore, many fans instantly suspected one of two things: that it was designed to remind Grammy members of Showgirl’s existence during their voting period to determine next year’s nominees, or to oust country ingenue Ella Langley from her record-breaking US No 1 run.If that sounds cynical, it’s also worth remembering that when Swift announced Showgirl last year, she said that unlike her previous album, The Tortured Poets Depar

Laura SnapesTaylor SwiftMusic

GuardianSep 25Preview

The best recent crime and thrillers – review roundup

Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley; The Silent Appeal by Janice Hallett; Cold Sunset by William Boyd; The Occidental Book of the Dead by T Geronimo Johnson and The Last Tenant by Eva Björg ÆgisdóttirMurder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins, £22) This, the first Miss Marple continuation novel, must have been a more difficult undertaking than a new Hercule Poirot; furnished by Christie with a cartoonist’s worth of exaggerated traits, the Belgian detective is surely easier to bring off the page than the unassuming but observant elderly spinster. Foley makes a commendable attempt, removing Miss Marple from the postwar austerity of St Mary Mead to the comparative luxury of the Swiss Alps. Although we are introduced to the unnamed body in the gondola cabin at the start, an immediate backward shift for a two-day lead-up means Miss Marple has little actual dete

Laura WilsonFictionBooks

GuardianSep 25Preview

Can’t Get You Out of My Head by Michael Cragg review – what’s the secret of Kylie’s genius?

The pop star emerges as a great unifier in this in-depth yet heartfelt portrait of an Aussie icon‘There’s an anxiety in declaring oneself a Kylie fan,” wrote the late San Francisco poet Kevin Killian (who nonetheless once published an entire collection devoted to the singer). Despite her remarkable longevity, with record-breaking chart success across five decades, Kylie’s place in the pop firmament has often felt more precarious than that of other artists, perhaps because of her past as a soap star, and the schmaltz of some of her early material with Stock Aitken Waterman.But she has always displayed a canny self-awareness, alongside a willingness to push the envelope. It’s evident in her knowing rendition of I Should Be So Lucky as a bad poem at the Royal Albert Hall in 1996, and her many collaborations with experimental dance producers. Then there’s her instinct for giving fans what th

Jack ParlettPop and rockBooks

GuardianSep 24Preview

Yellow Dog by Martin Amis review – Bill Nighy has a ball

From spoof monarch to porn tycoon, the actor narrator goes to town on the larger-than-life characters in this Booker-nominated satire In the 2003 novel Yellow Dog, Xan Meo is set upon by two men in a pub who cosh him over the head: “Like the statue of a fallen tyrant, he crashed sideways into the damp paving, and lay still.” Meo is a writer and actor whose late father was a dangerous gangster; the attack is in revenge for Meo naming an old associate of his father in print. Meo survives, though the injury leaves him with an altered personality. Where he was previously a conscientious husband and father, now he is a chip off the old block.While Meo languishes in hospital, King Henry IX – who is struggling to conceal his boredom with the job – is informed that images of his 15-year-old daughter in the bath are in circulation. And Clint Smoker, star reporter and gossip peddler at the tabloid

Fiona SturgesMartin AmisAudiobooks

BBCSep 23Preview

UK to review Chagos Islands deal over lack of US support, Streeting tells BBC

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has confirmed the review after Donald Trump told Andy Burnham the deal was "terrible".

GuardianSep 22Preview

Control Resonant review – save New York from paranormal phenomena

PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC; RemedyA surprisingly conventional game from a famously weird developer, this sequel to 2019’s Control is accomplished but safeThis is an arthouse action game from Finnish developer Remedy, masters of exactly this type of thing. It’s a sequel, however, so not only must it clear the high bar that its strikingly distinctive predecessor has set – it must also ideally arrive with a bushel of new ideas. There are clear and valuable strengths here in character progression and the lustrous presentation of its paranormal world, but Resonant doesn’t feel as enjoyably recondite or expansive in its influences as 2019’s Control did. As you wander New York brandishing supernatural abilities against glowing orange foes, the sad sense creeps in that you might be playing any number of games.As paranormal event survivor Jesse Faden, your journey through the original Control was li

Phil IwaniukGamesCulture