Cinema in One Take

Can you believe the evidence of your own eyes? This week on Cinema in One Take, film experts Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab discuss You Can See Everything, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s documentary about convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. What begins as an intimate portrait becomes something far stranger,but who is manipulating whom? Plus,could it be a Best Picture contender? And, fr...

Can a film change a country’s conversation, and then conquer the Oscars? This week on Cinema in One Take, Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab discuss La Bola Negra, the Cannes prize winner and Spanish box-office hit sparking fresh interest in poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, as well as the country’s painful Civil War history. After becoming a phenomenal hit in Spain, could this intertwined story...

Can Tom Cruise dig his way out of scathing reviews and into another Oscar nomination? In this week’s episode of Cinema in One Take, Kaleem Aftab and Emma Jones weigh up Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger: a star-studded satire with plenty of ambition, but a twist that leaves them both unconvinced. Plus, as the documentary NAZA prepares to stream for free, could giving political documentaries awa...

In this week's Cinema in One Take, Kaleem Aftab is excited about Elsinore after its critical acclaim at Toronto, and  convinced Andrew Scott will win an Oscar. Emma Jones  has another Best Actor contender in mind: John Malkovich from Wild Horse Nine. They also disagree over the TIFF audience prize winner La Bola Negra, before Kaleem reviews the Oasis reunion documentary Don’t Look Back in Anger an...

Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab discuss the big winners from Venice, including Golden Lion winner by Mai El-Toukhy, Woman Unknown, and its newly crowned Best Actress, Mathilde Arcel. In this week's episode of Cinema in One Take, they explore the film’s gripping portrait of the treatment of women accused of sleeping with the enemy in WW2, as well as the Special Jury Prize winner NAZA, Yuval Abraham and...

Journalists Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab finally record together in person for a special mini-edition of Cinema in One Take  from the Venice Film Festival. They discuss Martin McDonagh’s awards contender Wild Horse Nine, Florian Zeller’s divisive marital drama Bunker, starring Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem, and Ellen Burstyn and Taika Waititi’s unlikely friendship in Kornél Mundruczó’s Place to B...

Thirty years after Trainspotting introduced a generation to the worst toilet in Scotland, does Danny Boyle’s era-defining film still hold up — or do we simply miss being young? Kaleem recalls seeing it at one of its earliest Edinburgh screenings (for £1!) and winning a 25-word review competition, while Emma argues that civilisation peaked in the 1990s and has been deteriorating ever since. They al...

This week, Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab look at Hollywood’s troubling history with child stars following the death of Hayden Panettiere at just 36. Why has the industry struggled for decades to protect young performers — and how much can we really connect the pressures of childhood fame with what happens later in life? They also discuss new developments in the real-life case behind Kaouther Ben Han...

Cinema is having a blockbuster summer. The Odyssey and Spider-Man are smashing records, surprise hits such as Backrooms and Obsession are pulling younger audiences into cinemas, and the box office comeback we've been predicting finally seems to have arrived. So why is it still so difficult to make money from independent film? After producer Marco Perego — behind some of this year's most acclaimed...

The Venice 2026 line-up is here—and, as with Cannes, a pattern seems to be emerging. Are Hollywood studios moving away from the world's biggest film festivals? Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab give their first reaction to the Venice Official Selection, which includes Danny Boyle's Ink, Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine, Florian Zeller's Bunker, Primetime starring Robert Pattinson, and Lee Chang-dong's...

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is finally here, and Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab are, for once, in agreement about something: that it's a masterpiece. In this week's episode of Cinema in One Take, we review Nolan's ambitious adaptation of Homer's epic, discussing why it works so brilliantly as both an intimate character study and a spectacular cinematic experience. We debate whether it's Nolan's g...

This week on Cinema in One Take, we're asking whether independent cinema's coolest studio has made its biggest mistake yet. A24 has announced a $75 million partnership with Google DeepMind, prompting a fierce backlash from filmmakers and fans. Is the criticism justified, or is AI simply becoming another filmmaking tool that studios can't afford to ignore? We also discuss the extended theatrical re...

Why are audiences flocking back to cinemas in 2026? Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab unpack the record-breaking opening of Toy Story 5 and ask why animation and horror have become Hollywood's safest bets, while superhero films appear to be losing their grip. Is cinema entering a new era where audiences crave familiar worlds—just not necessarily superheroes? They discuss the return of The Blair Witch Pr...

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has broken BFI IMAX ticket sales records a month before release or before any reviews, raising a fascinating question: are Nolan and Avatar's James Cameron the last truly bankable directors in cinema? This week, Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab debate Nolan's unique relationship with audiences, and how many other directors could inspire those sales. Or is the box office...

Steven Spielberg's long-awaited new alien epic Disclosure Day has finally landed. Is it his best film in 20 years, or a frustrating missed opportunity? Cinema in One Take's Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab disagree about what Hollywood's legendary director has created. They also discuss the controversy surrounding Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid and his withdrawal from FIDMarseille after calls for a boyc...

What happens when YouTubers start making some of the biggest films in the world? This week on Cinema in One Take, Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab dive into the extraordinary success of Backrooms and Obsession, two breakout hits from directors who built huge audiences online before stepping behind the camera. What took Hollywood so long to recognise the talent pipeline? They also tackle the Tribeca-pre...

Our final Cannes Film Festival wrap-up is here! In this episode of Cinema in One Take, Emma Jones reports back from the Croisette after a whirlwind fortnight at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, while Kaleem Aftab joins to unpack the winners, surprises, controversies and biggest talking points from this year’s Palme d’Or race. They discuss why Christian Mungiu’s Fjord emerged as the festival’s major...

The Palme d’Or race at the Cannes Film Festival is becoming more unpredictable by the day as the festival enters its final stages. Emma Jones speaks to Kaleem Aftab from Cannes, to talk about the icy family drama Fjord starring Sebastian Stan, the politically charged Russian thriller Minotaur, and the visually stunning World War I love story Coward. They also explore one of the festival’s biggest...

AI children. Korean monsters. Missing Hollywood stars. And Jacob Elordi as Bond? In this Cannes dispatch, Emma Jones reports from the Film Festival as she and Kaleem Aftab break down some of the festival’s biggest premieres — from Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Sheep in the Box to Na Hong-jin’s bonkers sci-fi feature Hope, James Gray’s mafia thriller Paper Tiger, and Léa Seydoux’s acclaimed turn in Gentle Mo...

Emma Jones joins Kaleem Aftab from the Cannes Film Festival to unpack the films, politics, and glamour (as well as the growing exhaustion) at Cannes 2026. They discuss the strong early reaction to Pavel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, why critics are divided over Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales, Sandra Hüller’s latest performance, Isabelle Huppert in Parisian meta-fiction mode, and whether Cannes critic...

Day one at Cannes and already the big question is: what kind of festival is Cannes becoming? Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab break down an opening night dominated by Jane Fonda, nostalgia, political carefulness, and the idea that Hollywood studios no longer need the Cannes Croisette to launch a film. They discuss the first Competition reactions, why subtler world cinema may be have a moment with Koji...

This week Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab discuss the growing controversy around AI in filmmaking as Kaleem’s produced feature ' Memory of Princess Mumbi', made with generative AI, begins its international release following an award-winning festival run. From generative AI and visual effects to the Oscars’ new guidance on AI eligibility, they ask where the ethical lines around artificial intelligence...

In this episode of Cinema in One Take, Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab use The Devil Wears Prada 2 to ask what’s happened to journalism in the age of clicks, algorithms, and tech power? Arguing the film is often more about journalism than fashion, they explore how cultural journalism is being reshaped, from shrinking editorial budgets to influencers and platform-driven taste. Plus why style still matt...

Critics hate it. Fans seem set to love it. Michael, the biopic of Michael Jackson, has been met with some of the harshest reviews in recent memory, but it could still become one of the biggest musical biopics ever made. In this episode of Cinema in One Take, Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab are joined by journalist and critic Patrick Heidmann, to ask a simple question: if the reviews are so negative… w...

Are cinemas putting audiences off before the film even begins? This week on Cinema in One Take, Emma Jones and Kaleem Aftab respond to Sony’s Tom Rothman, who has urged cinemas to shorten the bloated pre-show of ads and trailers before films start, and ask whether the pre-cinema experience itself is part of the problem of getting audiences in? Then it’s to Cannes 2026, where the line up for other...