Entertainment

A brilliant performance from Alfre Woodard powers this taut, vital, moral drama about the toll on all involved of the death penalty. This film, which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, follows prison warden Bernardine Williams (Alfre Woodard) through a crisis in the lead up to the thirteenth execution she must oversee. The twelfth execution, which opens the film, went wrong and now she is under extra scrutiny as time draws near for convicted murderer Antony Woods (Aldis Hodge). We follow Williams closely and it is clear she is struggling – she is drinking too much, not sleeping and arguing with her husband Jonathan (Wendell Pierce). He wants them both to retire – an interesting flip on the usual portrayal of a wife begging her husband to slow down and spend more time at home. But she...

Catch this thrillingly beautiful documentary of 1920s Russian life, which is an exciting work of art as much as it informs – free until Tuesday. This week’s recommendation is something totally different – a silent Russian documentary that is nearly 100 years old. But it is wonderful, and startling, funny, intriguing and totally worth 70 minutes of your time. It was, a few years ago, named the best ever documentary by Sight and Sound but that actually makes it sound slightly worthy and it isn’t – it’s a wondrous, humanist slice of life and an ode to the power of cinema. Man with a Movie Camera was made by David Kaufman, using the perfect pseudonym Dsiga Vertov, which translates as ‘spinning top’, filmed in Moscow, Odessa, Kiev and Kharkov in the late 1920s. It includes numerous people...