The Lowdown to The Devil’s Backbone: the week in rave reviews

Ethan Hawke is a triumph in a poignant new comedy-drama, and Guillermo del Toro’s breakout horror flick gets a rerelease. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Bowie: The Final Act review – moving and enjoyable tribute to music legend’s last stand

Singer’s final decades can’t really be called his creative golden years but there are touching contributions from his collaborators

The Guide #222: From Celebrity Traitors to The Brutalist via Bad Bunny – our roundup of the culture that mattered in 2025

Not exhaustive, not definitive and unapologetically subjective: our annual tour of the best TV, music, films, podcasts, games and books of the last year

What rhymes with la la la, la la la la la? Kevin Killian, the poet obsessed with Kylie Minogue

He wrote poems named after Kylie songs and named his collection of erotic fiction after her indie album. He even loved the B-sides. So what did the avant garde writer find so inspiring about the mini Melbourne marvel?

Lurker to Our Girls: the week in rave reviews

A buzzy thriller about a Hollywood hanger-on and a moving documentary following the parents bereaved in last summer’s Southport attack. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Jarvis Cocker and Mary Beard announced as Booker prize judges

The historian is set to lead a ‘stellar’ 2026 panel featuring the Pulp frontman and other acclaimed writers, as the search begins for next year’s standout work of fiction

Five of the best music books of 2025

From an enraging indictment of Spotify to Del Amitri frontman Justin Currie’s account of Parkinson’s and a compelling biography of Tupac Shakur, here are five titles that strike a chord

Ian Marchant obituary

Writer, performer and broadcaster with a talent for being interested in everything and a particular fascination with British counterculture

From The Death of Bunny Munro to Wicked: For Good: the week in rave reviews

Matt Smith is the ultimate bad dad in a Nick Cave novel adaptation, and the Oz prequel musical reaches the end of the road. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Christmas Karma review – Dickens adaptation has as much Yuletide spirit as a dead rat in the eggnog

Gurinder Chadha’s leaden update of the hardy seasonal chestnut with Kunal Nayyar is joyless and nausea-inducing

Adele to make acting debut in star-studded Tom Ford movie

The singer will star alongside Adolescence breakout Owen Cooper, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Colin Firth, Thandiwe Newton and Nicholas Hoult in an Anne Rice adaptation

Bread of Angels: A Memoir, by Patti Smith review – a wild ride with the poet of punk

Smith’s incantatory voice shines through in this surprisingly revelatory follow up to Just Kids and M Train

‘Ambition is a punishing sphere for women’: author Maggie Nelson on why Taylor Swift is the Sylvia Plath of her generation

What do Swift and Plath have in common, and should Kamala Harris have spoken out about her political ambitions? The Argonauts author turns her lens on poetry, pop and patriarchy

From the Celebrity Traitors finale to a Margaret Atwood memoir: the week in rave reviews

A truly satisfying climax to the celeb reality show, and the sharp and engaging thoughts of the Handmaid’s Tale author. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Wings by Paul McCartney review – a brilliant story of post-Beatles revival

A compelling oral history traces the rise one of the most successful bands of the 70s from the ashes of a creative breakup