Cinema

It's 125 years since many landmarks of early cinema were invented – and a British seaside town was the unlikely setting, writes Norman Miller.

She was once the most successful studio film-maker in Hollywood. Caryn James explores the incredible rise, tragic fall – and recent re-discovery – of a cinema legend.

“This thing that appears to be, nowadays, so simple, in fact was an extraordinary series of multiple inventions in those days.”

Scent of Mystery was a 1960 film accompanied by scents pumped into the cinema. It was a gimmick that failed, but it’s being revived, writes Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore.

Legend is about gangsters, but don’t expect another Scarface. Why are British film mobsters so much more fallible – and funny – than those in the US? Nicholas Barber reports.

Director Christopher Nolan went to great lengths to make the spaceships in sci-fi epic Interstellar as realistic as possible. Jack Stewart investigates.

This week, people in Europe have been reminded how magical a solar eclipse can be – but how does fiction treat the phenomenon?

Time travel often appears in the movies, but it’s a pity that the science never matches up with the fiction, argues Quentin Cooper.